Author Archives: Phoebe

If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/21/19

Posted on January 21, 2019 by and

Have you ever been at a loss as to what to watch? Too many shows to pick from? We’re here to give you our opinions on what we feel is worth watching. Check it out and then let us know in the comments below what you’re choosing for tonight!

Kyle’s Choice

Tonight, CBS’s Celebrity Big Brother returns for a second season, with 12 new celebrities entering the Big Brother house to compete in a compressed version of the hit reality competition. I really enjoyed the first celebrity season last year, as things move along at a much faster pace than the regular summer show, which is stretched over 3 months instead of just a few weeks.

Julie Chen Moonves will once again be hosting the series, and this year’s batch of house guests includes an actual professional house guest, Kato Kaelin, who’s still stretching out his 15 minutes of fame from the O.J. trial. Also entering the house tonight are actors Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls, Cake Wars), Joey Lawrence (Melissa & Joey, Blossom), & Tom Green (Road Trip); singers and/or reality TV stars Tamar Braxton (The Braxtons), Kandi Burruss (Xscape), and Dina Lohan (Living Lohan); and athletes Lolo Jones (Olympic track and bobsled), Ryan Lochte (swimming Gold medalist), Natalie Eva Marie (WWE wrestler), & Ricky Williams (former NFL superstar). Finally, there’s 10-day White House Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci.

It looks like another odd mix of folks, though there are several cliques that could be formed or folks who already know one another going into the house. It will be interesting to see who teams up with whom and who ultimately wins the season.

Catch everyone moving in tonight on CBS at 8/7c.

I’ll also be watching/recording The Good Doctor, Manifest, The Resident, The Passage, and Arrow.
 
Jump with us to see else we think you should watch. Continue reading →

Share
Posted in If We Controlled Your Remote | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/21/19

If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/20/19

Posted on January 20, 2019 by and

Have you ever been at a loss as to what to watch? Too many shows to pick from? We’re here to give you our opinions on what we feel is worth watching. Check it out and then let us know in the comments below what you’re choosing for tonight!

Kyle’s Choice

Tonight, Showtime launches the new comedy Black Monday. On October 19, 1987, also known as Black Monday, Wall Street experienced the worst stock market crash in history. Who or what caused the crash still remains a mystery to this day. Showtime’s outrageous, over-the-top comedy opens one year before that tragic day, when there seemed to be no end to money, drugs, and opulence of the 1980s. Mo Monroe (Don Cheadle, House of Lies) is living the high life (literally), riding around in his Lamborghini limousine with an endless supply of cocaine. He is the founder of a small Wall Street trading firm known as the Jammer Group. He likes to party and take risks and hires the underdogs who don’t have the pedigree or connections to join the bigger blue blood firms. Dawn (Regina Hall, Insecure) is Mo’s head trader and partner in crime. She’s a tough, intelligent woman who has managed to rise to the top of what is largely a boy’s club. The Jammer Group is filled with misfits, like Keith (Paul Scheer, The League, Fresh Off the Boat), whose life is a mess, and the lines between parting and work are often blurred.

Blair Pfaff (Andrew Rannells, Girls, The New Normal) is a mild-mannered, wide-eyed new Wharton business school graduate with a rich, demanding girlfriend, Tiff (Casey Wilson, Happy Endings). He has invented an amazing algorithm that can figure out what stocks to buy and sell, and so Blair seems to have his pick of the top firms to join…until he crosses paths with Mo, who burns all of Blair’s bridges, leaving him only one choice, the Jammer Group. The cast also includes a host of other recognizable comedic actors, such as Ken Marino (Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, in dual roles as the twin Lehman brothers), Eugene Cordero (The Good Place, Wrecked), Kadeem Hardison (Love Is_), Yassir Lester (Making History, Champions), and Kurt Braunohler (Lady Dynamite). This show definitely won’t be for everyone, but it looks like it could be a wild, fun trip back to the 80s, when greed was good, and everything was in excess. I’ll definitely be checking out more episodes.

On tonight’s premiere, “365,” wide-eyed Blair is thrust into the insane world of 80s Wall Street; Mo enacts his master plan to take over the Georgina Jeans Company.

Head back in time tonight on Showtime at 10/9c.

You can also check out tonight’s premiere early via YouTube, Showtime’s website, or On Demand.

I’ll also be watching/recording Supergirl, Worst Cooks in America, Crashing, Counterpart, and SMILF.
 
Jump with us to see else we think you should watch. Continue reading →

Share
Posted in If We Controlled Your Remote | Tagged , , | Comments Off on If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/20/19

If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/18/19

Posted on January 18, 2019 by and

Have you ever been at a loss as to what to watch? Too many shows to pick from? We’re here to give you our opinions on what we feel is worth watching. Check it out and then let us know in the comments below what you’re choosing for tonight!

