October 22 Miracle Workers – End Times (final season)

It seems to me as if cable television is cratering. It’s the End Times – for somebody.  I wish it was due to the brilliance of broadcast and Public television (though PBS does do good work), but it’s due to streaming – sigh! I’m not anti-streaming, but it does tend to shortchange the people who are working the hardest at these productions, thus the strikes. (I worked for a while in theater, so I know the oceans of sweat putting on a show produces – it’s HARD work.) Cable once tried to keep the consumer from being able to afford entertainment and food (silly me, wanting to eat), but the entertainment industry’s solution to all of this is to…pay the people creating the entertainment less. Has nobody thought to pay the CEOs less? Sorry, silly thoughts. Why would the people in charge of the people working their butts off to create content take less money?? More silly thoughts. 

(My inner rant during Cable’s height was, “You create a monopoly, won’t let small towns turn it into a Utility, seriously cities got sued, and I still have to watch commercials – how is any of this fair!”) 

Anyhow.  

This means that it’s no surprise then that people turned to the cheaper alternatives that streaming provided. 

Miracle Workers marks the end of the Cable era. It’s fitting that this anthology series has named this season “End Times”, though I think that the creators meant that this was the end of their show. It’s just a weird coincidence that it is also the very last original content that TBS (the channel it aired on) will produce – and, as I said, we are at the twilight of Cable. 

So, I should re-name this post “Shows I Was Watching” as the last episode ever aired. It seems that television is being less and less aired and more streamed, which feels ironic for this last episode given there’s a big battle between the robots and the humans. The digital world is carving out its stake in humanity – at least in the entertainment world and unlike the ending of “End Times” the robots are winning. 

Anyhow. 

I think of Miracle Workers as the little engine, er, show that could. It seemed in its first season to make little dent in the cable world, yet it endured four seasons and got better with each pass forward. It was at first a Daniel Radcliff vehicle based on a novel by Simon Rich (who co-produced the show) – a cosmic comedy about angels trying to save the earth from an insecure god (played hysterically by Steve Buscemi) who is feeling that his wonderful creation isn’t getting the respect it deserves from the other cosmic omnipotent beings. Steve’s God, it turns out, is the least impressive of all the other gods and, after being made fun of by all the other beings for his flawed product, decides to just scrap it. The angels as guardians of humanity are working hard (sweating bullets) to stop this. 

The comedy from this season is sometimes a bit cringe-y, but it does do best what television does, it provides comfort as…an angel might to a suffering and striving humanity. (See how I turned that into something deep? I’m so clever!)  

But what I like about it is that it’s also kind of fearless humor. Instead of a family sitcom about the lesson that Billy needs to learn this week (you know, that point where the audience goes “ahhhhh!” because for some reason a comedy needs to be heartfelt instead of funny). I loved that even if some of the jokes went too far (did we need a sex with skeletons joke), I appreciated the fact that it went for the funny instead of playing it safe. I mean, it is the End Times after all. Might as well. 

I felt that my very late night Saturday night viewings (it started at 11pm, ug!) were perfectly joyful. There were B-list comedy actors proving that you don’t need a household name to be incredibly talented and hysterically funny.  

Geraldine Vishwanathan who plays a meek Daniel Radcliff’s wife (Dan is meek, not the wife) and War Lord is so bracing to the world around her that those around her suffer and still she never notices. She goes straight for the comedy jugular. Her physical comedy is so on point, that I was crying. I’ll never forget the moment she leaned out the door of her speeding truck setting off AKs from both hands and screaming as she went (why, yes, I have seen that in Mad Max movies and they were funny as well, but not as fierce as her). And all this viciousness and clueless cruelty done without the blink of an eye (she’s that good), yet somehow she stays sympathetic as she fiercely protects those she loves (much to the chagrin of those who she doesn’t). The writers put her actions into the context of every day affairs like Vishwanathan wanting to spice up her marriage, spats with her hubby or High School reunions. (Perhaps the writers are making fun of the fact that we currently aren’t very aware of the impact our actions have on others? Or maybe they’re wondering what day-to-day life would actually be like in this apocalyptic nightmare landscape – it can’t be all raiding and terrorizing, can it? Or maybe I’m just thinking too hard about all of this.) 

John Bass, most noted for playing the toxic male stereotypes, AKA shows I’ll never watch, is the family dog. It’s a cynical type of humor (as is most of the show): humans are so degraded in this nightmare scenario that they’re a family pet. It is hilarious how eagerly he adopts the role. He happily cuddles the couple in bed, eats from bowls on the floor and chews up furniture. There’s one episode where he rediscovers his old home town that he was kidnapped from. His family – that he appears to have forgotten – embrace him and encourage him to re-adopt his humanity. At first, he thinks this is fantastic as he’s sick of being treated like a lesser being by his “owners” (his new/old family hug him, tell him he’s great, his wife has sex with him and feeds him great food), until he has to resume his duties as a man. “Wait, I have to work in a field ALL day? But that’s hard work!” Then there’s all the politic-ing and the never having a moment to himself (he’s got children to teach and rooms to clean and people to help out). He quickly rushes back to his owners glad to just lounge on a couch all day. We laugh along with him, because, yes, adulting is hard is so, so, so, so, so HARD!!!! (I love that this show is so on point BTW. It knows exactly what I’m thinking. I could happily be someone’s cat for hire.) 

My favorite was Karan Soni of Deadpool fame (he plays the meek cab driver who wants to be a contract killer – sidenote he has my favorite line in DP 2 “I’m like Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, I want more” he wants to kill more people like Deadpool and he’s talking about Interview and…oh, just see the movie) who plays the killer robot. He has this love/hate relationship with Daniel Radcliff who by the way is nice even when he shouldn’t be (he’s supposed to still be an angel, I guess). Karan is angry at humans solely because he’s a robot. We haven’t done anything to him; we just deserve it. I guess robots in this world are just supposed to hate humans – not actually have a reason for it. He acts out for no reason what-so-ever (or the history behind the robots versus humans has not been told…or I miss that exposition episode) and it usually bites him in the ass, or nobody tends to care. He is often ignored. He seems to have no effect on anyone. Perhaps he’s angry that in this nightmare world where everybody has to do everything themselves, the world is destroyed after all, he has no purpose (he was built to do the things that people are having to do themselves), so the big finale where the robots invade the last human town to make them pay for…not needing robots (I guess) is really hilarious. Did it feel like it forced some climax onto a series that hadn’t really building towards anything? Sure. But was it still funny, entertaining – and kind of the perfect topper to a series that got better and better? You bet! 

I think the fact that this comedy was so self aware and so fearless made it such a great show. I’m sad that it was so under-rated. It seemed to come and go without much buzz, which is too bad. It was really a lot of fun and some of the best comedy writing, acting, directing (everything-ing) on television. In the meantime, millions of people are watching the Masked Singer.  

Sigh! 

It really is the End Times.