Month: August 2022

Men tell nada on Bachelorette but here’s a free cruise

August 30, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Host Jesse Palmer prepares for a night of nonsense on “The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All.”
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grab Craig Sjodin/ABC

Monday’s “The Bachelorette: Men Tell All” not only jumped the shark — it climbed on its back and did laps in a pool of man tears and pasta sauce.

What the hell was that?

It’s not that I was expecting fireworks. The men got along too well for that, plus the two contestants who displayed the most misogynistic behaviour — Chris Austin and Hayden Markowitz — were absent.

But I wasn’t expecting the usual inanities to be padded with so much filler, including a promo for Virgin Voyages, complete with free champagne and free cruises for everyone in the audience; an extended promo for “Bachelor in Paradise” with four cast members invited to the hot seat; an even more extended promo for the gay rom-com “Bros” with stars Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane onstage, culminating in Meatball dumping a giant jar of pasta sauce all over himself — because it wasn’t gross enough when he did it earlier in the season.

Meanwhile, poor Aven’s hometown date — “unfinished business,” as host Jesse Palmer called it — got 13 or 14 minutes at the top of the episode before the show moved on to, well, not much of anything.

Aven and Rachel get a love spell in the Crow Haven Corner witch shop.

About Aven’s date with Rachel in Salem, Massachusetts: naturally there had to be something witchcraft-related, so we had a segment involving a “love witch” named Lorelei (with the best accent ever) casting a love spell for Aven and Rachel that ended with the table top and candles sliding to the floor. A bad omen? Not for the meet-the-parents part of the date.

Rachel, still smarting from last week‘s smackdown from Tino’s parents, was nervous that Aven’s folks wouldn’t like her since they hadn’t been keen on his previous two girlfriends. But, unlike Joe and Sandi, A.J. and Dawn managed to ask Rachel tough questions without belittling her and her emotions.

Rachel reassured skeptical A.J. that she and Aven had talked about what real life would look like beyond the show, including raising kids and accommodating each other’s jobs. And when A.J. asked if she was “earnestly, sincerely, wholeheartedly ready to commit to love with Aven,” she answered honestly that she was not, although she did see a future with him.

Both A.J. and Dawn were sold. “Don’t stop fighting for her, man, because she’s a good catch,” A.J. told Aven.

Aven took the advice, telling Rachel he was falling in love with her, which seemed to delight her. She said in her voice-over that she felt like she was falling in love with Aven, too. “This could be my happy ending.”

We know that Aven at least made it to the fantasy suites, since Jesse told us that Rachel and Gabby each kept their remaining three men (Aven, Tino and Zach for Rachel; Erich, Jason and Johnny for Gabby) at the rose ceremony. No surprise there since there are always three fantasy suite dates, hence no need to send anyone home. But surely producers could have taken a couple of minutes away from shilling for Virgin or “Bros” to show us the rose ceremony.

What can I say about what happened after that?

Well, we had newly platinum blond Roby (insert your “Twilight”/”Harry Potter”/”House of the Dragon” reference here) acting like he’d been on the show for weeks instead of hours, chastising Meatball for rejecting Rachel’s rose then deciding he liked her after all. “If you’re more into Rachel, then say that, be that, do that, man up. Have some balls, Meatball!” (Do you think he rehearsed that?)

When Ethan tried to interject and Roby told him to shut the fuck up, Ethan put him in his place: ” You were there at the mansion for four hours for a reason, have some respect for the rest of us who had genuine feelings,” i.e. don’t be a baby back bitch!

Logan Palmer in the luke warm seat on “Men Tell All.”

With neither Chris nor Hayden there to fall on their swords — “cowardly,” Mario said of Hayden’s absence — we had to settle for the other men rehashing what they said and did. But Logan was there, trying to look contrite so we won’t all hate him when we see him on “Paradise.”

Blah, blah, blah, Logan was following his heart. He didn’t intentionally mislead Rachel. He wasn’t sorry he pursued Gabby; he just wished he’d done it in “a more graceful way.”

Not a word was spoken about how he became the only one of the men to get COVID-19 on the cruise ship (allegedly) and why he disappeared without an exit interview.

And then we had the Virgin Voyages plug and the cruise giveaway that Jesse said was “going to change your lives forever.” It’s a vacation, Jesse. At least Oprah gave her audience cars, which could in theory be life-changing.

Jesse gave Nate Mitchell a chance to address social media allegations of being a playa.

Next up, Nate got the “new Bachelor” edit.

Look, I really enjoyed Nate on the show. I was sorry he got sent home. And he was a model of empathetic, emotionally intelligent manhood in his time in the hot seat with Jesse. But is that enough to overcome the taint of a cheating accusation on social media? I’m not convinced.

“Real men hold other men accountable,” Nate said of Chris earlier in the show. Jesse duly asked Nate to address the social media allegations that a) he kept his daughter a secret from a woman he had an 18-month relationship with and b) he dated two women at once.

Nate blamed the trauma of his divorce for him wanting to protect his daughter from “the instability of my dating life” and said he was “deeply sorry for the way I acted” in the case of the two women, adding, “I pray that you forgive the man that I was because I’m not that same person.”

I would have loved a deeper dive into that apology. How unstable was his dating life? What made him change? Did he get therapy? But nah, got to make sure we have enough time for games with the cast of “Bros.”

Next we had the “Bachelor in Paradise” promo, with cast members Serene (Clayton’s season), Genevieve (ditto), Victoria (Peter’s season) and Andrew (Katie’s season) there to assure that it really will be “the most dramatic season” ever. I’m still pissed that Shanae will be there but OK, fine, I’ll be watching.

Gabby Windey and Rachel Recchia, still as close-knit as ever.

Finally, Rachel and Gabby made their appearance. Their friendship continues to be the best thing about this season.

Sure, Gabby put Mario in his place when he suggested she did him wrong; Jordan V absolved Rachel of any guilt over sending him home on their first date; Gabby accepted an apology from a choked up Jacob for telling her he would have gone home if she was the only woman there; Rachel got a tepid non-apology from Logan and was assured of the undying admiration of hometown castoff Tyler, who told her she did everything “perfectly”; and Gabby commended Nate for being “a leader for all the men and for how well you treat women.” (Another sign that Nate is likely going to be the next Bachelor.)

But Gabby’s and Rachel’s obvious affection and respect for each other was the real payoff. “You need to know just how proud I am of the two of you,” Jesse told them, which was the most sensible thing he said all night.

Finally, Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane took the stage to promote their movie “Bros.” Billy, of course, is the dude who told Colton Underwood during his season he might be the “first gay Bachelor” a couple of years before Colton came out.

Jesse Palmer demonstrates the correct reaction to Meatball getting doused in pasta sauce . . . again.

Billy’s other moment of Bachelor franchise infamy involved presenting a special gift to Meatball of a giant jar of pasta sauce to pour over himself and then getting tackled by a slimy Meatball.

And if this franchise thinks stupid stunts like that are what the show’s fans want, shark-jumping is going to be a regular occurrence.

We continue to plod toward what Jesse claims is going to be a “shocking ending nobody is gonna see coming.” But first, fantasy suites and more tears.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Watchable on FX, Crave, CBC Gem Aug. 29 to Sept. 4, 2022

August 29, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Please note: My show of the week is “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which debuts on Prime Video on Sept. 2, but reviews are embargoed until Wednesday morning, when I will be out of town on an overnight trip. I will post a review here either later this week or next Monday.

The Patient (Aug. 30, Disney Plus)

Steve Carell as Dr. Alan Strauss and Domhnall Gleeson as Sam Fortner in “The Patient.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Suzanne Tenner/FX

The series is called “The Patient,” but it’s the doctor who’s the star.

Steve Carell gives a wonderfully nuanced and sympathetic performance as a psychiatrist being held prisoner by a serial killer in this drama from Joel Fields and Joseph Weisberg, showrunner and creator, respectively, of “The Americans.”

It’s clear from the moment that “Gene” (Domhnall Gleeson, “Star Wars,” “Harry Potter”) shows up at Dr. Alan Strauss’s home office that something is off about him. From behind purple sunglasses, Gene gives a superficial account of his father’s violent abuse and the fact it has fucked him up.

When Alan says they have to go deeper to make real progress, Gene unilaterally decides on an exclusive course of treatment by kidnapping Alan and confining him to a dingy room in the basement of the home he shares with his mother Candace (Linda Emond), convinced that the doctor can cure him of his homicidal urges.

Obviously, Sam, which is Gene’s real name, is grossly bastardizing the therapeutic process, but we are rooting for Alan, hoping against hope he can connect with whatever shred of conscience Sam possesses. To fail to do so implies he’ll end up like the rest of Sam’s mostly nameless and faceless victims, his possessions inside Sam’s box of prosaic trophies.

Gleeson also does very good work as Sam, although he has less to dig into than Carell. The series doesn’t elucidate Sam’s psychopathy beyond his father’s violence and references to him being an odd kid. We know he’s good at his job as a restaurant inspector, loves food and Kenny Chesney, was married once and indulges in daily extra-large Dunkin’ Donuts coffees. But we skim the surface of his psyche.

Our emotional foothold comes through Alan, who’s grieving the recent death of his wife Beth (Laura Niemi, “This Is Us”), a cantor at a Reform Jewish synagogue, and his rift with his son Ezra (Andrew Leeds, “Barry”), whose adoption of Orthodox Judaism angered both his parents.

Alan is not physically mistreated in his captivity beyond the injury of being chained to the floor but — though Sam is mostly courteous and apologetic — the horror is palpable of being confined by a murderous, emotionally unstable captor with only words to use in your defence.

We explore Alan’s fear and confusion and despair and resolve through nightmares and flashbacks and imaginary sessions with his own therapist Charlie (David Alan Grier, “The Carmichael Show”).

These forays into Alan’s mind break up his two-hander scenes with Sam, while Candace, Sam’s ex Mary (Emily Davis), a few of his co-workers and a couple of his victims also figure in the action. (The series benefits from half-hour instalments that keep the show’s talkiness palatable.)

