Peacock’s MacGruber revival is the wrong kind of overkill
This new limited series is classic MacGruber: It stretches a 100-minute job to over three hours
TV Reviews MacGruber
A central joke of MacGruber, in any of its various forms, has always been that it exists at all. When the character first appeared on Saturday Night Live, the fact that anyone was making a scatological parody of MacGyver in 2007 (the original idea: a MacGyver type who insists that his friends hand him increasingly gross objects to help defuse bombs and get out of “sticky situations”) made the idea loopier and somehow more appealing.
When MacGruber became one of star Will Forte’s signature recurring pieces on SNL, it was especially funny to see each sketch end with a series of seemingly deadly explosions. And when that sketch was adapted into a movie in 2010, half the thrill came from witnessing Forte’s feature-length commitment to the bit, even (or especially) if it alienated and repulsed mainstream audiences. Now MacGruber has returned with a limited series, and the unlikeliness keeps compounding: Peacock’s MacGruber is both following up a notorious box office bomb, and doing so with more of this defiantly unlikable character than ever—its eight episodes add up to over three hours. In other words, there is suddenly an approximate 120% increase in the amount of MacGruber in the world.
This is exciting for fans of Forte’s whole deal—broadly speaking, a gonzo parody of American masculinity, revealing the grasping neediness beneath a lot of ceremonious, cliché-ridden bravado. It’s a natural, and often hilariously grotesque, progression from the work of Forte’s SNL predecessor Will Ferrell, and MacGruber has become Forte’s vehicle to explore the vast insecurities that inform our action-movie myths. The series version of MacGruber gives Forte, along with co-creators Jorma Taccone and John Solomon, plenty of time to expand on the vague Rambo spoofery of the first film.
Maybe, it pains this Forte acolyte to admit, a little too much time. Functionally, the show is a three-hour, decade-later sequel to the film, and given that Forte, Taccone, and Solomon had long discussed a sequel film, it seems pretty likely that this material was overextended from a feature idea. The first episode in particular feels like a lengthy postscript to the movie, catching the audience up on how the ending of 2010’s MacGruber has been undone—a shady sequel tactic that plays fine here, given how prone Mac is to blowing up his life, literally and figuratively. So, we learn that the hilarious overkill MacGruber dished out to his big-screen nemesis became grounds for a murder conviction, and that he’s spent most of the past decade in the slammer—but not before he attempted to pin his rap on both his partner, Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe), and his girlfriend/wife/ex-wife, Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig).
So when the government comes calling to send MacGruber on a new mission, he once again needs to win over the straitlaced Dixon and the heartbroken Vicki in order to stop a madman with a terrible weapon and a silly name; Enos Queeth (Billy Zane) subs in for Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), as top brass Barrett Fasoose (Laurence Fishburne) replaces the Powers Boothe character from the film. That’s all fine. The MacGruber character is built on repetition, with the sketch’s stock-footage explosions and rushed variations on its theme song serving as punctuation to 90-second segments that never overstay their welcome (or, at least, only overstay their welcome consciously, drawing out the urgent 10-second countdowns that MacGruber lives by). It’s only fair that the extended version would revive certain elements, too.
But those elements don’t mix quite as well over the course of a series—even one with this many laughs. The movie handled its sketch-to-screen transition by adjusting the character’s rhythms, parodying action-movie gravitas in between absurdist peaks where MacGruber (and Forte) would go spectacularly off the rails. Possibly to keep itself from burning out, the show has fewer of these peaks, especially early on. The ratio of Forte growling inane taunts to Forte engaging in panicked flailing over-favors the former, and the sheer number of times MacGruber calls someone either a condescending “bud” or a furious variation on “fucking piece of shit” grows wearisome.
The first episode, in fact, is largely stolen by Wiig and Phillippe; they’re arguably even greater assets throughout the show than they were in the movie. Wiig, whose Vicki has been abandoned by her idiot husband-to-be and is now married to Fasoose, has a blast playing a quieter form of nuttiness than Forte. Her incompetence nearly equals MacGruber’s, and also complements it; she makes a relationship that’s twisted on paper into something oddly convincing, even weirdly touching. Vicki’s dedication also inspires hilariously understated reactions of disbelief from Phillippe’s Piper, who necessarily goes bigger when responding to MacGruber’s nonsense.
It’s not as if that nonsense is in short supply. More than ever, Forte throws himself into playing MacGruber as an alternately aggressive and wounded little boy, made more explicit by bringing in his character’s father (Sam Elliott) and some tragic family backstory. There’s still plenty of room for classic Forte indulgences, like spending the entirety of the second episode fully nude. But more of those indulgences involve cartoonishly graphic violence this time around—funny, but not quite as inspired as, say, MacGruber obsessively reciting license plate number KFBR392 for future vengeance.
It’s those little moments of petty obsession that feel like missing pieces from the series, even as it expands the story well beyond the seemingly optimal 100 minutes or so. Episodes of MacGruber are individually brisk—they fly right by—yet somehow still baggy in the way that a lot of more prestigious TV projects are baggy, marrying the continuous narrative of a movie with the TV need to break things into chapters. The cliffhangers are played more or less straight; Taccone and Solomon (though they’re not the series’ only directors, they’re credited on the majority of the episodes) don’t do much to use the episode-ending cuts to black as explosion-style punchlines. Apart from some longer set pieces, Forte and company don’t take much advantage of the limited-series format.
