Jeremy C Kester

My wife and I watch a variety of shows together. There’s things that one of us watches that the other does not, but a lot of what we watch, we watch together. And since no one really cares, I thought I’d make a list with brief reviews of each. They are in no particular order.

On Now

• The Real O’Neal’s (ABC)
  This comedy about a gay kid (Kenny) coming out to his Christian family followed by the parents’ announcing they’ve decided to divorce is fun. No one has their shit together in this show and it results in a lot of hilarity. Kenny’s narration and day-dream sequences add to the fun. Plus this show had the best description of Chicago whether and how people behave in it than any show we’ve seen.
• The Goldbergs (ABC)
  Taking place near where my wife and I are from (Philly), and the show’s kids going where my cousins went to school, this was an obvious choice to watch. Another hugely loving, yet dysfunctional family as told through the eyes of the young Adam Goldberg (a recurring joke due to the feud between the two Adam Goldbergs in real life, this show is fun, with all of the references to what was great in the 80’s. We’ve had a lot of big laugh-out-loud moments from this one.
• This Is Us (NBC)
  This is an emotionally heavy show. But we love it. It is an extremely well written show about three siblings (one pair of twins and an adopted third) all born on the same day. The show flashes back and forth between their childhood with their father and modern times as they struggle through life and each other. I cannot tell much as there are some great twists in this show, but it can be heart-wrenching.
• Superstore (NBC)
  Probably our favorite comedy right now. This show is Walmart (called Cloud 9 in the show)… both employees and customers. It’s just brilliant.
• The Mick (FOX)
  Starring Kaitlin Olson of Always Sunny fame, this is a new show about a hugely disreputable and trashy Mickey who is left to care for her wealthy, stuck-up, crazy niece and nephews after her sister and brother-in-law flee the country leaving their children behind. Mickey is a terrible person with good intentions (counter to Kaitlin’s Always Sunny persona, Sweet Dea, who is terrible with no good intentions). It’s been fun so far with a lot of WTF moments.
• The Last Man on Earth (FOX)
  Phil “Tandy” Miller is not really the last man on Earth, but he is certainly the weirdest. This comedy is fun following the few survivors of a mass virus that kills somewhere around 99.999999% of life on the planet. Phil tries to be the group’s leader, but falls on his own personality quirks and pathological lies.

Waiting for the Next Season

• iZombie (CW)
  I cannot speak about how much fun this show is. It is one of those shows that you can tell that the cast is having a ton of fun too (like the next show I will mention too). It tells the story of Olivia “Liv,” a once promising surgeon who gets turned into a zombie and must feed on brains that she gets from now working in the morgue. The trick… a zombie temporarily gains the memories and personality of the person whose brain is eaten. So of course Liv decides to pose as a psychic to help solve murders. It is great fun.
• Jane the Virgin (CW)
  Like iZombie, this just shows that the cast are having a blast. Told in tele-novella style (Spanish soap opera) complete with narrator, this show not only has plot-twist after plot-twist, but the comedy never stops. It is a fun one to watch.
• Jessica Jones (Netflix)
  Marvel has been making hit after hit and this is no exception. Telling the obscure comic story of Jessica Jones, a super-powered young girl who fell victim to Killgrave (the Purple Man) who enslaved her through his mind control before she eventually broke free, but suffered severe PTSD from the experience. Now she works as a cocky private investigator while trying to avoid Killgrave at all costs. Kristen Ritter is awesome. Can’t wait for the next season, then her appearance in “The Defenders.”
• You’re the Worst (FX)
  Two horrible people who are just made for each other. It follows a cocky, self-absorbed, English novelist who can’t gain any popularity and the equally cocky and self-absorbed record executive as they figure out how to coexist while inventing as many ways to not acknowledge they love each other and have “feelings” other than bitterness and disgust for everything. It is a fun comedy.
• Stranger Things (Netflix)
  This was the runaway Netflix sci-fi show that took the world by storm. This is up there in my top 5 shows of all time and I know that it is one of my wife’s all-time favorites as well. Just watch it and see for yourself. Such a spectacular example of good television.

And two shows we wished we didn’t watch, or just eventually gave up on

• The OA (Netflix)
  As my wife and I describe it: “dimensional travel through interpretive dance while pretending to eat birds.” It started with some unbelievable promise, but it floundered. It went south halfway through and kept going at full speed. Huge disappointment.
• Once Upon a Time (ABC)
  Once upon a time this was our favorite show. This last season put the final nail in the coffin though as a show that went on too long. It started to go south with the Frozen story line, died with the time travel episode (a plot trope that is WAY overdone and usually ends up terrible), briefly came back to life in a coma for a while, then just flat out died. I dove out of watching it two episodes into the new season (season 6) and my wife hung in a few episodes longer, but from what she describes, it tripped and fell flat on its face.

There’s a long list of shows we’ve watched over the years that are no longer on because they’ve been cancelled or naturally came to an end, but I won’t list them. I also know there are a LOT of shows that we haven’t seen that would be fantastic, either way, for now the list above is it.