But it’s Alan who commands our attention and our empathy, and in whose fate we’re most invested.

Short Takes

Franz Linda and Tom Wlaschiha return in Season 3 of “Das Boot.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC Gem

Das Boot (Sept. 1, CBC Gem)

The first two seasons of this World War II drama were stealthy, kind of like the submarine of the title, in the way they hooked you on the tale of individuals on opposite sides of the conflict in Nazi-occupied France. Season 3, set in 1943, relocates the action to Germany and Britain. In the former, a push is on to build and crew new U-boats to destroy Allied supply lines; in Britain, the navy is refitting its own ships in a bid to destroy those U-boats. Our key characters initially are German engineer Robert Ehrenberg (Franz Dinda), who played a seminal role in the turmoil aboard U-boat 612 in Season 2; British commander Jack Swinburne (Ray Stevenson), who is fixated on wiping out as many submarines as possible after his son’s supply convoy is torpedoed by one; and German investigator Hagen Forster (Tom Wlaschiha of “Game of Thrones” and “Stranger Things”), who’s sent to Lisbon to try to discover who killed a Gestapo spy there. Trust me, there will be plenty more plot threads to follow as the season continues, both on land and sea, with U-949 about to go into service with a young, inexperienced commander and criminals among the crew. I would recommend catching up on seasons 1 and 2 on Gem before you dive into this one since that will deepen your appreciation of returning characters like Ehrenberg and Forster.

CBC Gem also has the original YA comedy “Fakes” (Sept. 1) about two best friends in Vancouver (Emilija Baranac and Jennifer Tong) who build one of the largest fake ID operations in North America; and Season 2 of charming YA period drama “Malory Towers” (Sept. 1) about the adventures of the inmates at a British girls’ boarding school after WWII. You can also check out Season 1 of the Canadian YA series “The Next Step” (Sept. 2), which is set at an elite dance school.

McEnroe (Sept. 2, Crave)

For those old enough to remember John McEnroe before he was the narrator of “Never Have I Ever,” this documentary is a nostalgia trip to a time when tennis giants walked the Earth, McEnroe among them. The documentary by Barney Douglas revisits the glory days of the late 1970s and early ’80s when McEnroe was ranked first in the world and played greats like Vitas Gerulaitis, Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors. It also recounts the not so great parts of his life and career, including the on-court tantrums that made McEnroe an enfant terrible, his turbulent marriage to actor Tatum O’Neal amid drug use and infidelity, his failings as a father to the children from his first marriage and his difficult relationship with his own dad. McEnroe gives his own perspective on all of it, while walking the streets of New York City over a single night. Current wife, singer Patty Smyth weighs in as do his kids, and friends and colleagues like Borg, former women’s No. 1 player Billie Jean King and even Rolling Stone Keith Richards.

Crave also has Season 2 of “1 Queen 5 Queers” (Sept. 1), in which drag royalty Brooke Lynn Hytes moderates unfiltered conversations about queer life and culture.

Odds and Ends

Cast members socialize in “Dated & Related.” PHOTO CREDIT: Ana Blumenkron/Netflix

We have another dump of content of dubious quality from Netflix, led by the “reality” series “Dated & Related” (Sept. 2), in which pairs of over-endowed, under-dressed siblings travel to France ostensibly to find love — and cash — while their brothers or sisters look on. Reviews are embargoed, but I doubt I’d have anything to say that would make you want to watch it. Then there’s the movie “Fenced In” (Sept. 1), a comedy about a man who has to endure loud neighbours; the comedy special “Liss Pereira: Adulting” (Sept. 1); the rom-com “Love in the Villa” (Sept. 1), which if nothing else will let you hear Tom Hopper of “Umbrella Academy” use his native British accent; French series “Off the Hook” (Sept. 1), in which roommates decide to abandon their phones and other devices; yet another real estate series, “Buy My House” (Sept. 2), in which Americans try to get real estate investors to purchase their properties; limited series “Devil in Ohio” (Sept. 2),ß about a young girl taken in by a psychiatrist (Emily Deschanel) after she escapes a cult who — surprise! — turns out to be a cuckoo in the nest; Season 2 of “Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives” (Sept. 2); Turkish movie “The Festival of Troubadours” (Sept. 2); witchy Spanish YA series “You’re Nothing Special” (Sept. 2); and the South Korean series “Little Women” (Sept. 3), based on the Louisa May Alcott novel.

I would have screened “The Midwich Cuckoos” (Sept. 1, 9 p.m., Showcase/StackTV), an adaptation of the 1957 sci-fi novel about all the women in a British town mysteriously becoming pregnant, if only because it stars Keeley Hawes of “Spooks,” “Line of Duty,” “Bodyguard” and much more.

AMC+ has animated sci-fi series “Pantheon” (Sept. 1), about a bullied teen who receives messages from the consciousness of her dead father (Daniel Dae Kim).

Finally, if you’re a “Rick and Morty” fan, the much hyped Season 6 of the animated comedy debuts on Adult Swim and StackTV Sept. 4 at 11 p.m.

NOTE: The listings here are in Eastern Standard Time and I’ve verified the times where possible, but it’s always best to check listings for your own area. The selection of programs reviewed reflects what I’m given access to by networks and streamers, whether reviews are embargoed, how many shows I have time to watch and my own personal taste. The Odds and Ends section includes shows that I have not watched.

The Bachelorette hometown dates go from good to sad to bad

August 23, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Tino Franco’s mother, waiting to shoot down everything Rachel Recchia says on “The Bachelorette.” PHOTO CREDIT: All photos screen grabs

What is real on a reality dating show like “The Bachelorette”?

Was Erich Schwer bringing Gabby Windey home to meet his dying father real?

Was Rachel Recchia crying her eyes out because she sent Tyler Norris home without meeting his family real?

Was Rachel’s discomfort as she got grilled with hostile questions by Tino Franco’s parents real?

All of those moments felt pretty real but, according to Tino’s mom, Sandi, what happens on “The Bachelorette” isn’t real.

Look, I get it: having your son go on a TV show only to come home after six weeks to tell you he’s met the woman he’s going to propose to, it must feel weird and scary.

But asking rude questions, stating your opinions as facts when you don’t really know what the f**k you’re talking about, and being so aggressive you almost make that woman cry . . . well, welcome to the Hometown Hell Hall of Fame, Tino’s parents.

In what’s been a rough season, Monday’s hometowns episode was rough and I don’t just mean around the edges.

It started out encouragingly with lovely dates with Jason (Gabby) and Zach (Rachel), started to slide a little with Johnny (Gabby), who seemed not at all ready to commit, and then just got sad with Tyler and Erich. Then we had the shit show that was Tino’s hometown. We didn’t even get to Aven’s. His gets sandwiched in with “Men Tell All” next week.

But we’re in the home stretch. Just a few more weeks and we’ll know whether the experiment of having two Bachelorettes was a complete failure or whether we’ll even have two Bachelorettes by the end of the season, given the promo. But let’s rewind.

Gabby meets Jason Alabaster’s father on their hometown date.

After a completely unnecessary bit of B-roll of Rachel and Gabby packing on the Good Ship Bachelorette and then telling host Jesse Palmer about their expectations — we’ve got seven dates to get through people, we don’t need this crap! — Gabby got the ball rolling with Jason in New Orleans.

We’ll skip the street musicians on Bourbon Street and throwing beads off a balcony — this isn’t a travelogue — and go straight to Gabby and Jason meeting his dad Michael in a park. He seemed like a warm, decent human being who tearfully described Jason as “a good kid, a good man” and welcomed Gabby with open arms, flowers and beignets. By the time Michael told Jason, “If it’s the real deal I want to be the best man at your wedding,” those beignets were getting a little soggy.

The love-a-palooza and tears-a-palooza continued at Jason’s mom’s house (she and his dad are separated) where sister Kelsey and Gabby got on like a house on fire, and mom Karen said Gabby and Jason were “really, really cute” together.

But Jason confessed to Karen that he wasn’t ready to get engaged and she tearfully warned him not to lose a good thing because “you’re so distracted by everything around you,” i.e. the cameras, the other men, etc.

After the date, Gabby said she was falling in love with Jason.

How long did Rachel and Zach Smallcross have to kiss until that plane crossed the sky?

Next stop: Anaheim, California, where Zach had a surprise for Rachel: a couch set up on a rooftop where they could watch planes take off and land from the airport — a callback to their first date when they talked about going plane-spotting with their dads as kids. It was perfect.

Zach also gets points for being the only hometown with a famous family member, his uncle, actor Patrick Warburton of “Seinfeld,” “NewsRadio,” “The Tick,” “Rules of Engagement,” “Family Guy” and lots more.

We’ll forgive Zach’s dad, Chapman, for saying that “You go to the most romantic places on Earth and you’ll fall in love with a monkey.” By the end of the visit, he and Zach’s mom, Megan, were ready to welcome Rachel into the family.

Zach told Rachel he was in love with her and she said, in voice-over, that she was falling in love with Zach. Forget Tino, honey: snap up Zach!

Johnny DePhillipo with Gabby. Did we mention he’s “super hot”?

Gabby’s next hometown was Palm Beach, Florida, with Johnny, who she said was “super hot” and . . . um . . . well, a good kisser, I guess.

His dad John and mom Elizabeth were all in on Gabby being with Johnny, if that’s what Johnny wanted — but about that. Johnny told his mom he could see himself falling for Gabby, but he wasn’t ready to get engaged, which might come as news to Gabby. As she and Johnny went for a cruise and a smooch, we heard Gabby saying, “It feels so good and so easy being with someone who I know is ready for the next step.” Uh oh.

Rachel shares some hard truths with Tyler on the Jersey Shore.

When you put the Jersey Shore on reality TV, can you expect anything less than turmoil?

