October Netflix: New Seasons of Things

So, new seasons of things have been popping up on Netflix. I've watched halfway into a few of them.

One of the problems that plagues continuing series is that, after the first two seasons or so, the plot tends to resolve all the really interesting things that brought you to the series in the first place, and now it has to find new conflict. I'm going to rank the series in ascending order of how well they do that.

Longmire

Running to a murdered plotline

I had such high hopes for Longmire's fourth season. The last one tied up who killed Walt's wife, and yet there was a cliffhanger.

And now, four episodes in, Walt's still avenging his wife's death, the cliffhanger got tied up too fast, and, worst of all, the nuance in the original seasons seems to be lacking.

A good example is the character of Jacob Nighthorse. In the first season, he was a polarizing figure in a moral gray zone; the constructor of a casino on reservation land, Nighthorse was a forceful advocate for American Indian rights while also being a semi-criminal land developer. Now he's been developed into a cartoonish crime lord who uses American Indian grievance as a recruiting tool for his thugs and justification for his actions. I liked Longmire for its lack of "good Indian/bad Indian" cliches, but now that's gone, I kind of don't want to see how the series finishes. 

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

Apparently, my wife and I weren't the only ones saying, "put more gold-plated, pearl-handled revolver into this series!" It shows up a lot in Season 3.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries seemed to be floundering a little in its second season; while still entertaining, the major interpersonal conflicts between the characters had basically been resolved and stayed in stasis.

I was going to write that for the third season as well, but the series started picking up in the third episode, making the romantic subplots more nuanced and, frankly, stepping up the game in the "murder of the week" department. Still definitely worth watching.

The Blacklist

These are ridiculously ugly sunglasses that James Spader wears all the time in the second season, possibly as a conspiracy involving the costume designer to make me want to destroy my television in sartorial fury, allowing a secret organization to replace it with a new one that explodes or bugs my apartment or releases biological weapons, or all three.

So, when you have a show whose first season is based on being so over-the-top with cliffhangers, every-other-episode twists, reveals, false reveals, etc. that the plot doesn't just border on incoherence, it is in fact completely nonsensical, you can't really jump the shark. 

Seriously, if James Spader's character Reddington water-skied over a shark to prove his cojones to a Mexican drug lord so that the drug lord would provide Reddington with the Swiss bank account number of an autistic Kazakhstani albino who can crack uncrackable ciphers by comparing them to the bar codes on bulk packages of candy, that would really only be par for the course for this show. Nearly every major plot point of every episode would make you say "wait, WHAT?!?" if you took The Blacklist seriously.

But that's not why you're watching, right? You don't really care if Elizabeth Keane figures out who her real parents are or what happened on the night of that mysterious fire or what she means to Reddington, right? You're watching because James Spader is amazing as an oleaginous criminal mastermind with amazing monologues. 

And, if you haven't heard one before, a Spader Monologue in The Blacklist is amazing. They tend to go like:

KEANE:

Red, did you kidnap and/or murder a person I kind of cared about again?

REDDINGTON:

Lizzie, when I was a young man, I spent a summer kayaking. Besides developing an attractive tan, I learned some valuable things about the way one has to move while essentially alone in white water rapids. One day, I was passing over a particular stretch when a bear catching a salmon distracted me...

And it goes on for five minutes, and maybe Spader will answer the question, but who cares? He owns the character so completely that the fun is in watching. 

Longmire - Why Aren't You Watching?

After wresting it from A&E, which canceled it because I was the only person not eligible for Social Security watching the show, Netflix has finally put up Season 3 of Longmire. Season 4 will be a "Netflix Original."

I am basically jumping up and down with glee. Longmire is an amazing detective show. And, frankly, since young people like you reading this blog haven't seen it yet, you should go watch it now. Ignore the rest of this blog post, your job, your family, your need to eat. Get yourself a catheter from one of those ads on basic cable and just plop yourself on the couch for over 20 hours.

Okay, obviously you didn't do that, because A) you're still reading, and B) that was one of the times I give crazy-person advice. I'll bet you're wondering why you should watch Longmire, since I haven't even described it yet. Fair enough.

This is Walt Longmire. He is the sheriff of the fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming:

Robert Taylor as Walt Longmire.

Walt is, in some ways, the television descendant of Gunsmoke's Marshal Matt Dillon (I love me some Big Broadcast). Sheriff Longmire has an old-school "yes ma'am" politeness to everyone, be they local or tourist or from the nearby reservation (although he did arrest the last tribal chief of police, which was legally correct but did not win him friends on the "rez"), and he basically rocks at police science. Also, he hates having to carry a cell phone, so he's always borrowing his deputies'.

This is Walt's best friend, Henry Standing Bear:

Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear. He is often this pensive.

Henry owns what seems to be the only quality non-chain bar/restaurant in Absaroka county. He also helps Walt navigate American Indian culture, mostly by pointing out when the sheriff's department is about to do something that will make a lot of people very pissed. This being America, and a show about police, these warnings often go unheeded.

This is Sheriff Longmire's loyal deputy, Vic Moretti:

Katee Sackhoff as Vic Moretti.

Deputy Moretti is from Caprica -- I mean, Philadelphia -- which means that she has to learn Wyoming as she helps Sheriff Longmire chase down criminals.

And this is Sheriff Walt's totally disloyal deputy, Branch Connally:

Bailey Chase as Branch Connally.

As season one starts, Branch gets sick of Walt being too mopey over the death of Walt's wife to be reliable at police work (something that wears off about halfway through the first episode), so Branch runs for sheriff against Walt. And has a relationship with Walt's daughter. And goes behind Walt's back to solve cases. Somewhere down the line, they get into a fistfight. Basically, it's amazing that Sheriff Longmire manages to have a working relationship with Deputy Connally at all, and yet they still manage to solve crimes together. This is probably because, despite being kind of a giant jackass, Deputy Connally is also pretty good at the policing thing.

So, with this main cast together, we follow Walt try to get his detective mojo back and win his sheriff's election, which is more complicated as it sounds because A) Walt's got basic decency on his side but Branch is hitting up all the power players in the county for money and influence, and B) Walt may have gone vigilante on the man who killed his wife (what actually happened isn't totally revealed until the end of season two). Between those two main plots, plus a host of complications for the supporting cast, there's plenty of enjoyable dramatic tension and weekly murder-solving fun for all.

So, now I've explained it. Wyoming sheriff. Capable cast with famous names. Fun plot. Begin your marathon couch-sitting.