2018-19 TV Season Recap

Previous TV Season Recaps - (2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | 2017-18)

9-13-2019 Update: 2019 Summer TV Season Recap now online! Click here for recaps of latest seasons of GLOW, Veronica Mars & Jessica Jones!

Greetings and welcome to my belated annual TV season recap! Got to this several weeks later than I wanted to, but glad to finally knock this out of the park! I will…attempt…to make this a little more concise than previous years so fingers crossed that I do not drone on forever! If you do have the time and want to check out my past year in TV breakdowns going back to 2013 please check out the links above! With that out of the way let us jump to the seasons of new TV I devoured from late summer/fall 2018 through spring 2019.

South Park – Like the past few seasons of South Park it features a season spanning arc, though it is not as prevalent as past seasons as the build up is for the town’s annual bike parade the kids are all stoked for. It was an interesting build up throughout to the payoff in the finale. A secondary, smaller season-spanning arc focusing on legalization of weed in South Park was a hokey plot thread to see touched on from time to time and had a payoff at the end I cracked up at. Other episodes were kind of a little lower fare than past seasons with the usual riffing on current events that South Park is known for with notable takes this season on the Roseanne Barr controversy conveyed through the return of Mr. Hankey and additionally ManBearPig making his deadly return and rampaging through South Park. Grade: B-

The Conners – Previously known as Roseanne, but because of some ill-worded tweets from her last year lead to her removal of the show and being rebranded as The Conners. I am fine with how they wrote Roseanne out of the show by touching on her pill-addiction issues that were a focus in the first season. That said, I dug it more than its return season, primarily because the cast is gelling together far better now. Sarah Gilbert and Lecy Goransen both stepped up to fill the void with Barr's exit from the show. Darlene is the front and center star now, and she is nailing it holding the chaos at home down. It is good see DJ finally receive a marginal, but noticeable bump up in screen time this season after being an afterthought in a handful of episodes in the return season. I was glad to see an episode emphasize Dan dealing with Roseanne's storyline passing of the show. Also was fun to see cameos from recurring characters from the first run of the show throughout this season. Darlene finally gets a new gig at a newspaper and her boss there has tremendous chemistry with her character. A part of me still seems like that show is just not right with Roseanne not on there, but I understand why that is how it is and the cast is making the best out of a bad situation and are all bringing it with a pretty damn good second return season. Grade:B+

Orville – So I mentioned in last year’s TV recap I dropped off this show towards the end of the season because McFarlane’s humor felt a little too forced in an otherwise fine and occasionally pretty good modern take on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Eventually I revisited it and finished off last few episodes of the first season and I was glad I did because Orville stepped it up and dialed back McFarlane’s jokes and while still noticeable are better paced and not as nonstop as most of the first season was.

The second season does a little cast swapping and position shifting around the Orville vessel much like the second season of TNG did. It leads to a better flowing second season with LaMarr now heading up engineering. I will miss Halston Sage’s kickass security character from the show, but Jessica Szohr proves to be a suitable replacement. Seeing the true nature of Isaac’s home planet was a two-part episode arc I will never forget that ranked near the top as my favorite TV all year and was highlighted by a huge CG-quality space dogfight of theatrical quality. As much as I loved this season there were still a couple head-scratcher episodes with one Bortus-themed episode that did not go over well with me, and another where Claire attempts to date Isaac in an intriguing arc, but eventually had a lackluster conclusion. Major props again to Seth McFarlane for restraining his humor which leads to the times when Seth does work in his jokes playing out far better and more memorable including a Twinkie joke ranking right up there with Twinkie references in UHF and Die Hard. Props also to Seth for portraying a pretty damn good captain too. Grade: A-

Castlevania - I cranked out both seasons of Netflix’s exclusive anime based on the hit videogame series at the beginning of this year. Both are really quick watches with the first season being four episodes and the second only eight episodes. I am not even going to attempt to elucidate the intricacies of the plot. Both seasons involve signature characters from the series such as Belmonts, Dracula and Alucard. Both seasons also have exquisite animation and all kinds of lusciously crafted gory medieval violence. I was not super huge into both seasons as the lore sometimes went right over my head, but both served as entertaining background noise to indulge. Grade: B

Arrested Development - The second half of season five hit Netflix earlier this year. I consider it more-or-less season six since it launched about roughly a year after season five first started. It puts a nice bow on most of the Netflix-era arcs such as George Michael’s FakeBlock business, whether Joeb’s controversial magic trick really spelled the end of Tony Wonder, Michael’s repeated failed attempts at trying to save the family and yes it all wraps up with the breaking-ground ceremony for the Mexico/America border wall. For the most part I was a fan of this season although it is a victim of past Netflix-era seasons where they could not film with the entire ensemble cast present which leads to many odd camera angles and noticeable stand-ins present. I do not know if a future season is announced, but I am guessing not as this season had a nice sense of closure to it, and by that I mean in only the most pure, awkward nature possible that proved to be a worthy sendoff to Arrested Development. Grade: B+

Gotham - This was the fifth and final season of Gotham. FOX announced a year ahead of time they would be running a shortened final season of the show to give an opportunity to the creators and cast to wrap up all the story threads. Only problem was Gotham had a ton of threads and a huge cast. Season four’s theme was all about the ‘rise of the villain’ with Batman’s trademark wide range of antagonists coming into their own by season four. With the shortened season, several of those villains like Mr. Freeze and the…flamethrower girl do not appear whatsoever in the final seasons and some of my favorites like Poison Ivy and Zsasz are limited to only one or two episodes. Rest assured fan favorites Penguin and Riddler are featured throughout and both are awesome to follow along with in their constant love/hate relationship.

