agree that the whole email drama is kind of overwrought and dragging down the story a little, but you gotta admit, that scene at the roadside gas station when Deborah learns that Helen Mirren is attached and she starts chucking tourmaline and screaming, "OF *COURSE* IT'S GOING TO SERIES!!" was funny as hell. (as was her purchase of the reusable cup, a callback to early S1, explaining, "...it offsets my private jet!")
it's not often that we get a narrative centered around a woman of Smart's age, and even less often that the woman in question is someone that people should be afraid of, both materially and physically. to play a character that is so jaded, wise, and confident on the surface, and watching that hardened exterior crumble when she sees Marty publicly flaunting his relationship with an older woman or reading a bad review of her act in the hometown paper, we understand exactly why she built up those walls in the first place. i could watch Jean Smart do this kind of character work every single night for the rest of my life.
I'm in complete agreement. There is so much great story to be mined just from two different generations of comedians working together on the road to develop an act. All this extra drama with the email and the lawsuit is not as appealing to me. I love comedy, love comedians, and love simply seeing process at work, but I don't know that this show -- which could give me all of those things -- is necessarily aiming for that.
That being said, Einbinder, Smart, and Downs are all so good I will likely stick with this for the rest of the season.
P.S. As the unrealistic paintball and weird CG bothered you, I was left to wonder how they stopped at the very recognizable (and about one-hour from Los Angeles) Charlie Brown Farms on a drive from Las Vegas to Flagstaff. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic car or something?
I never get enough Paul W. Downs, so I'll take whatever. Ditto the previous comment on the Helen Mirren "of course it's going to series" joke, I was laughing the instant she said the name. In fact Helen Mirren would never even be asked to do just a pilot.
I was surprised they did that paintball scene given the death and horror unleashed from a Vegas hotel by someone with a gun just a few years ago. Especially with the red paint. But maybe I'm an outlier on that one.
yeaaaaaah, i'm a Vegas resident (and lived <2 miles from Mandalay Bay in 2017) and that paintball scene was wholly unnecessary and tone-deaf, but i just chalked that up to the fact that the show doesn't bother to examine what Las Vegas is *actually* like, it's cartoon Vegas. (but that's my biggest gripe about the whole show and it's a minor one, all things considered.)
Caught up on S1 last week after it finally aired in the UK/Ireland (I liked most of it!), but no sign of S2 coming soon. I suppose they're still advertising S1 as a "new" show, so it doesn't make sense to put S2 up yet.
HBO Max not having a presence here makes it impossible to tell where most of their shows will end up and when. Some go to Sky (which makes sense, as they have a deal with HBO Regular), some to the BBC, a few to Starz, some to ITV's new on demand service, and this went to Amazon. One of their animated shows even went to Netflix.
A bunch of other shows have shown no sign of showing up at all, including Our Flag Means Death, Minx, and pretty much all their kids' shows.
Combined with the CW discourse this week, a reminder that there is pure chaos happening overseas with the U.S. congloms building these streaming libraries.
Yeah, most non-superhero CW shows have just not aired at all here since the Netflix deal ended a few years back (Dynasty was the last show to sneak through on that AFAIK). I believe the first season of All American is starting this month on ITV2, but I can't even get that channel in Ireland.
Of the current shows, Legacies, Nancy Drew, Kung-Fu, In the Dark, and Walker have never aired at all, Charmed and Roswell, NM were both dropped after two seasons.
-
A further frustrating thing about the international versions of streaming services is how they're often a watered-down version of the US service, especially in terms of library content. Paramount Plus is advertising 8,000 hours of content when it launches here next month, compared to 30,000 in the US.
