Category Archives: If We Controlled Your Remote

What do we think you should be watching each night? Find out!

If We Controlled Your Remote… 9/19/18

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

I’m not a diehard American Horror Story fan. I loved Coven. I recently watched Roanoke and thought it was decent. But many of the seasons failed to draw me in. I tuned into the AHS: Apocalypse premiere last week to see if this season would be one for me. So far I’d say so. A fair balance of dystopia and the macabre with a droplet or two of sci-fi mystery hiding in the wings of a secret survival complex.

The episode opened with spoiled rich lady/wannabe-Instagram celebrity Coco St. Pierre Vanderbilt at the hair salon getting her hair done. Everyone started to get text alerts that nuclear missiles were inbound to L.A. and they were going to die. Coco’s dad called her, confirming the alerts were real but that she may escape on a private jet if she got to the airport in time. While her boyfriend Brock did not make it, she took with her the hair stylist, his grandmother, and Coco’s assistant Mallory. They were being relocated to a safe place by an organization her father paid 400 million dollars to, named the Cooperative.

In another storyline, we saw how a boy named Timothy was taken from his family in L.A. before the bomb dropped because the Cooperative found him to be genetically predisposed to survival. At first he was taken to a bomb shelter under the city, but in two weeks he and another selectee, a young girl named Emily, were sent to the same safe place as the others, a post-Apocalyptic citadel called Outpost Three. As Tim and Emily were walking into the safe zone in their gawky yellow hazmat suits, they witnessed the execution of two teens guilty of “unauthorized copulation.”

Inside the Outpost, they survive on a diet of jello cubes that were filled with “all the nutrients they require for survival.” Head mistress of the Outpost, a Cooperative agent known as Wilhelmina Venerable (played by Susan Paulson) informed them they had 18 months’ worth of food. A pigeon arrived with the message that three other Outposts had been overrun and society had broken down completely – 99.9% of all humans were already dead. Inside Outpost Three, Purple were the Elites, while Grays were the “worker ants.”

The hairstylist and another young man were found to be radioactive and taken to a decontamination room. After a scrubbing the stylist was clean, but the other man registered as radioactive, so they shot him in the skull. Wilhelmina and Miriam Mead (Kathy Bates) celebrated in private that they faked the Geiger count machine to kill the man as meat. After he was served to the Purples, they had mixed reactions to being cannibals. After dinner, as they all argued over the ethics of it all, the song that had been playing for two weeks straight suddenly changed. They mistakenly took it as a sign the Cooperative will be coming for them soon. Instead we jumped forward eighteen months to when the food was running out. An outside representative of the Cooperative arrived to judge whom amongst them was really fit for survival; he could relocate all or none of them to a ten-year facility that was much more secure.

So far, super rad show. I’ll be tuning back in for tonight at least to give it another try.

On tonight’s episode, “The Morning After,” after the nuclear apocalypse, the world’s chosen elite survive in secure outposts created by the mysterious Cooperative; underneath the surface of humanity’s salvation lies a battlefield for the final conflict between good and evil.

Catch episode two tonight on FX at 10/9c.

I’ll also be watching Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.

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If We Controlled Your Remote… 9/9/18

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 #1

What would happen if you took Dexter and added elements of a dark rom-com? You’d get Lifetime’s new series YOU. Joe (Penn Badgley, Gossip Girl) is the manager at a small local bookstore and on the surface seems like your average nice guy next door. His neighbors in the apartment across the hall are always going at it, so Joe keeps young Paco (Luca Padovan, Super Wings!) company when he is alone and scared in the hallway. However, there is a darker side to Joe. When he crosses paths with aspiring writer Beck (Elizabeth Lail, Dead of Summer, Once Upon a Time), he quickly becomes infatuated with her. He utilizes the internet, social media, and good old-fashioned peeping Tom techniques to stalk her, learning every intimate detail of her life. His goal is to get her to fall in love with him, and so he arranges for serendipitous meet-cutes and manages to ease his way into her life. However, there are still some obstacles in their relationship, and he plans to remove them no matter what it takes. The series is based on the based on the novel of the same name by Caroline Kepnes and is produced by Greg Berlanti (responsible for the majority of The CW’s lineup) and Sera Gamble (The Magicians) and also features Zach Cherry (Crashing, Search Party), Shay Mitchell (Pretty Little Liars), and a special guest appearance by John Stamos.

I got to see tonight’s premiere back in June at the ATX Television Festival and have been anxiously waiting for the series to air – it was probably my favorite of the new shows I saw at the festival. It is disturbing, very dark, and sometimes a bit funny and romantic. I had oddly conflicting feelings while watching. Joe can be incredibly charming, and you kind of root for him to succeed as he and Beck would make a fun couple. However, at the same time, he’s a complete psychopath, so you don’t really want him in Beck’s life. In the pilot we just scratch the surface of the dastardly things he’s capable, and I can’t wait to see how this thrilling story plays out.

On tonight’s premiere, “Pilot,” Joe meets Beck, falls in love, and goes down a social media rabbit hole to learn everything about her. He becomes so obsessed that he tracks her IRL (and they meet again). This might be a real shot at real love. But there are some things standing in the way…like her ex, Benji.

Meet Joe and Beck tonight on Lifetime at 10/9c.
 
