Readers, Pride Month 2022 has gone by in a rainbow-toned blur. đłď¸âđ Let me round up the month in streaming media for you, with a digest of all the new and very queer content offered to us these past several weeks â and there has been a lot of it.
I suppose that that great amount is progress, however; as the queer narratives that are our lives become more commonplace in our culture, so too will the programming representing those narratives to our culture become more common. The only double-edge to that trajectory is that common means common: The increasing availability of stories reflecting LGBTQIA+ lives and struggles inevitably means the increasing mediocrity of those stories as entries in our culture; big data regress toward the average. Still, perhaps only when our stories are so humdrum normal to even mainstream audiences that no one even bats an eye for novelty, can we claim to truly have reached a practical and cultural equality.
Musings on long-term social progress aside, letâs dive into this smĂśrgĂĽsbord of queer narratives with a side of nature documentary. May our tea times always feel so gay.
Fire Island (2022)
Hulu ⢠Comedy ⢠ Weâre not in Kansas anymore, Starshine
Synopsis
An umbrageous libertine sparks with the stolid companion of the wholesome doctor his best friend attracts, during one week of summer vacation on Fire Island, NY.
My take
Hereâs the thing about modernizing adaptations: If youâre going to lift a story from its original context and then plant it like a legacy orchid into a brand new setting, then youâre also going to have to do all the work (i.e., additions, adjustments, and general compensations) necessary in order that the story survive the repotting. Adaptations that fail here (see this servingâs take on the new Queer as Folk for example) wither and eventually die.
In repotting the core of Jane Austenâs still well-known (1854) novel Pride and Prejudice into the soil of 2021 Fire Island decadence, screenwriter and actor Joel Kim Booster reaches for that survivorâs success but ultimately finds that his arms arenât long enough to actually clutch it.
While the human spirit driving the core of Austenâs original remains constant in this adaptation, Kim Booster makes choices that undermine the power of its overall machinery and result in a fairly mediocre product. Take the primary source of the dramatic and comedic tension in the piece: the manners and norms that dictate the acceptability or unacceptability of behaviors or choices for both men and women in society. To understand Austenâs story, the reader (or viewer, if youâve been lucky enough to catch Joe Wright [dir.] and Deborah Moggachâs [wri.] fantastic [2005] in-period adaptation) must understand those manners and norms implicitly; otherwise, it can seem immediately non-sensical, that a man and a woman who have such immediate attraction cannot couple openly in society or that an invitation to a manor home acts far more like a social obligation than a casual opportunity to fill out oneâs datebook â these two, among many other plausible examples. Austen (and Wright and Moggach for that matter) spend little time on spelling out these implicit details, she (and they) choosing instead to pepper in any explanation of such curiosities indirectly, through reactions, comments, or contrasts that the observer will be able to notice and appropriately interpret. Now, it should come as no surprise that the episodes and details belonging to a 19th-century British drawing room differ more than slightly from the episodes and details belonging to a 21st-century gay back room at an underwear party; clearly, work did need to be done in order to carefully translate the rhymes and reasons of Austenâs original system into the contemporary lingua franca. Kim Booster does establish many creative and thoughtful translations of functional components of the system (e.g., Austenâs five sisters are Kim Boosterâs five gay close friends, Austenâs scandalous elopement is Kim Boosterâs aconsensual sex video). However, making a beautiful translation comprehensive is about much more than what are really transliterations of point-by-point items, however sharp those transliterations may be. Kim Booster fails to sew together the resulting components into an elegant machinery; instead, the seams are clearly visible. Context, conduct, and social codes are over-explained, at worst by an explicit voice-over, literally spelling out otherwise readily inferrable truths about the manners and norms his modern characters promote and obey: e.g.,
ânot every single man is looking for a wifeâ(i.e., the men in this story are gay),
âFire Island, itâs like gay Disney Worldâ (i.e., gay men party there),
âIn our community, money isnât the only form of currency; race, masculinity, abs â just a few of the metrics we use to separate ourselves into upper and lower classesâ (i.e., being âhotâ is an asset).