The version of Peacock available over here is to the US version what the McDonald's Fry Wagon at Disneyland was to a regular McDonald's. It has only a few dozen shows, many of which are on other streaming services, and doesn't even have all of Peacock's shows: they just announced that the Peacock Queer As Folk reboot will be on Starz instead of Peacock here. It's very clear that they only launched it so they could tell shareholders they had launched it.
if it's any consolation, you can 100% skip Minx. (but, speaking as a sex worker, i'd def recommend The Deuce if you wanna watch a show about the 70s porn industry and don't mind watching James Franco mugging x 2)
Myles mentioned there was a discussion of Minx here so thought I would weigh in. I agree that The Deuce is a better show. And the other show that comes to mind is Mrs. America (on Hulu, fantastic). Having said that, I thought Minx was a lot of fun. I get the criticism. Emily Nussbaum had a lot to say about the problems with the show on Twitter. But for me it was just a very fun watch. I just had a great time watching it even if those other 2 shows mentioned are more thoughtful. Basically I had a great time with Jake Johnson and the rest of the cast. Joyce is the weaker character but frankly she represents a lot of white feminists, sadly.
i enjoyed Mrs. America too, but i think a closer companion-piece to Minx would probably be Physical (with Rose Byrne, on AppleTV+) - it's set a few years later (80s, not 70s) but the vibes are very similar, ie: the story is centered around a ferociously unlikeable female protagonist attempting to make a name for herself in media. (except on Physical she's hocking at-home workout tapes, not porno mags.)
the biggest difference i found is that while both female leads were written as prickly/annoying, on Physical i actually found Rose Byrne's character to be quite hilarious (albeit much sadder) than Joyce's; that depth and added layer of pathos was the key for me.
i really wanted Minx to be great, i did! but it was just meh for me. Jake Johnson was very charming, but i felt like he was just doing an extended Marc Maron in GLOW/David Krumholtz on The Deuce bit. i'll watch Lennon Parham in anything and Jessica Lowe was great too, but whew, that lead actress who played Joyce was like nails on a chalkboard. (i realize this was supposed to be the nature of her character, but i just don't understand why Joyce was so dead-set on being such a stick-in-the-mud for *so* many episodes.)
in my opinion, Minx had all the elements of a great show, but it just didn't gel for me. as a sex worker myself, i felt like the way the narrative treated Joyce's whole arc was patronizing and condescending as hell. for example, when Joyce got SO personally offended by the idea that Conrad Ross (Steven Toblowsky) wanted to spend an evening with Bambi in order to finance the project that she publicly blew up the entire deal and made a massive scene at the country club.
first of all, there is a ton of crossover between porn actors and escorting (and even moreso back in the 70s) so Joyce's pearl-clutching moralizing as someone who was an *interloper* to the industry was extremely overblown. one date with a rich asshole in exchange for a publication-saving advertising run is... not that big of a deal. the offer should have simply been presented to BAMBI and she could have made the decision on her own. by making a huge public scene, not only did Joyce fuck up her shot at funding the magazine, but she also denied Bambi any agency and acted like yet another paternalistic "savior" instead of a shrewd businesswoman hoping to make a deal.
it honestly felt to me like the show did not consult with any experts in the field before writing a show about this industry (in stark contrast to The Deuce, which was meticulously researched.) i think if the show scrapped Joyce's whole story and just returned with its ancillary characters, it would immediately improve the show by a considerable measure. i'd happily watch a 2nd season featuring Idara Victor's character Tina and Jake Johnson as co-leads. but as it stands, i'm passing on S2.
But wasn't that true to Joyce's character? I 100% agree that that was no one's choice but Bambi's, but Joyce is clearly sees porn and escorting as exploitative.
yes, it was true to her character. i guess my issue was, why did her character need to start from such an extreme place of "porn is exploitative and i am helping/saving these women because they are obviously in distress" in the first place? like, from the moment that Joyce meets Doug, she's visibly nauseated by him and everything he does. her contempt is palpable.
for the majority of the season we're subjected to Joyce's misguided attempts to keep the magazine, "classy" and "elevated" by discussing what she deems "serious topics" rather than working to make it entertaining, exciting, or accessible. and her insistence on doing things her way was based on a track record of, what, exactly? she had zero professional knowledge or experience, but rather than work collaboratively with industry veterans, she stormed into every encounter like a bull in a china shop of bad ideas. the entitlement! ugh.