Phoebe’s Choice

In the still of the night, Netflix did it again, dropping the full second season of The Punisher at once. This may be the second to last Marvel Cinematic Universe season to ever occur, with only a third season of Jessica Jones still under contract and done with filming. In hindsight, this corner of the MCU took enough wrong turns to deserve overall cancellation, though the real reason is more likely the fact that Disney has finally consolidated all Marvel Universe film and television rights under one company. After his debut in Daredevil season one, Frank “The Punisher” Castle has been the most independent of the Netflix forays into the MCU. He was the only hero in this corner of the universe to not take part in The Defenders miniseries. In case you forget where we were at in Frank’s arc, let me take you back to the lowdown on last season’s finale.

Psychotic and damaged ex-soldier and mercenary Lewis Wilson started things off with a bang, taking out one of Billy Russo’s ANVIL mercenaries before going crazed lone wolf in an attack on a senator at a hotel. The episode occurred out of order with several threads and narratives explored in a winding chronology. Frank called Russo to warn him that Lewis was about to slip past his security team and attack Senator Ori, who was in an interview with Karen Page in a suite. Karen was then explaining after the attack to the FBI agent on the scene how Frank was not working with Lewis, which was his theory. We saw the attack and the confusion in the room as he gassed everyone. We next saw how Lewis snuck into the hotel disguised as an ANVIL agent. In this telling of the events, we saw that Frank arrived just in time to take a bullet to save Ori & Karen from Lewis.

Lewis then escaped with Karen as his hostage, holding a detonator that would kill them both if his hand let go of it. As soon as he exited on an elevator with her, the SWAT on the scene fired at Frank, who fled. We then began to explore DHS agent Madini’s path through the day. She was in the building to confront Russo about the fact it was 4 ex-ANVIL agents who did the job her partner died on. And it was the 5th one who got away who actually killed him. We fast forwarded to the confusion of Karen being kidnapped. She managed to corner Frank in a stairwell. She was taking him in when Russo appeared and glanced a shot off Frank’s head. Madini confirmed her suspicion that Russo killed her partner. They were in a Mexican stand-off when a bunch of NYPD swarmed in. Frank got away in the chaos, making his way to the basement, where Lewis was holding Karen in the huge hotel kitchen, which was otherwise empty.

Frank laid some heavy guilt onto Lewis, harping on how his now comatose father’s life was ruined. He talked to Karen using duress language to confirm she had a gun in her purse. She shot Lewis in the foot on Frank’s signal. Lewis locked himself in the walk-in cooler and blew the bomb. Frank and Karen shared a moment in the elevator and nearly kiss. Then he climbed away and ghosted from the hotel via a zipline. Gotta say, they went out with a bang!

Check out the entire new season now on Netflix!

Aside from binging this, I’ll also binge the three episodes on Young Justice that also dropped at 3AM on streaming service DCU.
 
Jump with us to see else we think you should watch. Continue reading →

Share
Posted in If We Controlled Your Remote | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/18/19

If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/17/19

Posted on January 17, 2019 by , , and

Have you ever been at a loss as to what to watch? Too many shows to pick from? We’re here to give you our opinions on what we feel is worth watching. Check it out and then let us know in the comments below what you’re choosing for tonight!

Kyle’s Choice

First thing this morning, A Discovery of Witches made its U.S. debut on streaming services Sundance Now and Shudder. The series, which aired on Sky TV this past September in the UK, is based on the bestselling “All Souls” trilogy by Deborah Harkness. Historian Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer, Hacksaw Ridge) is a witch who refuses to use her magical powers – not that she really knows how to control them anyway. After her parents were murdered, Diana was raised by her Aunt Sarah (Alex Kingston, ER, Doctor Who) and her partner Emily (Valarie Pettiford, Being Mary Jane) in their farmhouse in Madison County, New York. Sarah is upset that Diana denies her magical heritage and wants her niece to embrace being a witch, but Diana is more concerned with her academic career. While she received tenure at Yale, Diana has now returned to Oxford in hopes of obtaining a professorship.