None of these unnecessary explications of vivid on-screen illustrations and, frankly, currently commonly known truths about male social patterns should be such a surprise for anyone in the audience, that he or she wouldnât be able to follow the plot without the handrail of the omniscient voice-over. Honestly, I like and respect the film so much more when I simply mute the sound during those voiced-over parts.1 Moreover, even where voice-over is absent, connections among the various storylines feel sometimes hasty, often exposing pieces of the original that were unceremoniously collapsed or abandoned likely for the sake of expense and runtime (e.g., Lady Catherine and her daughter, or Rhys and his alleged Lyme disease; Mr. Collins, or Johnny?, and his rejected proposal to Elizabeth, or Noah). Stakes in the story simply feel less real, making the plot lines feel less motivated, when those elements arenât there enough to give the charactersâ ultimate outcomes their appropriate contrasts. For example, Noahâs fraught connection with Will feels less tangibly gripping, when we donât see Noah turn down rationally promising alternatives perhaps because of the confounding electricity between him and Will; and on his side Willâs hesitancy feels less plausible, when we donât know of any prior promise he might have been dutifully made to oblige. Connective tissues like these two examples are important in putting the bones of the piece, however strong they may be as individual fragments, into the living motion of an actual body. Without those examples, in short, we have a broken run.
For all these issues with the screenplay, I have to hold back my appraisal of this new entry, however exciting the idea and premise of a modern gay adaptation of Pride and Prejudice may have been; for the film otherwise is good at raising (especially a similarly aged and similarly single gay manâs) spirits. Yang and companyâs in-film talent show performance, for one, is a stand-out charmer; and James Scullyâs Charlie is an endearingly uncomplicated performance, certainly the best of the film. Even putting aside Kim Boosterâs unproven acting abilities for this lead role, the honestly presented moments that the film does create â no doubt thanks in large part to the talents of its director, Andrew Ahn, a 2016 âRich Pickâ nominee for his sublime Spa Night â feel truly rewarding. If only it all felt that wayâŚ.
Temperature check
Tepid
Stranger Things (Season 4 â Part 1)
Netflix ⢠Drama ⢠Reaper Madness
Synopsis
The supernatural deaths of troubled townsfolk call together the ragtag group of teenagers whoâd previously faced threats from the âupside downâ to save the day.
My take
It was no surprise shortly after the premiere of Stranger Thingsâ first season on Netflix in the fall of 2016, that the show quickly became a banner offering from the streaming service. The fine-tuned nostalgia mixed with the emotionally underpinned horror made the small production about the literal and figurative demons that haunted a small group of friends and their families in a mid-American town an instant hit, likely drawing in far many more audience members than the standard family-focussed or supernatural affair alone. I myself couldnât get other the wicker furniture, which so thoroughly conjured a specific place and time in our shared American history. At the time, then, it made sense that the show would carry on for years, for at fewest two more seasons, each ringing in the deep-cutting and rewarding interpersonal drama coated in the caramel and azure blues of a fashion era now past. Like a House of Cards (Willimon [creator], 2013-2018) or even an Orange Is the New Black (2013-2019), Stranger Things could, it seemed then, stand the test of time and perhaps even take home an Outstanding Drama series Emmy for its creators somewhere in its sophomore or junior seasons.
That, of course, did not happen. Though the show has taken home seven Emmy Awards over the course of its currently three eligible seasons â seven, including two for its inaugural seasonâs truly outstanding Main Title Design and Music, which I argue ushered in a shift in that subspecialty within streaming media â and has been nominated for Outstanding Drama Series all three times, Stranger Things has mostly been a stranger both in criticsâ circles, like the Emmy Awards, and, since the dusk of second season at latest, in peopleâs homes and minds. While the spot-on production design has mostly stayed strong â with the third seasonâs Starcourt Mall as a recent highlight â the writing in my eyes has been rotting the show from within. Missing obvious opportunities to continue its fairy-tale-based narrative style egregiously in its second season and then more subtly in its third, the series I doubt has kept many more than the most diehard aficionados invested in the charactersâ stories or riding on the edge of their seats since its first season ended.
This past month, shrewdly in time for the long Memorial Day weekend, Stranger Thingsâ fourth season premiered and, with what in my view were appropriately calibrated expectations, I tuned in and fairly quickly regretted my decision to do so. Yes, the production itself continues to be beautiful and interesting; the sets, visual effects, sound design, and make-up all are regularly outstanding offerings on television and showcase the still somewhat sizable investment Netflix is pouring into the series. However even the best money-bought technical and aesthetic concealer canât cure the grief-striking mantle the series now continues to bear in its fourth slow march around the âbig bad scary monsterâ track. Whereâs the thoughtful backstory? O, there it is: in regurgitated grafted-on shambles. Whereâs the socially conscious commentary? O, there it is: in throwback Cold War nonsense. Whereâs the quiet understanding of character? O, there it is: collapsed into a meme-able pop song from the period â a song which, for the record for everyone, was used far better and more impactfully five years ago in the landmark first season of FXâs Pose (Murphy, Falchuk, & Canals [creators], 2018-2021), a show which quite like Stranger Things now that I think about it only came to broader acclaim once its best storytelling was already behind it.