What’s left is the inherent advantages of making MacGruber stuff at all—the delight that this character continues to exist by the sheer love of a stubborn few. The show still goofs amusingly on how the one-man-army brand of patriotism sold by so many action movies is actually just raging narcissism, and Forte remains an expert at poor attempts to disguise a tantrum as laconic cool. Fans will adopt some of the new running gags; expect a small uptick in locket sales among comedy nerds. It’s a shame, though, that this supersized version can’t sustain its satirical ambitions or its goofy emotional notes as well as, say, a longer-form Ferrell effort like Talladega Nights.
As a character and a concept, MacGruber specializes in overkill. It turns out his streaming service is on the same page, albeit for reasons more algorithmic reasons than bloodthirsty. Why shoot us with 100 minutes of content, when the job can be done with twice as much?
114 Comments
It stretches a 100-minute job to over three hoursAh! The ol’ “reverse-The Many Saints of Newark” gambit!
Or the Irishman, remember that garbage?
I liked it enough to watch it a couple of times, but I liked the book better. And it helps to take it with a massive grain of salt.
That said, yeah, Hoffa’s body ain’t gonna be found, because there isn’t one. That’s the most plausible aspect of it, even if it’s bullshit.
I have it on real good authority that Hoffa never even really existed, man.
He very well could’ve been a soppressata golem. Or Taylor ham.
I didn’t believe you until you punctuated that statement with “man”…
I’m till recovering from those scenes where “young” Deniro is supposed to be in his 30-40s.
The worst part in the rise of the “streaming wars” has been that the amount of content has become more important than anything.I don’t think I’ve seen a show in the past 4 or 5 years that wasn’t 1-3 episodes too long. The Marvel shows are probably the most egregious examples but even Ted Lasso got hit by it. And it doesn’t help that the subset of the audience that just wants more is pleased by it, even if it’s not good or adds nothing to the story. They just think more is better. It’s just a lot, and not in a good way at times.
So many shows seem to stretch what would have most logically been the premise for a rather good mid-budget movie 10-15 years ago to three-four seasons of 13 episodes.
Yeah, I think this is it. This is exactly what the Marvel live-action shows have been doing, all of them, up to and including Hawkeye. The pacing and structure feel wrong because rather than feeling like episodes, they feel just like… minutes 120-175 of a really long movie. Thus, having a weeklong break between each one hurts way more than it helps.Compare to a show like… well, maybe it’s not a fair comparison to one of the best shows on TV, but Better Call Saul’s episodes feel like episodes. They have introductions, arcs, conclusions, while simultaneously moving the overall narrative along. The Expanse, as well.To a degree, at least with the Marvel shows, I wonder if it’s because Kevin Feige is running everything and while he may be great at movies, his entire career has been in movies, not TV. He (and his team, I’m under no illusions he does it all himself) haven’t yet figured out how to make shows like this without every single episode leaving you going “Well that was pretty cool, but…”
The weirdest thing about that is I would compare the MCU to a television series, with the movies being episodes and the Avengers movies being sorts of season finales where all our plotlines come together and conclude (for now). So then the Marvel shows are basically an episode cut into several miniature episodes, as you describe. While a relatively-self-contained movie ends with a tease for the next movie, it’s a fun little cookie; but when you’ve been sticking with a series for 6-8 weeks and the final episode blows a big wet fart of “now I told you this story so I could tell you the next, more important story,” it can be really dissatisfying.
I mean… on the one hand, serialized TV having season-ending cliffhangers that set up next season is nothing new. I think it’s the internal structure of the shows that’s the problem, not that they set up another thing. WandaVision worked out the best this way, in that it more or less tied up what happened during the season while also leaving threads for later; but TFATWS and Loki and (I’m guessing, based on how it’s going so far) Hawkeye didn’t really conclude any of their plotlines.
Doesn’t help that every episode has the same long opening logo and same long movie-style credits, just to hammer things down.
I disagree. The Marvel ahows may not be the best shows ever created, but WandaVision, Falcon and ther Winter Soldier and Hawkeye keep a lot of people tuning in every week. They all told a story and I still don’t get what “feels” like an episode. Even the What If cartoon was different, but often fun.
keep a lot of people tuning in every week.Oh right. I forgot that since the shows are really popular, I shouldn’t be bothered by the narrative. Thanks!
That’s honestly the feeling I’ve gotten from these MCU shows. I’ve enjoyed watching them for the most part (Falcon & Winter Soldier was the weakest), but they can’t help but feel like spliced-up movies.
