Is It A Miss Or A Mood?

When a show goes wrong, is it the show or is it you? A look at three recent series.

I’m going to answer my own question from the subhead with an emphatic, long-time critic response of: It’s the show.

I’ve got a large sample size, people. It’s the show.

That said, I think everyone has to be honest with themselves whether watching a mid-tier television series or an overly hyped movie. It could be you. Not in a critical way, to suggest you’re just “not getting it.” But it could just be your mood. You might want to circle back. Maybe next time the vibes will be immaculate.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way. And in my current state of mind, the one that’s guided this Substack from the start, I’ll waste no time on a terrible show but I also won’t be grumpy and self-critical if I hit a streak of trying otherwise fine series that just aren’t moving the needle in my head or heart.

Not far removed from watching — and loving — the 20-episode Korean series “Moving” on Hulu, which is the best television series I watched last year (even though it didn’t come out last year), I tried to watch the latest series from the creators, “Light Shop,” also on Hulu.

More accurately, I first watched the trailer (I know, I know) and it looked like a depressing series about death, which I’d had enough of in 2024, including the death of democracy. Clearly, the mood was wrong for that show.

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The Best Of What I Watched This Year.

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On Monday night, I tried again, this time watching the entire first episode with Viewing Partner KB. Here’s the processing of emotions:

• This is moody. I like this. Getting some “Moving” creative DNA vibes.

• Hmmm. I see a structural issue. Flag up.

• Even taking into account the cultural differences between Korea and the confines of my own life, I’m not sure the choices being made here are sound, especially for your own teenager.

• Oh, it’s that kind of show. Hmmm.

I’m not sure what kind of series “Light Shop” will ultimately be, but we both agreed it was trending toward either horror (that would count us both out) or scary/creepy paranormal mystery with blood (that’s a maybe; but not for me right now).

I can tolerate (and even appreciate) a lot of violence. I don’t like jump-scare horror (or any horror, really, outside of zombies — and yes I know that genre has both elements). And this rationale, this making sense of my own likes and dislikes, with their various shades of gray, is a complicated thing indeed. It probably says more about me (and you, when you study your own self) than it does about “Light Shop.”

What further complicates this particular decision of mine — bowing out, at least for now, after one episode — is that I loved the Korean series “The Frog” (as many of you know), and that series had a particularly notable scene of a woman dragging a large rolling suitcase with the clear implication that there was a cut up body inside of it, and that exact concept closes out the first episode of “Light Shop,” with tiny drops of blood dripping out of the rolling luggage.

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"The Frog."

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So, I have to ask myself, what’s the difference?

Nothing. Except the mood in the moment. Which is something.

In “The Frog” I’m stunned and intrigued and partially freaked out about the luggage scene and in “Light Shop” I immediately think, “Nope, not for me.”

Strange. But certainly no fault of “Light Shop.”

As I’ve said before, I like going into movies with no knowledge of what they are about. In television, especially if I’m going to possibly make a multi-episode commitment, I usually do a little sleuthing first.

But last week I fell into “Interior Chinatown” on Hulu, described as an “action comedy” based on the 2020 book of the same name by Charles Yu, which won the National Book Award. To his credit, Yu took that success and created “Interior Chinatown” the TV series. Almost everyone who writes a book holds a secret dream of not just seeing it optioned, and then eventually turned into a TV series or movie, but of being directly involved, shepherding the story and your own beloved characters. If you’re the creator and executive producer, you’ve won the lottery.

I noticed that Yu had written the first and last episodes (small flag goes up; why not more?) and was also the show runner (big flag goes way up; not a job for newbies, no matter how talented).

The series premiered on Hulu in late 2024 (November) and I heard…exactly zero about it.

Jimmy O. Yang in “Interior Chinatown.”

But it stars Jimmy O. Yang, the talented comedian and, it turns out, surprisingly adept lead. It’s always a joy seeing someone flourish in ways that maybe you (and others) didn’t expect. Taika Waititi is also an executive producer on the series and directed the pilot with flair.

“Interior Chinatown” is a complicated, conceptual series. It’s a show-within-a-show — but also significantly more in that main character Willis Wu (Yang), a waiter at a Chinese restaurant, dreams of being more than just some background character in life without apparently knowing he’s a background character in a fictional cop series.

The pilot does a quick, skillful job of laying out that Yu is trying, through Willis, to illuminate a lot of thoughts about what it’s like to be Asian-American — especially if you’re not the hot guy or girl that get free (or free-er passes) regardless of ethnicity; if you’re normal and plain, which can sometimes seem like you’re invisible, how do other people see you and how you do you perceive yourself?

That’s intriguingly ambitious.

Yang is instantly good at taking Yu’s pilot script and making it feel understandable and earned, a complex identity trip through Willis Wu’s dreams of something better. It could be argued that Waititi’s direction in the pilot is an absolutely essential element in making the very tricky “show within a show without knowing you’re on the show” conceit work.