O, readers, I think that this season will be my last time hopping about this once amazing train to the axiomatic twilight zone. Iâll likely finish the second part of the series, whenever that eventually is released, but only as the last burst of the dying ember that once was my affection for the series. Kindling, where are you? O, right: nowhere.
Temperature check
Cold
Love, Victor (Season 3)
Hulu / Disney+ ⢠Romance ⢠Will they? Wonât they?
Synopsis
A conflicted high school student chooses between two suitors and deals with the emotional consequences of his and othersâ romantic choices in his social circle.
My take
Itâs important to remember that this new, third season of Love, Victor premiered on Disney+ at the same time as it premiered on Hulu. Evidently the corporation known for its G-rated entertainment values the world over has deemed this show and its storylines wholesome enough for its core audiences to not just provide it but also promote it to all subscribers. This promotion, readers, is the important thing here; it implicitly mainstreams relatively frank depictions of and conversations about adolescent sex, gay sex, and sexual health â ârelatively,â mind you, for Disney â and that mainstreaming is the best part of Love, Victorâs otherwise mediocre third installment.
With a plot that is largely a rote âmissed connectionsâ romance set in a high school, the season is simple and easy â which, to be fair, is part of the showâs mission, it being a serialized spin-off from the first-ever mass-marketed young gay romantic film, Love, Simon (Berlanti [dir.], Aptaker, & Berger [wri.], 2018), a simplicity grail if ever I saw one. Love, Victor now meets that mark, I guess, but that achievement isnât much to write home about. In short, the new season feels like the show gay adolescents will love about as much as and for about the same reasons as heterosexual adults once loved later seasons of Friends (Crane & Kauffman [creators], 1994-2004): itâs uncomplicated, romantically toned, and occasionally even funny.
Donât bother starting it however, readers, unless youâd identify yourself of the like.
Temperature check
Cold
Queer as Folk (2022; Season 1)
Peacock ⢠Drama ⢠Queerness to the Center Stage
Synopsis
An irresponsible playboy returns to New Orleans to catalyze chaos for good and bad in the lives of his queer friends and neighbors.
My take
As exciting as it is to see Kim Catrall back in a queer-friendly series on American television, the only real highs in this new reboot of the millennial watershed of the same name (Davies [creator], 1999) are in its rampant drugs and melodrama. Written about as well as a daytime soap opera, the new Queer as Folk struggles to stand in the long shadow of its past iterations, which for their creative approach to an integration of queer sex and love onto mainstream television screens more than twenty years ago were turning points in the representation and consideration of queer narratives within our personal and social consciousnesses. While the new series does attempt to pay homage to that legacy, the rough recalibration to current themes within the queer community feels slipshod in a way that (emotionally at least) assumes its own conclusion as a necessary premise â a logical fallacy that undermines drama on our screens as much as it undermines argument in a legal register. And it certainly doesnât help things, that unlike the American and British original casts the new cast, with perhaps the exceptions of Ms. Catrall and Ryan oâConnell, turns in a set of performances no less wooden than the metaphorical boards upon which they tread.2 All in all, I canât say that the show really offers anything more than commercial gravitas, dipped in sex and candy, that reads more plastic than fantastic; instead of trying to make something new but conceptually identical, itâs satisfied itself with being a tawdry recycle of what were once fascinatingly novel storylines.
Temperature check
Cold
Irma Vep (Series Premiere)
HBOMax ⢠Drama ⢠Cloak the Mystery; Record the Cloaking
Synopsis
A high-profile actress accepts the rigors of an artistâs vision for her next part, despite the proximity it places her in to past patterns and controlling temperaments.
My take
Olivier Assayas is one of my favorite working directors. (There, Iâve said it.) With a storytelling oeuvre including the stunningly brilliant LâHeure dâĂtĂŠ (2008) and the decadently bombastic Carlos (2010), the two releases that first keyed me onto his talents over ten years ago, Assayas is skilled at sensitive character studies, where the charactersâ borders extend beyond people and include objects and environments. Itâs no surprise to me, therefore, that he was attracted to Irma Vep, a project concentrating around the enigma of an early-cinema villainess whose cryptic yet seductive motivations charm and beguile decades later enough to inspire a remake at the hands of an (unironically French) director and storyteller. Itâs metacognitive catnip, a dark tale wrapped in a mystery and then coated with the everyday before being nestled within a parallel system one step ahead. The fact that Assayas had already tackled the project as a film in 1996 only pushes everything one more layer deep. Itâs a fascinating opportunity â and, more than fascinating, itâs fun.