Rachel’s date with Tyler in Wildwood, New Jersey, started out with fun carnival games and rides and fried food and smooches on the boardwalk. But by the time Tyler started introducing Rachel to all his friends inside the Hot Spot Restaurant, the wheels were coming off. Next thing you know she was having a breakdown in the time-honoured refuge of the women’s washroom.

Then came the painful breakup. Rachel couldn’t get a word in edgewise because Tyler kept babbling about how great everything was. She started telling Tyler he was “the most incredible person” — and everyone who’s ever watched the show knows the next words will be a variation on “but you’re not my person.” However, Tyler, oblivious, told Rachel he was in love with her and she was “the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” interjected Rachel.

Shaking and crying, Rachel finally managed to tell Tyler that she couldn’t meet his family because she didn’t know if she could “get there” with him.

Tyler, bless him, comforted Rachel, telling her that he still believed that “love that’s forever is real” and she was going to get it.

Then Tyler had to break the news to his excited family that Rachel wasn’t coming. Harsh.

Look, I know this heartbreak is going to put Tyler in the running for next Bachelor. I’d still like to see it go to Ethan, but maybe Tyler can find a nice girl in Paradise.

Let’s be honest: taking a woman home to your family who you’ve known for mere weeks and been sharing with other men does seem absurd. But the fact that Erich took Gabby to meet his sick father, Allan, who died of cancer in July, belies Tino’s mom’s insistence that “The Bachelorette” isn’t real. Why would Erich put his dad and Gabby through that if he didn’t have real feelings for her?

It was a sombre visit to Bedminster, N.J. Allan was very frail and had obviously been through hell with the disease. Mom Donna was as welcome as you can be when your husband of 35 years is dying in front of you.

“We marry for life,” she told Erich. And to Gabby: “We don’t give up on each other, ever.”

Erich vaulted to the front of Gabby’s pack after the emotional day, with them telling each other later that they were falling in love with each other. But a clip of Erich telling Gabby he can’t handle the woman he’s in love with having sex with other guys suggests a rocky road ahead.

Don’t let the smiles on Sandi, Joe and Mateo fool you; Rachel got a rough ride from the Franco family.

Finally, it was time for the main event in Santa Clarita, Calif., as “The Bachelorette” saved the worst for last.

Even before Rachel and Tino walked into the house, his parents were dismissive of the possibility of them having a real relationship.

When Tino said he was going to propose in two weeks, his dad Joe scoffed, “What are you talking about after two months? We’re gonna have to have a talk.”

Rachel told his mom how much she admired Tino’s positive, giving outlook on life, to which Sandi replied, “If you met him outside of this, this isn’t real.”

“Well, it is,” replied Rachel, but Sandi wasn’t having it, calling the experience an “insulated bubble.”

And sure, it is that, but Sandi wasn’t there for any of it, so what the hell would she know? Unless there’s criminality or abuse involved, you should butt the hell out of your adult children’s love lives.

It went downhill from there. Joe, insultingly, referred to Rachel’s “second go-round” — as if the fact she got dumped by Clayton Echard should preclude her from trying to find love with someone else — and suggested she was out to get engaged at all costs.

“I wouldn’t put him in this position just so I could get married, I’m not that type of person,” Rachel said, but she might as well have been talking to the wall.

“I feel like they hated me,” Rachel fretted to a producer after the talk. Nonetheless, Rachel graciously rose above the rudeness of Tino’s parents and thanked them for asking her hard-hitting questions.

Outside the house, Tino told her his family adored her. And when Rachel told him she did not feel adored, he changed the subject and told her he was falling in love with her.

Giant red flag. Run, Rachel, run! Instead, alas, she told Tino she was falling in love with him too.

So here’s where things stand, with one hometown date still to come. Rachel’s falling for Zach and Tino, both of whom appear ready to get engaged although, as Rachel pointed out, “When you marry someone you marry their family.” I would not want to marry Tino’s family.

Gabby’s falling for Jason and Erich, and can see herself falling in love with Johnny, although only Erich seems proposal-ready and fantasy suites might screw that up.

The promo showed both Gabby and Rachel in tears — what else is new? — and Jesse telling Rachel, “Gabby will not be joining you. You’re gonna be the only Bachelorette here.” We’ll have to wait two weeks to find out what that’s about.

In the meantime, you can watch “Men Tell All” Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Watchable on Crave, AMC+ and Netflix Aug. 22 to 28, 2022

August 22, 2022 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK 1: House of the Dragon (Now on HBO/Crave with new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m.)

Matt Smith, Emily Carey and Milly Alcock in “House of the Dragon.” PHOTO CREDIT: Ollie Upton/HBO

If you long for a certain brand of backstabbing betrayal and political discord, stomach-churning violence and frank sex, the “Game of Thrones” prequel is here. But it’s not rival families jockeying for power, but members of one family turning on each other in this story about the ancestors of Dragon Queen Daenerys Targaryen.

As “House of the Dragon” begins, things start out well enough for King Viserys I, an amiable but weak-willed monarch played appealingly by Paddy Considine. He was chosen as king over a cousin who had a better claim to the Iron Throne but was discounted because she was a woman, Princess Rhaenys Velaryon (Eve Best).

But there is peace in the kingdom, Viserys has a queen he loves, who he’s certain is about to bear him a son, and a daughter, Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock), who seems content to play second fiddle to an infant. Yet childbirth is the battlefield of women, as mother Aemma (Sian Brooke) reminds Rhaenyra, and a shattering loss leaves Viserys without his longed for heir.

By tradition, Daemon, the violent, impulsive and vain brother of the king (played with sinister panache by Matt Smith), would inherit the throne, but he finally exceeds the forbearance of Viserys when he mockingly toasts the king’s dead son while partying in a brothel, which leads Viserys to name Rhaenyra as heir — despite the prejudices against women on the throne.

If you’ve read up on Targaryen family history or you just have an appreciation for foreshadowing, you’ll know this can’t end well.

The six episodes that were made available for review trace the fallout of that decision.

Also jockeying for position are the hand of the king, Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), and Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint, read my interview with him here), husband of spurned Queen That Never Was Rhaenys. Both men use their daughters to try to solidify their power by offering them as new wives to Viserys, though one is just 12 and the other, Rhaenyra’s best friend Alicent (Emily Carey), is 15. I know that sort of thing was actually done in the times that inspired George R.R. Martin’s novels, but that doesn’t make it any more palatable.

And while we’re on the subject of creepy couplings, incest among the Targaryens is apparently still on the table in “House of the Dragon.” Jon Snow doing it with his Aunt Daenerys was not a highlight of “Game of Thrones” for me, but at least they were consenting adults. Daemon taking his 15-year-old niece to a “pleasure palace” is considerably ickier.

This spinoff appears to be trying to give its female characters more of a voice although women still get the short end of the stick in the Seven Kingdoms. I suppose if Rhaenyra doesn’t end up power-mad, scorching the streets of King’s Landing with her dragon, that will be an improvement.

Speaking of dragons, they are a regular feature here and the CGI is passable, but just as Targaryen rulers can’t depend too much on their dragons, as Viserys warns Rhaenyra, a TV series can’t either.

“House of the Dragon” has a lot going for it. It’s handsomely shot and expertly acted, and great care obviously went into the production.

But a lot has happened in the world since “Thrones” signed off in 2019, so one question becomes whether the brutality inherent in the “Thrones” universe is as palatable now in a war-weary, pandemic-pooped and politically fragile milieu.

Heads, limbs and other body parts are lopped off when Daemon and his City Watch go on a rampage; fights between knights end with skulls getting caved in; and there’s a childbirth scene bloody enough to make women of child-bearing age book tubal ligations.

What’s more glaring are the things that “Thrones” had that “Dragon” does not, chiefly humour and variety. There is no Tyrion Lannister here for comic relief, for instance. And the action is mostly confined to King’s Landing and Dragonstone, with some brief forays to places like Pentos, Harrenhal and the Stepstones, where Daemon and Corlys combine to quash a rebellion of the Free Cities.

It’s not that characters like Rhaenyra and Daemon aren’t of interest, but the glorious — as well as the sometimes maddening — thing about “Game of Thrones” was how widely it ranged within Westeros and beyond, and how many plots and people it presented for our regard.

It remains to be seen whether the travails of one family in a small part of the vast Seven Kingdoms is enough to hold viewers’ attention in an even more competitive TV landscape.

Annie Murphy as Allison and Mary Hollis Inboden as Patty in “Kevin Can F**k Himself.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Clark/Stalwart Productions/AMC

SHOW OF THE WEEK 2: Kevin Can F**k Himself (Aug. 22, 9 p.m., AMC/AMC+)

If you worried where Season 2 of “Kevin Can F**k Himself” would go, with Allison’s (Annie Murphy) plot to kill her husband Kevin (Eric Petersen) foiled and exposed to his best friend Neil (Alex Bonifer), you can exhale.

Season 2 brings a satisfying, if dark, conclusion to this tale of the behind-the-scenes torment of a sitcom wife.

It begins where Season 1 left off, with Neil on the floor of Allison’s kitchen, which is where his sister Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden) put him after he tried to strangle Allison. He’s still threatening to tell about the murder plot, though, which brings another blow to the head and an abduction.

That chain of events causes trauma for all three characters, puts a dent in Allison’s and Patty’s friendship, and sees Neil spending more time in the single-camera dramatic universe of “Kevin Can F**k Himself.” He tries to resume his position as the faithful sidekick in Kevin’s brightly lit, laugh-tracked, multi-cam world, but he has seen behind the curtain of his own and Kevin’s dysfunction, and that knowledge won’t stay buried.

Alison, meanwhile, knows that she can’t murder Kevin, not least because his bid for public office has brought him temporary fame after a ridiculous campaign ad goes viral.

If she can’t kill Kevin, what about herself? She hatches a new scheme to fake her own death, into which she draws to varying degrees Patty, her former lover Sam (Raymond Lee) and her aunt Diane (Jamie Denbo). But, as is usual for Allison, the more she tries to fix things the more they go awry.