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If We Controlled Your Remote… 9/4/18

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 #1

Tonight, USA Network kicks off the new 10-episode event series The Purge, which is an extension of the popular film franchise. The 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution established the National Purge, a 12-hour period where all crime, including murder, is legal and all emergency services are shut down. This series takes place 10 years after the events of The First Purge and follows the intersecting stories of some of this year’s Purge participants (some willing and some not so much).

As the series opens, we are just 97 minutes away from the Purge, and folks are getting ready for the night of mayhem. Miguel (Gabriel Chavarria, East Los High) is a marine who returns home looking for his missing sister, Penelope (Jessica Garza, SIX), who had been coerced into joining a Purge-worshipping cult run by the charismatic Good Leader Tavis (Fiona Dourif, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency). Rick (Colin Woodell, Masters of Sex) and his wife Jenna (Hannah Emily Anderson, Shoot the Messenger) are trying to climb the social ladder by attending their first pro-Purge party with the rich and elite. And Jane (Amanda Warren, The Leftovers) is a hardworking woman who seems to always get passed over for promotion, so she has hires a Purge-assassin to help her break through the glass ceiling at her firm.

I am a big fan of the Purge franchise and have been really looking forward to this series. I am curious to see how a Purgestory can be told in a much longer format, where we can get more character development and backstory. I’m happy to say that I was not disappointed with tonight’s premiere, which mainly concentrates on the events immediately leading up to the start of Purge Night. It sets up a lot of interesting characters and events and introduces several ominous and mysterious situations. The series will make use of flashbacks to provide more backstory into how each of these characters ended up where they are at the start of the series. I’m excited to see how the rest of the season plays out!

At this summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, I got to speak with some of the cast and creators of the series. You can find my interviews at NoReruns.net.

On tonight’s episode, “What Is America?” Purge Commencement looms. Several characters find themselves venturing into the chaos of the night.

Catch the premiere tonight on USA Network at 10/9c.
 
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If We Controlled Your Remote… 8/31/18

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

Early this morning, Amazon released the 10-episode first season of the new original series Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. Jack Ryan (John Krasinski, The Office) is a former Marine, the sole survivor of a helicopter crash that killed 12 of his fellow soldiers. For the past four years, Ryan has spent his days behind a desk, working as a CIA analyst, studying financial markets and transactions in Yemen, looking for suspicious activity. As the series opens, Ryan discovers an unusual pattern of bank transactions, and thinks he has identified the next Bin Laden, a possible terrorist named Suleiman. But when he takes his data to his new boss, he gets a lot of pushback. Ryan got off on the wrong foot when he first met his new boss, James Greer (Wendell Pierce, Suits, Treme, The Wire). Greer also has a chip on his shoulder – he was a former Base Chief who just returned from a forced leave after an incident and now finds himself demoted to Group Chief for a team of analysts. However, it isn’t long before Greer sees some merit in Ryan’s findings, and Ryan suddenly finds himself thrust into the field, ending up in the middle of a dangerous and deadly situation.

I had never seen any of the five Jack Ryan films, nor read any of the books, so I didn’t really know what to expect from the series or the character. However, John Krasinski is fantastic in this role, which is drastically different from his more comedic Jim Halpert on The Office. The pilot takes its time to introduce the characters and set up the premise, but by the end of the episode, it has really hit its action-packed stride, and I am really looking forward to checking out the rest of the season! The series comes from creators Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel, Colony, The Strain) & Graham Roland (The Returned, Almost Human, Fringe) and has already been picked up for a second season of 10 episodes, so there’s plenty more to come.

Binge-watch the entire first season now on Amazon!

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If We Controlled Your Remote… 8/26/18

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

With almost three seasons done in Preacher, we’ve seen an interesting adaptation of a road trip comic book converted to a show set alternately in a small Texas town, New Orleans, & an idyllic swamp haunt called Angelville. The last locale is where title character Jesse Custer was raised by his voodoo-wielding evil Grandma, who is one of several “bad guys” this year. And Jesse likely would have wiped her out as a threat, had Herr Star and his goons in The Grail organization not extracted Jesse’s soul a while back. Without a soul, he had been unable to use the power of Genesis inside him that makes his commands act affect others like the word of God.

God, btw, is still running around doing something depraved in a vinyl dog suit, motorcycling the country with his hot girlfriend. And Cassidy the Irish vampire has been off on his own for half the season, dealing with a cult led by another much more sadistic and powerful vampire named Eccarius. Cassidy tries to warn the cult members who are really just food being fattened for Eccarius to slaughter them, but they believe their leader instead. They beat Cassidy up and leave him crucified on an upright pool table, awaiting the sun’s beams to burn him out of existence.

The last cliff they left us hung on was the bus ride back to hell as overseen by the Angel of Death. Teamed up with the super badass Saint of Killers, a Confederate soldier turned demon cowboy, Angel of Death had acquired the three people Satan sent her to get: Eugene, Hitler, & Tulip. Just as Tulip had been about to try an escape, Hitler instead kicked his way out the window and dove directly onto a landmine in 1940’s WWII. This flipped the bus and left them all stranded in the past!! I can’t wait to see how they finish it all tonight.

On tonight’s episode, “The Light Above,” Jesse returns home for what he hopes is the last time but in doing so angers Starr and endangers Cassidy. Meanwhile, Tulip battles Hell and Nazis.

Find out who prevails in tonight’s finale on AMC at 10/9c.

I’ll also be watching Get Shorty and The Venture Bros.

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