I was all in. I saw the promise.

Until the second episode, when I was all out.

It wasn’t a huge mystery about what happened between those first two episodes because it happens all the time in television. The writer-creator pens the first episode and then stops. The big name director shoots the pilot and then never returns. (Yu writes the season finale, but I never got through the second episode, so I can’t tell you if the finale was as good as the pilot, or why he didn’t write anything in the middle; perhaps he was too busy as the show runner).

Without Waititi (and the money behind the pilot), “Interior Chinatown” goes from complex, staged night shoots with atmospheric production creating a kind of live theater experience to, well, a full-tilt, brightly lit, lower-budget TV series in the next episode.

It’s visually shocking (also kind of funny because it’s clear what happened). The writing became listless and obvious. The show-within-a-show concept cratered under its own weight. The directing was lifeless. Even the actors seemed to understand that they were now in a different series.

One that didn’t work.

In this case, it’s the show. When you’re as excited as I was to discover something new and then you can’t get through the second episode, it’s the show.

Almost always is, historically.

Bryan Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura.

When I first saw Brian Tyree Henry in “Atlanta,” it was quite the revelation. That whole series was, in fact. Before it aired, I talked with some of the cast, (including what I know now was a pretty rare long discussion at an FX party with Donald Glover, who doesn’t really do that often). Back then, before “Atlanta” had aired — and was still months away from airing — the people involved in it didn’t know how it was going to be received. They had no idea, in that moment, that it was great. My conversation with Glover revolved mostly around telling him, as calmly and critic-like as possible, “No, really, this thing is great. It’s going to have an impact.”

That whole “Atlanta” cast is/was exceptional. But Henry, damn, he was a revelation. He contained multitudes (go check out his Wikipedia page) that “Atlanta” wouldn’t immediately reveal. I remember thinking I would watch anything he did in the future (and have). You follow actors and writers and directors like that — those who have something intangible, who will morph and create for the rest of their lives, most likely.

So I was looking forward to the new AppleTV+ series, “Dope Thief,” starring Henry. The series was created by Peter Craig (who co-wrote “The Town,” “The Batman” and “Top Gun: Maverick”), based on the 2009 book of the same name by Dennis Tafoya.

The series also stars Wagner Moura, Marin Ireland, Kate Mulgrew and Ving Rhames — a solid cast. “Dope Thief” is also executive produced by Ridley Scott, who directs the pilot (and then bails, though it’s unclear right now if he directs another later episode).

“Dope Thief” has an interesting premise, though one that seems like it will be stretched very thin as early as (checks notes), yep, the second episode.

Henry and Moura play two childhood friends from Philadelphia who have grown up just surviving, not much more, and their current plan in life is a flawed, highly rationalized Robin Hood ruse to pose as DEA agents and rip-off minor drug dealers plaguing Philly.

They see themselves as heroes, in some way. And their beliefs are very believable.

The dramatic tension and show-changing decision comes in the first episode, when Henry and Moura’s characters go against their gut instincts and branch out to a rural robbery, only to hit a highly evolved organized drug dealing outfit currently under surveillance by the real DEA.

They left behind enough things to be tracked by the drug dealers, and very dangerous things are ahead, proceeded by grisly but clear threats about what’s going to unfold once they’re caught.

The pilot is solid — Craig has written a convincing portrait (from the book) of two friends who make a really dumb decision and it blows up in their faces. Scott’s direction keeps things tight and fraught with peril.

I liked that hour.

In the second episode, which, unlike “Interior Chinatown,” I was able to finish, there’s a subtle shift in tone that puts what seemed like a gritty mistake into that very Hollywood territory of, “Let’s joke and shoot our way out of this shit.”

That’s not a show I want to watch. That’s a really American kind of response that immediately lightens the gravitas of the drama.

Again, this tonal shift is more subtle than that sentence two paragraphs ago suggests, but I’d bet heavily that it becomes increasingly less subtle in the third episode and beyond, though I won’t be there to find out.

Henry is not only the star of “Dope Thief,” but a top line executive producer, which means he’ll make lots of money and he’s got creative say as well. And honestly, he definitely has the chops to take a tried and true formula like the buddies on the lam laugh off their predicament trope and make it entertaining. I’m sure of that.

I’m also sure I don’t want to watch that show.

So, mood or miss?

Both, probably. The fact that it can be both is complicated and sometimes frustrating to work out in your own head. I have found myself completely content to watch — nay, burn through an entire season — of something like “The Gentlemen” on Netflix, with glee no less, so I’m no stranger to light, agile comedy and violence.

So why not take to “Dope Thief”?

Because that’s not the show I was promised in the pilot. That’s not the best version of this series. That’s a miss, in my estimation.

But maybe that’s the mood I’m in.

(Thinks for five seconds…).

Nah, “Dope Thief” is a miss. It’s the show.