What is gratifying is that Allison, like Neil, gains greater self-awareness, a realization that not everything that’s gone wrong in her life is Kevin’s fault and that she can be selfish in her own right, particularly when it comes to Patty.

That’s not to say that Kevin gets any less reprehensible. He continues to sow chaos for everyone in his orbit while pursuing his own gratification. Allison even begins to use Kevin’s talent for getting himself out of jams to her advantage, telling Sam that after 15 years of Kevin taking from her she’s starting to get something back.

But when Patty’s police officer girlfriend Tammy (Candice Coke) begins to unravel Patty’s part in the murder-for-hire scheme, Allison takes drastic action to keep her friend safe.

Along the way, she gains the confidence to do what she should have done from the beginning rather than plotting murder. I won’t tell you how it ends, but Kevin is torn from his sitcom cocoon — finally — by Allison’s honesty. And when the chips fall, Patty is still by Allison’s side.

It turns out “Kevin Can F**k Himself” was a love story all along, just not one that had anything to do with matrimony.

Odds and Ends

Mohammed Amer, right, created and stars in ” Mo.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Sorry folks, I’m still not up to full screening speed yet, so I don’t have any short takes this week. As usual, Netflix has a plethora of new offerings. The one that seemed of most interest to me was “Mo” (Aug. 24), a semi-autobiographical comedy in which comedian Mohammed Amer stars as a Kuwait-born Palestinian refugee in Houston, hustling to make a living while seeking asylum for himself, his mother and brother. Also on the menu: the prank comedy “Chad & JT Go Deep” (Aug. 23); kids’ show “Lost Ollie” (Aug. 24); luxury real estate reality series “Selling the OC” (Aug. 24); legal drama “Partner Track” (Aug. 26), starring Arden Cho as a young New York City lawyer; gearhead docuseries “Drive Hard: The Maloof Way” (Aug. 26) about the racing, stunt-driving Maloof family; and the film “Me Time” (Aug. 26), a dads on a wild weekend comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and the ubiquitous Kevin Hart.

I had every intention of screening “The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe” (Aug. 23, Britbox), a new true crime drama about a man who faked his own death with the connivance of his wife. It stars the excellent Eddie Marsan (“Ray Donovan”) and Monica Dolan (“Vanity Fair”). And it’s just four episodes, so get binging.

There’s been buzz around the docuseries “Welcome to Wrexham” (Aug. 24, 10 p.m., FX), about actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a football club in the scrappy Welsh town of Wrexham. The “Ted Lasso” comparisons are inevitable, but I have to say it looks pretty darn heartwarming in the trailer. FX also has Season 13 of animated comedy “Archer” (Aug. 24, 10 p.m., FXX) and new animated comedy “Little Demon” (Aug. 25, 10 p.m., FXX), starring Danny DeVito as the voice of Satan and his real-life daughter, Lucy DeVito, as the devil’s offspring.

Mike Tyson has made his feelings clear about the bio-series “Mike” (Aug. 25, Disney+ Star) — hint, he’s not happy — but I guess you can make your own judgment about the miniseries starring Trevante Rhodes as the heavyweight champion.

Apple TV+ has the third and final season of “See” (Aug. 26), starring Jason Momoa as a warrior and father in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity has lost the sense of sight.

Finally, if you’re partial to Sylvester Stallone and/or aging superheroes, Prime Video has the film “Samaritan” (Aug. 26), in which Sly stars as a superhero who has to come out of retirement to save the world again. Of course he does.

Edited because, duh, I mixed up Arden Cho’s name with her character name.

Nate gets dumped, Tino’s a big cheese on ‘The Bachelorette’

August 16, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Ethan and Tyler balance wheels of cheese during a group date with Rachel in Amsterdam.
PHOTO CREDIT All photos Craig Sjodin/ABC

That stink you’re detecting isn’t the smell of cheese from Rachel’s group date; it’s the stench of this season of “The Bachelorette” being treated like a zero sum game whereby Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey aren’t allowed to be happy at the same time.

Last week, we got sad Rachel after Logan jumped ship to Gabby’s team. This week, we got sad Gabby after a) she sent Nate home because she wasn’t ready to be a stepmom and b) she had to cancel her group date after-party because Logan . . . wait for it . . . got COVID-19.

Yep, that “there has been a situation with Logan” promo from last week? Manipulative nonsense. And I have so many questions. How did Logan get COVID? How come no one else got it considering we saw him unmasked and less than six feet away from the rest of Gabby’s men in last week’s episode and laying smooches on Gabby? And why did he look so healthy during the day portion of the group date, which involved absolutely ridiculous S&M-tinged shenanigans?

And you’re seriously telling me that after Logan was essentially made the star of last week’s episode he’s just gone with not even so much as an exit interview? Weird.

I missed about the first 10 minutes of this episode due to some technical difficulties with the TV in my B&B (I’m writing this from Stratford, Ontario), but I was able to catch Gabby’s heartrending breakup with Nate.

Obviously this isn’t Nate and Gabby in Amsterdam, but ABC didn’t
provide any photos of them this week and I couldn’t do screen grabs.

And yes, I said heartrending. I read the stuff all over Twitter last week about Nate supposedly dating two women at once and keeping his daughter a secret from one of them, but even if it’s true it doesn’t negate the sadness of his breakup with Gabby.

It seemed obvious from the moment Gabby said she hadn’t figured out yet if she wanted to be a mother that Nate was on the way out. We didn’t need a totally staged conversation between Logan and Johnny back on the Good Ship Bachelorette to hammer the point home.

It’s not exactly rocket science that someone who’s still trying to get over her dysfunctional relationship with her own mother wouldn’t be jonesing to be a parent.

“It’s so cliche, but I’m, like, terrified of not just being a mom but being, like, bad at it,” Gabby told Nate through tears as they sat on a bench in the heart of Amsterdam.

There were tears on both sides and long hugs and kisses goodbye and Nate, despite his frontrunner status, was gone.

Gabby seemed so very sad to lose Nate and Rachel, conversely, seemed so very happy.

She and Zach had a one-on-one, a bucket list date apparently that began with them taking crappy Polaroid photos of each other in a massive field of tulips (sorry, no photos; ABC saw fit to provide photos of Gabby’s S&M date but not Rachel’s picturesque tulip date).

Then she and Zach went bike riding and among the things you can find in the Dutch countryside are cheese, wooden shoes, lemonade and, um, hot tubs.

Also windmills but, unlike Pilot Pete and Hannah Brown, Zach and Rachel didn’t get busy inside one, they just did some smooching in front of it.

There was a lot of smooching on this date.

Zach had some revelations to make at dinner in a gorgeous museum full of old Dutch masters (might have been the Rijksmuseum, but I’m not 100 per cent sure). First, he said he used to be 85 pounds overweight and didn’t love himself so he went to therapy. And Rachel was as thrilled about that as Gabby was upon hearing about Jason’s therapy.

Second, now that Zach felt like a man who deserved love, he knew he was falling in love with Rachel.

Zach’s hometown date rose was never in any doubt, but that revelation sealed the deal.

Cut back to the cruise ship: Gabby was still sad. She tearfully told her remaining men — Johnny, Jason, Erich, Logan and Spencer — about sending Nate home and they all gave her hugs, which was nice of them.

Gabby was still sad about Nate the next morning, but she said her other connections were deepening and she had “a so amazing and so fun” group date planned.

But she didn’t plan it obviously. Nobody but a “Bachelorette” producer would think it would be entertaining — for either the participants or the viewers — to have a leather-clad dominatrix ask the men intrusive sex questions and threaten to whip them if they didn’t answer.

I am not a prude, but it’s nobody’s business but the individual men’s and Gabby’s whether they like giving oral sex (I’m assuming that was the bleeped out bit), how often they masturbate (again, bleeped out, but my assumption) and how many people they’ve had sex with.

Gabby uses a whip on her remaining five men on another stupid group date.

The guys were also forced to strip off their shirts (Johnny at one point stripped to his underwear) so they could be tickled with feathers, whipped, and have whipped cream and even flames applied to their chests.

As Logan said, “I was hoping today would be the deep dive into who we are and what we represent. I’m blindfolded, laying on a shag carpet, waiting for her to rub whipped cream on my nipples.”

And how would any of that help Gabby decide whose hometowns she wanted to visit? It wouldn’t obviously. (Not unless she wanted to analyze why Johnny’s safe word was “pumpkin” and Logan’s was “asbestos.”)

And the fact that Gabby was able to choose three men for hometowns (instead of the usual four) despite not getting to talk to any of them at the cancelled after-party shows the group date was kind of superfluous anyway.

The same applied to Rachel’s group date. Did anybody really think that Ethan was going to get a hometown and that either Tino, Tyler or Aven would not? Of course not, but they went through the motions nonetheless with a trip to a town called “the cheese capital of the world” (no, I did not catch the name).

Eventually, the four guys had to take off their shirts — are you noticing a theme here? — and hold yokes across their shoulders laden with wheels of cheese. They eventually got up to four wheels on each side, which looked really heavy.

Rachel smooches Tino in the “cheese capital of the world.”

Tino won, barely beating out Ethan. Poor Ethan, who had been nibbling cheese despite being lactose intolerant, collapsed on the grass from exhaustion. Tyler had cuts on his hands and wrists, but what hurt the most was having to watch Rachel kiss the victorious Tino.

And let’s be honest, Tino acted like kind of an entitled dick at the after-party. He figured the date rose had his name on it, but Rachel gave it to Tyler, who told her he was falling very, very hard for her.

Tino walked off to complain to a producer that it was “a fucking joke” and was making him second guess everything, which prompted one of the other dudes to call him a “real baby back bitch.”

But at least Tino apologized to Ethan the next day.

Of course, all this talk of Tino feeling blindsided and not knowing if Rachel felt the same as him was bullshit to try to build up suspense for an utterly unsuspenseful rose ceremony. Which is also why Tino’s name was the last to be called for a rose, after Aven’s. But sorry producers, no one seriously thought Rachel was going to dump Tino for Ethan. No offence Ethan.