To continue the trend of unfair comparisons to all-time great TV shows, ‘Mad Men’ is one of the best series I’ve seen for having both long-running arcs and self-contained stories. I remember someone (maybe even a writer here at the Club) saying that the seasons of ‘Mad Men’ felt a bit like collections of short stories by a great American author, and it really affected the way I engaged with the show. There’s plenty of time to grapple with Don Draper’s slowly disintegrating sense of self as he hits the wall of the American Dream; in the meantime we can spend an episode watching Sal pine hopelessly for talented writer/unthinking homophobe Ken. (Ken. Cosgrove. Accounts!)
Yeah, excellent points. Mad Men is probably my favorite show of the, uh, Golden Age of Prestige Dramas (Slice of Life Division). (Breaking Bad for the Tense Sociopathic Violence Division.) They really hit the sweet spot between serialization and episodic.
Yeah, to me this is exactly what separates the top tier of great TV from everything else: the interlocking structure by which each individual episode tells a specific story, that story contributes to a larger season-long arc, and the season-long arcs together outline a trajectory for the entire series.Way too many series have individual episodes without any self-contained story beyond “Here’s all the stuff that’s happening this week in the ongoing arc.” And way too many shows don’t really have a series-long trajectory beyond veering this way and that so they don’t get to the ending before it’s time to wrap things up. People are too apt to complain about the limitations of serial storytelling when what they really dislike is bad serial storytelling.
Yeah, Mad Men was great at making sure each episode told a complete story, even as it contributed to the overall narrative.Obviously there’s been a lot of commentary on the way Weiner’s time at The Sopranos influenced Mad Men. But I think the fact that all of his pre-Sopranos writing experience was on network sit-coms really contributed to his focus on making sure each episode could stand on it’s own.
I dunno if that can be blamed on streaming. I agree that streaming shows are often too long, but in the network days shows were (and are) 24 episodes.
Yeah, case in point: I am finally getting around to watching Agents of Shield. I quit on it during the original broadcast due to a very weak start, but always had heard it got a lot better.And it does, but even counting as a good broadcast show, it still has extremely long seasons by modern streaming standards, with lots of parts that feel overly slow or like padding.Which is long how broadcast worked, particularly if the producers were hoping for re-run syndication. That typically took at least 65 episodes, and usually more like 80-100. And if anything, I still think streaming TV series at least on average are less padded out than broadcast TV series.I think this is really fundamental to TV economics. If there is any sort of substantial fixed cost to producing a TV series in terms of acquiring IP, sets and costumes, marketing, or so on, there is a natural incentive to try to spread those costs over as much content as possible.
I think there’s a significant difference between the old episode model and current streaming model though.The episode model at least, every episode had A, B plots that had beginning, middle, and ending. If there was seasonal plot it was pretty much only during sweeps and the end of the season.Now, it’s all plot. There’s no stories in episodes. It’s all continuous ,and in Marvels and Star Wars cases, everything is setting up and referencing something else. So there’s whole episodes where nothing happens that’s important to that episode but it might have a hint to the ending but it’s all just moving chess pieces. And Marvel and Star Wars are even worst because it can’t even let you sit for one second with what you just watched, because it has to setup the next thing. Look at Loki (spoilers for people that care about a show that’s been out for months)It’s not only an episode or two too long.But we don’t even get to sit for a second of what Loki might do because immediately everything is wiped and new Kang has taken over.
But we don’t even get to sit for a second of what Loki might do because immediately everything is wiped and new Kang has taken over.Standard season finale stuff, honestly.
I blame Netflix.
I mean, a lot of it comes from the constraints of the medium. In the olden days you couldn’t usually rely on viewers having watched the last episode, so most episodes had to be more-or-less standalone (with the major exception of soap operas, which operated by quite different rules).Then with VCRs for off-the-air recording, VHS and DVD box sets, TiVo and finally streaming (not to mention piracy somewhere in there), it became easier and easier for viewers to catch every single episode of a show, and so you saw a parallel development towards more and more serialization: Twin Peaks, The X-Files, Babylon 5, Murder One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos…There was a golden age (roughly 2000–2010) when show creators could fully expect that viewers were following along episode by episode, and they were therefore able to construct ambitious season- or series-long arcs, but when they still had the discipline to ensure that each individual episode functioned as its own meaningful story, not just an installment of a larger narrative. Then Netflix started its practice of dropping a whole season at once and encouraging binge watching, actively discouraging that kind of storytelling. (I believe Netflix were the first to adopt this broadcast model, but in any case they were the ones who institutionalized it.) The result is shows that are baggy and spin their wheels.In the comedy space (to try to tie this back to MacGruber), compare Childrens Hospital with Medical Police.
Netflix is definitely part of it. I’d also add some blame on TV critics, The Wire, and the push towards the idea of the only thing that matters is the ending.As TV criticism has pushed away from wanting to right about episodic television because critics want to write as much as they want TV to be good, they’ve shifted the cultural appreciation of a good episode. Add the pushing of the Wire and “TV as a novel”, showrunners learning the wrong lessons in order to seek critical acclaim, and even with the Wire, critics just willing to give bad or at least nothing episodes a pass as long as the ending is good.It’s created a situation in which TV as long as there’s a payoff you can keep kicking the can.
