Courtesy of The Examiner
We’ve asked a group of friends the eternal question: What TV show is killing it right now? Here are their responses…
Carrianne says:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFvb3WKISk
The show that I think is killing it right now is Aziz Ansari’s Master of None. Caveat: I’ve only watched two episodes, so it may not be fair to say that it’s a great show just yet. But, and this is an important but, the show is killing it for stirring the already boiling racial pot of American TV.
Ansari is a comic first and foremost, so the show, featuring the mundane life of Dev, a thirty something actor in New York, is a bit reminiscent of a Jerry Seinfeld project. There is a neighbourhood, coffee shops, restaurants, street scenes, and an ensemble cast of best friends and family members. However, unlike Seinfeld’s NYC, Ansari’s is populated by white AND people of colour. I know – it’s mind-blowing that folks of colour actually live in NYC and are not just permanently behind the counter of the local bodega…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0EF70Vc0cQ
Take, for example, the second episode: ‘Parents’. Ansari’s Dev is a 30-something brown guy and his bestie Brian (Kelvin Yu) is Chinese. They spend the episode wandering around NY, making cracks and observations about race that are completely ordinary in the daily lives of folks of colour. Without being overly earnest in their attempt to break down stereotypical representations, the writers create a narrative where Asian dudes get laid, the guys help their dads set up their iPads, eat Italian sandwiches and watch their friends get married and sink into the doom of domesticity. Put plainly: the series is a slice of real life and it’s funny as fuck.
The entire series (13 half hour episodes) is currently available on Netflix. People should definitely check it out.
Tasha says:
For me, iZombie is killing it. This show – about a woman who gets turned into a zombie after a disastrous boat party and becomes a medical examiner to gain access to brains and solve murders – is so much more than a murder of the week.
iZombie stands out because it’s not your typical zombie show. For one, it could easily be billed as a comedy. Each week our heroine, Liv Moore, eats the brains of a corpse to help solve their murder because in this show, zombies can do that and it’s funny. This season alone, Liv has been a frat boy, a country singer, an old man, and my fave – a real housewife of Seattle. Piece by piece the writers slowly unpack their take on zombie lore and it has been great to watch the main characters deal with the mythology (centering around an evil soft drink company) as it unfolds. There are no axes to the face or bodies chopped in half (yet); the hardest scenes to stomach are actually the ones where Liv cooks and eats the brains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjtKwSgbyeo
I knew how much I loved the show when I realized how much I genuinely missed all of these characters while the show was on hiatus. In S2, the new characters are leading the show into darker and darker territory. At the moment my favourite character to watch is Major (Robert Buckley), Liv’s ex-fiancé and the pawn of the evil corporation. The writers haven’t been easy on him, but I’m rooting for his relationship with Liv to survive her zombie-ism. More people need to be watching this show – it’s so much fun!
iZombie wraps up the first half of S2 on Tuesday at 9pm on The CW.
Val says:
How To Get Away With Murder centers around Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), a high-powered lawyer who abuses her students in between terrible acts of crime and violence. The series is currently in its second season, and I’m still loving its narrative structure, which plays around with time. It’s fast-paced to the point that you might miss something if you blink. It makes you feel the students’ stress when they’re in trouble and their adrenaline rush when they win a case, or when they have sex (which happens quite a lot)!
What makes the series so interesting are its flashforwards, which transform the season into a Shakespearian play. The first half of the second season just ended and it went out with a bang! We sorta knew how the mid-season finale was going to end – with Annalise’s shooting – we just didn’t know how the crew would get there. Throughout the season, Annalise had a hard time keeping her crew together. Opposing counselor Sinclair kept the whole team on the verge of turning on each other and their leader in an effort to take Annalise down. The problem is, Annalise will do anything to keep everybody safe, no matter what.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXz7CaqbpxQ
This first half of S2 has been one hell of a ride; we’ve seen the team fall apart because of their lack of trust and their need for answers, especially Wes (Alfred Enoch). Turns out SPOILER he’s the one who shot Annalise (Davis). The truth about Rebecca – revealed at the end of S1 and the premiere of S2 – pushes Wes over the edge and while his reaction didn’t surprise me much, the reveal that it was all part of Keating’s plan, does END SPOILERS.
Heading into the Winter half-season, we’re left wondering if Annalise is alive and what the rest of the group will do moving forward: will they drop her class and quit their jobs? On top of that, Annalise dropped a big bomb on us, revealing that she’s known Wes for quite some time now. What did she and ex-girlfriend Eve (Famke Jansen) do 10 years ago? What’s the connection?
I’m definitely going to need the break to recover before jumping back on the HTGAWM roller coaster. The show returns February 11th, 2016.
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Check back in January for a new Rumour Has It Q&A about pop culture resolutions for 2016 and holiday binges.