Conan O'Brien wraps up his late night show "Conan" this week, with the final episode airing Thursday at 11 p.m. on TBS. His guest will be Jack Black. |
 | | Kwame Patterson, left, and Cayden K. Williams in a scene from "David Makes Man."Rod Millington © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc./Courtesy of OWN |
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When to watch: Tuesday at 9 p.m., on OWN. |
Season 1 of "David Makes Man" aired almost two years ago, a humid and dreamy coming-of-age story. Season 2 deploys a major time jump: David is now an adult, though in many ways he's carrying the same anxieties and vulnerabilities he had as a child and teen. The show's magical realism is still in effect, with David often seeing apparitions of the past, envisioning alternate scenarios, hearing echoes that aren't there. |
While I'm usually a proponent of just jumping into shows — we all have Google — I strongly encourage you to watch "David" from the beginning. (Season 1 is on HBO Max.) One of my favorite facets of Season 1 was how immersive it was, how much it felt like being in David's head; Season 2 is less like that, which evokes sympathy more than empathy. That's not bad per se, but it's different. And what makes Season 2 a little trickier is that it splits its time between adult and high school David, a technique that is perhaps overused on TV these days. The device can also be tiring when the ostensible secrets of the past are secret only to the audience, not the other characters. |
Still, the performances and casting remain terrific, and Kwame Patterson, who plays adult David, perfectly — almost hauntingly — mirrors tiny mannerisms of Akili McDowell, who plays young David. The show's tender poetics remain, even as it shifts from a story about growing up too fast to one about needing to grow a little more. |
I have a glue gun (just kidding, I have two glue guns) |
 | | From left, Simon Doonan, Dayna Isom Johnson, Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman and Adam Kingman chitchat on the season premiere of "Making It."Evans Vestal Ward/NBC |
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When to watch: Thursday at 8 p.m., on NBC. |
Hooray, this peppy reality-contest show, hosted by Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler, is back for a third season of crafts and artistry. There is a lot of crying on the first episode, not from anger or overt sadness but rather from an overabundance of emotion. After a year of emotional hibernation, this feels like the part in a nature documentary when the snow finally melts and the flowers burst forth from the earth, the river gushes back to life and the wobbly baby animals frolic anew. |
"Making It" is great inspo for anyone with a D.I.Y. streak or for fans of earnest reality shows like "The Great British Baking Show" or "The Great Pottery Throw Down." The contestant pool has improved over the show's run, too, which makes me more convinced than ever that this would be the perfect series to adopt a nonelimination format. Let the contestants accumulate points over the season! I want to see more projects, not fewer: Part of the appeal of the show is the range of ideas and approaches the different contestants bring to the craft table, and when the number of contestants shrinks, so does the scope of creativity on display. Maybe next season? |
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