2021 Fall TV Review Roundup

What’s worth watching

The streaming wars have all but killed the traditional release model for television, but the fall season continues to house the biggest surges in new shows and season premieres. I spent the last week catching up on the biggest TV releases of the past month to parse what’s worth your time and what isn’t. Here are some quick reviews of Cowboy Bebop, Hellbound, Yellowjackets, Dexter: New Blood, Invasion, and Chucky. Minor spoilers ahead…

Cowboy Bebop

Taking a page out of the Wachowskis’ playbook, Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop attempts to construct a live-action adaptation out of one of the most iconic anime series of all time. But where Speed Racer embraced every over-the-top aspect of its source material with sincerity, verve, and spirit, Cowboy Bebop seems ashamed of its roots at all turns. Detailing the adventures of a cadre of spacefaring bounty hunters (John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, Daniella Pineda), this iteration of Cowboy Bebop strips its animated counterpart of its melancholy soul and of all its color. Every trace of character and style is defaced through exposition, winks, and lampshades hung - even the anime’s airtight 25-minute episodes are stretched into interminable hourlong husks. Cowboy Bebop doesn’t trust its audience, but worst of all, it doesn’t trust its own namesake. C-

Hellbound

What if divine judgment was real, tangible, and brutally violent? What if you knew exactly when punishment for your sins would be dispensed? This is the premise for Netflix’s Hellbound, created by Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan). The opening moments of the first episode finds a nervous man being viciously dragged to hell by a trio of CGI monstrosities, and it would be easy for Hellbound to extrapolate its horrors into empty-brained spectacle, but the series has much more humanist concerns on its mind. A gripping supernatural yarn that pits detective vs. demagogue, faith vs. doubt, sin vs. purity, Hellbound finds a tricky moral tightrope underneath its phantasmagoria - a meticulously crafted and surprisingly introspective chiller even when it stumbles in its thematic juggling act. B+

Yellowjackets

The mutant, three-headed offspring of Lost, Lord of the Flies, and Wrong Turn, Showtime’s Yellowjackets is as promising as its mashup sounds. Featuring the murderers’ row of Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci, Yellowjackets shuttles between past and present, centered around a high school girls’ soccer team and their adult counterparts as they grapple with the formative trauma of their lives: a harrowing plane crash that turned them into ritualistic cannibals for 19 months before their rescue. When an unknown blackmailer threatens to reveal their secrets, the adult women must band together amidst a web of deceit, lies, and murder. A killer hook cemented by killer performances and one of the best pilots in recent years, Yellowjackets is a twisty and macabre thrill ride you won’t soon forget. A

Dexter: New Blood

What can only be construed as an attempt at redemption after a truly wretched final season and series finale eight years earlier, Dexter: New Blood returns with original showrunner Clyde Phillips and a new, snowy locale for Dexter Morgan. Now going by Jim Lindsay, Dexter has put his killing ways behind him with a sheriff girlfriend and an incognito cover, but it isn’t long before the past - and his murderous urges - come knocking. A far cry from its final season awfulness, Michael C. Hall is as solid as ever, and Jennifer Carpenter makes a welcome return as a ghostly Deb, but this new Dexter is mostly like old Dexter: killing scumbags while a bigger bad lurks in the shadows. There’s nothing really new under the hood other than the comfort of nostalgia. C+

Chucky

Continuing the saga of Charles Lee Ray for a new generation, Syfy’s Chucky finds a new unassuming host for the killer doll (once again played by Brad Dourif) in 14 year-old Jake Wheeler (Zackary Arthur). At first glance, Chucky is yet another installment of the titular murderer slashing his way through thinly-drawn fodder, but as the series goes on, it adds layers of shading to its teen characters - as well as Chucky’s past - to deliver something much more thoughtful than its gory veneer lets on. Touching upon themes of identity, coming out, and volatile teen urges, Chucky - with the aid of longtime franchise steward Don Mancini - expands modern perspective to a beloved slasher franchise. B+

Invasion

It’s easy to see what Apple TV’s new sci-fi thriller Invasion is going for. A slow burn, first contact narrative that focuses on the humans rather than the aliens, Invasion wants to deliver a meditation on the human condition and our scattered response to apocalyptic catastrophe, but everything just comes off as opaque. Moving at a glacial pace, not even the likes of Sam Neill or Golshifteh Farahani can inject a pulse into its wholly uninteresting subplots - from bullied kids to domestic squabbles, Invasion is invested more in its flavorless wheelspinning than the curiosity, fear, and panic that should come from an alien invasion. By the time the extraterrestrials finally show up in the sixth episode, it’s far too little, far too late. C