📺 How do you fold a fitted sheet?
Afternoon, folks. The 2022 Emmy nominations were announced earlier this week. We’ll be sharing some of our thoughts and what else we’ve been consuming lately in a special edition of Double Take this Sunday. Keep an eye out.
In today’s edition:
Rutherford Falls
Maggie
Loot
Welcome to Plathville
— Jess Spoll and Jenni Cullen
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Where we each choose a recent-ish show to review and feature.
If you’re constantly looking for a show to replace the Parks and Rec sized hole in your heart, try… Rutherford Falls
Keywords: sitcom, small-town, indigenous people
Watch if you like: Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Superstore
Jess’s Rating: B-
Rutherford Falls stars Ed Helms as Nathan Rutherford, the direct descendant of a colonial settler who founded the eponymous small town via a treaty with the native Minishonka Nation in the 17th century. Nathan’s purpose in life is to preserve his family’s legacy. His best friend, Reagan, is also dedicated to her ancestry — she runs the Minishonka Nation’s heritage “museum” (read: one small room within a casino). When an argument over moving the town’s statue of Lawrence Rutherford puts Nathan and Reagan at odds with each other, Nathan is forced to confront the truth of his ancestors’ problematic past.
This series has a lot of funny moments but doesn’t shy away from hard topics, similar to how The Good Place tackled ethical questions through the lens of comedy. Reagan and her boss, Terry (Michael Greyeyes) are the standouts of the show, along with the fictional Minishonka Nation. In fact, the biggest flaw of the first season is that it centers Nathan as the protagonist.
Rutherford Falls is accomplishing a rare feat in bringing visibility and authenticity to the stories of indigenous people (note: one of the showrunners is Navajo and they have 5 Native writers on staff). The premise isn’t an obvious fit for a sitcom, and I think the writers are still finding the balance between the heavy themes and the gags, but season 2 showed an improvement upon the first, so I have hope that it’ll continue to get better.
Length: 30-min runtime, 2 seasons / 18 episodes
Watch on: Peacock
If you would watch That’s So Raven navigating her early 30s, try… Maggie
Keywords: sitcom, will-they-won’t-they romance, quippy
Watch if you like: How I Met Your Mother, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, New Girl
Jenni’s Rating: B
Jess’s Rating: B+
This show is essentially How I Met Your Father, if HIMYF weren’t unbearable and there were more mystical elements. It’s definitely corny, but I binged the first season in one day while sick, and it was honestly extremely cute.
Maggie is a romantic comedy about a psychic struggling with her future and her relationships, romantic and otherwise. When she sees herself married in a vision, she panics, and decides to avoid the fated husband. Except, then said man moves in downstairs, Maggie’s vision of her future gets a little muddier, and the rom-comedy of errors unfolds.
Like I said, it’s plenty corny; the jokes are quippy rather than character-based and the first few episodes consist mostly of the main crew bouncing one-liners off one another. It’s also so much like HIMYM that the format risks feeling a little outdated, but the fresh spin of psychic powers and the warmth of the characters helped reel me back in. All in all, it was a sweet, fun, feel-good watch.
Length: 30-min runtime, 1 season / 13 episodes
Watch on: Hulu
Where we feature a show that you may have been tempted to check out, but we’re here to tell you…it might not be worth it. 🤷♀️
Loot
Keywords: satire, workplace comedy, billionaires
Jess’s Rating: D
Loot has an interesting premise, on paper: Molly Novak (Maya Rudolph) gets a divorce from her tech billionaire husband and is awarded a settlement of $87 billion. Looking for purpose in her life, she starts showing up to work at the charitable non-profit that was set up in her name, unbeknownst to her. If the conceit sounds familiar, it should — it’s ripped almost directly from the real-life divorce of Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie Scott.
You’re probably thinking that this sounds like the perfect setup for a biting satire of the mega-rich. And it starts out that way. But the show quickly morphs into something resembling a workplace sitcom set at the office of the non-profit, in which Molly is cast in the Michael Scott role as a misguided but good-natured overseer. The issue is that Molly is still a mega-billionaire who, besides having been recently divorced, hasn’t suffered any real hardships. It’s hard to empathize with a character who could buy anything she wants, especially when the show stops short at her coming to terms with the ethical implications of having that much wealth.
Even as a workplace sitcom, though, it fails. Where The Office poked fun at the banality of corporate life and Parks and Rec joked about the pains of working for the government, Loot spends almost zero time on the workings of the non-profit. The show’s office setting could be any office in any industry in any city, giving the series a generic, undercooked feel. And most importantly, it’s just really not that funny.
— Jess
Length: 30-min runtime, 5 episodes out so far with a new one each Friday
Watch on: Apple TV+
Where we give our takes on reality TV and give unscripted shows a time to shine.
Welcome to Plathville
Reality genre: docu-soap, family dynamics
Watch if you like: Breaking Amish, Keeping Up with the Kardashians
This may be the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures. It’s very likely fake and scripted like most other reality TV shows, but it’s also horribly fascinating.
The premise: Kim and Barry Plath have raised nine very blonde children on a 55-acre farm in rural Georgia with conservative (restrictive) rules about clothing, food, technology, and entertainment. The kids have never had a soda and couldn’t pick Justin Bieber out of a crowd. The oldest son, Ethan, (now in his early 20s) is recently married and his parents consider his new bride, Olivia, a bad influence. Meanwhile, two of the teenage Plaths are eager for a taste of freedom now that their brother is out of the house and experiencing more of life.
There are a lot of fun firsts for the kids, some familial rifts, and quite a few cringey moments to behold in Welcome to Plathville. If you have a morbid curiosity like me and don’t mind feeling your judgmental side kick in every once in a while, the first two seasons in particular are a really addictive watch.
— Jenni
Length: 42-min runtime, 4 seasons / 30 episodes
Watch on: TLC, Discovery+, Hulu with Live TV
Your shows, returned:
Fboy Island, Season 2: Premieres July 14 on HBO Max
Love Island USA, Season 4: Premieres July 19 on Peacock
Virgin River, Season 4: Released July 20 on Netflix
grown-ish, Season 5: Premieres July 20 on Freeform (on Hulu the next day)
American Horror Stories, Season 2: Premieres July 21 on Hulu
Upcoming new releases:
Resident Evil: Released July 14 on Netflix