"The Irrational"

This isn't fresh, or new, in terms of plot.  You have a quirky guy with a tragic past who solves crimes in an untraditional manner.  But it's not bad, mostly due to the fact that the quirky guy is played by Jesse L. Martin.  He is an actor I would watch read a phonebook.  He can do a million things with a look or a word, and injects thoughtfulness and humor into much of his work.  Moving away from the detective who just notices all the little details all the time, the crimes here are often solved with some behaviorist theory.  It makes it kind of fun to "learn" something about human behavior each week, although it can also make the show a little stilted or predictable.  The overused "troubled past" motif is also a bit tired, and not being handled particularly well in the writing.  Another criticism is that Mr. Martin is kind of a huge talent -- the supporting cast doesn't feel wholly up to meeting him at his level.  That's okay, it's kind of his show.  All that being said, this is actually my favorite of the whole three new shows which have actually debuted in the past two months, so I'll take what I can get.  And yes, like everything else NBC is putting out there these days, it is filmed in Canada (and not in DC, where it supposedly takes place).

"Found"

Last fall there was a showdown.  FOX premiered a new show called "Alert:  Missing Persons Unit" about some troubled and unique people who spend their lives finding the missing.  NBC was supposed to premiere a new show called "Found", about some troubled and unique people who spend their lives finding the missing.  FOX won round one and NBC pulled their premiere.  In the wake of the SAG strike, NBC has been taking shows off the shelf and finally premiered "Found".  As indicated, there are a lot of similarities between the two shows but also differences.  The FOX show covers a supposed goverment unit while the "Found" group is a private company.  Which means the characters on the NBC show break the rules.  A lot.  That's one of the themes.  Another theme is that the focus of "Found" is to go after the missing who don't get looked for by traditional law enforcement.  People of color, the undocumented, the indigenous, the unhoused, etc.  And there is a twist.  A "big twist".  One I don't particularly care for.  Between the heavily "issue focused" storylines and the twist, the plots are sometimes a bit strained in order to cover the moral lesson the producers want, rather than honor the truth of a given story.  I don't buy, for instance, that an adult man would kidnap a teenage girl and keep her for more than a year without physically or sexually abusing her.  That unrealistic idea is there to support the "big twist".  The plots are fairly predictable.  I can usually figure out the "who done it" in the first ten minutes or so, but these super-smart, hardworking folk can't, because, again, they need the "big twist" character to help solve the crime.  It's a bit irritating, and undermines the power of the leads.  I also really don't care for the fact that they make a big deal about this being in DC, but clearly have never been in DC.  The series is filmed in Canada, and while the leads are on point a number of the weekly guest actors have been ... iffy.  And ... have I mentioned? I really really really hate it when DC is used as a background for a film, TV show or book and the creators do absolutely no research and everything they say about the region is wrong.  (Yes, I'm talking to you, "NCIS", who once famously had a character refer to it as the "tri-state" area.  Dude.  DC is NOT a state.  And no, no one on NCIS pronounces Norfolk correctly.)  Anyway, a recent episode had a character who lived in the district indicate that she had been "avoiding going to Virginia."  Given the geography of the city, "avoiding Virginia" would be near to impossible.  The story also focused, heavily, on a big Indian Reservation in the Virginia, which was "at least" three hours south of DC.  Except, there aren't any Federal Indian reservations here, with "tribal land, tribal police, and a no man's land of forest separating it from the non-tribal land."  There are two small plots of land set aside which are not federal reservations and are fairly unpopulated ... more like state parks than anything else.  They are less than a two hour drive down a major highway. So, I have issues with "Found".  Frankly, I have issues with "Alert:  Missing Persons Unit" too, which could lean into melodrama.  Neither show deeply engages me.  They are about entertainment.  They both try to be thought-provoking but they both fail, because, again, they are too detached from reality.  They have decent casts and are a way to spend an hour, but that's about it.

"Asteroid City"

Just.  So.  Weird.  I mean, it was fun.  It was interesting.  I'm not sure there was a major plot there.  Maybe an event.  One which could be described in a paragraph.  But the characters, the strangeness.  It had me intrigued while I watched it but I couldn't tell you too much about it afterwards.  More like -- images -- impressions -- paintings which come to life.  Dialog which would make Jack Webb proud.  A lot of big names.  Huge names, on this project.  Forward motion by the characters?  Not so much.  Development of events?  Ummm.  It's visual.  It's strange.  And if you are up late one night and maybe a little stoned or drunk or punchy, this might just be the film for you.  Even if you sit there afterwards and go, "What the He** was that?"

"Cagney & Lacey"

That's right.  I'm watching a 40 year-old TV series.  "Rewatching" is a better term.  Loved the series when it was on originally.  After purchasing the DVD set I launched in and found, as I often have with these old beloved shows, that I am a little surprised.  Yes, it's dated, but not in the way I expected.  I was struck by the constant presence of air pollution in NYC, and how the river was always brown.  I had forgotten, amidst the cries about climate change, that it used to be worse.  A lot worse.  There are also the faults of '80s television.  The underscoring is bad, really bad, and with occasional hackneyed scripts the whole thing takes on the tone of melodrama now and then.  But all that being said, a few episodes in, I was hooked.  Again.  Like "Barney Miller" this isn't flashy police work.  It's paperwork and boring stakeouts and sitting in an office making phone calls.  Which means it feels more substantive.  This is compounded by storylines which are messy and events which aren't brought to a nice little conclusion at the end of each episode.  The characters are messy too.  They are complex and don't know what they want or need and are often at loose ends.  And the acting.  Oh, the acting.  The whole cast is great, of course, but the delivery by Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless had me watching the show.  Really watching.  This was real feminism and remains, in this age, hugely impactful and unique.  There is literally nothing on TV today like this.  These two characters navigate the difficult landscape of the times.  And many of the battles they fought are still present today.  The difference in the decades isn't the walls they faced, but the attitude of those around them regarding those walls.  In a gut-wrenching episode where Cagney is sexual harrassed by a superior her own partner questions whether Cagney sent mixed messages to the man.  They fight, of course.  That's another thing -- these women don't always get along.  From different worlds and with different perspectives, they clash.  A lot.  And in doing so we learn that the "liberated woman" of the 1980s didn't just have to forge a path, she often had to struggle with the perceptions of other women, even her own perceptions of herself, to move forward.  And sometimes she failed.  This is what draws me in.  This series is so much more ... real ... than most of today's offerings.  These characters are more layered than almost any show I've ever seen with two women as leads.  They are a human kaleidoscope of behavior.  I dare anyone watching the show to dismiss these two women as being in any kind of a box.  You can't sum up their "type" neatly, and that's the point.  These characters weren't two dimensional archetypes.  They were complex and layered.  The characters navigated their lives as best as they could and often fell short.  And they weren't, and aren't, size zero.  The characters didn't wear inappropriate body-hugging clothing at work like every female detective on television today does.  The actors playing Cagney and Lacey had pedigrees, they knew the craft.  Brava, ladies.  You had the heavy responsibility of speaking for all of us.  You did it with amazing gravitas.  (PS, the "Complete DVD series" is anything but.  The promo film and first season, sans Sharon Gless, were listed as "the last episodes," when, in fact, they were the beginning.  I had to buy the four TV movies, complete with excellent inteviews, separately.)