Evening Latte

Minor spoilers for all, but big stuff will be noted.

Colin from Accounts (season three)

The third and final season of this rom-com continues to be a clever and darkly funny exploration of relationships involving deeply flawed but endearing characters. Married-in-real-life Harriet Dyer (Ashley) and Patrick Brammall (Gordon) write and produce. The pilot brought Ash and Gordon together via a car accident that resulted in them caring for an injured dog (Colin). Initially suspicious of each other and cynical of relationships in general, they grow on each other, but are self-destructive and immature enough to keep things from going smoothly.

This season starts off with a significant time jump whose details are referenced, but only described in short bursts during the first two episodes. A lot has changed, and the focus has shifted back to Ash and Gordon deciding what they want from romance overall instead of limiting the scope to their relationship. The show continues to greatly benefit from its talented supporting cast and subplots that range from the serious (potentially blowing up your marriage with three kids for your first lesbian love) to wacky-but-relevant (Ash’s mother is part of a “men’s rights” group named Women Against Women Against Men with her creepy boyfriend). Dark humor keeps things moving even when tackling heavier topics.

I really like how the show plays with awkwardness for laughs while rarely going full cringe. Some scenes are tough to watch, but it’s usually balanced with cleverness and levity instead of just piling on. The dialogue is snappy, and some of the best jokes in the show are quick one-liners.

Rick and Morty (season nine)

Starting around season five, I felt like the series had leaned more into riffing on established themes and indulging in concepts that didn’t really have the legs to carry an episode. An example of the latter is Wet Kuat Amortican Summer, which stretches a Total Recall (1990) reference to its absolute limit for very few laughs. From seasons five to eight, there were more good episodes than bad ones, but standouts were few and far between.

Season nine was a return to a form closer to the first four seasons. It did have a dud (Rick Fu Hustle), but there were also episodes that could be stacked up against the best of the series (Rick Days, Seven Nights; Mortgully: The Last Rickforest; Field of Dreams). My favorite moments in the show are when an entire episode builds to something truly bleak with actual emotional stakes, then they let you just sit in it. Morty eating breakfast and staring at his own grave while Mazzy Star plays, Rick sitting lonely on a toilet while being berated by his own recording, etc.

Season nine has a couple moments that hit hard, and most of the episodes are centered around concepts that can actually stand as the primary story in a 22-minutes episode. The mix of actual stakes, silliness, and sci-fi farce feels more balanced, and overt meta references/fourth wall breaks have been scaled back. I found myself looking forward to the weekly releases again instead of getting around to watching days or even weeks later.

Quarterback (season three)

If you’re even a casual NFL fan, you’ll know at least the major beats of what’s below. If you only watch the show without following the league, you may want to to skip to the next section.

The least eventful season of this show by a pretty wide margin. That’s partly due to the four players themselves and partly due to circumstances outside of their control.

• Joe Flacco was benched by Cleveland partway through the season and became interim starter for Cincinnati until Joe Burrow got healthy.
• Jayden Daniels had two injuries that each kept him out multiple weeks apiece, then the Commanders shut him down at the end of the season because they had no chance to make the playoffs.
• Cameron Ward was a rookie on a team that was bad enough the previous year to get the number one pick (him). They went 3-14 during this season’s…season.

The only person whose on- and off-field stuff was consistently interesting was Baker Mayfield. The show neatly mixed a brief summary of his tumultuous college career with him and his wife telling the story of how they got together, with Baker copping to all his bad decisions and (seemingly) showing genuine gratitude for the lessons he learned. He’s funny mic’d up during practice and games, and he’s loose/relaxed on camera in a way the other guys aren’t.

The Bucs also started the season hot, beating the 49ers and the Seahawks while going 6-2. But the slide that would eventually end their season wasn’t anything juicy: a bunch of key players got injured, so the team just couldn’t execute consistently enough to win.

Flacco and Mayfield had a fair amount of interesting off-field stuff like the birth of a child (Baker), talking about supporting a professional athlete spouse in the twilight of their career (Joe), and showing the family impact of moving teams mid-season (Joe). Both wives were great interviews and seemed to be fine with cameras being around during games and such.

Jayden and Cam’s off-field stuff was mostly limited to standards like “getting to the gym at 5:30am to grind” and “charity event hosted by his foundation.” Cam was a little more open in his interviews, and we briefly got to see him go fishing with a friend, but I can’t say I really learned anything about either of them as people. Which is a bit lame since that’s the main reason I watch shows like this.

If you liked the first two seasons, it’s not bland enough to skip entirely, but you could be forgiven to having it on in the background while doing chores.

Gary and His Demons (S01E01)

I randomly found this on a list online, and based on the opening scene, I’m looking forward to the rest.

The Bear (season five)

What a ride this show was. Taking the TV world by storm with a first season that was simultaneously painful to watch and incredibly compelling. Subjecting its audience to the most stressful consecutive 66 minutes ever committed to film (Fishes). Being loudly accused of pretentiousness and self-indulgence during its first two seasons, then actually being super pretentious and self-indulgent in season three. Bringing the focus back to the characters and generally righting the ship in season four. Pretending to be a comedic series to win Emmys (episode length hasn’t been a factor in series categorization since the rules changed in late 2021, and if the amount of humor in The Bear qualifies a show for the comedy category, The Wire is the best comedic series I’ve ever watched).