It’s kind of funny to include soap operas in a parenthetical, because that’s the closest analogy from late 20th century entertainment to what we currently have. It’s not just a formal thing, where the story is endlessly serialized, shuffling new characters in to replace actors whose contracts are expiring. It’s the existence of a large core audience that needs to see the resolution of every cliffhanger and isn’t fazed by the repetition. Superhero movies aren’t all that similar to comic books, which tended to have major stylistic departures (often for the worse) and can rejigger existing characters to suit new aesthetic needs. They’re much closer to the insular style of a soap opera, where cohesion comes from a consistent tone and narrative rhythms, and actors are very closely associated with their characters.
I agree that there’s a difference between the “old” broadcast model and streaming, but there’s significant bloat in current, serialized series that arose after DVRs, DVDs, etc. became common. But, you’re absolutely right that even with the modern stuff, the episodes on broadcast are actual “episodes,” not 48 minute slices of something much longer.
“If there was seasonal plot it was pretty much only during sweeps and the end of the season.” I disagree with this. Babylon 5 and Alias, for example, each dealt with the seasonal storyline extensively during many or most seasons. I do agree that their episodes were generally better structured with A, B, and sometimes C stories. There’s no reason that could not be done today with streaming shows. Some do a good job, like the Expanse or Bojack.
But in the network days episodes were produced to be self-contained bites that anyone could dip into (even in the very middle of the episode), get their bearings, and see a story conclusion by the end of the episode. If your season was 24 episodes, you wrote 24 stories, and if you got axed to 12, you wrote 12; you weren’t expanding or contracting a single story to fit your season order. Even if you had season or series-wide storylines like X-files’ invasion storyline, they’d pop up sporadically between the monsters-of-the-week.It wasn’t really until the 00s and DVD that tv seasons became novelistic, with episodes linerally fitting together to express a single story (of course there are exceptions, such as Twin Peaks).
You are forgetting Baylon 5 and Buffy my friend.
I already said there were exceptions, my friend.
I’m of two minds on this. Yeah, there are a lot of 13 episode shows that could be 10. (Or 10 episode shows that could be 7, etc.)But is that because they’re making too many episodes, or because they don’t have the ambition to use their run-times fully? I think it’s different for different shows.There are all-time classic series that pumped out 22-24 episodes a season. Virtually no streaming series does that. It’s not like 13 episodes is too long to tell a good story. It just seems like people have much less desire to tell those kind of sprawling, kitchen-sink stories now.I’m especially thinking of comedies.
Those 22-24 episode seasons were almost always episodic, with only a very, very few partially-serialized exceptions.
When 2020 hit in earnest I was actually kinda hopeful for what we’d see in terms of media. I thought maybe the era of the $200M blockbuster that ended with a blue laser shooting into the sky might give way to smaller, more intimate movies focusing on character and story.Unfortunately what happened is that instead we are getting whatever crumbs services find in their sofas they they toss onscreen in order to have “Content”.
Well, we’re still dealing with movies that were supposed to be released in 2020. At least give it a few years to see what effects a much lower box office and streaming focus has on things.
Don’t get me wrong – I do enjoy a $200M blue laser movie as much as the next guy. But I’d like to see more smaller movies as well is all.
I mean, me too. I just thought it was weird to expect things to change so suddenly when we’re still dealing with things that were supposed to happen in 2020. Like, the James Bond movie that was supposed to release last year just came out weeks ago. Media landscapes take a long time to change and I hope eventually there is more of a place for adult material. We’re in a brave new world of habits being altered by a pandemic, a growth of new streaming services and diminished box office. Things will looks very different in a few years.
I want to see a small, intimate movie that ends with a blue sky laser.“It took me so long to realise that the reason I couldn’t let go of your father was … that I see him in you every day.”*sky laser fires up in the background*
I was hoping that The Lost Daughter would end with a kaiju emerging from the ocean.
LOL!
That’s sort of what Midnight Special is like.
SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!
Aaaaaaand some shows have episodes with widely-varying run times too! I watched Invasion on Apple+ and some episodes of the same darn show were 10-15 minutes shorter than others. Very strange.
While I agree with you in general, I actually disagree about the Marvel shows specifically. It feels like they’ve all had really good build-ups to their climaxes, followed up insanely rushed resolutions, every single time. I felt like only Loki really nailed their ending, but to do so it had to be an episode-long exposition dump. Wandavision and FATWS instead both devolved into rushed CGI-punch ups that didn’t really follow the character driven lead ups. For example, in the FATWS finale, after five episodes of setting up Walker as an unhinged PTSD-driven shadow of Captain America, he suddenly just shows up for the final fight to help Sam before walking off trading quips with Bucky like they’re best friends. After having blatantly murdered somebody in front of them like an episode earlier. It came so out of no where that you’d think that we missed several episodes in between.
I didn’t see FATWS.For me, those first two Loki episodes could be one episode. That second episode where we practically spend the whole time walking through the store, unnecessary. I thought the ending was too much. Didn’t neeed to see that the TVA was already taken over by a Kang. Wandavision has similar problems. No need for two 60s episodes. The whole Scarlett Witch thing was forced in.And I don’t like that both Loki and Wandavision have the whole “give the new version of a dead character all their memories so we don’t have to do the work again” thing happen.