Likewise, it was obvious that Gabby was giving roses to Erich, Jason and Johnny, and sending Spencer home.

Does that mean Logan would have got a hometown if he had still been around? Guess we’ll never know.

So next week, hometowns and if you believe the promos it looks like rough waters ahead for Rachel and Tino, but you can’t believe everything you see.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Watchable on Crave, Netflix, Apple Aug. 15 to 21, 2022

August 15, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Here’s the deal: I didn’t screen anything last week, partly because of the usual embargoes, partly because some screeners weren’t available, partly because — after more than two years of working seven days a week to feed the blog while also fulfilling my duties as a Toronto Star editor and writer — I gave myself permission to take a weekend off. So unfortunately, I haven’t sampled any of the shows I’m presenting below, but these are the things that seem to me to be worth a shot.

Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman in “Better Call Saul” Season 6.
PHOTO CREDIT: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

The sixth and final season of “Better Call Saul” has been like summer: over way too soon. In the series finale (Aug. 15, 9 p.m., AMC), we presumably find out how things end for Gene Takavic, the post-“Breaking Bad” alias of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, after Marion (Carol Burnett) dropped a dime on him in the penultimate episode. You better believe if I’d been able to get my hands on a screener I would have watched this one in advance.

Manti Te’o in “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist.” PHOTO CREDIT: Netflix © 2022

Most promising for Netflix this week, in my view, is “Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist” (Aug. 16), a docuseries about the catfishing scam that befell Hawaiian college football player Manti Te’o in 2012. The streamer also has the film “Look Both Ways” (Aug. 17), in which a young woman (Lili Reinhart) lives two parallel realities, one in which she becomes a single mother, one in which she pursues a career in L.A. There’s also the Spanish series “The Girl in the Mirror” (Aug. 19), about a teenager with amnesia after a bus crash that kills most of her classmates, and “Echoes” (Aug. 19), an Australian series about twin sisters who trade lives.

Tatiana Maslany in “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Superhero shows are usually not my thing, but I want to give “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” (Aug. 18, Disney+) the benefit of the doubt because it stars talented Canadian actor Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”). Here she plays a lawyer who is also a six-foot-seven hulk. She gets advice from her cousin Smart Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Tim Roth (Emil Blonsky) and Benedict Wong (Wong) are among the MCU veterans who are along for the ride.

Anne-Marie Duff, Sharon Horgan, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene and Eve Hewson in “Bad Sisters.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

The dark comedy “Bad Sisters” (Aug. 19, Apple TV+) sounds very promising. It was created by Sharon Horgan, known for “Catastrophe,” “Pulling” and “Divorce”; it stars some talented actors besides Horgan, including Anne-Marie Duff (“Shameless”), Eva Birthistle (“Brooklyn”), Sarah Greene (“Dublin Murders,” “Normal People”) and Eve Hewson (“The Knick”); and it’s set in Ireland, which is always a plus for me. Although the official synopsis describes it as being about five sisters bound by the premature death of their parents, from what I’ve read it has more to do with the death of John Paul (Claes Bang), the husband of Grace (Duff) and who killed him.

Four adolescents search for three teenage girls who mysteriously disappeared in “Paraiso.”
PHOTO CREDIT: CBC Gem

“Mi’kma’ki” (Aug. 19, all shows CBC Gem) is a short documentary series about Indigenous people and their connections to their land, culture and community. The first three episodes stream Friday with the fourth to follow at a later date. “Paraiso” (Aug. 19) is a sci-fi series that sounds like a Spanish “Stranger Things.” Three 15-year-old girls disappear from a nightclub in 1992 and four other kids set out to find them, discovering that supernatural beings are involved. Finally, the documentary “The River of My Dreams: A Portrait of Gordon Pinsent,” about the revered Canadian actor, makes its TV debut on Aug. 20.

Eve Best in “House of the Dragon.” PHOTO CREDIT: Ollie Upton/HBO

“House of the Dragon” (Aug. 21, 9 p.m., HBO/Crave) is the big one if you’re a “Game of Thrones” or fantasy TV fan. I will get screeners at some point, since I’m interviewing Steve Toussaint, who plays Lord Corlys Velaryon, on Thursday. I just don’t know when. In the meantime, I can tell you that “Dragon” is a “GoT” prequel set 200 years before the events of that series that focuses on the forebears of Daenerys Targaryen. Crave also has the premiere of “Drag Race Philippines” (Aug. 17) for those of you who can’t get enough “Drag Race” and the streaming debut of the movie “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” (Aug. 19), with Jessica Chastain channelling the late Tammy Faye Bakker in an Oscar-winning turn.

“Cinema A to Z” (Aug. 21, 9 p.m., Hollywood Suite) does what its title suggests, explore a film topic from A to Z with interviews and clips. First up is “Books,” already available online and making its broadcast debut on Sunday. Expect insights into everything from Jane Austen adaptations to Stephen King to J.R.R. Tolkien and Stefan Zweig (“The Grand Budapest Hotel,” for one, was inspired by his literature).

Logan jumps Rachel’s ship for Gabby’s on The Bachelorette

August 9, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Interloper Logan, third from right, with Johnny, Erich, Spencer, Jason and Nate of Team Gabby.
PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

Belgium was the perfect place to set Monday’s episode of “The Bachelorette” considering the main plot line was about a dude waffling.

Logan Palmer finally fessed up that he wanted to switch from Team Rachel to Team Gabby and the duplicitous bastard got away with it.

At the start of the episode, Logan decided that he couldn’t in good conscience go on a group date with Rachel given his feelings for Gabby, which is how he found himself at the door of her suite aboard the Unloved Boat just before said date — although his conscience had been cool with him accepting a rose from Rachel in last week’s episode.

The worst part is that Gabby not only invited him onto her team — after getting Rachel’s blessing — she gave him a rose at the end of the episode.

But let’s rewind a little bit on l’affaire Logan.

You might recall that in Week 2, Logan kissed both Gabby and Rachel and, though they were both into him, Gabby stepped back and let Rachel give him a rose.

Logan accepted another rose from Rachel in Week 3 but then, in Week 4, just seeing Gabby again was allegedly enough to give him doubts about Rachel. But oh gee, the cocktail party got cancelled before that rose ceremony, conveniently preventing him from telling Rachel how he felt before the roses got handed out.

So here they all were, on their humongous Virgin Voyages cruise ship, and Rachel was excited about tasting real Belgian chocolate and putting the rejection of the previous week behind her. As if.

Cue Logan knocking on her door to tell her — after blowing a sufficient amount of smoke up her ass about how great she was — that he still had feelings for Gabby.

There were more tears (not in front of Logan thankfully), more lamentation about how she was a failure as a Bachelorette and, poof, no more group date. Instead Rachel sulked in her room in a robe while getting a pep talk from host Jesse Palmer, who then had to break the news to Zach, Tino, Meatball, Ethan and Tyler that Rachel wasn’t coming out to play in Bruges that day.

Host Jesse Palmer breaks the bad news to Zach, Meatball, Tyler, Ethan and Tino.

They may have dodged a messy bullet since I’m pretty sure they were meant to wrestle each other in a giant vat of chocolate, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t bummed.

And I am also disappointed that Rachel didn’t put her big girl panties on, say “Fuck Logan,” and go spend some time with guys like Zach, Tino and Tyler, who have very much not been rejecting her.

In the meantime, Logan had slimed his way over to Gabby’s suite to tell her he still had a boner, er, I mean feelings for her. Gabby told him she couldn’t make a decision until she’d talked with Rachel, which she did, in the loving, supportive way that we’re used to. And Rachel said she was cool with Gabby pursuing Logan if that’s what she wanted but also, after Gabby had left, “I just don’t think Logan is trustworthy. He strung me along for weeks.” Exactly!

And this is what makes Gabby’s decision to keep Logan so annoying. Quite apart from taking up with the guy who just disrespected your best friend (see also, Rachel and Hayden), why would you trust a dude who was that wishy-washy?

Could Gabby actually like or, at least, lust after Logan; or she is just doing the producers’ bidding in the time-honoured tradition of Bachelorettes before her?

Door No. 2 seems more plausible. At the rose ceremony she kept Jason, Spencer and Erich (along with Johnny and Nate, who already had roses) and let Michael and Mario, her first impression rose winner, go home. But if she had already decided that Michael and Mario had no chance of making it to the end, it would be no skin off her teeth to keep Logan at the producers’ behest instead of one of them.

The drama potential is obviously high: not only is Logan’s presence stirring up resentment in Gabby’s men, it will be a constant reminder to Rachel of rejection. Gotta keep stoking those insecurities.

Rachel, meanwhile, did make it to the after-party portion of the group date, where she told her fellows about Logan and offered them the chance to walk out if they also weren’t feeling her.

None of them did, obviously. I got a particular kick out of Meatball, who’d declined a rose from Rachel just a couple of weeks before and been allowed back in to even up the team numbers, saying he was “100 per cent invested in this relationship.”

After doing some heavy duty smooching with favourites Tino, Tyler and Zach, and having her confidence restored — duh — Rachel gave the date rose to Tino, who told her off a little for the “amazing memory” they lost when she chose to brood over Logan instead of explore Bruges with the other men.

Onwards! Gabby had a group date to be getting on with and it was drama-free unless you count Erich, Michael, Jason, Nate, Spencer and Mario getting their asses kicked by a bunch of little kids playing soccer. Not even the part where they slapped each other in the face with cold fish could ruin the collegial mood.

From left, Michael, Nate, Gabby, Jason, Mario, Erich and Spencer enjoying some fine Belgian beer.

“It’s just refreshing to not have to worry about drama,” Nate said. Dunh dunh dunh dunh.

The men had barely settled into their seats at the after-party, with more commentary by Nate about how respectful the group was of each other, when Logan crashed it. Surprise!

The other men were shook, naturally, but put on their game faces with Gabby. Nate even told her she had his support to explore her relationship with Logan.

