December TV preview: The Crown, Percy Jackson & The Olympians, and a dozen other notable shows
Brace yourself for big-deal series finales, promising premieres, and more
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Clockwise from left: Leah Jeffries in Percy Jackson & The Olympians (David Bukach/Netflix), Imelda Staunton in The Crown (Justin Downing/Netflix), Mandy Moore in Dr. Death (Scott McDermott/Peacock), a still from Archer (FX) Graphic: Karl Gustafson
We’ll be honest: December is a pretty slow TV month in 2023. But that doesn’t mean the next few weeks don’t boast some highly anticipated shows, like The Crown, which ends with the second half of season six. And that’s not all: Canadian sitcom Letterkenny and FXX’s beloved Archer also bow out for good, while buzzy projects like Disney+’s Percy Jackson & The Olympians arrive just in time for the holidays. To help you navigate what’s what, here’s The A.V. Club’s guide for the next month.
18 Comments
SPOILER ALERT FOR THE CROWN:Diana dies.
I mean the whole thing is pro monarchy fantasy anyway, so I assume she turns out to be an evil witch , and turns into a giant hydra like in Willow , and Charles has to slay her with Excalibur to protect his kids (that are absolutely totally his biological sons in this reality and not James Hewitts…becuase fantasy).
The early seasons were great period pieces, but I really couldn’t give a shit about the 80s, and, according to The Guardian, S6 is just the pits. I can guess why they focused on Diana, and it’s nothing to do with Royalists – it’s because she’s about the only royal Americans recognise, plus she’s great victim porn.
How skewed it is, I don’t know, but from this Yank’s perspective every character vacillates between sympathetic and total twat. Even the Queen, although she generally gets the most sympathy.
It helps that she’s generally played by actresses far prettier and more charismatic than Elizabeth was. I mean I’m not a big fan of royalty, but if Olivia Colman was actually Queen, I might reconsider.
Archer is quite the loss as the show is fantastic.
I’m ambivalent. On the one hand, even though S14 was really quite good (although I don’t really get the love for Zara; I don’t think she’s particularly funny or interesting), I don’t think it serves well for a show to run endlessly. A show can only be fresh and inventive and boundary-pushing for so long; eventually what was new becomes commonplace. This isn’t to fault the show itself; no continuing storyline can accomplish that. It’s the nature of art. You eventually run the gamut of what the premise and characters are able to do, and can only tread water. If you change things enough to be able to be inventive again, you’ve essentially created a different show. For obvious reasons, that effectively never happens.
I still enjoy watching Archer, and the primary emotion served by that is nostalgia. Nostalgia is dangerous; we should always be wary of it.
I know it is time. Zara was pointless. I miss Mallory. I just so enjoyed a new season of Archer to look forward to in the hapless desert of bland miniseries and no new content that streaming seems to becoming.
I miss Mallory, sure, but I disagree that Zara is pointless. She is Millennial/GenZ while Archer and Lana are GenX. She brings up the fact that neither Archer nor Lana are really at their prime (professionally or sexually) which is a valuable lesson for them to learn (I say this as a GenXer in real life),
Is there love for Zara? She’d have been a decent addition to the crew at any point prior, but for a final season introduction, she wasn’t consequential enough. Not around long enough to really get to know her, didn’t really provoke a new arc in anyone else (her late rapport with Krieger was one of the better parts of the season, but it didn’t have enough time to flourish) . Into The Cold could redeem that I suppose.
The reviews on this site praised her in every episode, so maybe I’m just relying on that as the perception. I couldn’t say whether that was the broader opinion of her among the viewing audience.
I tried watching a few post-Reed eps, but they never took. They really lack his way with words; you go back to the early seasons and holy hell, the whole thing just hums along. Absolute screwball, firecracker dialogue.
For sure. I’ve been rewatching the entire series lately in the run-up to the finale (I’m partway through Archer: 1999). I remember during the original run that the popular consensus was that the coma seasons, while still written by Reed, didn’t have that same spark, and I think that’s still generally true. But watching them again with foreknowledge is actually quite a different (and improved) experience, for a couple of reasons.The first is that this time around, I know for sure that Archer is hallucinating all this while he’s in a coma. The first time around, we didn’t know that for sure; there was speculation, but also argument that these were just amusing riffs that the show was doing for a change of pace. Knowing that this is all happening in Archer’s mind gives it a different feel, because you can see places where he’s clearly processing his feelings toward the other characters.
The second is about Dreamland in particular. It’s widely considered the least (and least funny) of the coma seasons, which I still agree with; but knowing that in advance this time made it a lot more interesting. I went into it knowing it wasn’t going to be very funny, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more, because despite the (still fairly common and funny) jokes, there’s a lot of what’s very obviously Archer (the real Archer, the one who’s dreaming, not the private dick) processing his own real-life trauma.I’ll see how I feel about the post-coma seasons once I get there, but I do think they generally are of a piece, and in a lot of cases there are missed opportunities for clever lines and jokes that instead end up with (and I hate using this word) lazy placeholders. I don’t think having Reed writing them all would have been much better, as he was clearly tired of it by then, but I do think the other writers have done a creditable job of giving us something that’s essentially Archer without being quite as good.
Raising Kanan is back Dec 1. This site never touches anything in the Power Universe. Hmmm.
S1 of Dr. Death was some horrifying entertainment, given it all actually happened. I didn’t know there was a plan for a second season, but the anthology thing should work if they bring the same level of quality to the new story. I just caught an article on the S2 real life doctor. Yikes.
Me initially watching the Letterkenny trailer – “That’s what I appreciates about you, Letterkenny”
Me towards the end of the Letterkenny trailer – “How can those high of boots be comfortable?”
I’m gonna need you to take about 20% off of what you’re thinking about there.
On Monday, AV Club sister site Deadspin uploaded an article accusing a child of wearing blackface to a Kansas City Chiefs game, a claim that was quickly debunked. Today the site updated the article, but still failed to correct the erroneous claim.
To me this suggests that G/O Media websites not only publish false information, but stand by it, and therefore cannot be trusted. I will no longer be reading AV Club or any of its sister sites, and I strongly suggest any who continue to do so fact-check their claims vigorously. Please help stop the spread of misinformation!