That said, the series so far is particulate bricolage: Everything makes sense and can even be beautiful and intriguing on its own, but together itâs impossible to see the whole yet, to know where things are going, to trust the system for its ride, to stay attentive. I can easily see a number of viewers â maybe even most â now by the end of episode 3 wondering what even is happening and abandoning the project. I have to admit, readers, Iâve stayed and Iâm going to keep staying only on the credit that Assayasâ past works have afforded this new one in my opinion. Again, nothing internal is wrong per se; the various scenes generally feature sharp acting, budding dynamism among characters, clever devices, and self-referential commentary that all feel independently worthwhile. Itâs just that nothing is really hanging together for me yet; itâs, instead, as if I were watching four or more inoffensively interleaved, tangentially connected but otherwise separate and individually mundane stories unfold in a staggered sequence â not the tour de force anyone was hoping for.
Will you hang on with me, readers?
Temperature check
Tepid
Loot (Series Premiere)
Apple TV+ ⢠Comedy â˘Â Independence, with Resources
Synopsis
The wife of a tech. mogul steps out on her own as a billionairess with a desire to, for the first time, make a mark of her own.
My take
Iâm going to tell you right now, readers: Loot is the only new entry onto streaming platforms this serving, that I with any degree of passion actually recommend you check out. Though it is quite similar in structure and format to another recent premiere (i.e., that of I Love That for You [Bayer & Beiler [creators], 2022] on Showtime), the show has more than enough mettle to stand out on its own.
Most of that mettle, unsurprisingly, comes from a pitch-perfect performance from Maya Rudolph, leading the cast and seemingly having an enviably fantastic time while doing so. Who wouldn't? Her leading role is such an excellent substrate for comedic chemistry: a fantastically complex and contradictory character, with the resources to do essentially anything she wants, an awareness of that potential, and the emotional turmoil to catalyze its most eccentric reactions. Iâm envious of the role, and Iâm truly glad that Rudolph is the actress with the opportunity to gain serious traction by playing it, since frankly she has not gotten nearly as much attention as she deserves for her work elsewhere to date. I very much look forward to seeing what she turns the character into, as the season progresses.
Before I close this review, however, because it is still Pride Month I do want to spend a little time on openly investigating one particular coincidence this new series and I Love That for You share: the uptight gay assistant character. Coincidentally played by friends and Fire Island co-stars Joel Kim Booster and Matt Rogers, respectively, the role is simultaneously a stock character deferment of queer stories to the periphery of mainstream straight charactersâ lives and narratives as it is in these two instances a chance to break out of that periphery and into focus. Both Loot and I Love That for You follow their assistant characters off stage, into worlds their leading ladies have no place in or even knowledge of, and allow them a greater dimension of humanity in their own right, beyond the slight careerism Stanley Tucciâs character received in The Devil Wears Prada (Frankel [dir.] & Broth McKenna [wri.], 2006) or the comedic catharsis of Michael Urieâs on Ugly Betty (Horta [dev.], 2006-2010), characters that may have been important in making sure that the queer community had any representation at all in the mainstream in their heydays but characters that also hardly ever received three-dimensional scenes or storylines of their own in lieu of further camera time for their leading women. Where Rogers takes the part literally and bowls straight â forgive the usage â down the aisle, Kim Booster plays this role wonderfully, introducing the right blend of neuroticism and shine to the material on the page â which goes a long way toward showing what he may truly be capable of as an actor where other projects may have lost that sight⌠In this Pride edition of Hot Tea, itâs interesting to start to see what is by no means a new trope take on these new forms, and so too do I look forward to seeing where the writers of Loot (and for that matter of I Love That for You) take the trope in upcoming episodes.
Temperature check
Hot
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Amazon Prime ⢠Drama ⢠Coming of Age
Synopsis
A nearly sixteen-year-old girl balances familiar love and romantic longing during a significant summer in the wealthy beach town she, her mom, and her brother have been visiting since she was little.