What almost made me gag was Gabby telling Logan, “The premise of everything is to listen to your heart and try to find a way to do it with integrity, which you did.” Uh, no, he did not. And then she smooched him.

It would have been even grosser if she had given Logan the date rose, but thankfully it went to Nate.

There were also one-on-one dates to be getting on with.

Rachel and Aven practising for the wedding with a lace veil.

Rachel and Aven seemed to do more kissing than sightseeing in Bruges, ate some chocolate, natch, and came upon some strategically planted women making lace, who just happened to have a veil handy for Rachel to try on.

Blah blah blah, I could see a wedding in our future, blah blah blah.

Later, Aven sang for his supper by telling Rachel how he was forced to live with his dad when he was 10 and didn’t have much of a relationship with his mom until he was older. And she had made him some rubber bracelet good energy thingy that he turned over to Rachel to help smooth her rocky path as Bachelorette.

Then came smooches, a date rose, fireworks. Add Aven to the hometown date list.

Gabby’s one-on-one was with Johnny and it was kind of cool because, honestly, this guy was a cipher until we saw him having fun with Gabby at the Half Moon brewery, including taking a beer bath.

Rub a dub dub, Gabby and Johnny in the beer tub.

Later, Johnny told Gabby about getting his heart broken by a woman who disappeared on him as soon as he started being himself, how he lacked confidence generally and struggled with depression. And Gabby, who knows from depression and anxiety, could relate.

Perhaps Jason could share the name of his therapist although, in all seriousness, his confession made me root for Johnny. He got the date rose, obviously.

Going into the rose ceremony, the only question was whether Gabby would keep Logan and we know how that turned out.

At least the cocktail party didn’t get cancelled this week. But it was a bad night for guys whose names, or nicknames, started with M, with Meatball getting the boot from Team Rachel alongside Michael and Mario on Team Gabby.

Next stop, Amsterdam. We don’t know precisely what will happen next week since the promo was for the rest of the season, but was anybody shocked to see Jesse telling Gabby “There has been a situation with Logan”? Did he find a third woman to switch his allegiance to?

If you’re still hanging in, you can watch next week’s episode, when the hometown date recipients will be chosen, Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Watchable on Apple, Crave, Netflix Aug. 8 to 14, 2022

August 8, 2022 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Five Days at Memorial (Aug. 12, Apple TV+)

Vera Farmiga as Dr. Anna Pou in “Five Days at Memorial.” PHOTO CREDIT: Apple TV+

It seems to me the best way to take in a catastrophic event is to bring it down to an individual, human scale.

“Five Days at Memorial” tackles the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina by focusing on a particular group of people inside Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans and what they faced when the levees broke, and a place of refuge became a place of horror and hopelessness.

Vera Farmiga leads a strong cast as surgeon Anna Pou alongside Cherry Jones as nursing director Susan Mulderick and Julie Ann Emery as Diane Robichaux, an administrator at the private LifeCare unit on Memorial’s seventh floor.

(Full disclosure, a relative of mine by marriage, Katie Boland, plays a nurse at LifeCare.)

When the show begins, the hospital staff are battening down for Hurricane Katrina, expecting the building will weather the storm just as it has others for 80 years.

There are frightening moments in the first episode as the winds hurl debris through windows and nearly collapse a walkway between wings. Then the power goes out and water leaks into the basement where food and water are stored.

But by morning, the sun is shining and the hospital’s generators have kicked in. Anna, Susan and their colleagues believe the worst is behind them.

Viewers know differently since the series opens with the discovery of 45 bodies in the hospital chapel, the empty hallways strewn with debris and ominously empty wheelchairs.

But life at the hospital continues to hum along on Day 2 until the water rushing through the city from the broken levees starts to advance on the building.

It becomes clear the basement will be flooded, knocking out the generators and cutting off access to what’s left of the water and food. And thus begins the arduous effort to evacuate the hospital, including more than 200 patients, some of whom have to be carried on stretchers and in wheelchairs on a 40-minute journey to the helicopter pad on the roof.

The hospital becomes a microcosm of the chaos in the city at large, of poor planning, unreliable information and an abdication of responsibility by all levels of government. And while the main characters inside the hospital are white — aside from Cornelius Smith Jr. as Dr. Bryant King and Adepero Oduye as nurse Karen Wynn — it’s clear from the news footage interspersed throughout the series that the city’s poor, Black residents are the worst off.

“This is something that happens in a third world country, not here,” Anna says on Day 4, when the generators have failed, the medicine has run out, the water is nearly gone, the building is like a furnace and patients are dying.

By Day 5, when the New Orleans police finally show up and give the staff just five hours to evacuate the rest of the building, it’s clear some patients will be impossible to move.

At issue is whether some of those patients were then euthanized, with suspicion in the subsequent investigation settling on Anna and two nurses.

If you’re familiar with news reports about the real-life events that “Five Days at Memorial” is based on (along with the book by Sheri Fink), you’ll already know how it turns out. And if you’re not, I won’t spoil it for you.

But the series makes clear just how harrowing those five days were, and the life-and-death decisions they engendered.

Short Takes

Instant Dream Home (Aug. 10, Netflix)

With the plethora of home renovation shows out there, it’s getting harder to up the ante. This new series’ conceit is that abodes are renovated in just 12 hours — or less. In the first episode, for instance, a cramped two-bedroom bungalow is remade with new paint, new storage space, new furniture, a newly landscaped front and backyard, a new room for the coming baby carved out of the entryway, even a new prefab kitchen that has to be forklifted in, in two giant pieces. The recipients are the original homeowner of more than 40 years, who has gone blind due to treatment for a brain tumour, her expectant daughter and son-in-law, who all share the small home. So there’s definitely a feel-good element to go along with the design porn. Danielle Brooks, who you’ll remember as Taystee if you watched “Orange Is the New Black,” is the energetic host.

Netflix also has the docuseries “I Just Killed My Dad” (Aug. 9), about the Anthony Templet murder case; Season 3 of “Locke & Key” (Aug. 10); Season 2 of “Indian Matchmaking” (Aug. 10); Season 3 of “Never Have I Ever” (Aug. 12); and the films “Day Shift” (Aug. 12), starring Jamie Foxx as a vampire hunter, and the family coming-of-age comedy “13: The Musical” (Aug. 12).

Children of the Underground (Aug. 12, 8 p.m., FX)

This is one of those docuseries where what you think you’re getting at first isn’t what you end up with. It starts off as a straightforward story about an American organization called Children of the Underground, led by a woman named Faye Yager to protect kids from sexual abuse, then detours into the satanic panic of the 1980s and the men’s rights movement. It’s a multi-layered story with huge swaths of grey. Yager’s campaign to rescue women and children began after the courts gave custody of her own daughter to the father who was molesting her, despite physical evidence she was being sexually abused. Yager started to help other women in similar circumstances go on the run and you can’t listen to a story like April Meyers’ — whose own very young daughter, like Faye’s, was found to have a sexually transmitted disease — and not comprehend why these women lost complete faith in the family court system. But Faye starts to seem more zealot than saviour as the series goes on, not least because she perpetuated the now discredited myth that there were satanic cults all over America whose rituals included child sexual abuse, and used faulty interview techniques to elicit tales of those rituals from children. Despite that, Yager seemed nearly invincible until she helped disappear a woman and children who hadn’t been molested because the wife alleged physical abuse by her husband. That rich husband launched a punitive lawsuit against Yager that, combined with others, hounded her out of the underground. The series, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, known for the killer whale doc “Blackfish,” includes many voices, including allies and enemies of Yager’s, and now grown children who were both helped and harmed by their time on the run. But it will leave you with no doubt there are still desperate women and children out there being endangered by a system that continues to give the benefit of the doubt to men.

Diana, Princess of Wales, in a scene from “The Princess.” PHOTO CREDIT: HBO

The Princess (Aug. 13, 8 p.m., HBO/Crave)

This documentary, directed by Oscar nominee Ed Perkins (“Black Sheep”), purports to be about the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, but it’s only about the part of her life that intersected with the Royal Family, up until her death in Paris and the worldwide mourning that followed. It’s the 25th anniversary of that sad event on Aug. 31 — one of those “where were you when you heard the news?” happenings for those of us old enough to remember it — which explains why we’re seeing this doc now. There are no talking heads; the film is entirely composed of archival footage and commentary, but it’s a potent reminder of the outsized popularity of the princess, plucked from relative obscurity at the age of 19 in 1981 to become the wife of Prince Charles. If you were a consumer of media during those years, or even if you watched the most recent season of “The Crown,” you won’t learn anything new here about the disastrous turn the marriage took. Nor does it shed any new light on her death at the age of 36 in a car crash in a Paris tunnel. But I defy anyone to not feel moved watching that old footage of her sons William and Harry walking behind her coffin, nor to feel regret for what might have been had Diana lived.

Crave also has Season 2 of “RuPaul’s Secret Celebrity Drag Race” (Aug. 12, 8 p.m.); Oscar and TIFF People’s Choice Award-winning film “Belfast” (Aug. 12); and Season 2 of “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” (Aug. 14, Starz).

Odds and Ends

Series co-creator Abbi Jacobson as Carson Shaw in “A League of Their Own.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Nicola Goode/Amazon Studios

Reviews were embargoed for “A League of Their Own” (Aug. 12, Prime Video), which reimagines the 1992 movie about a team in the wartime All-American Girls Professional Baseball League by fleshing out the ball players, including one portrayed by series co-creator Abbi Jacobson, and not just those in the AGPBL. Chante Adams plays a Black woman who finds an alternate path to baseball after racism keeps her out of the league. And look for Canada’s own Kelly McCormack (“Killjoys,” Letterkenny”) — whom I’m interviewing later this week — as one of the Rockford Peaches.

