Welcome to The Friday TV Five, a column where we pull out five of the best, worst, and weirdest highlight-worthy things from the week of television, and present them all in a handy list format where the numbers don’t particularly mean anything. We have fun.
1. It is now time to kick off your Mr. Robot re-watch or catch-up
The second season of Mr. Robot premieres on July 13. I bring this up for a few reasons. One, because summer is generally a time for fun little shows and binge-watches, which is fine, but with Game of Thrones over for the year, things are about to get rough from a weekly viewing perspective. That’s kind of a shame. Maybe I’m a dinosaur, but I still like having a show or two that drives the cultural conversation over an extended period of time (“What’s gonna happen?” “Who’s that guy?!” “So do those dragons ever have sex or… What? It’s a legitimate question!”), and as cool as Netflix is in a lot of ways, it doesn’t do that at all. Orange Is the New Black just premiered a critically-acclaimed new season and the chatter about it is sparse and scattered because so many people are at so many different places in it, which makes it hard to find an agreed upon point to start a conversation. Which, again, is fine. But it would be nice if we had a show we can all talk about. Hopefully Mr. Robot can become that show.
And that brings me to my second reason: July 13 is almost two weeks from now, with one regular weekend and one long holiday weekend stuffed in there. If you haven’t watched the first season yet, you have plenty of time to pull off a leisurely catch-up. (I mean, to the extent you can do anything related to Mr. Robot “leisurely.”) And if you did watch the first season already, but could use a refresher, you have time to do that, too. You probably should do that, to be honest. A lot of things happened on Mr. Robot.
It’s available for streaming on Amazon Prime, but definitely keep an eye out for a marathon on USA at some point, too. Please do this. I do not want us to drift apart.
2. Game of Thrones has nothing on Princess Olga of Kiev
This season of Game of Thrones was stuffed with female characters getting revenge in brutal fashion. Examples include: Arya serving Walder Frey a meat pie made of his own sons and then slitting his throat; Sansa feeding Ramsay to his own dogs and loving it; Cersei setting off a wildfire explosion that killed hundreds of people and leveled a not-insignificant chunk of the city; and Daenerys burning something like a dozen Khals alive in their own temple and then emerging as triumphant as she was naked (which is to say, “very”). It was what one might call a theme.
It is also an excellent excuse to bring up one of my favorite historical figures, Olga of Kiev. Olga got married to the ruler of Kievan Rus, Igor, somewhere around 900 AD. They had a son. Things were going great for Olga. Then, when their son was three, Igor was killed by the Drevlians while out seeking “a tribute.” (A lot of money, basically.) This made Olga mad. The Drevlians then proposed that Olga marry their prince. This made Olga really mad.
As the legend goes, this is what happened next:
- She had the 20 men sent to make the official marriage proposal buried alive.
- Without letting the Drevlians know that she killed the first group of men, she sent word back that she had accepted the proposal, but required their best men to accompany her on the trip. When those men arrived, she offered to let them relax in her best bath house, then locked them inside and burned them alive.
- She then went to see the Drevlians to have a funeral feast to honor her husband. After they got sufficiently drunk, she had her army slaughter 5,000 of them.
- When the Drevlians begged for mercy, she asked for a dove from each family as a tribute. They happily complied. Then she tied hot coals to the doves’ feet and set them free over the city and watched it burn to the ground.
The Catholic church later made her a saint. History is fun.
3. There was not enough tuna on Broadway anyway
Losing Kroll Show after three seasons was heartbreaking, both because it was pretty great and because it was the most reliable opportunity to see Nick Kroll and John Mulaney in their “Oh, Hello” characters, George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon. (Please Google “Too Much Tuna” if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) But losing the show led to those characters taking their schtick to the off-Broadway stage. The video up there is a clip from one of their performances. As they’re preparing to prank the real Marcia Clark with a sandwich packed with a preposterous amount of tuna, John Mulaney says, “You’re about to get the second biggest surprise of your life.” This, to be very clear, is hilarious.
And now the show is making the jump to Broadway. Like, real Broadway. Hamilton Broadway. I’m not sure if there’s anything in here I could be happier about. Maybe if other Kroll Show bits follow this one to the stage. A Gigolo House musical would win double-digit Tonys, easy.
4. BrainDead is fun
BrainDead is easily the best show I’ve ever seen about evil space ants infecting the brains of Washington politicians and turning Tony Shalhoub into a right-wing ideologue. We discussed this. What we didn’t discuss, however, is the fact that each episode opens with a brand new little song by Jonathan Coulton with lyrics that sum up the story to-date. It’s a cool twist on the classic “Previously on…” segment and another reason to give the show a spin during the aforementioned summer slowdown.
It’s also fun to think about what Mad Men would have done with this, what with their famously vague teasers and Matthew Weiner’s commitment to secrecy. I’m imagining a very nervous-sounding singer being like “Don, uh… closed the door, and Pete and Trudy had a figh-” and then Weiner interrupting him by shouting “Shut it down!” I miss Mad Men.
5. I’m still not over this exchange from Zoo…
… and I don’t know if I ever will be.