I can understand where you’re coming from, and I think that feeling is valid. However, as others have said, the television standard used to be closer to 16 episode seasons at minimum, 24-30 episode seasons at maximum. And to top it all off, the series would be stretched out across as many seasons as they could squeeze out of it. The amount of narrative bloat in older television shows was very palpable.We’re in a far, far better spot with shows now, which are embracing seasons as short as 6 episodes but rarely exceeding 13 episodes, and the vast majority of popular shows wrap up their narratives in 3-6 seasons.
I’m not sure what shows you’ve been watching, but I’ve rarely felt like a season of a show had much, if any, narrative bloat in roughly the past decade. It’s just long-form storytelling allowing for a deeper exploration of a narrative, which to me is usually a good thing. There are certainly times when any story overstays its welcome and there needs to be balance, but I’m personally glad we’re in an era that allows for really compelling long-form storytelling at extremely high production values. We can get more tightly packed narratives when we watch movies. The entire reason to make a show is to have the room to explore a narrative as fully as possible.
I don’t even think that a lot of these things have too many episodes, per se (remember when shows did 24 episodes a season?! And sometimes remained very good throughout? It wasn’t constant, but it happened) so much as they’re overly conceived as ongoing stories when they don’t really have *enough* ongoing story to really justify that. It sounds goofy (and prescriptive!) but I honestly think this MacGruber show would have worked better with stand-alone sitcom-style episodes.
remember when shows did 24 episodes a season?! And sometimes remained very good throughout? It wasn’t constant, but it happenedI thought about this around 15 years ago, around when it became obvious that all the critical acclaim was accruing to the 10-to-13-episode prestige cable dramas, and the critics no longer gave much of a shit about broadcast shows any more. I came up with the hypothesis that for a traditional broadcast model show (22-26 episodes a season, every year like clockwork), it was essentially impossible to have every episode be top-notch. You would inevitably end up with some mediocre or filler episodes, even in the very best shows. To this day I haven’t found a single example of such a show that even has one single season without any chaff. Even my favorite full-season shows of the pre-streaming era (e.g. Simpsons, Seinfeld, Buffy, various Treks, The West Wing) never had a perfect season.
The premise was that a show could only be really high quality if it had the necessary (but not sufficient*) condition of a single highly talented showrunner with a vision that they could consistently execute. The demands of TV production are high enough that no one is capable of overseeing every element of every episode to the same level of quality if they have to do 20+ episodes in a season and have a normal annual production cycle. There literally is not enough time.
When cable shows started having 10-13-episode seasons, suddenly it became possible to do so; the amount of time in a year was now sufficient for such a talented showrunner to ensure that every episode in the season was top-notch. It seems to be the case now that most shows have fewer than 20 episodes a season; for me, at least, every single first-run show I watch has between 6-13 episodes per season. (Since Brooklyn Nine-Nine ended, none of them are on a broadcast network, either.)The whole notion was, at the time, that shorter seasons were therefore better because all the chaff was excised, leading to leaner and meaner shows. The one thing I didn’t really account for was that even mediocre episodes of a full-season show still gave you more time with the characters, more opportunities for fleshing out the world, for having lower-stakes episodes that don’t need to be operating at full throttle all the time.
*Shows also need sufficient budget and support from their network, but neither of those things will help much without a kickass showrunner
I think also my feeling is that “perfect” shows (or even shows that approach perfection) are so rare anyway that it’s hard for me to favor the 13-episode model — even though I like it for other reasons (time management among them, as someone who has a LOT of movies to watch). As you allude, the thing about having twentysomething episodes a season is that it’s really no big deal if you have a few that are middling! (And frankly, The Simpsons from S3 through S9 and most of the run of Seinfeld are SO close to being perfect, in terms of having an obscenely high hit rate, that it’s vastly more impressive to me than some 8-episode quasi-pristine record.) When I was younger, I loved the X-Files mythology episodes and also liked the stand-alones… but you know, the mythology stuff was the real marquee attraction after a few seasons. Now, I positively *yearn* for a show as consistently and wonderfully inconsistent as the X-Files, where you really didn’t know what you might be getting from a given episode. I also love that X-Files had a bunch of different writers who specialized in different types of things, so as much as Chris Carter was one of those mythical showrunners, the vision of the show was so much more eclectic. This will sound snobby, but if I want a more concentrated vision from a brilliant (ugh) “storyteller,” there are movies for that. I like when TV can mix it up a bit for me.
