A little roundup of the recently released shows I’ve been watching lately. One of the shows (Rooster) still hasn’t quite wrapped up, but I felt like I’d seen enough to give my thoughts on them.

DTF St. Louis

I went into this show thinking that it would be more about two men using a dating app to cheat on their partners but it ended up being a murder mystery instead – and a good one at that. It really places three seemingly very different characters into a story that has intrigue and twists that range from funny to tragic. 

Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini take up most of the screentime in this and nail their somewhat off-kilter roles. Bateman plays Clark Forrest, a local weatherman, who just seems to find a way to straddle the weirdest line between charming and awkward. Although I love him as an actor, I wouldn’t say range is his strong suit. But he just constantly finds roles like this that are just perfectly suited for his style. David Harbour meanwhile is just the most likeable guy and has found a knack of being the audience favourite in everything he does. His overweight Floyd Smernitch, an ASL interpreter working hard to lose weight, is just so endearing in every scene. Linda Cardellini probably has the most complex role out of the three where the murder mystery framing of the story makes her seem constantly suspicious and makes it hard to decide whether she’s devious or just in a tough place in life, and thus has become cold to others.

Although the hook to get you into the show is about Floyd and Clark using an app called DTF St. Louis to cheat on their partners, the show finds success in exploring very mature themes of midlife loneliness, family dynamics, and the choices and sacrifices we make both as individuals but who we are in relation to our families and friends. It was a lot deeper than I was expecting, but expertly punctuated by humour and a great foil in the two detectives investigating the murder played by Joy Sunday and Richard Jenkins. 

The writing employs some fun narrative tricks to keep you guessing about what you really know. The constant reframing is fun, but the pacing is a little uneven in the middle portion of the show. In the end, as with any murder mystery, I think whether you end up really liking it or not is dependent on the payoff, and I thought they did a great job with that. It really got a reaction out of me to see what really happened. I can’t say it’s fully unpredictable, but it adds enough elements around the mystery to make it satisfying to reach the end.

If you’re looking for a murder mystery that’s adult without being too dark, juxtaposed with humorous awkwardness, I’d suggest giving this a try.

Rooster

Now if you miss light fluffy comedies in your life that still have a little maturity to them, this is the show for you. I feel like we are no longer really in the age of comedies. Most of the popular comedies these days feel niche at best, whether it’s Nathan Fielder shows or sketch comedy stuff like I Think You Should Leave. It feels like most people seem to just return to old favourites when they’re in the mood for comedy such as Seinfeld, Arrested Development or The Office. 

I actually have no way to back up any of that stuff, but it gave me an excuse to mention The Office, so I can use a very smooth segue to Steve Carrell’s newest show Rooster. This is just a straight comedy with no other bells and whistles attached, but it has this warm feeling to it when you watch it. I’ll say a lot below about all the things that make this such a likeable show, but I would be remiss to not say the obvious upfront: Steve Carell is just such an easily loveable guy and he carries this show effortlessly. He is the heart of the show and he nails every line delivery – especially the ones where he’s stumbling.

The premise of the show is Carell’s character Greg is a bestselling author of an “airport book” series called Rooster that follows a spy that may not be written in a way that appeals to today’s sensibilities. He takes on a temporary job at a college that his daughter teaches at in a small town that seems to revolve around just the college.

This may or may not be a sell for you, but I describe this show as a boomer’s intro to woke. Hear me out! The show is anchored by 63 year old Carell and 66 year old John C. McGinley. However, the supporting cast includes Charly Clive, playing Carell’s daughter, Danielle Deadwyler, playing a poetry teacher, and Lauren Tsai, playing Clive’s character’s husband’s student and mistress. It’s a great cast of women with two of them being POCs. Meanwhile, Phil Dunster’s Archie plays the antagonist of the show as the cheating narcissistic husband who is still somewhat charming. 

This cast of characters with the show taking place in a college allows a lot of topics to be explored and magnified under multiple lenses. I found the show does a great job at understanding why some groups, whether it’s men or just older people, may say certain things or hold certain views while still challenging those things with today’s sensibilities. 

The most clever part of the way the story and show in general is framed is that I think people of all ages can relate to it in some way. I think for older audiences, it does a great job of using Carell and McGinley as conduits to potentially have them learn why it may be important to people to be sensitive to certain things and that we are not in the world that they grew up in. It also does it in a gentler way that doesn’t alienate that audience. Meanwhile, if you’re more of the age of the students, I think it does the reverse just as well. It validates your views and ways of thinking while still bringing you to empathize with generations that are removed from them. 

But most importantly, I think the show is genuinely funny and warm and wholesome in its own way. It’s become my favourite little comfort show, and it’s too bad that even shows like these are only 10 episodes. I yearn to return to the days when some shows could be 20 episodes because I could keep watching much more of this just to spend more time in this environment with these people.

Invincible – Season 4

Alright, now let’s take a sharp left turn. Somehow, Invincible is by far the darkest and most mature show of the bunch here. This one will be quick since it’s now the 4th season so you kind of know what you’re getting. 

That said, I really appreciate how the writing has not deviated from the maturity it really honed in season 3. There were a couple of extremely strong episodes in here, and I think it says a lot about the growth of the narrative that my favourite episodes are the ones where there is no action, but rather an exploration of very adult emotions. I thought everything surrounding Mark, Nolan, Oliver, and Debbie has been so well handled – whether it’s showing the very real desire for Nolan to repent for the awful things he’s done or the fact that the writing is strong enough to not just erase his mistakes and show that he can do whatever he wants to repent, but he is not owed forgiveness. 

The show can’t seem to escape its need to have an episode or two that always end up feeling like filler nor overcome the issues with its below par animation. However, its highs continue to carry it as a show I can’t put down.