While doing research for a paper on Alchemy, Diana accidentally discovers a bewitched manuscript that had been thought to have been lost for hundreds of years. When she opens the book, she finds herself thrust into a dangerous world of witches and vampires, with many parties eager to get their hands on the manuscript. Vampire/geneticist Dr. Matthew Clairmont (Matthew Goode, The Crown, Downton Abbey) has been trying to figure out why his breed are dying out and are having trouble siring new vampires. He has been looking for The Book of Life for over 100 years and believes the manuscript contains information about how the vampires were created – this information may be the key to their survival. He finds himself inexplicably drawn to Diana after she opens the book but must try to control his urges. Meanwhile, power-hungry witch Peter Knox (Owen Teale, Game of Thrones) is also after the book, but he has other, more nefarious purposes in mind.

This series is beautifully shot, with some really great production value. The pilot quickly establishes the main characters and some of the rules of this world, where vampires, witches, and other demons hide in plain sight among the humans, always fearful of being discovered. The first season is 8 episodes and covers the events of the first book of the trilogy. The series has already been renewed for two more seasons, and the plan is to cover one book per season, so there’s plenty more to come for fans! I’m not sure if there are plans to eventually air the series on the linear Sundance TV network, but today the entire season is available on both the Sundance Now and Shudder streaming services.

At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I got the chance to speak with some of the cast and creators of the series and hold the actual book itself! Check out my interview videos at NoReruns.net.

Check out the entire first season streaming now on Sundance Now and Shudder!

I’ll also be watching/recording Grey’s Anatomy, A Million Little Things, The Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon, Fam, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, Gotham, and The Orville.
 
Jump with us to see else we think you should watch. Continue reading →

Share
Posted in If We Controlled Your Remote | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/17/19

If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/16/19

Posted on January 16, 2019 by , , and

Have you ever been at a loss as to what to watch? Too many shows to pick from? We’re here to give you our opinions on what we feel is worth watching. Check it out and then let us know in the comments below what you’re choosing for tonight!

Kyle’s Choice

Tonight, Syfy officially launches the new series Deadly Class, which is based on Rick Remender’s hit comic book series of the same name. Set in the 1980s, the series follows Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth, Teen Wolf), who was orphaned as a young boy when his parents were killed by a person with mental issues. He blames Ronald Reagan and his budget cuts for his parents’ untimely death. Marcus was sent to a boys’ home, where the living conditions were horrible. He literally burned the place to the ground when he left, killing dozens of children. Now he lives on the street, eating out of trash cans and avoiding the cops. One day Marcus is approached by a group of teenagers, who abduct him and bring him to see Master Lin (Benedict Wong, Doctor Strange, Marco Polo). Master Lin tells him about King’s Dominion, a secret school for assassins, founded by his grandfather, where Marcus could learn to harness his hate and master the deadly arts.

And so Marcus now finds himself in this strange and deadly new world, taking classes like AP Black Arts, Hand-to-Hand Combat, and Poison Lab. He learns of the various gangs and cliques on campus and meets some of his fellow students – the mysterious Saya (Lana Condor, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before), who has goals of being valedictorian and is the person Master Lin sent to close the deal with Marcus; the unstable and wild Maria (Maria Gabriela de Faria, Yo Soy Franky), who causes Marcus to be the target of the cartel on his first day of class; skater punk misfit Billy (Liam James, The Way, Way Back, Psych), the son of a corrupt cop; and would-be gangster Willie (Luke Tennie, Vengeance), whose L.A. gang leader mother sent him to the school to toughen him up.

I really enjoyed tonight’s premiere, which sets up this elaborate and interesting world that feels both fresh but also familiar in some ways – King’s Dominion is like Hogwarts or Brakebills but for assassins rather than magicians. The episode also introduces viewers to a wide variety of characters, each with a unique background and reason for being at the school. The series has a bit of a darker, more mature tone, as it explores the angst of high school – just at a very unusual and more deadly one than most of us attended. The 1980s setting works well for the series, as these students live in a world that isn’t flooded with social media and phone cameras to catch them doing their homework assignments—the first of which involves finding and killing someone who deserves it! Plus there’s a lot of great 80s rock/punk music in the show’s soundtrack. This show looks and feels like a feature film, and I can’t wait to see where this story goes next and what lies ahead for these characters.

At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I got the chance to speak with some of the cast and creators of the series. Check out my press room videos at NoReruns.net.

On tonight’s premiere, “Reagan Youth,” a disillusioned teen finds purpose and fights for survival at an elite academy for the Deadly Arts.

If you want to check out the episode early, for free, you can find it on iTunes, Vudu, and possibly On Demand.

I’ll also be watching/recording The Goldbergs, Schooled, Modern Family, Single Parents, Match Game, The Masked Singer, Schitt’s Creek, MythBusters Jr., and I’m Sorry.
 
Jump with us to see else we think you should watch. Continue reading →

Share
Posted in If We Controlled Your Remote | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on If We Controlled Your Remote… 1/16/19