HBO Max. It’s like HBO, but bigger, like how Mad Max is a movie about the most mad you can get.
So far in the Quarantine series of blog posts, I’ve covered TV shows and podcasts, as well as the idea of escapism in general. I know I signed off the last piece pondering what video games I’ve been playing to escape the anxiety of the world under a global pandemic, but I’m postponing that just for a bit. The piece on video games in the quarantine is still in the pipeline and will be coming next; I’m just taking a slight detour to cover the long awaited HBO Max streaming platform, which finally went live a few days ago. Just to be completely clear, I’m not sponsored by HBO in any way, nor are they an investor in this blog, and I’m not being paid for my opinions (though if you want to pay me, HBO, I’m willing to come to the table; bring a checkbook and a reasonable number of zeros).
For most of the run-up to the HBO Max release, I was bombarded with marketing like “HBO Max is the only place to see Friends!”, which was baffling to me because every time I turned on the television to something other than MSNBC, it seemed that Friends was on. No matter how many late night, insomnia-driven channel surfing ventures on which I embarked looking for goddamn Hogan’s Heroes, I always seemed to find Friends. If you’re somehow not familiar with Friends, it’s the story of a group of, well, white people, who seem to live in New York but almost only ever interact with other white people (TV in the 90s, when diversity just wasn’t a priority), and who can easily pass as actually liking each other. I don’t want to spend all our time together criticizing Friends—I actually do enjoy the show, for all its flaws—and I want to spend some time making fun of The Big Bang Theory again, because I enjoy doing that. Yes, HBO Max also has The Big Bang Theory available for stream should you feel like watching a show of ostensibly very intelligent people who less-than-secretly hate each other while purporting to be friends acting very one-dimensionally, written by people who seem to have had nerds described to them over the phone by someone who met a person who played Magic: The Gathering once. It’s there for you should you need it, the Flatland of sitcoms.
But, there are some true gems on HBO Max, and I really don’t want you to miss them.
Search Party
Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before; an aimless millennial, living in New York, tries to find purpose in her life as the people around her seem to have things much more together than she does. Maybe that sounds like your life a little, maybe it’s another show you’ve seen. But here, Dory, played by the wonderful Alia Shawkat, whom you might know as Maebe Funke, finds purpose when she sees a missing person poster for a girl with whom she went to college. Quickly becoming obsessed with finding the missing Chantal, Dory finds herself spiraling down the rabbit hole and dragging her friends and boyfriend along with her. Chantal herself is a girl that has already disappeared in the minds of people; everyone thinks they know her, everyone has some reconstructed memory of her; but for the most part, Chantal is a girl who faded away before the posters went up. But Dory is determined to find her.
It’s hard to just tell you how great this show is without sitting you down and making you watch the whole thing and then discussing it with you, because every twist, turn, and joke is so well crafted and earned that I don’t want to risk spoiling a single thing for you. It’s that good. I’ve struggled in the past to describe this show to people I’ve tried to get to watch it; how can I describe its genius without tipping you to the journey that must simply be experienced rather than described? I’ve been calling it the most brilliant show no one has ever heard of since it first aired on TBS in 2016. It’s darkly comedic, cuttingly brilliant, and shockingly honest. There were many times throughout the show’s first two seasons that I stopped and rewound just to take in a specific actor’s performance in a scene. And it’s all of them. John Reynolds, whom you might recognize as one the deputies on Stranger Things, John Early, and Meredith Hagner are all fantastic. And the show also has a great cameo from The Tick’s Griffin Newman as Chantal’s boyfriend and suspect in her disappearance, leading to the most awkward dinner party you’ve ever seen (this is before he donned the wingsuit of Arthur). Ron Livingston, as Keith the private investigator, shines as well, recruiting Dory into his quest to find Chantal and helping push her further and further into the mystery.
Search Party is one of those special shows that makes you feel just about every emotion each episode. As the mystery unfolds and Dory gets deeper into her investigation, you will laugh, you will feel uncomfortable, you will roll your eyes, and you will be on the edge of your seat. From episodes that remind me of the feeling of unease that I got while watching The Invitation to episodes that thrill you the way a good mystery should, to episodes that make you laugh almost constantly, Search Party is well worth your time. If there’s only one show you watch from this blog post, this is the one. I’ve begged and pleaded with people to watch this show. So please, please, watch Search Party. You deserve to have it in your life.
