Each week or so we're asking member of Team Experience to share the MVP of whatever they've been watching on TV lately. The MVP may be a prop, a theme, a person, or a collective. In past episodes we've talked The Flash and Bob's Burgers, The Walking Dead and The Knick and a handful of others. Now five more shows hit our collective eyeballs. Maybe you're watching them?
The Leftovers' Showrunners
The first season of The Leftovers made for difficult but extremely rewarding viewing. But nothing could have prepared us for the show's second season, which has been more daring, more ambitious, and yes, even more difficult than the first. Take the season premiere, which spent its first nine minutes telling a prehistoric tale of a cavewoman and her infant child, before shifting to present-day Jarden, TX - thousands of miles away from the show's previous setting of Mapleton, NY. When characters we finally knew appeared, they were treated as supporting characters. And it wasn't until the fourth episode of the season that we finally came back to the opening scene's lake in the aftermath of the premiere-ending earthquake during which that entire lake and at least three girls disappeared.
The sixth episode "Lens" was a killer dual showcase for the Emmy-worthy Carrie Coon and Regina King... More plus Transparent, The Mindy Project, and Black-ish after the jump...
The sixth episode "Lens" was a killer dual showcase for the Emmy-worthy Carrie Coon and Regina King. It's no accident that the show's new theme song has the refrain "I think I'll just let the mystery be." Tom Perrotta and Damon Lindelof, freed from the boundaries of the former's novel, are doing something completely audacious with the second season of The Leftovers, and I for one can't wait to see where it goes.
-Dancin' Dan
The Leftover's Regina King
Since Dan stole my topic for this week's column, my "runner up" MVP is the daring show's newest cast member, Regina King. Yes, she's having quite a year. Though she's always been an engaging actress on film, her talents were underutilized at best until TV finally handed her a few juicy roles with which to stretch and wow us. She anchored the better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be cop drama Southland with Emmy worthy-work for a handful of years and then things really exploded with American Crime (a surprise Emmy win) and her work as a secretive outwardly calm inwardly raging deaf wife and mother on The Leftovers. With the brilliant Ann Dowd, last season's arguable MVP, sidelined as a kind of perverse Greek chorus this year, Carrie Coon and Regina King are in an entirely brutal altogether dazzling throwdown for Season 2's MVP - neither actress is giving an inch and their faux neighborly, weirdly damaged, hostile window smashing duet in "Lens" was the single best thing on TV since Jon Hamm 'ommmmed' his way through that genius final moment of Mad Men. It wasn't until the end credit card flashed that I realized I had momentarily stopped breathing.
-Nathaniel R
Master of None's co-creators Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang
The premise of Aziz Ansari's new Netflix show doesn't sound particularly innovative or exciting. Ansari stars as Dev, a 30-something actor trying to make it in New York City. I know. How many shows about single professionals in New York do we really need? Well, Ansari and co-creator Alan Yang prove that there is still room to explore in the "contemporary Brooklynite" genre.
Some of the best episodes are inspired by personal experiences that we haven't seen a thousand times before thanks to the lack of diversity in American television: like an episode that focuses on Dev's relationship to his dad, and the multigenerational divide of the immigrant experience; or an episode that deals with the complications of being a person of color trying to find work as an actor. The most important thing, however, is that Ansari and Yang have developed a distinctive voice all their own, and understand that the more personal and specific their stories are, the more ambitious and exciting their show is going to be. There is something melancholic, insightful, and thoroughly entertaining about Master of None.
- Coco
Blackish's Children
Even when individual episodes fail to reach greatness there is always something to appreciate about Blackish and one of its finest assets is the children quartet, my favourite group of children on a current show (RIP Trophy Wife, sigh). Last week’s Halloween episode had some plotting issue seeing the privileged Johnson family confronted with their poorer cousins but the story issues were negligible in seeing a chance for the four Johnson children to play off each other. The show avoids forced drama in making them battle each other, and it’s always more charming seeing a group of TV siblings who appreciate each other’s weakness. Yara Shahidi, Marcus Scribner, Miles Brown and Marsai Martin are doing fine comedy work in their own way and they win this week for going all in the episode’s highlight moment where the children undergo a Rocky-esque training montage to stand up to their tougher cousins. If I had to choose the MVP of the quartet it would be Martin, who is pitch perfect as the acerbic Diane but they all have legitimate chemistry with each other, suggesting a camaraderie that’s not always easy to do. (And bonus points for the Halloween costumes.This year the family went as the Obama’s, the two daughters as the Obama girls, the older son as a secret service agent and the younger son as the dog.)
- Andrew Kendall
The Mindy Project's Girlpower
From Girls to Gossip Girl, to Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia, it seems every show starring a group of women was supposed to be "the new Sex and the City", and while no show will ever replace the magic SJP and MPK conjured together, there is one show touching similar topics in an unafraid, in-your-face manner.
When it aired on FOX, Mindy Kaling's The Mindy Project brought anal sex to people's homes, but since moving to Hulu it has touched on even more issues that television, or film for that matter, rarely discuss. This season as we've seen Mindy deal with the fact that she does not want to be a stay-at-home-mom, and craves the thrill of work life, despite the wishes of her husband (Chris Messina) the show has become almost subversive in its unapologetic way. Warmhearted, funny, sexy and socially conscious it seems it kinda has it all.
-Jose Solis
And finally...
Transparent's Dildos
This week’s MVP is a collective award to the dildos of Transparent. Yes, I've finally caught up with Amazon's hit. Transparent was far better than I’d imagined, even after its rave reviews and awards. It deftly balances heartfelt drama with moments of hilarity, some of the latter being brought by our silicone MVP. Dildos make three appearances on Transparent. The first, in an early episode, shows two women in the throes of passion pausing to deal with a slight dildo inconvenience. The second, about midway through, is a woman and a trans-man dealing with much more, much funnier, inconvenience. And in the season finale, a character uses the hilarious word “dildology”, while homophobically suggesting that dildos cannot make up for the “real thing”.
Among its many, many virtues is the fact that Transparent understands how lesbians (and people in general) have sex. People of the male and/or straight variety tend to be very confused about how sex happens without a factory-installed penis involved. It’s really pretty simple, and often involves the after-market variety. “Dildology”!
- Deborah Lipp
Who was the MVP of your TV week? And if you're not watching The Leftovers or Transparent you owe it to yourself to catch up. (The new season of Transparent debuts the first week of December)