i kept waiting for Joyce to experience some sort of epiphany, but instead we were forced to spend an entire season watching a lead character trying to assert herself as a boss in an environment where she was uncomfortable at best and actively harmful at worst.
it really bothered me that the lead character was SO fundamentally opposed to sex work yet she still opted to shoehorn herself into the industry anyway, and we, as the audience, were expected to follow alongside on her Liberal White Lady Redemption Arc (if you can even call it that) rather than focusing on the professionals who willingly chose that work with open minds and didn't need to go on some kind of spiritual journey in order for it to be deemed acceptable. the whole thing was condescending and paternalistic as hell.
and the ending of S1? when Doug just... gives up and hands the magazine over to Joyce? on what planet does that make any sense for anyone? Doug is the guy with the publishing empire and proven track record selling dirty magazines, and Joyce is still an uptight know-it-all who hasn't learned anything about succeeding in the industry. so why on earth would the magazine be better off in her hands? it makes zero sense.
sorry for going off like this (lolll) like i said, i really did want to like this show! if i had to give it a grade i'd probably give it a C+/B- overall. if S2 was re-written to exclude Joyce and just focused on the rest of the ensemble it could potentially rise to B/B+ territory, imo.
I see where you are coming from, but I believe in 1972, finding women outside of the the broad rubric of sex or sex-related work (by that I am including, for example, any who work for a porn company such as Doug's right-hand woman as well) who do not believe it is exploitative is rare.
I do believe Joyce was evolving over the course of the season. Hopefully, season 2 does not backtrack on that.
I loved Season 1 of Hacks but haven’t had a chance to start Season 2. I completely agree with you on the email and am happy to hear that issue gets resolved.
agree that the whole email drama is kind of overwrought and dragging down the story a little, but you gotta admit, that scene at the roadside gas station when Deborah learns that Helen Mirren is attached and she starts chucking tourmaline and screaming, "OF *COURSE* IT'S GOING TO SERIES!!" was funny as hell. (as was her purchase of the reusable cup, a callback to early S1, explaining, "...it offsets my private jet!")
it's not often that we get a narrative centered around a woman of Smart's age, and even less often that the woman in question is someone that people should be afraid of, both materially and physically. to play a character that is so jaded, wise, and confident on the surface, and watching that hardened exterior crumble when she sees Marty publicly flaunting his relationship with an older woman or reading a bad review of her act in the hometown paper, we understand exactly why she built up those walls in the first place. i could watch Jean Smart do this kind of character work every single night for the rest of my life.
Yeah, I was texting with a friend last night, and Smart will never lose an Emmy for this role, and I'm fine with that.
I'm in complete agreement. There is so much great story to be mined just from two different generations of comedians working together on the road to develop an act. All this extra drama with the email and the lawsuit is not as appealing to me. I love comedy, love comedians, and love simply seeing process at work, but I don't know that this show -- which could give me all of those things -- is necessarily aiming for that.
That being said, Einbinder, Smart, and Downs are all so good I will likely stick with this for the rest of the season.
P.S. As the unrealistic paintball and weird CG bothered you, I was left to wonder how they stopped at the very recognizable (and about one-hour from Los Angeles) Charlie Brown Farms on a drive from Las Vegas to Flagstaff. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic car or something?
I never get enough Paul W. Downs, so I'll take whatever. Ditto the previous comment on the Helen Mirren "of course it's going to series" joke, I was laughing the instant she said the name. In fact Helen Mirren would never even be asked to do just a pilot.
I was surprised they did that paintball scene given the death and horror unleashed from a Vegas hotel by someone with a gun just a few years ago. Especially with the red paint. But maybe I'm an outlier on that one.
