I was late getting a copy, but wanted to share my September column A Man’s Perspective for Simply KC Magazine: The Discerning Man’s Guide to Fall Television.
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As a man with an abundance of free time on my hands, I thought I’d take a moment to scan the Fall television radar to ensure no interesting entertainment opportunities pass you by.
First on my list, as I’m sure it is on many of yours, is the return of football. After the tumultuous NFL off-season, it’s a relief to see the professionals back to work. Coming off their first divisional championship since 2003, the Chiefs enter the most highly-anticipated season in recent memory. With several primetime television match-ups, (Mon. 10/31 vs SD, Mon. 11/21 @ NE, Sun. 11/27 vs PIT), all eyes will be on Kansas City as they try to repeat as AFC West champions and hold off their talented divisional rivals in San Diego.
*Author’s note: Clearly this article was penned in mid-August. I, along with the rest of the city, have mostly abandoned all hopes of anything positive coming from the Chiefs this season other than a shot at Andrew Luck.
Equally exciting, and much to the chagrin of our bosses/lovers/families, September also marks the return of fantasy football. By the time you read this, it’s likely that your draft has already occurred. However, as savvy players know, fantasy success is driven by the moves you make throughout the season, not on your draft. Waiver wire pick-ups, smart trades and knowing which players to start all have a significant impact on the success of your team. The best tool I’ve found to assist with these is Rotoworld’s Season Pass (www.rotoworld.com, $14.99). In addition to weekly projections and positional rankings to assist your start ‘em/sit ‘em decisions, Rotoworld publishes a weekly Top 200 Going Forward report that is quite useful when evaluating trades and targeting players on the waiver wire. They also allow you to enter league-specific scoring rules to view customized point projections for each player. It’s well-worth the price of admission. While we’re talking about fantasy football, I’ll throw in a plug for The League on FX which begins its third season on Thursday, October 6. It’s a comedy based on a group of friends and their fantasy league, including the expected trash talk, pranks and psychological warfare that make most leagues fun. The first season of the show was excellent, but they fell into a sophomore slump last year. I’m hoping for a third season rebound.
Let’s talk about what to watch between football games. In the time since the writer’s strike ended in 2008, we’ve seen a surge of great television. New shows exhibited a creativity and uniqueness that had been largely missing in recent years. Advances in the technology and affordability of HD programming and DVR boxes mean that we’re able to watch higher quality content with fewer time constraints. It’s a good time to be a TV fan.
First, let’s rundown the essential Summer shows that are nearing their finales. HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm airs its season 8 finale on Sunday, September 11. Somehow Larry David, after seven seasons of Seinfeld (Jerry acted as showrunner for the final two seasons) and eight seasons of Curb, is still pumping out new and hilarious content. The second episode of this season, ‘The Safe House’, was the best I’ve seen in quite some time. If you’ve fallen behind, all of season 8 is available on HBO OnDemand and HBO GO. FX has really stepped up their original content in the last few seasons. On no night is that more evident than their Thursday powerhouse comedy line-up. Louis C.K.‘s Louie is currently airing its second season with the season finale scheduled for Thursday, September 8. No one better exemplifies the downtrodden everyman or does it in a more realistic and hilarious way. In season 2, the Louie team has become more ambitious in its production and really propelled it beyond any other sitcom on the air. Sharing FX’s Thursday night bill is Wilfred, a new adaptation of a successful Australian comedy starring Elijah Wood as a depressed, out-of-work attorney and Jason Gann as Wilfred, Wood’s neighbor’s dog who Wood can only see as a human in a dog suit. The premise allows opportunities for many humorous scenarios in which a human can exhibit dog behavior and an interesting interplay between Gann and Wood’s characters, but is pushed further by Wilfred’s proclivity for human vices and his tendency to sabotage Wood’s attempts at being the good guy. Wilfred’s season 1 finale is also on Thursday, September 8. In the drama category, AMC’s Breaking Bad might just be the best show on TV right now. Bryan Cranston offers a superlative performance in the lead as Walter White, a hapless high school chemistry teacher undergoing cancer treatment and resorting to meth production to pay his mounting debt. If you aren’t watching, you should be.
Concerning the Fall line-up, here’s what you shouldn’t miss. Thursday, September 15 marks the return of two more heavy-hitting FX comedies: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Archer. Always Sunny returns for their seventh season of envelope-pushing hilarity. It’s a polarizing show, one you probably will either love or passionately hate. I fall into the former camp and am excited to see what they’ve come up with for the new season. Archer is an animated comedy series starring Sterling Archer, a secret agent contractor with a humorous level of delusion about his own invincibility. He’s voiced by H. Jon Benjamin (Bob’s Burgers, Jon Benjamin Has a Van) who’s among the funniest men on television. It’s a great cast, especially for an Arrested Development fan, including Jessica Walter and Jeffrey Tambor. Archer is entering its third season.
On the premium networks, Showtime’s Dexter returns on Sunday, October 2 for its sixth season. Dexter stars Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) as a Miami PD bloodstain pattern analyst with a penchant for vigilante justice according to his own warped code of morality. The characters aren’t uniformly great, but the one constant is the consistently excellent performance by Hall. I expect more of the same in the new season. HBO’s hit mob drama Boardwalk Empire returns on Sunday, September 25 for its highly anticipated second season. It’s set in prohibition-era Atlantic City and revolves around Steve Buscemi‘s Nucky Thompson, a gangster politician with no qualms about taking unconventional routes to solidify his position of power. Excellent performances from Buscemi, Michael Pitt and Michael Shannon anchored the first season. Another HBO series which receives much less hype, but it no less enjoyable in my opinion, is Bored to Death. It’s a quirky comedy centered on Jason Schwartzman‘s character Jonathan Ames, a struggling writer who moonlights as an amateurish private detective. Schwartzman, Zach Galifianakis and Ted Danson all deliver strong performances to bolster the show’s entertainment value. Bored to Death is entering its third season which premieres on Monday, October 10.
“A Man’s Perspective” appears monthly in Simply KC Magazine. You can view my archived columns here. If you have any ideas you’d like me to explore, let me know. I’d love to investigate and include them in an upcoming column.