“Rutherford Falls” is back for a second season on Showcase and StackTV (Aug. 9, 9:30 p.m.) with even more Canadian content. Besides scene-stealing Cree actor Michael Greyeyes and Dustin Milligan of “Schitt’s Creek,” Mohawk actor Kaniehtiio Horn (“Letterkenny”) joins the cast as villainous gym owner Feather Day.

Disney+ has the animated shorts series “I Am Groot” (Aug. 10), featuring Baby Groot (Vin Diesel) from the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films.

Finally, Prince Charles might not be your favourite royal, especially if you watch “The Princess,” above, but he judges the new reality series “The Prince’s Master Crafters: The Next Generation” (Aug. 10, 10 p.m., Makeful), in which six British folks learn heritage crafts like basket-weaving, blacksmithing and kilt-making.

Life on ‘The Bachelorette’ is the (arm)pits for Rachel

August 2, 2022 / Debra Yeo

Rachel Recchia with her men, blissfully unaware that Logan Palmer, right, is about to attempt to defect. PHOTO CREDIT: All photos except screen grabs Craig Sjodin/ABC

I have somewhat misjudged the “Bachelorette” producers. I said at the start of the season that they were going to shovel shit at both Rachel Recchia and Gabby Windey, our dual Bachelorettes, to make them feel rejected. Turns out the storyline is really about making Rachel seem like the odd woman out.

That was certainly the plot in Week 4. After last week‘s embarrassment of having three men reject her roses, things seemed to be off to a good start for Rachel. She had a great one-on-one date with Tino in Paris. But then, when she and her nine dudes crashed Gabby’s group date, Rachel’s men were more interested in watching the boxing than in her, which sent her into yet another tailspin.

By the end of the episode, Rachel had to dump a guy who preferred the company of his dog to her. And the roller-coaster is about to take another plunge with Logan jonesing to switch back to Team Gabby.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the plan all along was to get Rachel to quit.

OK, maybe we can’t blame all of this on the producers. But I have no doubt that the cocktail party getting cancelled — again — was a device to prevent Logan from fessing up to Rachel about his feelings for Gabby so the drama could be dragged out for another week.

Here’s all you really need to know: Gabby’s group date involved her men literally fighting to spend time with her; Rachel got to smell her dates’ armpits. Nuff said.

So let’s back it up to the beginning of the episode.

Before Team Rachel and Team Gabby flew from L.A. to France, “leisure executive” Hayden had a revealing conversation with Meatball and some of the other men. He was complaining about being called out by Rachel and Gabby for telling Gabby she was “rough around the edges.”

Hayden’s excuse was that Gabby had used those words about herself and then she and Rachel threw it back in his face. “Well bitch, maybe you shouldn’t use that fucking word to describe yourself then,” he sniped.

Hayden also appeared to use the word bitch — it was bleeped out — about Rachel or Gabby or both, who he said didn’t “hold a candle” to his ex. “I don’t see how any guy in here could be ‘I’m gonna fucking marry these girls.'”

Hold that thought and let’s switch to some positive stuff.

Rachel and Gabby were in Paris, where they met up with Tino and Jason and went off on separate dates. They did some Paris 101 kinds of things: ate crepes (and pretended to make crepes while kissing, in Rachel’s and Tino’s case); tried on berets (Jason and Gabby, who said she looked like “a bald baby” in hers); tasted Champagne; kissed in the rain.

Yes, Rachel and Tino Franco are having dinner in an actual church.

But, whatever, they had fun and then they all met up at a cafe, and Gabby and Rachel pretended to go the washroom so they could compare notes about their dates, which was cute.

Rachel and Tino had dinner in the Cathedrale Americaine de Paris, which is Anglican, so maybe they’re less uptight about people eating and smooching in their churches than Catholics? I don’t know.

The theme of the dinner chat was whether Tino would object to Rachel’s job as a pilot and flight instructor and . . . we’re seriously still having these sorts of conversations?

And the answer was, as long as Rachel was willing to have kids at some point (she was), Tino was totally cool with their spawn having two working parents. He explained that his folks both worked full-time and “there’s always a way to make it work.”

Test passed, rose given, smooches bestowed.

Jason Alabaster and Gabby compare therapy notes.

Gabby’s test for Jason was whether he could open up to her and it didn’t take long, once they settled in for their non-meal, for him to spill about how he was a sensitive dude who took everything personally, but therapy had helped him “have my power again.”

(Although obviously the power needs recharging since when he got to the Bachelor mansion he couldn’t eat or sleep for three days and had a “breakdown.”)

Jason seems a tad, well — there’s no polite way to put this — boring.

But Gabby, who knows from therapy thanks to her estranged mother, was thrilled about his confession. They talked about “inner child work” for crying out loud!

So yes, Jason got a rose and smooches with a view of the Eiffel Tower.

Host Jesse Palmer shows the men their new temporary home in Le Havre, France.

Next up, Gabby’s group date and I should pause to mention that while Jason and Tino wandered around Paris the other men checked into a freakin’ cruise ship in Le Havre, two hours away. Yes, apparently ABC paid for the Virgin Voyages Valiant Lady, which holds 2,770 people, to ferry two women and a dwindling number of men around Europe. One hopes there were other passengers on the 11 decks that Team Gabby and Team Rachel weren’t using.

So the group date was a French boxing competition, which is a type of kickboxing, although the guys just whaled on each other like in a regular boxing match from what I could see.

But the main event for plot purposes was on the sidelines, where Rachel was sitting with Gabby. Her men were on the opposite side of the ring watching the bouts and Rachel was upset that none of them would make eye contact with her, let alone walk over and talk to her.

Kirk lands a punch on Spencer, whom Gabby declared the champion.

A few thoughts: a hectic, noisy environment like the, ahem, “Bachelorette Battle for Love” isn’t an ideal place for a tete-a-tete. How much of Rachel could the men actually see from where they were standing (Logan had to lean over to gawk at Gabby)? And were they told to stand there by producers, the better to stoke Rachel’s insecurities? (I wouldn’t put anything past them.)

Whatever the circumstances, Rachel was in full-on, tearful “I don’t feel like I deserve to be the Bachelorette” mode afterwards, to the point she claimed she felt more wanted by Clayton Echard than any of her current suitors.

She marched into the men’s suite to tell them how hurt and upset she was and not one guy followed her out to try to make amends so, yeah, slow learners.

Contrast that to frontrunner Nate telling Gabby at the match how he missed all the little things about her, like her “cute little head shake” when she starts to talk. Rachel noticed the difference in devotion and viewers were meant to as well.

Nate didn’t get the date rose. That went to Spencer, declared the winner of the battle and gifted a “special dinner” with Gabby. As far as I can tell, their only connection is that Spencer was in the military and Gabby comes from a military family, but good enough.

Poor Rachel. Still smarting from her “rejection” of the night before, she took her dudes to learn about the “art of romance” and it was one of the cringiest dates in franchise history.

First off, their guides, Flora and Boris, “experts in all things romance,” sat on a settee sucking face for a full 33 seconds while the men looked uncomfortably on. In my experience, over the top PDAs are not uncommon for the French, in Paris at least, but yes, awkward.

I can’t imagine, however, what having the guys take off their shirts so Rachel could smell their armpits, blindfolded, had to do with romance.

Between Zach flirting with Rachel by putting her in a choke hold from behind, Meatball crawling across the floor to her like “Little Miss Sunshine” and Hayden French-kissing his own hand, the less said about this date the better. Just try to wipe it from your mind.

Luckily, Tyler wrote Rachel a poem to make amends for the night before so she picked him for alone time.

Tyler told Rachel how, even though his last serious girlfriend dumped him after he’d bought them a house, he was ready to find “unconditional love” again. “That feeling is 10 times better than the pain.”

Tyler Norris won Rachel over with his talk of suffering for love.

And since Rachel seemed like someone who loves “really, really hard,” Tyler was there for her.

Sounds a little masochistic to me, but fine. He got the date rose and Rachel’s fear was behind her. Or was it?

Of course it wasn’t. As Rachel and Gabby happily prepared to enter the cocktail party hand in hand as usual, we heard Logan plotting to express his feelings for Gabby because “the heart wants what it wants” and his didn’t want Rachel.

But before that bomb could go off, we had Hayden to deal with.

His plan to snare an extra week on the cruise ship was to tell Rachel all about his dying dog, Rambo, who had a brain tumour, sharing a book of photos of the poor animal.

Not only did Hayden put the dog through radiation just so he could get an extra six months with his pet, he left the pooch behind to come on “The Bachelorette” and he brought Rambo’s “cancer duck” stuffie with him to show Rachel. Who the hell does that?

Hayden Markowitz plays show and tell with Rambo’s “cancer duck.”

Then, when Rachel let Tino interrupt Hayden’s tale of woe, Hayden started complaining about her behind her back.

In the meantime, Meatball had dropped a dime on Hayden and, even though Hayden denied everything that Meatball said he said, Rachel was done with him.

I would have liked to see Hayden get lowered into a teeny lifeboat and made to row to shore, but the ship was docked so he got to walk a gangplank instead of the plank.

Hayden made it clear that he wanted Rambo more than Rachel. “I know right now for a fact no one has the amount of love that I have for Rambo and that Rambo has for me,” he said. Here’s a tip: next time stay home and take care of your sick dog.

Cue Rachel’s next meltdown: “This isn’t working for me. I’m a failure.”

Nonetheless, there was a rose ceremony. Gabby gave roses to Nate, Erich, Johnny, Michael and Mario.

Rachel gave roses to Aven, Meatball, Zach, Ethan and, yes, Logan, who accepted just so he’d get another chance to talk to Gabby.

Buckle your seatbelts for the Brouhaha in Bruges next week.

You can watch Monday at 8 p.m. on Citytv. And you can comment here, catch me on Twitter or chat on my Facebook page.

Watchable on Disney, Prime Video, Netflix Aug. 1 to 7, 2022

August 1, 2022 / Debra Yeo

SHOW OF THE WEEK: The Bear (Aug. 3, Disney+)

From left, Jeremy Allen White, Lionel Boyce and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in “The Bear.”
PHOTO CREDIT: FX

First things first, if the behind-the-scenes operation of a restaurant is as chaotic as in the fictional Original Beef of Chicagoland in “The Bear,” it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to open one.

