Once Upon a Time Dating

Lately in an attempt to broaden my television horizons I started two new shows, one of which is brand new and the other which is in its second season: Togetherness and Broad City.

Togetherness (which is on HBO Sundays at 10:30 PM, right after Girls) was created by indie filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass, and has a simple premise: married parents Brett (Mark Duplass) and Michelle (Melanie Lynskey) are pressured into allowing Brett’s best friend and out-of-work actor, Alex (Steve Zissis), and Michelle’s romantically troubled sister Tina (Amanda Peet), move into their Los Angeles home. The show revolves around each character’s personal struggles, relationship conflicts, and desires to rekindle their passions for life. The show is poignant with subtle humor and brilliant writing, and the perfect half-hour escape we could all use at 10:30 PM on a Sunday night. There have only been three episodes so it won’t take long to catch up!

Broad City (on Comedy Central, Wednesdays at 10:30 PM) is my newest obsession. I know I am late to the party (the first season premiered January 2014), but for those of you that haven’t yet tuned in be prepared to binge watch the entire first season like your life depends on it. It is a half-hour comedy created by Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (produced by Amy Poehler), two Jewish 20-something best friends living in New York. I know what you are thinking, “Oh great, another Sex and the City/ Girls knock-off”, but you are very, very wrong. The show has less camp than Sex and the City and none of the hipster drama of Girls: it is simply two shamelessly hilarious girls navigating very bizarre paths and finding themselves in the awkward situations every girl my age can relate to. The show has had guest stars like Fred Armisen, Rachel Dratch, Amy Sedaris, Janeane Garaofalo, and many more. You will be instantly hooked. I was able to find the ten episodes of the first season and the three episodes that have aired of the second season so far all on demand, and am not ashamed to admit I finished all thirteen episodes last night (and I am still craving more).

If you are in a post-Fall television slump like I was, these two shows are sure to ease your pain. Run, don’t walk!

I have been so wrapped up in midterms I have yet to comment on the fourth installment of American Horror Story, which is Freak Show. The season is only two episodes in (the third episode airs tonight at 10 PM on FX), and I am already mesmerized.

This season is set in 1952 Jupiter, Florida, and tells the story of the last remaining freak show led by Elsa Mars (Jessica Lange). In the first episode Elsa recruits conjoined twins Bette and Dot (Sarah Paulson) to join her troupe of freaks that consists of “Lobster Boy” (Evan Peters), a bearded lady (Kathy Bates), a strong man (Micharl Chiklis), a three breasted woman (Angela Bassett), and others. What I love most about the show is that the majority of the “freaks” are not actors, but people who actually have the conditions that freak shows would exploit. Elsa’s assistant Ma Petite is played by Jyoti Amge, who is the world’s smallest living woman with a height of 2 feet. I think the misconception about this show is that it is portraying “freaks” as scary, when in fact the horror element of the show surrounds the murders occurring around the freak show by Twisty the Clown (John Carroll Lynch), and the super creepy freak show groupie Dandy Mott (Finn Wittrock) and his mother Gloria (Frances Conroy). If anything, this show is promoting tolerance and showing that people we label as “freaks” are no different than anyone else.

I loved the first season of AHS (Murder House), had some issues with the second season (Asylum), loved the third season (Coven), but I think Freak Show is the best one yet. There is no such thing as a haunted house, Anne Frank’s death was not a hoax, there is no such thing as witches, but freak shows really did exist. The realistic element of this installment of AHS sets it apart from the rest, and the result is magnificent.

The Affair is quickly becoming my favorite new show. It is beautifully written, has a breathtaking aesthetic, and has the most compelling and unique premise I have seen on television.

The show uses the Rashomon effect to demonstrate how two people can have contradictory recollections of the same event. In The Affair, the two individuals are Noah and Alison, and both are being asked to recall their extramarital affair that transpired years ago in True Detective– like interrogations about which we (so far) know very little. Each episode devotes the entire hour to the same day and events, but the first half-hour shows Noah’s perspective, and the second half-hour shows Alison’s. The discrepancies in their memories are sometimes glaring, and other times subtle. For example, in the first episode Noah’s daughter chokes on a marble at the diner where Alison works (she is their waitress, and this is how they meet). Noah and Alison both remember her choking, but in Noah’s scene he saves his daughter, and in Alison’s scene she is the one who saves her. In Noah’s memory his wife wears glasses, and in Alison’s memory she does not. In Noah’s memory Alison offers him a cigarette, and in Alison’s memory Noah offers her a cigarette. I imagine as the show evolves the inconsistencies in their stories will become more and more consequential.

The Affair examines the disparities in how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves, as well as how self-perception can skew the truth in our memories. The show is artistic and romantic, but with criminal undertones that add an air of mystery to this captivating story.

You need to see The Affair to truly understand it. There have only been two episodes, so catch up… Sundays, 10 PM, Showtime.