I dunno, they made Diane Keaton do a pilot for her Nikki Finke pilot! (But I agree that things have changed in the past decade).
yeaaaaaah, i'm a Vegas resident (and lived <2 miles from Mandalay Bay in 2017) and that paintball scene was wholly unnecessary and tone-deaf, but i just chalked that up to the fact that the show doesn't bother to examine what Las Vegas is *actually* like, it's cartoon Vegas. (but that's my biggest gripe about the whole show and it's a minor one, all things considered.)
Caught up on S1 last week after it finally aired in the UK/Ireland (I liked most of it!), but no sign of S2 coming soon. I suppose they're still advertising S1 as a "new" show, so it doesn't make sense to put S2 up yet.
HBO Max not having a presence here makes it impossible to tell where most of their shows will end up and when. Some go to Sky (which makes sense, as they have a deal with HBO Regular), some to the BBC, a few to Starz, some to ITV's new on demand service, and this went to Amazon. One of their animated shows even went to Netflix.
A bunch of other shows have shown no sign of showing up at all, including Our Flag Means Death, Minx, and pretty much all their kids' shows.
Combined with the CW discourse this week, a reminder that there is pure chaos happening overseas with the U.S. congloms building these streaming libraries.
Yeah, most non-superhero CW shows have just not aired at all here since the Netflix deal ended a few years back (Dynasty was the last show to sneak through on that AFAIK). I believe the first season of All American is starting this month on ITV2, but I can't even get that channel in Ireland.
Of the current shows, Legacies, Nancy Drew, Kung-Fu, In the Dark, and Walker have never aired at all, Charmed and Roswell, NM were both dropped after two seasons.
-
A further frustrating thing about the international versions of streaming services is how they're often a watered-down version of the US service, especially in terms of library content. Paramount Plus is advertising 8,000 hours of content when it launches here next month, compared to 30,000 in the US.
The version of Peacock available over here is to the US version what the McDonald's Fry Wagon at Disneyland was to a regular McDonald's. It has only a few dozen shows, many of which are on other streaming services, and doesn't even have all of Peacock's shows: they just announced that the Peacock Queer As Folk reboot will be on Starz instead of Peacock here. It's very clear that they only launched it so they could tell shareholders they had launched it.
if it's any consolation, you can 100% skip Minx. (but, speaking as a sex worker, i'd def recommend The Deuce if you wanna watch a show about the 70s porn industry and don't mind watching James Franco mugging x 2)
Myles mentioned there was a discussion of Minx here so thought I would weigh in. I agree that The Deuce is a better show. And the other show that comes to mind is Mrs. America (on Hulu, fantastic). Having said that, I thought Minx was a lot of fun. I get the criticism. Emily Nussbaum had a lot to say about the problems with the show on Twitter. But for me it was just a very fun watch. I just had a great time watching it even if those other 2 shows mentioned are more thoughtful. Basically I had a great time with Jake Johnson and the rest of the cast. Joyce is the weaker character but frankly she represents a lot of white feminists, sadly.
i enjoyed Mrs. America too, but i think a closer companion-piece to Minx would probably be Physical (with Rose Byrne, on AppleTV+) - it's set a few years later (80s, not 70s) but the vibes are very similar, ie: the story is centered around a ferociously unlikeable female protagonist attempting to make a name for herself in media. (except on Physical she's hocking at-home workout tapes, not porno mags.)
the biggest difference i found is that while both female leads were written as prickly/annoying, on Physical i actually found Rose Byrne's character to be quite hilarious (albeit much sadder) than Joyce's; that depth and added layer of pathos was the key for me.
Oh interesting - I haven’t seen that show!
i'm interested to see where it goes in S2, which drops on 6/3. :)
Minx was great. You're outta your mind. The Deuce was great.
i really wanted Minx to be great, i did! but it was just meh for me. Jake Johnson was very charming, but i felt like he was just doing an extended Marc Maron in GLOW/David Krumholtz on The Deuce bit. i'll watch Lennon Parham in anything and Jessica Lowe was great too, but whew, that lead actress who played Joyce was like nails on a chalkboard. (i realize this was supposed to be the nature of her character, but i just don't understand why Joyce was so dead-set on being such a stick-in-the-mud for *so* many episodes.)
