What I’m Watching: Miracle Workers: Dark Ages

Miracle Workers: Dark Ages: Season 2, Episode 6 “Music Festival” (B+)

This episode was primarily about two things: friendship and romance. Al just wanted to spend time with a friend who she feels has other things going on, and Chauncley was determined to impress the girl he has eyes for and to not be like his father in the process. I’ve enjoyed watching Lolly Adefope on this show and “Shrill” simultaneously, and she really has the perfect delivery for the absurd versions of the professions we know well, like marketing executive, that represent devout beliefs that, upon the slightest bit of examination, should be seriously questioned. I wasn’t quite as into the no tongue jokes about Trish – probably because they were too reminiscent of similarly medieval but far more disturbing practices featured in “The Handmaid’s Tale” – but the overall message about Al being jealous about Maggie having other things going on in her life resounded. Fred Armisen was a humorous and fitting choice to play the musician so obsessed with his own creative process that he didn’t want to deliver on what he had been hired to do, and I like that Chauncley hulked out only when he realized that was what it would take for him to ensure Al’s happiness. His desire to help people, namely the peasants and Al, rather than to crush them like his father continues to do with his skull demonstration, is positive, and Lord Vexler seems to be realizing that the idiot he always had to babysit may be capable of much more good than he ever realized.

What I’m Watching: The Mindy Project

The Mindy Project: Season 2, Episode 3 “Music Festival” (C-)

I can’t comprehend why this show went some of the ways it did in this episode. It was hard enough to believe that Casey would actually be real, and that his relationship with Mindy would actually work given all of her superficial traits. After they went to Haiti together, for him to all of a sudden decide, and announce publicly, that he wants to be a DJ is completely ridiculous. That it didn’t even pay off and he abruptly shifted to an event planning dream was even less convincing, and to use this purely as a device to get rid of Casey is pointless since he and Mindy could have avoided the entirely implausible trip to Haiti altogether. With him gone, it will be back to the dating drawing board for Mindy, who can now try to meet men while her almost-romance with Danny continues to progress. Morgan faking a proposal to Danny in order to get the National to come perform for him was silly, and treating someone unknowingly eating pot brownies as an original plotline is naïve. Jeremy is a fully different character now, no longer nonchalant and the only serious member of his practice, a title formerly held by Danny. I understand the need to infuse new blood into this show to keep it fresh, and I do like Adam Pally, who was entertaining on “Happy Endings,” but he came from out of nowhere. This show demands a suspension of disbelief that’s too much to bear, and it’s very irritating.