My take
While steeped in the outdated traditions of women as property valued only for their beauty â traditions which, yes, I know carry on tirelessly even in subtle ways in every pocket of our culture but donât need to be reinforced on its main stage in media like this one, thank you â Jenny Hanâs The Summer I Turned Pretty manages to not fully succumb to the ugliness of its moralistic and titular priors. While it only brushes against the notion that not only adolescent girls but also adolescent boys may be viewed differently (hint: for their beauty) as they physically mature (e.g., âI didnât pay any attention to him until he got abs.â) and even has an openly bisexual supporting character whose individual aesthetic and costume choices only reĂŻfy that attention to the beauty of young men (to the extent that his presence on camera usually looks like live footage from the set of a Pierre et Gilles photo shoot; see above image for evidence), the show really curbs its focus onto the protagonist and her stereotypically enviable âstrugglesâ: Too many romantic interests think sheâs attractive, two of them love her for who she is more than how she looks, and wow if she isnât also a formidable athlete who can dance but remain wholesomely down to earth at the same time⌠Anyone would hate her, if she werenât so aspirationally relatable for the showâs intended audience (i.e., heterosexual teenaged girls). She eventually stands up for herself â no further spoilers, I promise â and in doing so makes explicit the subtext I did hope the show was working toward all along. While the ending of the miniseries works hard to try to con the viewers into a cathartic release with the characters, Iâm still overall satisfied with the end product â which, for what this show is or even could have been, is effectively a rave review.
Temperature check
Tepid
Dead End (Season 1)
Netflix ⢠Animation ⢠Queer Circumstances
Synopsis
Two teens deal with their personal issues at a campy theme park that may or may not be haunted.
My take
Steven Universe (Sugar [creator], 2013-2020) aficionados may find this new animated series, created by Hamish Steele, to be an eligible candidate to soothe the absence of their beloved six-seasons-and-a-movie story â that is, as long as those aficionados are OK with things getting a littleâŚspooky.
Dead End is cultural inheritor to a legacy (albeit a small one) left by Paranorman (Fell [dir.] & Butler [dir. / wri.], 2012), whose oaky overtones and gay-tinged denouement opened the creaky cobwebbed door for more overtly queer horror entries into the animated cinema. With a visual style resonant of Steven Universe and at least the beginnings of a heart to match, the new series offers an interesting intersection of themes and choices, dabbling even in christian notions of angels and demons while it mainlines a story of trans acceptance within an everyday American family.
While âall the pieces are thereâ and the show provides a heap of entertainment in its episodic allegories, I canât say that I was truly wowed by it overall. It was completely fine in every respect â but then that is what I thought about the first few seasons of Steven Universe too. Maybe itâs that both series play so tightly by the rules, coloring within their own individually stylized lines and whipping up a responsible amount of froth just enough to tickle the palette in any given episode, that I personally find the storytelling predictable in its levity? I mean, when I can point out with 100% accuracy what is going to happen later in most if not all episodes on the bases of their opening premises alone, Iâm not exactly primed for awe, readers. But thatâs my perspective. Perhaps youâll love it?
Temperature check
Tepid (but campy fun)
Prehistoric Planet
Apple TV+ ⢠Sci-Fi ⢠Speculative histories
Synopsis
Computationally conjured creatures are born, eat, fight, mate, and die in a new scientific history of our planetâs journey of living things.
My take
Apple TV+âs new miniseries Prehistoric Planet follows in the footsteps of two other miniseries, hybridizing nature documentary and science fiction. The more recent, Alien Worlds (2020), outright posited small exotic ecosystems on exoplanets where adaptation and environment have selected toward curious creatures with unique abilities, traits, or skills and presented those ecosystems in the spirit of wonder at what may lie out there, beyond our known solar system, on the planets orbiting other stars. The earlier, The Future Is Wild (Adams [creator], 2002), projected what we now about our current planetâs ecology and wildlife millions and hundreds of millions of years into the future, to see where evolution may take contemporary organisms outside the influence of humans; and spawned the hyper memorable speciation of land-dwelling intelligent octopodes, among other creatures. This time, David Attenborough narrates our way through âpre-jections,â or âback-castsâ of the lives of creatures and environments we never knew outright except through their traces in the fossil record and the analogies to living plants and animals we draw in hopeful understanding â and who doesnât love David Attenborough as our nature documentary narrator?
In typical Attenborough documentary fashion, Prehistoric Planet concentrates on those hypothesized moments of drama, where life struggles to maintain its grasp on the world despite the main conspiring forces against it; and this drama rivets. Especially for anyone hoping to better understand our planetâs present day difficulties by understanding those natural difficulties of the past, the storytelling choices engage and promote the difficult but realistic take-aways that adaptation is always hard, losses of life in sweeping environmental change are inevitable, but hope can always be found in the endurance of spirit characterizing our motivation and intent to go on living.