But it’s to viewers’ advantage that sandwich shop Original Beef is up and running. If you’ll forgive the bad food pun, there’s a lot to chew in this story about a hot shot young chef (Jeremy Allen White, “Shameless”) who returns to Chicago to take over the restaurant he was willed by his dead brother.

When Carmy Berzatto takes on Beef, it has a tired menu, an inefficient kitchen and recalcitrant staff who resist the changes he wants to make, especially his so-called “cousin” Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “Girls”), an aggressive loudmouth who was the best friend of Carmy’s brother, Michael (Jon Bernthal).

Michael was a drug addict who committed suicide and has left a pile of debt behind, including hundreds of thousands owed to his Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt). Carmy could wipe out the debt by selling to Jimmy, but against all odds he wants to keep the place and fix it up.

New employee Sydney (Ayo Edebiri, “Big Mouth”), an ambitious young woman who has her own ideas about how to run things, tries to help Carmy whip the kitchen into shape, which adds to the tensions among the staff, particularly with long-time employee Tina (Liza Colon-Sayas) and with Richie.

And Carmy, on top of everything else, is still processing his grief about Michael’s death, particularly since they were estranged for a couple of years before the suicide. He also has a tenuous relationship with his sister Natalie (Abby Elliott), who’s partly on the hook for the restaurant’s unpaid back taxes.

Add in mundane screw-ups like incorrect orders from suppliers, kitchen accidents, a bad rating from the board of health, an exploding toilet and a power failure, and it’s a wonder anyone’s getting fed.

Series creator Christopher Storer told Esquire he saw the chaos of a restaurant kitchen firsthand when he spent a couple of days as a line cook, but there was also a lot of research done and the show has a secret weapon in Canadian chef Matty Matheson, a co-producer who also plays the Beef’s resident handyman, Neil Fak.

If it seems like a restaurant kitchen is an unlikely setting for drama, I can tell you the show is fast, intense and never boring, and some of its most dramatic scenes take place in that cramped space .

In particular, in Episode 7, part of which was filmed in one continuous shot, something as ordinary as a restaurant review kicks off a nightmare of a shift in which many harsh words are exchanged, two people quit and another is accidentally stabbed.

But there is a resolution — a little too neat of one, but one that points the way to the already greenlit Season 2 — and the team pulls together.

Cooking is life for people like Carmy, Sydney and aspiring pastry chef Marcus (Lionel Boyce).

For those of us who would rather just enjoy the end result, a show like “The Bear” makes it entertaining to see how the sausage is made.

Paper Girls (Prime Video)

From left, Fina Strazza, Sofia Rosinsky, Riley Lai Nelet and Camryn Jones in “Paper Girls.” PHOTO CREDIT: Amazon Studios

(Note: I don’t normally include shows that have already debuted on the Watchable list, but I missed out on reviewing “Paper Girls” last week because of an embargo.)

There’s been an inevitable linking of “Paper Girls” with Netflix juggernaut “Stranger Things,” but aside from the fact both start in the 1980s with bike-riding preteen protagonists confronted by supernatural forces, they’re not anything alike.

The girls of the title — 12-year-olds Erin (Riley Lai Nelet), Tiffany (Camryn Jones), KJ (Fina Strazza) and Mac (Sofia Rosinsky) — are battling humans, not monsters, albeit ones that possess advanced technology and can jump through time. And our heroines, despite their youth, shed their innocence more quickly than the Hawkins gang of “Stranger Things” and in ways that feel truer to real life.

In the early hours of Nov. 1, 1988, the girls are on their paper routes when they band together to avoid Hell Day hooligans and finish their deliveries. But it looks like nobody in this part of Stony Stream, Ohio, is getting their paper on time, because Erin is jumped by a couple of men in black who steal the walkie talkie that Tiffany lent her and the quartet gives chase.

That pursuit kicks off a series of events that puts them smack in the middle of a fire fight between two groups of time travellers known as the Old Watch and the Standard Time Fighters, or STF.

The walkie thieves save the girls’ lives but at the cost of them travelling 31 years into the future. They spend the rest of the eight episodes trying to get back to 1988, while avoiding an Old Watch assassin (Adina Porter) who is hunting them, with the help of an STF member named Larry (Nate Corddry) and older versions of Erin (Ali Wong) and Tiffany (Sekai Abeni).

That last wrinkle adds depth to “Paper Girls.” Each of them learns disappointing or confusing things about their futures and the people they become. Youthful optimism runs smack into the compromises that adult life demands and the girls don’t take it gracefully.

But they’re 12, so why would we expect them to?

The time-travel plot line is fine if not always well explained. It’s the performances of the show’s young and relatively unknown stars that elevate the material.

These girls have layers that are sympathetically and thoughtfully excavated, whether it’s KJ, who’s from a wealthy Jewish family, glimpsing a sexuality she doesn’t even know how to name; Tiffany, who is African-American, fighting to preserve her vision of what success means; Chinese-American Erin coming to terms with fractures in a once close family; or Mac, who lives in the rough part of town, realizing she might never escape the violent blight of her upbringing.

The girls straddle the line between childhood and young adulthood. One moment they’re eluding Old Watch travellers after seeing people they know die; the next they’re trying to figure out how a tampon works after Erin gets her period.

They start out as near strangers and end up friends, and it feels both earned and rewarding.

There is one other way that “Paper Girls” is like “Stranger Things”: it’s at its best when its young characters come together to grapple with whatever is plaguing them, whether it’s warring time travellers or the pain of growing up too fast.

Short Takes

Concert-goers dance as what’s left of Woodstock ’99 burns in “Trainwreck.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix © 2022

Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 (Aug. 3, Netflix)

The title of this three-part docuseries is appropriate because, as with the proverbial train wreck, it’s hard to look away as it documents this disaster of a music festival day by day and hour by hour. If it all seems familiar, it might be because HBO’s “Music Box” series also covered the chaos in the doc “Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage” last summer. The Reader’s Digest version is this: what was supposed to be a three-day sequel to the blissed out hippie vibe of the 1969 Woodstock festival turned into a sort of “Lord of the Flies” nightmare of anger and violence that culminated in a riot on the final night. “Trainwreck” (whose original title was “Clusterf**k,” also very appropriate) is long on details of the mayhem but short on explanations. Promoters Michael Lang and John Scher; musician Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit; untrained security guards; aggressive, young men in the crowd: all get fingered for some part of the blame. Scher, in particular, still seems determined to deflect any responsibility for what happened and still seems to blame the women who got raped at the festival for their own misfortune. As far as I can tell, the die for the catastrophe was cast the minute it was decided the festival would be more about squeezing participants for every possible dollar than keeping them comfortable and safe. And as I said in my review of “Peace, Love, and Rage,” “One does wonder what geniuses thought packing 220,000 or so people onto a largely asphalt surface in searing July heat was a good idea.” This series makes no mention of the one (and only one, surprisingly) death from the festival: that of David DeRosia due to hyperthermia from overheating. But it does provide a cross-section of voices, including Lang (who died three months after he was interviewed), Scher, event staff, musicians, reporters, MTV personalities who covered it live and concert-goers, a couple of whom say they’d do it all over again despite the fear they felt that weekend. Lucky for them and for us, there will never be another Woodstock.

Netflix also has the rom-com “Wedding Season” (Aug. 4) and, of far more interest, “The Sandman” (Aug. 5), based on the comic book series by Neil Gaiman about what happens to the Master of Dreams (Tom Sturridge) and the world after he is imprisoned for a century. Reviews for this one are embargoed until release.

Odds and Ends

CBC and CBC Gem have “FreeUp! Emancipation Day” (Aug. 1, 8 p.m.), celebrating the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, including Canada, on Aug. 1, 1834. The two-hour show includes a special about Emancipation Day celebrations across Canada, talks about what emancipation means, and performances by Jully Black, TiKA and Measha Brueggergosman. CBC Gem also has Season 2 of the Quebec series “C’est comme ca que je t’aime” (Aug. 1) and reality sitcom “Bobby & Harriet Get Married” (Aug. 5) in which a real-life couple, Brit Harriet Kemsley and Canadian Bobby Mair, play heightened versions of themselves.

Crave has the second season of workplace drama “Industry” (Aug. 1) about young traders in London, England. And if you missed Guillermo del Toro’s latest Toronto-shot, Oscar-nominated movie, “Nightmare Alley” comes to Crave Aug. 5.

Speaking of movies, “Toy Story” spinoff “Lightyear” is on Disney+ Aug. 3.

Apple TV+ has the animated film “Luck” (Aug. 5) and Season 2 of “The Snoopy Show.”

Finally, Prime Video has another film, “Thirteen Lives” (Aug. 5), a fictionalized account directed by Ron Howard of the rescue of young members of a soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand. I’m sorry I missed the chance to screen this one because the Disney+ doc about the event (“The Rescue”) was fascinating. Also new to Prime Video is Season 2 of “The Outlaws” (Aug. 5), about ne-er-do-wells banding together while doing community service in London.

Month: August 2022

Men tell nada on Bachelorette but here’s a free cruise

Watchable on FX, Crave, CBC Gem Aug. 29 to Sept. 4, 2022

The Bachelorette hometown dates go from good to sad to bad

Watchable on Crave, AMC+ and Netflix Aug. 22 to 28, 2022

Nate gets dumped, Tino’s a big cheese on ‘The Bachelorette’

Watchable on Crave, Netflix, Apple Aug. 15 to 21, 2022

Logan jumps Rachel’s ship for Gabby’s on The Bachelorette

Watchable on Apple, Crave, Netflix Aug. 8 to 14, 2022

Life on ‘The Bachelorette’ is the (arm)pits for Rachel

Watchable on Disney, Prime Video, Netflix Aug. 1 to 7, 2022

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