I can understand that. I’ve softened my stance about season length over the years, although time management is a huge factor for me, as well as my extreme dislike of not finishing media. If I was going to start watching a show, I wanted to know that it was going to be worth it; there were countless shows in that era (late 2000s) that had had really impressive first seasons, and then got crappy fast. (Heroes is the standard-bearer here.) So I was perfectly happy to wait a couple of years to see if it was worth going back and watching through a show.I also shifted away from being interested in episodic content, and toward serialized content. It’s hard to say for sure why this happened but one reason I suspect is that we stopped having cable.When we moved into our house in 2007, we declined to get cable TV service. We hadn’t been watching much TV over the prior year, so we figured we’d save money. As a result, our TV consumption had dropped drastically, as well as our exposure to TV advertising; since then, we basically never see TV ads. That’s been hugely transformative for us; our kids grew up almost never seeing TV ads (pretty much only on the rare occasions we visited my parents’ house), and as a result they never pestered us for toys and McDonalds the way all their friends did. Imagine asking a five year old what they want for Christmas, and they’re like, “Hell if I know. I’m gonna go back to playing with this empty plastic water bottle, because I haven’t been brainwashed by TV to think that only colorful toys are fun.” They’d get buried in expensive toys by the grandparents every Christmas and would never even play with half of them.
So I wasn’t constantly being told by the TV that I was MISSING OUT!! So I didn’t feel a constant need to be watching something. It’s possible that this led to a stronger desire for more involved, serialized content.
I used to hear this a lot with the Doctor Who revival – that the show was better because of fewer episodes. I never really believed that, and as episodes of the revival become fewer and fewer, the praise seems to become more and more scant. There’s something to be said for shows that give you more variety, more ability to immerse yourself in their world, and do not rush through plot points.
I think the sweet spot may be around 13-16 episodes, as long as the showrunners (and whoever’s paying for the whole thing) have the aim of making a quality show, and not trying to hit algorithm metrics or just be part of the giant morass of “content” on a platform. I realize that TV has pretty much always been a consumable, disposable product, but creative types still manage to craft compelling stories even within that context.Fewer episodes doesn’t automatically mean better in all contexts; in my earlier comment the obvious context was that 22-26 episodes is too many to have them all be hits, and that 13-16 is few enough to avoid the chaff while still allowing enough time to flesh things out. Nobody’s positing a generic “fewer = better” principle.
I was just piggybacking on your comment because I did hear the fewer = better stuff for years. I know you weren’t saying it.
The big weakness of modern Doctor Who is almost certainly its lack of variety. Classic Doctor Who has its faults, true, but a lack of variety isn’t one of them. Modern Doctor Who, however, feels very samey; the show can’t seem to find a way to move on from milking as much drama as possible from the Doctor being The Last Of The Time Lords to the point where they had to kill them off again just to give her something to brood over, it’s getting a bit bogged down in the showrunner-of-the-moment’s pet continuity theories again, and it says something for how repetitive the “let’s make the companion a Buffyish twenty-first century woman who likes to make vaguely meta quips and have romantic tension with the Doctor” character model has gotten that bringing in a couple of companions who’ve been late middle-aged straight white guys has somehow felt like a breath of fresh air.
But if they tried doing something different (like Chibnall tried), the rabid gatekeeper Who fans will flood the Net with toxic bile and vomit about how “woke” the show is and how it’s not the same.The BBC knows how valuable the brand is and so won’t risk being different. Disney did the same thing after TLJ.
Oh, sure, it’s a rock-and-a-hard-place situation for them and no mistake. But that doesn’t really change my point; classic Doctor Who didn’t have to really worry as much about The Almighty Brand, so it could have a lot more fun and try new things. And that’s ultimately the curse of being a mega-brand; it leads to almost inevitable eventual stagnation, and then even your die-hards will start drifting away eventually because what they think they want and what they loudly demand usually isn’t what they actually want when it’s put down in front of them. Exhibit A: the fact that as contentious as The Last Jedi is, literally everyone in the world seems to think that Rise of the Skywalker is utter shit. (Plus, well, it has to be said: at least part of the problem with Chibnall is that he tried to do different things in an often bland and usually incredibly unsatisfying way. I’ll freely admit that different by itself doesn’t automatically equal good.)
The Prisoner is one of the all time great shows of Britain’s golden age in the 1960s, it lasted a total number of 17 episodes and a third of those were spinning-the-wheels timefillers.
I fully agree mate, but it should be said (and I’m sure you know this), all British TV runs short, not including the Soaps. Very rare is the series that goes over 6 episodes, be it drama, half hour sitcom or whatever. Even the ones that go a little longer, like Doctor Who which just had a 6 episode run incidentally, rarely go over 12.I absolutely love The Prisoner, even if a lot of the episodes divide into two plots – Number 6 tries to escape, or Number 2 tries a weird and wonderful method to break Number 6
He he – Number 2Is he just shitty at his job?Hehehehehehe
My contention was about episodes in the 22-26 episode range. 17 is fewer than 22.
I did understand. And my point is that it doesn’t matter how long the season run, every show of any length, no matter how great overall, is going to be imperfect.