Home Movies and Aqua Teen Hunger Force
One of the golden shows of the period of my life when I was still watching Adult Swim cartoons, Home Movies was a show that only managed four short seasons but deserved many more. It follows three elementary school children who make homemade films. Brendan, Melissa, and Jason spend their afternoons playing soccer under coach and often drunken lout John McGuirk (the inimitable H. Jon Benjamin, who does double duty as Jason) and making movies. Brendan is an eight-year-old visionary; writing, directing, and acting in hundreds of films with his friends as he navigates the strange time of childhood. The show takes a few episodes to really get going; it leans heavily into the Squigglevision you may have seen on Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (the effect becomes less pronounced over time) and Brendan’s mother is recast from comedian Paula Poundstone to Janine Ditullio, who is hilarious as Paula. But once it does, there’s this special, heartwarming funniness about it that has the ability to transport you back to your own childhood, when your imagination was the most important tool in your toolbox. Brendan is pure id; he’s smart, but does poorly in school because he’s constantly letting his imagination run wild and that’s how he thinks up his films. Melissa is highly intelligent, driven, hard-working, and often plays the voice of reason, as much as a third grader can. Jason is…well, Jason is a bit dim, but always well-meaning and mostly pure hilarity. Whether Brendan is trying to get a fisheye lens for his camera, sneaking off from a field trip to film on location in a hotel, or being forced to do normal little kid things, like trying to escape a sleepover at a kid’s house whom he does not like, you get to follow along and relive that feeling of being a child who lives almost entirely in his unlimited and fantastical imagination.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force was far less of a cohesive show and certainly less of a journey to a less encumbered time. It centers on sentient snack food; a box of French fries who floats in the air and shoots lasers from his eyes, a talking milkshake that is at least 6 feet tall and very angry, and a giant meatball who loves to dance. If you’ve never seen the show or the movie before, yes, I just said all that, it’s all true, and I’m not on any illicit drugs (though I can’t vouch for the writers). They start off solving mysteries, or at least trying to, but the show is usually just zany, madcap insanity that barely holds together, but when it does, you can easily find yourself in a fit of side-splitting laughter. At its best, the show hits the comedic beats with expert timing and endlessly quotable one-liners (to this day, I can say “I just ate whole a bathtub full of cherry cobbler” to my brother and get a sizable laugh). You’ve got a rich cast of supporting characters; the neighbor Carl, who is stuck living next to the destructive trio because no one will buy his house, the 8-bit aliens from the moon known as the Mooninites, the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future, and many other strange creatures. Nothing about this show is normal, nothing about it is expected, and that’s sort of nice. I will say this one isn’t for everyone, but it’s worth a try. And episodes are only about 12 minutes long, so you can watch a few here and there and if it’s not for you, you haven’t really lost much time.
Doom Patrol
Okay, this isn’t a rewatch for me; it was originally on DC’s streaming network, which was just one streaming network too far. I just fired it up yesterday and watched the first five episodes, but they were good enough that I’m going to go out on a limb and recommend it (though I reserve the right to change my mind should the show fall apart later in the season). The first episode is a slower affair, with a lot of exposition and backstory, but it sets up a truly compelling narrative with some surprisingly strong performances. Brendan Fraser shows incredible range here, acting mostly only with his voice as Cliff (not the best superhero name, I know); I’m as big a fan of the first Mummy movie as the next guy, but I had no idea that Brendan Fraser was this good. His voice is capable of such emotion, such moving performances that I was shocked that this was the same guy from Encino Man. Matthew Bomer also puts in a strong voice-biased performance as hotshot pilot who now has to wear bandages from head to toe at all times. Diane Guerrero has a Tatiana Maslany-esque performance as a person with 64 different identities, each with their own personality and set of superpowers (my personal favorite so far is the one I call the Scott Pilgrim, where the words she speaks hang in the air comic book style, and she can then propel as if they were throwing knives to the serious detriment of the people on the receiving end). April Bowlby plays an actress who becomes a Clayface/Blob-like creature when stressed, so she’s always balancing on this knife-edge of controlling herself and dealing with insanity of what’s going on around her. And there’s a great turn by Timothy Dalton, as the wheelchair bound (but don’t call him Professor X) genius who brings them all together. But I couldn’t talk about the show without mentioning the simply unparalleled Alan Tudyk, who plays the narrator. The show simply wouldn’t be as engaging or as funny as it is without him. Alan Tudyk (who you may know as Wash from Firefly or as I like to think of him, Dangerboat from The Tick, or K-2SO from Rogue One) is brilliant in this role, and that should come as no surprise, because Alan Tudyk is brilliant. He’s perfect in every role, but in particular, the way the words drip off his tongue as the narrator, you can tell he’s having fun with the role and it really sucks you in. Alan Tudyk is a treasure. What at first seemed to be a recipe for completely off-the-wall hijinks actually turned into a deeply involving story with wonderfully thought out characters that makes you laugh, satiates your need for thrills, and will engage you emotionally.
I have some really high hopes for this show, which raises a big question for the DC cinematic universe. Why is this show so good when the movies are so bad and look so bad (except Wonder Woman, which was great)? Cyborg has featured heavily in the episodes I’ve seen so far, with a different actor from Justice League and with practical special effects rather than a nigh fully CGI body and it looks and feels so much better. CGI doesn’t impress me. Writing impresses me. Acting impresses me. Direction impresses me. Score impresses me. And so far, I’m impressed.
I’m still sifting through the content on HBO Max and, of course, I didn’t touch on the many movies that are available, so this is an incomplete list. There are also a number of originals that I’ve yet to try. But if you have HBO Max (which has a free trial period), these are some shows that are really worth your TV time. At the very least, go watch Search Party. I’ll wait. And once you do, hit me up on Twitter and let me know what you think of it. Until then, stay safe. Video games are coming soon.