This season-spanning arc features Gotham declared a DMZ and is ruled by gang warfare and Gordon is in charge of a resource-depleted Gotham PD constantly under siege throughout. Since the show presumably wrapped up three-to-five years early I understand the direction FOX went with having the final episode jump several years in the future so we can finally see Bruce Wayne’s destiny come to fruition and I loved the build to the memorable closing shot of the series. The final episode also has many other caps sealed to see how the rest of the fantastic cast evolved. While I could not help but get the feeling that this season was rushed, I felt the cast and crew did as best as they possibly could with the condensed season they were allotted to wrap it up. Grade: A-

DC/CW ARROW-VERSE

Arrow - The seventh season of Arrow gets the distinction of being the only one of the four CW shows I started at their season premiere that I made it to the season finale of. Ollie’s compromise to serve time in jail at the end of season six had real consequences where he spends the first half of the season in prison and his journey to get out of there was an enticing ride that sees him making unlikely enemies and allies and having to go through the prison’s twisted underground fight club to stay in the warden’s good graces while Team Arrow looks through every nook and cranny to get his sentence repealed.

I loved the flash forwards this season that focuses on the cast’s offspring coming together as future vigilantes to save Star City. The Arrow-verse crossover special this season, Elseworlds was another solid crossover and served as introducing the Batwoman character while CW primes up that show later this year. Seeing Barry and Oliver react to their introduction to Superman was priceless. The annual cameo of Tommy was the best yet this season, and I absolutely loved his final interaction with Oliver. The conclusion paved the way for what is announce to be Arrow’s final season debuting this fall. I was very saddened to hear one long-standing character will not be part of it, but loved the heartfelt way they were taken care of on the season finale.

Pen15 - This Hulu-exclusive show is a nostalgia trip for me. It focuses on two 13-year old girls in 1999 starting seventh grade. There is a lot of late-90s ‘extreme’ pop culture window dressing that I could not help but sink my teeth into since it is what I grew up with in high school. The episode dedicated to AOL Instant Messenger is spot-on and brought back so many memories. Pen15 focuses on all the craziness of middle school one could anticipate, including a few awkward pubescent encounters that got borderline uncomfortable to watch. For the most part though I am on board with following along with the adventures of Anna and Maya in future seasons. Grade: B+

Riverdale, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow - I dropped almost all of the CW shows I follow except for Arrow. Riverdale jumped the shark too many times this season and it seems like they are placing the Archie characters in some odd beast of a show that is a Warriors-Hunger Games-DnD hybrid that got progressively nuts-o by the week. I was initially on board with the new direction and twists on the Archie characters I grew up with, but as this seasons warred on it has gone off the deep end with a horrible intro thread that saw Archie in juvie and eventually on the run for the first half of the season and Veronica heading up a speakeasy underground at Pop’s. Without diving into too many spoilers I was not a fan of how Riverdale glorified certain things that rubbed me the wrong way and a few other characters overstayed their welcome who did not gel with the rest of the cast. The whole speakeasy scenes in the show never gelled, even with the new hard-edge drama this series has and finally when Cheryl ups and forms her Hunger Games tribute gang of archers was the line I finally went and threw my hands up and dropped Riverdale a few episodes after the winter break.

Flash was on a slow downward spiral of mediocrity past couple seasons and I could not take it anymore with new characters I could not get into and Flash looking like a buffoon every week. Chris Klein portrayed the season-long villain and I could not help but feel the producers had no idea how to implement him as he seemed like more of an afterthought. Legends of Tomorrow was my surprise favorite CW show last season, but this season gradually introduced a new character named Mona Wu that was a minor background annoyance at first, but grew into the major character to circle the season around and the character did not get any more affable and was still grating to endure and it also got to the point where I said no more! Like with Riverdale, I dropped both Flash and Legends of Tomorrow within a few episodes past their midseason break. Sorry CW, it is me, not you. Grade: Dropped


MARVEL NETFLIX SERIES

Punisher - People who know me, and if you have been following this blog long enough you know I am a huge Punisher fan, so obviously I am biased, but I still got to say I loved both seasons, and I will give the nudge slightly to season one. I loved the first setting the first few episodes of the second season takes place in to mix things up a bit from the other Marvel Netflix shows. The new love/hate sidekick, Amy took me awhile to warm up to, but I warmed up to her about halfway through and watching their relationship develop with Frank was a lot of fun and to see how some of their foreshadowing paid off later on in the season was pretty special. Curt's and Midani's interplay with Frank is still on the mark and they did not miss a beat in season two. The interplay with the therapist and Billy Russo could have been dialed back a little bit as I felt she was in one scene too many nearly every episode.

