Dragon Ball Figures: Watching: A Showbiz Comedy

Monday, April 26, 2021

Watching: A Showbiz Comedy

April 26, 2021

By Margaret Lyons

Television Critic

Dear Watchers,

Ready or not, the first "Game of Thrones" spinoff, the prequel "The House of the Dragon," has begun production, HBO announced today. The show is set 300 years before the "Thrones" saga.

Have a happy week.

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I like comedy, and I am extremely online

Heléne Yorke, left, and Drew Tarver in a scene from "The Other Two."Jon Pack

'The Other Two'

When to watch: Now, on HBO Max.

This brisk, biting comedy is sort of a coming-of-age story, focused on the flailing adult siblings of an emerging teen pop star. The show it resembles most closely is "Difficult People," another blistering show about a straight woman and a gay man who love snarking on showbiz while also trying desperately to participate in it. But the tone of "The Other Two" is a little more fraught, and while "Difficult People" pickles happily in its brine, "Two" is torn between its snappish and its sympathetic instincts.

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Chase (Case Walker) is a teen pop star with two horrible — hilarious — songs, a scuzzy manager (Ken Marino, the king of playing desperate losers) and a mom who is in over her head (Molly Shannon). He also has two much older siblings, Brooke (Heléne York), a former dancer, and Cary (Drew Tarver), an aspiring actor. They process their brother's strange stardom with jealousy, pride and bafflement.

Brooke and Cary are miserable in the way a lot of comedy characters from the last 10 or so years are: underemployed, stuck in a rut, smug about people they think are too into social media but also secretly extremely into social media. But rather than just let them wallow, "The Other Two" sets them up against Chase's dumb rise to fame, and thus a lot of their eye-rolling feels righteous rather than just petty. Over the course of the first season, we learn more about their family, and how their childhood differed from their brother's — an emotional swing the show simultaneously takes and scoffs at.

All 10 episodes of Season 1 are now streaming, and Season 2 is supposed to come out later this year. If you like "Search Party" or "The Mindy Project," watch this.

When do my shows come back?

Billy Porter in a scene from the season premiere of "Pose."Eric Liebowitz/FX

"The Girlfriend Experience": May 2, Starz
"Pose": May 2, FX
"Mythic Quest": May 7, Apple TV+
"Shrill": May 7, Hulu
"High School Musical: The Musical: The Series": May 14, Disney+
"Special": May 20, Netflix
"Black Monday": May 23, Showtime
"In Treatment": May 23, HBO
"The Kominsky Method": May 28, Netflix
"Lucifer": May 28, Netflix
"American Ninja Warrior": May 31, NBC
"Making It": June 3, NBC
"The Bachelorette": June 7, ABC
"Dave": June 16, FXX
"Holey Moley": June 17, ABC
"Rick and Morty": June 20, Adult Swim
"David Makes Man": June 22, OWN
"Ted Lasso": July 23, Apple TV+
"The Walking Dead": August 22, AMC

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