Wrapped like candy in a pure blue neon glow
Let's watch some T.V.!
Dame Karen: It’s so good to “see” you! We’re talking television! A bevy of shows are about to come back for fresh new seasons and we wanted to discuss, delight, recommend…you know how we do these things.
Dame Sophie: I do indeed! Plus, this time we’re recommending specific things to each other, with the hope that readers will be racing to hit play on one or another of these shows. Though, as is typical for us, we’re actually going to start with a shared favorite, because it’s too good for us to skip an opportunity to lead more devoted viewers to it.
Dame Karen: Please can we start with Girls 5eva?! This show was a surprise love for me because I don’t love the work of executive producer Tina Fey (sorry) and I don’t like musical theater (sorry sorry), which is the day job of many of the actors on the show. However, the showrunner for the show is not Ms. Fey but rather a former employee, Meredith Scardino, and it has so many things I love. Absurdity, true heart, actually funny songs, and a cast that is, to a letter, absolutely perfect in their roles which manage to be both extremely broad and extremely SOMETHING NOT BROAD at the same time.
Dame Sophie: And they are, notably, a bunch of delightful broads themselves! I was more susceptible to this show from jump, as a longtime enjoyer (and critic) of Ms. Fey’s oeuvre, and as a total cornball who loooooves musical theatre, and am so happy to say that I join you in being a huge fan of absurdity, true heart, and actually funny songs, and I so admire how the somewhat broader broadness of S1 matured into something deeply heartfelt and messy in S2. The friendships felt more lived in, the jokes were even better & zippier, it just all started to really FEEL like a group of people who loved each other way back when and are figuring out how to love each other again, now. Which just goes to show—again!—how much range solid comedic actors actually have. Readers may remember that we wrote about taking comedy seriously about a year ago, and we stand by it. All of which is to say: Girls 5eva: A+ pick! Now, I understand that Peacock won’t be producing a third season of G5A, but I think it’s found a soft place to land elsewhere?
Dame Karen: Yes, I hate to say it, but bless Netflix in this one specific instance, as they have picked it up, allowing all the good stuff that started gelling in S2 to carry on. For those who need some background, G5E is about a ‘90s girl group who had one big hit before breaking up and going their separate ways. One Girl, the “fun one,” played in flashbacks by Ashley Park, died in “an infinity pool accident” in the aughts, leaving the remaining four, Wickie, the “hot one” (played by Renee Elise Goldsberry, aka Angelica From “Hamilton”), Dawn, the “chill one” (Sara “Waitress On Broadway” Bareilles), Summer, the “hot one” (Busy “Kim Kelly From Freaks And Geeks” And Other Things Too” Philipps), and Gloria, the “always working one” (Paula “My Very Soul” Pell), to come back together after their hit song is sampled and puts them back in the spotlight. The flashbacks to the ‘90s are plentiful and full of body glitter and horror but the current storyline of how they use their five minutes of nostalgia to take control of their own group, their own songs, and their own lives is even better. What was the scene you wanted to discuss?
Dame Sophie: Ok, so I realize that explaining a joke is not good for the joke, but I have to give G5A credit for providing me with the most out of control, mirth tears-strewn, close-to-wheezing laugh of 2022. The hilariously grandiose Wickie has been dating A Normal, a lovely man she calls The Lunch Lord. The Lunch Lord is played by Chad L. Coleman, who you may know from The Wire, in which he played the soulful ex-felon and boxing mentor to the youth of West Baltimore, Dennis “Cutty” Wise, or from The Walking Dead. At one point she comes over to his apartment and he’s doing some chore or other. He remarks, “oh, I was just hanging this Ansel Adams poster of a cool mountain.” It’s a decent line, his delivery is so matter-of-fact and relaxed, and something about the combination of describing a mountain as “cool” and his apparent choice to hang it up dorm room-style with thumb tacks, kind of behind his TV…it caused me to lose control of my actual breathing. That joke punched so far above its weight that I’m giggling about it again months later.
Dame Karen: Yes! The show is full of moments like that and then will just destroy with all guns blazing with a song like “B.P.E.” (“Big Pussy Energy”), an actual Girls 5Eva song, or a song that tells the story of the episode (like, gasp, A MUSICAL!) so goofily and perfectly, like “New York Lonely Boy,” a Simon & Garfunkel parody about upper middle class little boys in New York (His pants are always spiffy, only sibling is the city / His playground is the lobby, has a palate for wasabi / The Strand is his Disneyland...) That sort of self-conscious cutesy pooing normally makes me gnash my teeth with rage but there I am, laughing and humming along! The show is also absolute catnip for me, in the words of You, Sophie, because it centers a bunch of middle-aged women and lets them be middle-aged as well as funny, gross, gorgeous, hot, awkward, creative, sad, weird….SEVERAL THINGS!
Dame Sophie: Several things, all at once?! The way that people often are??? The hell you say! A revolution! In a similar vein (and on the same platform in the US, Peacock), may I present to you We Are Ladyparts? It’s a Britcom about a punk band of Muslim women in London. Let’s watch the trailer together.
Dame Karen: I LOVE IT!
Dame Sophie: YAY! I’m so glad you like it! This is a show that may as well have been created in a lab for me. I love the friendships, the idiosyncrasies of each character’s navigation of being observant in a religious minority, the high-quality joke density, and the rocking songs. The creator is Nida Manzoor, who also plays the lead role, and if this show is what she’s capable of in her mid-20s, I can’t wait to see what she cooks up in 15 years, not to mention what she’s just created, an action comedy / sisterly love & support movie called Polite Society. If it delivers on even ⅔ of the trailer’s promise, it’ll solidify my admiration forever. To paraphrase the great Wayne Campbell, We Are Lady Parts can really wail. Any fan of Crucial Taunt should groove on this show.