Because Iâm not sure how many of you readers out there are true nature aficionados and how may others would sooner crumble into a tight ball and weep, I must decline from giving this show a higher temperature rating that Iâd describe applying to myself alone. Still, if youâre reading these words and curious, I encourage you to go and check the series out: At the very least the special effects are cool.
Temperature check
Tepid (but gurgling)
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
HBOMax ⢠Fantasy ⢠Who says thereâs no magic in politics?
Synopsis
While bound by love from acting openly himself, the young Albus Dumbledore coaches and supplies a ragtag group of allies to deter an oligarchâs corrupt seizure of a political election.
My take
Despite the fact that it is sometimes literally nonsense, I am a fan of âThe Wizarding Worldâ of Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, and Lord Voldemort among others. The allure of a world in which magic is real is too strong for me to dispose of it, especially when that magic can be portrayed so compellingly on the silver screen â thank you, Alfonso CuarĂłn and Slawomir Idziak, who respectively directed and shot the third and the fifth movies of the wizarding worldâs original franchise series, Harry Potter and⌠(2001-2011). In truth, any world of media would have to really muck itself up for me to lost interest in its literally magical story â and in this oeuvre only Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016), that dreadful, overly long, and bizarrely chronicled stageplay, comes to mind. All of this set-up is to say, readers, the new Fantastic Beasts entry, The Secrets of Dumbledore, started playing in my book with a noticeable handicap â though, of course, I intend to be as fair as possible in my ultimate reading of it for you all here, however much I personally was entertained.
Iâll formally get started here by noting that it additionally helps any film, to cast potentially excellent actors in its leading roles; Jude Law and Eddie Redmayne, each favorites of mine for specific work theyâve done in the past, star as the young(er) Albus Dumbledore and the Fantastic Beasts protagonist, Newt Scamander, respectively and look charming, thanks to costumes and make-up, while doing so. Still, it should come as no surprise that the leading foot of this new film was always going to be not its actors nor even their make-up, but its effects and production design, those two elements of filmmaking that build the literal physical context through which the narrative drama is exercised. The Wizarding World has always been an excellent substrate for such film-magical chemistry â forgive my second use of this metaphor this serving â and in this instance we see no exception. Sets and spells dazzle, with sound design to match.
If only the editing of the plot were as good⌠You see, readers, the story here is actually one that is remarkably timely and possibly fun: The contamination of the democratic process by invidious people in power is a hugely timely topic for our culture â and, sadly, has been for quite some time now. Itâs important, especially for film designed to be seen by younger viewers, to educate them however necessary on the dangers of unbridled avarice and self-interest in what are ultimately public offices designed and designated for the public good. The screenplay of this new film has all the pieces required to provide such an education, however frivolous it may be dressed, but lacks ultimately the editing and motivating wherewithal to make that informative narrative an engaging success. Gaps in logic appear, pacing fluctuates uncomfortably, and relatively emphases on what really should have been peripheral moments â seemingly elevated in order to inspire emotional reactions from the viewers â cast an imbalance over what could have been a powerful story.
For this trip on its own skirts, I must defrock this entry into the Wizarding World from any true glory, but nevertheless will expect to see it crop up in end-of-year conversations about the best in make-up, costumes, and production design of 2022.
Temperature check
Tepid
Physical (Season 2 Premiere)
Apple TV+ ⢠Drama ⢠Work the Pain Away
Synopsis
The once mild-mannered wife of a political candidate sheds her demure shell but finds it will still be hard work to get what she wants.
My take
I love that Rose Byrne has this venue for making her mark on American audiences. However quietly she may be doing it, sheâs still there, on stage, out in front. The difficult part of Physical remains, however, how dark it consistently wants to be. The caustic streams of consciousness Byrneâs character spouts in voice-over, plus the nature of the material itself and the visual tones chosen to match that nature, burn more than a bit upon reception. I respect the feeling, but find it hard to believe that the series will hold out much of an audience if it leaves those viewers it does have red and raw afterwards every episode. Salve, anyone?
Temperature check
Tepid
Itâs not as if there were no salvageable parts of the voice-over in Fire Island. Components that expose non-obvious or at least uncommonly known truths (e.g., the opening quote of Austen herself, the effects of various drugs at the party) are worth keeping somehow, voice-over notwithstanding as a device. Those pieces are just few and far between.
Forgive me, reader; I recently saw the quote on a statue in Philadelphia and this review is how Iâm exorcising it.