To add to this, I’d say that something that’s been increasingly lost in a lot of modern TV, with shorter running seasons and the idea that every episode is an individual brick in an ongoing narrative, is the idea that you can feel free to skip the occasional episode now and then without feeling like you’ve missed a crucial part of the story (film kind of has this feeling as well, thanks in part to the MCU). It’s not quite all streaming’s fault, granted — we’ve been moving this way at least since Babylon 5 and the idea that a TV series was somehow closer to a long-running novel rather than a short story collection collection became more popular, and shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad just cemented it further. But nevertheless, even if the run-time is shorter a lot of TV these days is beginning to feel increasingly like an obligation rather than a leisure pursuit; once you start you’ve somehow signed up to a commitment that you almost have to see out to the bitter end. Which is fine when the creator’s a certified genius and every episode is perfect — but even with a thirteen-episode limit that’s still a tall order to ask.There is something to be said for the old model where, even if there’s plenty of episodes of cruft, you can just dip in and out at your own pace and not feel like you’re behind on your homework if you skip an episode or two. Like, if you missed the last Columbo, don’t worry, you can still follow this week’s perfectly well. And maybe I’m at the age now where I don’t really want my TV viewing time to feel like a second job.
But 24 episode shows never had the kind of long form, serialized storytelling that today’s shows have. Network procedurals still have 20+ episodes a season. I get it, it’s often hard to really gauge how many episodes you actually need to finish your one long narrative. But almost all shows err on the side of way too many.
Some shows in the ‘80s did, and some, like Knots Landing, made it work. But it’s extremely difficult.
Yes. Soaps (even prime time soaps) are obviously a different animal. Most shows, though…..
But 24 episode shows never had the kind of long form, serialized storytelling that today’s shows have.Yes they did. But the writers knew how to combine that serialized storytelling with episodic elements. So each episode told a story of it’s own, while contributing to the ongoing narrative.I’m not saying none of the shorter run series accomplish this, obviously there are great series that have 8-13 episodes a season. But nowadays too many series are just 4-10 hour blocks of content chopped up into more or less random chunks.
I honestly think this MacGruber show would have worked better with stand-alone sitcom-style episodes.
It’s what I’m starting to think of as “Kurtzman TREK Syndrome”, the urge to make everything a season-long or series-long arc (that’s almost never paid off right!) rather than just telling us stories. Just because STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE or BUFFY, THE VAMPIRE SLAYER could do it brilliantly doesn’t mean the current bunch of “’Splosions! Big Mysteries Whose Solutions Make No Sense! Fighty-Fighty Boom-Boom!” hacks who are currently writing shows can do it at all well.
You may really despise Mike Stoklasa and Rich Evans of Red Letter Media, but they’re not wrong about WTF so much of current STAR TREK and other story arc shows are tanking creatively. Even GAME OF THRONES ended up playing like a bad streaming series once Benioff and Weiss ran out of George R.R. Martin books to guide their show, and had to work off of his very loose outlines. (When public furor resulted in their CONFEDERACY series getting pulled before it got started, I think we really dodged a bullet as viewers given how readily B&W rush to coercive sex and graphic violence to replace strong stories and intelligent, consistent characterizations.)
While the Marvel streaming shows are a lot better than most, they also hit a point about halfway through a season where you can see the writers and cast start to vamp for several episodes right before rushing to a conclusion — not that watching Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany and Kathryn Hahn doing the MCU equivalent of the soft shoe to “Tea For Two” isn’t enjoyable, but by this point they shouldn’t have tummel for us just to get to the end.
so much as they’re overly conceived as ongoing stories when they don’t really have *enough* ongoing story to really justify that. This sounds about right. I think it comes down to how a lot of “prestige” tv is meant to be watched. Where older series might have more episodes and often over-arching plots, it was rarely conceived as something to be viewed in one sitting because realistically it was going to be one episode per week. Now a lot of modern shows are more or less in the binge model and I think the lesser episodes or moments where things feel padded out are more apparent when one is watching in a longer stretch.
I’m surprised at how non-news/sports cable channels are still plugging along with actual new shows despite many of them being just sitcom/movie marathon machines. Like, I had no idea Game Show Network was actively still making new game shows.
Don’t get it either.Waiting for the great Cable purge.But I also can see an ouroboros happening where we start seeing Streamers licensing their older content to cable to make back some money and run ads for the streaming service. Like a Netflix channel or a Disney+ channel that’s just their vault stuff and the ad breaks have ads for new content on the streaming service only.Because these streamers still need somewhere to advertise.
I thought all the Marvel NETFLIX shows (Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones) were all several episodes too long. Feels like they cured that problem with the Disney shows though.
Honestly, this is the problem I had with the movie. When it’s funny, it’s really damned funny, but it is just taking a one note joke and stretching it to 100 minutes.
What’s weird is, the review reads positively. The C+ seems to be attached to the idea that streaming shows have to have a reason to exist beyond the creator’s desire for it to exist.
I was very torn between C+ and B-. The show is funny, but it’s not as funny as the movie, and is twice as long.
Is there a Celery Trick?
Okay, now, piece of advice. When you use the old celery trick, you’re gonna wanna go with the thick end.
The saving grace is that even though I’m interested, it’s on Peacock, so I will never see it.
Fwi, peacock is free (with ads). But for just $4.99/mo you can get the premium subscription (which still includes all the same ads).
Also, it should be noted that if you have Xfinity internet or cable, you likely have access to the premium version included with your subscription.