For the final outing, they took a pretty big swing by doing a kind of bottle season: seven of the eight episodes collectively portrayed only one day at the restaurant with only a few offsite excursions by Jimmy/Computer/entourage and Sugar. Fortunately, while the restaurant’s survival continued to be a constant topic of conversation, the focus was squarely on the characters, primarily how much they’d changed since we first met them. Remember when Richie brutally mocked any level of organization beyond “customers stand on that side of the counter?” When three quarters of every episode was people screaming over each other? When Neil couldn’t walk in the dining room without his hands up? When Syd was indecisive? OK, some habits die harder than others. Thankfully, the show avoided smacking viewers upside the head with a bunch of long flashbacks; it was mostly content to show us the new behaviors and trust our memories (jogged a bit with some nostalgic or self-reinforcing dialogue) to recognize the seismic shifts.

While thinking about the season for a few days after watching the finale, the word that kept coming up was “beautiful.” And it’s not primarily about the visuals: while the show overall has a distinctive style (extremely zoomed frames on characters’ faces, very shallow depth of field close-ups of food, fast cuts during any sort of action, etc.), I personally don’t find it overly pleasant. What struck a chord with me was the hard-fought growth and maturation of the characters.

When we first met them, most were in bad places, even if they didn’t recognize it. The final episodes both showcased how far they’d come and jubilantly celebrated that progress. It’s a difficult to describe, but it felt personal, and I was…proud of them? There’s a difference between being happy for someone and being proud of them, and I was proud of many of the characters during the last few episodes.

One example is a scene where Carmy and Richie talked about anxiety in the walk-in freezer. There were multiple times during the conversation when their season one or two versions would have closed off, mocked the other person, or even swung on each other, but the work they’d put into themselves and the trust/openness they’d developed kept things (mostly) even. It ended with laughter. Taken as an isolated scene, it was fairly benign, but in the context of the series, it was massive.

Among the staff’s gallows humor and Jimmy’s amusingly creative insults, there were some slyly funny moments courtesy of the guests that were given a “kitchen tour” to get them off their table so the staff could make a turn. My read is that they represented the cultural view of/response to the show (they were guests, not staff), especially the guy. Two choice ones:

• He loudly and shortly says, “Yes, chef!” every time someone talks to him. When his wife asks him why, he replies, “Everyone says that now.” Potentially a reference to how it’s become common for people to respond with kitchen lingo from the show in everyday situations.
• In the silence after Marcus and Luca’s scuffle is broken up, he says, “This is not funny.” Potentially a reference to the Emmy categorization drama.

While the season resonated with me, it obviously wasn’t perfect. Past a certain point, the number of serious issues that hit during that one day but didn’t cause the restaurant to shut down became pretty unbelievable. I would have been fine with them dropping one or two of the mini motivational speeches. The path that Carmy eventually chose was…interesting. A fair number of scenes bordered on schmaltzy, and a few crossed over. But these are small grievances when stacked against the series-long payoffs.

I talked about season five with a friend who is a very talented cook (has been paid to do private dinners). At the beginning, we were on opposite sides: I enjoyed it quite a bit, and he was disappointed. As we talked through our reasons, it became apparent that the food itself was important to him while I was watching almost completely for the characters. Another friend who cooks professionally and was once a CDC at a very popular local restaurant has told me that a lot of the numbers/financials in the show don’t reflect reality.

The implication from these anecdotal experiences is if you go into The Bear expecting food porn or a high level of logistical realism, you may get impatient or frustrated at times. They do geek out about food sometimes, but for a lot of the show, it’s primarily a reason for the characters to be around and relate to each other. At the risk of oversimplification, it’s less a show about food than one about obsessive and dysfunction people who are associated with the same restaurant.

Spoilers

Carmy dropping the lamb plate was the hardest-hitting thing I’ve seen in a while. Even though Syd was truly leading the kitchen at that point, I think Carmy still saw himself as the most reliable person in the room, and based on the reactions around the room, I don’t think he was the only one. To fail that completely on something so important was simply not in the realm of possibility, and I have some familiarity with the look of confusion in his eyes as he came to terms with a thing that couldn’t have happened, but did.

I assume the intended parallel was him getting stuck in the freezer in season two, causing him to be absent during what was, to that point, the most important night in the the restaurant’s history. He felt like he let everyone down, and the result of him trying to process that event was choosing to reject the only remaining source of true happiness in his life (Claire). Importantly, when he was in the freezer, he was alone. He was isolated from his team members, and most of what he heard yelled from the other side of the cold door was deeply hurtful things from Richie. So the important part of him dropping the plate was what happened after.

The extended and deafening silence was broken by his apology, followed immediately by Syd struggling to both assure him and come up with a plan. Then my guy Richie came through the door. His reaction to the tone of the room was genuinely funny (still doesn’t qualify, Emmy committee!), but there was an edge to how he asked “Why’s he sorry?” that made me wonder if we were about to see Old Richie again. He did raise his voice, but only to snap Carmy out of his shock before calmly saying, “We got you,” projecting confidence, and making a intentionally lame joke as he left. Carmy was still reeling, so Syd locked him in with a whisper (a whisper in this kitchen?) that brought him the rest of the way back.

That’s probably what I’ll remember most from this show. For years, he was alone, abused by family and coworkers into deep down believing he was unworthy of happiness or satisfaction. Then he found a team who showed in practical ways that they considered him worthy of love, support, and grace. I like to think that when Richie and Syd brought him back from the plate drop, he started to truly believe it. I’ve needed picking up, and I’ve picked people up, and that scene captured both sides in about 35 seconds with the weight of five seasons making it seem a lot longer. Beautiful.