Dame Karen: CRUCIAL TAUNT!!!! I love Tia Carrere AND Wayne’s World director Penelope Spheeris forever. I have been meaning to watch We Are Lady Parts and now I MUST. I like the contrast between the Girls 5Eva women in their 20s being completely beholden to a shady manager’s vision of what a girl group is and the This Is Lady Parts women in their 20s doing their own damn thing. Some Things Have Changed, Apparently! And For The Better! is a pretty basic concept but that doesn’t mean I don’t love to see it.
Dame Sophie: Same!! What have you got next up your sleeve?
Dame Karen: Perhaps it’s a surprise that a show that devotes an entire episode to someone trying to take a flattering photo of their butthole and it all going horribly wrong is also one of the most laughing through tears because I’m sudden incredibly moved by the familial love of it all shows around…but it is! The Other Two premiered two seasons ago on Comedy Central, moved over to HBO Max for S2, and though there’s no trailer yet, we’ve been promised a third season. The showrunners are Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, formerly of Saturday Night Live, and it focuses on a brother in sister in their very early 30s who are doing their best to make it in New York as an actor and…former ballerina when their 13-year-old brother Chase, aka ChaseDreams, becomes an internet sensation à la early Bieber and sets the entire world on fire with his original hit song “Marry U At Recess.”
Dame Sophie: Ok, this child star’s name and original hit song title are very close to Ansel Adams Poster of a Cool Mountain territory, humor-wise. I’m already on board! Quick question – did Chase, that is, ChaseDreams, write “Marry U At Recess”, or is this more of an Elton John/Bernie Taupin situation?
Dame Karen: It seems to be Chase’s original composition, but there’s a suspiciously professional, hilariously literal video that accompanies it during its YouTube premier, somehow? It brings to mind those ARK Music Factory songs and videos from ten+ years ago, most famously Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” Just all part of the ChaseDreams magic, I guess!
Dame Sophie: I’m listening to the song now and am both giggling like a fool and ready to put it on repeat. I see what you mean about the video, too.
Dame Karen: Like Girls 5eva, the songs are genuinely good and catchy while being utterly ridiculous. See also “Stink,” a song about dancing until you stink. I sing the line “even the walls should stink!” and laugh to myself probably once a day.
Dame Sophie: A funny earworm cannot be denied! And — like so many fun and/or funny things — is harder to execute well than it gets credit for.
Dame Karen: Their momager who moves from the Midwest to New York to shepherd Chase along his very surreal way is played by Molly Shannon and she is STUNNINGLY funny. It’s odd to see that old Mary Katherine Gallagher energy funneled into a middle-aged character but it works so well; Molly Shannon is having A MOMENT and I’m very happy to see it.
Another stroke of genius is making Chase a thoroughly sympathetic character who’s just taking his bizarre new life as it comes with the help of his loving, completely shell-shocked family. Did I mention the father died in a mysterious manner that is eventually revealed in yet another of the show’s patented horrifying-but-make-it-sad-but-also-funny turn? There’s that, too. The real stars are Helene Yorke and Drew Tarver as Brooke and Cary, “the other two,” who are hapless and prone to the cringiest and jaw droppingly weird embarrassing moments (see the butthole sitch above) but god, you just want them to get a win in their chaotic personal and professional lives and they do, sort of. Add Ken Marino and Wanda Sykes in perfect supporting roles as Chase's manager and publicist, respectively, doing the “weirdly sympathetic jackass” and “brusque, savvy genius trying to keep everyone in line” bits they do so well, and you’ve got fun, baby!
Dame Sophie: Well done, this is fully in my wheelhouse! The silly songs! The stacked-with-talent cast! The heart! I now have a couple of highly deserving One Season Wonders to share with you. Have you watched either Terriers, and/or High Fidelity?
Dame Karen: I have seen High Fidelity only — I have heard GOOD THINGS Terriers! I also enjoyed your High Fidelity RECAPS, ahem ahem!
Dame Sophie: My hype-woman is always on the job!! Thank you <3 I did enjoy writing them, the second entry in my niche of recapping literary adaptations! Since you’ve seen High Fidelity, of blessed memory, I’ll just say I’m grateful that we got a full season of the genius of Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Cherise and furious that it was canceled. There was plenty of runway for more storytelling, and the season finale had set that up very nicely. Doomed to a not-dissimilar and lamentable fate, Terriers aired in 2010 on F/X and it’s clear that although the show had a great F/X-y pedigree, the network didn’t have a clear idea of how to market it. The title tells you nothing, and neither does this promo video. What…is happening in there? The only thing that registers is the selection of a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song to play over the show’s leads trying to jumpstart a well past its prime pickup truck. All they had to say was “The Big Lebowski x Veronica Mars in vaguely scuzzy greater San Diego beach town” and the PR would have written itself!
Dame Karen: Damn, they should have hired YOU--that sounds incredible!!!
Dame Sophie: I’m so sad that I had no idea of its existence when it aired! I’d have done for Terriers what you have just done again for me! Two Bossy Dames: come for the zippy, trenchant cultural recommendations, stay for master classes in the art of gassing up your friends!
Dame Karen: It’s what we do!
Dame Sophie: Facts!
Thanks for going on this journey with us, Dames Nation — we hope you found something tantalizing and worth watching among our recommendations. Please leave your own recommendations below!