As with the first season, loved the action, loved the dialogue for nearly the entire cast and I thought they expertly handled the Punisher as a man of few words, but obviously they had to give him some dialogue to span an entire season, and Netflix got a ton out of his body language and cadence of the dialogue he does deliver throughout the season. I agree with many that John Berenthal is far and away the best actor to portray the Punisher, and I will forever remember all the little things he did to make him pop out and stand out among the rest as the way to play the Punisher. His final line of dialogue to close out the series is perfect! While I was saddened to see this get the inevitable cancellation announcement from Netflix along with the rest of its Marvel shows, I hope this one day gets picked up by Hulu or Disney+. Grade: A

Iron Fist – I had no intentions of watching the second season of Iron Fist, but then I heard it got canned and after being a little optimistic for how he was portrayed in the episode of season two of Luke Cage he guest appeared in I decided to give it a shot. It is better than season one, but it still has a far way to go from being must-see. Finn Jones is far more entertaining this season as Danny Rand and is nowhere near as insufferable this season, although he does he have his moments on occasion. His Kun-Lun background is explored much more this season with some intriguing flashbacks. There is a new split personality character introduced this season who I became a big fan of by the end of the season. Ward and Joy are both more tolerable this season and by the end I was kind of won over by Ward with his whole NA/recovery arc. Davos returns as the main villain and with his background with Danny he winds up a more viable villain than Bakuto and the Hand. Also, no Hand this season!!!

The season loses points with me this season because Joy's arc was initially promising, but kind of falls apart by the end. Same with Colleen who was another character I was not big on, but won over this season...until the last couple of episodes anyway. Finally, Luke Cage’s Misty Knight is on several episodes of this season and I was never a fan of her before and she is equally unpleasing to endure here. If you got the time to kill and want to keep up with everything in the Marvel Netflix universe than I would say it is kind of barely worth it and is enough of a step up from the disastrous first season to check out. Grade: D+ (But a good D+ if there ever was a thing considering how big of an improvement this is from the first season)

Daredevil - What a big step up from the disappointing previous season! Glad to see Kingpin as the forefront again as the antagonist this season and to see him go from prison to taking control of the reins of ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ again was a delight! Also a delight was the evolution of newcomer Dex to the show into a certain favorite Marvel character of mine. The way Daredevil handled Dex could not have been done any better. Coming out of the Defenders team up season, I loved the opening episodes focusing on Matt going into isolation as he recovered and gradually worked his way back into the fray. As with Punisher, all the action and fights here are masterfully choreographed and I was glued to the screen once a fight kicked off. I cannot think of a single person that is mis-casted since everyone delivers sublime performances. Karen and Foggy are awesome supporting characters and I loved their angles this season with more background into Foggy’s family struggles while trying to save the Nelson & Murdoch firm and Karen taking insane risks in her journalistic endeavors.

My highest praise is I think this is probably the sole Marvel Netflix season that could have went an extra episode or two because it felt like they kind of had to rush through a few scenes that felt a little condensed in the final episode. Another similarity Daredevil shared with Punisher is that it also unfortunately was cancelled by Netflix and I am super-bummed to see it go after this redemption season. Here is hoping it too gets picked up on another streaming service or maybe even by some stroke of luck both Daredevil and Punisher get incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

FINISH!!!

That wraps up this past year’s worth of TV coverage. I tip my hat to you if you somehow managed to stick with me all this way through! I do not know if I will do my annual bonus summer TV viewing follow-up or not. I know Netflix still has to unload the last season of Jessica Jones, but I thought it would have dropped within the last few months so who knows when it will hit. I know season three of GLOW will hit Netflix this summer and that will jump instant viewing right away because of how much I enjoyed the last two seasons. I keep telling myself I need to do a one week trial of HBO Now to binge watch the final season of Game of Thrones and get caught up on Ballers so I might go down that well later this summer too. I am also tempted to do a trial of ESPN+ to watch that highly rated Love & Basketball docu-series and get caught on the last several 30 for 30s I am behind on. Got other suggestions for what I should watch this summer? Feel free to tweet them away to me @Gruel

Past TV/Web Series Blogs

2013-14 TV Season Recap
2014-15 TV Season Recap
2015-16 TV Season Recap
2016-17 TV Season Recap
2017-18 TV Season Recap
Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series
Baseball: A Ken Burns series
Angry Videogame Nerd Home Video Collections
Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 | Season 2
OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30
RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13
Roseanne – Seasons 1-9
Seinfeld Final Season
Star Trek: Next Generation – Seasons 1-7
Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle
Superheroes: Pioneers of Television
The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series
X-Men – The Animated Series: Volumes 4-5