in my opinion, Minx had all the elements of a great show, but it just didn't gel for me. as a sex worker myself, i felt like the way the narrative treated Joyce's whole arc was patronizing and condescending as hell. for example, when Joyce got SO personally offended by the idea that Conrad Ross (Steven Toblowsky) wanted to spend an evening with Bambi in order to finance the project that she publicly blew up the entire deal and made a massive scene at the country club.
first of all, there is a ton of crossover between porn actors and escorting (and even moreso back in the 70s) so Joyce's pearl-clutching moralizing as someone who was an *interloper* to the industry was extremely overblown. one date with a rich asshole in exchange for a publication-saving advertising run is... not that big of a deal. the offer should have simply been presented to BAMBI and she could have made the decision on her own. by making a huge public scene, not only did Joyce fuck up her shot at funding the magazine, but she also denied Bambi any agency and acted like yet another paternalistic "savior" instead of a shrewd businesswoman hoping to make a deal.
it honestly felt to me like the show did not consult with any experts in the field before writing a show about this industry (in stark contrast to The Deuce, which was meticulously researched.) i think if the show scrapped Joyce's whole story and just returned with its ancillary characters, it would immediately improve the show by a considerable measure. i'd happily watch a 2nd season featuring Idara Victor's character Tina and Jake Johnson as co-leads. but as it stands, i'm passing on S2.
But wasn't that true to Joyce's character? I 100% agree that that was no one's choice but Bambi's, but Joyce is clearly sees porn and escorting as exploitative.
yes, it was true to her character. i guess my issue was, why did her character need to start from such an extreme place of "porn is exploitative and i am helping/saving these women because they are obviously in distress" in the first place? like, from the moment that Joyce meets Doug, she's visibly nauseated by him and everything he does. her contempt is palpable.
for the majority of the season we're subjected to Joyce's misguided attempts to keep the magazine, "classy" and "elevated" by discussing what she deems "serious topics" rather than working to make it entertaining, exciting, or accessible. and her insistence on doing things her way was based on a track record of, what, exactly? she had zero professional knowledge or experience, but rather than work collaboratively with industry veterans, she stormed into every encounter like a bull in a china shop of bad ideas. the entitlement! ugh.
i kept waiting for Joyce to experience some sort of epiphany, but instead we were forced to spend an entire season watching a lead character trying to assert herself as a boss in an environment where she was uncomfortable at best and actively harmful at worst.
it really bothered me that the lead character was SO fundamentally opposed to sex work yet she still opted to shoehorn herself into the industry anyway, and we, as the audience, were expected to follow alongside on her Liberal White Lady Redemption Arc (if you can even call it that) rather than focusing on the professionals who willingly chose that work with open minds and didn't need to go on some kind of spiritual journey in order for it to be deemed acceptable. the whole thing was condescending and paternalistic as hell.
and the ending of S1? when Doug just... gives up and hands the magazine over to Joyce? on what planet does that make any sense for anyone? Doug is the guy with the publishing empire and proven track record selling dirty magazines, and Joyce is still an uptight know-it-all who hasn't learned anything about succeeding in the industry. so why on earth would the magazine be better off in her hands? it makes zero sense.
sorry for going off like this (lolll) like i said, i really did want to like this show! if i had to give it a grade i'd probably give it a C+/B- overall. if S2 was re-written to exclude Joyce and just focused on the rest of the ensemble it could potentially rise to B/B+ territory, imo.
I see where you are coming from, but I believe in 1972, finding women outside of the the broad rubric of sex or sex-related work (by that I am including, for example, any who work for a porn company such as Doug's right-hand woman as well) who do not believe it is exploitative is rare.
I do believe Joyce was evolving over the course of the season. Hopefully, season 2 does not backtrack on that.
I loved Season 1 of Hacks but haven’t had a chance to start Season 2. I completely agree with you on the email and am happy to hear that issue gets resolved.
100% agree about the unnecessary email drama.