“Will Forte’s whole deal—broadly speaking, a gonzo parody of American masculinity, revealing the grasping neediness beneath a lot of ceremonious, cliché-ridden bravado.”Wait, I thought that was Will Arnett’s whole deal? And sort of Ron-Burgundy-era Will Ferrell’s deal too? How many macho-but-actually-comedically-insecure Wills are there?
Am I the only person who sort of loves the movie adaptation? The whole part with all the WWE stars is still one of my favorite sequences in a comedy.
It’s a great movie from start to finish, and I am also glad that this new limited series exists.
The movie is the best comedy of the past 20 years. It also features the single greatest sex scene in the history of all cinema…
It’s good, but it’s no Walk Hard.
Team America would like a word.
no way. MacGruber has TWO of the best sex scenes in cinema.
The movie is amazing.
MacGruber works as a skit on SNL. It worked as a series of skits on SNL… but after about the 5th one it stopped working. It just doesn’t have the bones to work in longer forms.
The movie is a classic, so this is a lie. I’m not saying this isn’t stretched out, but MacGruber has the bones to work in 90 minute formats.
We shall have to agree to disagree on the merit of the movie.
What the world really needs is more Eagleheart – not this tired clown show.As soon as Chris Elliot is done counting his Schitt’s Creek money maybe they can retcon the whole “All That Jazz” ending and make the 80s cop show parody Americans really want.
The fact that Eagleheart had a three season run is a genuine miracle. Great show.
No we need Sledgehammer! to come back
Every time I see him on Succession, I think about it.
No we need Sledgehammer! to come back
I’ve been rewatching it, to see if it holds up (Netflix has it, on DVDs— the 3rd disc of season 2 is on its way right now) and the answer is— kinda.It was way ahead of its time in a number of ways (single-camera, no laugh track) and was also pretty funny, and was fairly successful in walking a very thin line with Sledge himself, in terms of character, but a lot of it wouldn’t play well now (and heck, probably didn’t then) despite how cartoonishly over the top much of it was. On the other hand, a large part of the writing / staging / acting is lazy even for an 80s sitcom.I do think Rasche would kill it in a reboot though. (Or not reboot, I guess, but sequel maybe.)
My favorite Sledge Hammer joke is from an episode where he’s working on a case to rescue a kidnapped newborn.
Mother: We hadn’t even had time to name him
Sledge: How about Rob?
He could have a child that is the same as him.
Sledge Hammer! The Next Generation
Could work….
He’s half cocked for Justice!!!
Better yet, Action Family
Chris Elliott as FDR: A One Man Show.
I look forward to watching this in the same way the movie was meant to watched: very, very high.
I was probably going to skip this series before, but this line actually has me sold: There’s still plenty of room for classic Forte indulgences, like spending the entirety of the second episode fully nude.That sounds absolutely inspired.
Just wait till the ass wiping scene
Gonna be honest, this all sounds incredible, but I should clarify that I have an endless appetite for the Lonely Island crew’s particular brand of very dumb humor (ie: 7 Days In Hell, Tour de Pharmacy, the forgotten skits on their albums that just amount to silly voices)
This sketch first appeared in 2007, fourteen years ago. The time for a spinoff series was 13.8 years ago. Sheesh, what a terrible idea.
The peacock streaming overloards demand more content…. no matter how ridiculous. More content!!!
Will Forte is one of my favorite SNL cast members of all time, but I never had a great deal of interest in Macgruber (I think the ones I enjoyed most were the blatant commercialization parody commercials he did with Richard Dean Anderson for the Super Bowl). This doesn’t exactly change my mind.
Wasn’t this site proclaiming the series a second coming when it was announced?
What a bizarre and inexplicable inconsistency, to be excited about something when it’s announced yet feel disappointed when actually watching and reviewing it! Even worse, I hear that sometimes different people write different things for the same website?!? I hope someone got fired for that blunder!!!
It’s fucking Macgruber. Anyone who set their expectations above “SNL skit movie as cheap tv series” should probably work at a different blog. Your point works for Cowboy Bebop better. Lotta people wished really hard for that to be good. To be woofed like that as a major fan sucks. If there are major fans of Macgruber, they probably work here.
Personally I found the SNL MacGruber one note and boring. The movie was hilarious but unrepeatable. The jokes work but don’t seem like they should and a sequel alone would be unfortunate. The producer who went “Ah yes, lets make even cheaper and watered down versions of this classic movie based on a award winning SNL skit” is probably fired or pissed at this point.
I think the whole thing about MacGruber is that a small but extremely passionate minority of people are DELIGHTED at the prospect of a TV series, as I was, because I find the character very, very funny (and was happy to see him translated so well to a feature film). So, you know, I’m just speaking to my audience here!
And I loved the Mona Lisa before they put her up in every goddamn classroom in the USA. As hilarious and miraculously passable character MacGruber is relies entirely on timing it’s awkward but works in short form. Jokes run too long or literally the entire movie (holy shit that license plate gag was run into the ground so many times and somehow was funnier each time). No way that works for a series length copy of copy of a parody.. They got lucky once and wanted to push something cheap and well known onto a flailing streaming platform.
Running jokes are hard. And MacGruber is no Archer.