Steve Padilla

Mostly unwatchable, there is not much to the story and most of it is insulting to the audience's intelligence. Implausible storyline wherein the family at the center is able to move to a an incredibly expensive home within five minutes based on a single sale of a sauce. They drive to this house in a busted old van from their other expensive house. This is California, Echo Park and then Calabasas. From a $2M dollar home to a $10M home. And we're supposed to believe that they're poor. Once they move to the fancier neighborhood all of a sudden everyone is awful to the mom, who is diverse. Of course, every one of their neighbors are awful racists! The viewer is beat over the head with "woke" messages implicit and explicit and the storyline is basically just victim story vignettes strung together for an hour and a half.

Knowing that it shares a creator with “Superstore’ helps the viewer understand why “American Auto” is a bad television show. It isn’t funny, and almost every main character is irredeemably awful. In “Superstore”, the characters all had quirks but were at their core good people who worked hard. In every episode employees did department store employee things. And all that hard work never mattered to the cold, unfeeling and distant puppet masters in corporate whom made Cloud Nine’s employees lives difficult for never stated evil corporate reasons. Clearly, “Superstore’s” creator has a certain view of corporate executives which is why it’s weird that their next would be focused on corporate executives. In “American Auto”, the cast is the C (corporate) suite of an American car company with a new CEO coming from pharmaceuticals. No one ever does any work and all they do is make terrible decisions while offending everyone. The viewer is left wondering how the company remains afloat. The only main character with any redeeming qualities is the former line worker brought into the C suite as an intern because he impresses the new CEO. It makes sense that someone who seems to have a very negative view of corporate executives would portray them as unfeeling, incompetent terrible people who do nothing. Why they would think that anyone would want to watch a miserable show posing as a comedy is a mystery.

The White Lotus is a brilliant snapshot of a disparate group of people while on vacation and on the job. Based on the show, one might come away with the idea that people suck, especially those idiotic and awful, wealthy hotel guests. They would be wrong. The real takeaway is that people are complicated. Especially their relationships. A couple’s flame is reignited after the husband reacts heroically in a time of need proving his love. The viewer knows that it was just the poor young employee, seduced by the couple’s guest, who made a poor decision, but they did not. They had no idea the kid’s intent nor capability for violence or lack thereof. A friendship is strained but reconciled when they learn to listen to one another. An aimless young man finds his passion and new friends. Two newlyweds realize they don’t know each other as much as they thought. And sure, he’s petulant but the hotel manager was screwing with him. He will support her, especially as his mother’s influence recedes as her’s grows. His mom is a bit much but she’s like all moms, always in her son’s corner. A single woman who has inherited wealth and is lonely pretends to be an investor, even though she hasn’t the slightest idea how to invest in business, to make a new friend. A hotel manager who hates his job and isn’t very good at it finds peace after making yet another terrible decision. A spa manager who should know better allows herself to believe that a flighty and irresponsible person actually is going to invest in yet another Hawaiian wellness center, she does receive a pretty incredible gratuity for her trouble. A slacker just wants to make his own schedule and get high with friends. There’s really no bad guys. Just lots of different perspectives and an excellent fake out of class obsessed woke culture. Of course the hotel employees hate the guests, everyone hates their boss. And every tourist expects to be treated like gold.

The good: - Lots of great performances from the wildly diverse acts comprising the festival. - Interesting interviews from those that put it together and were there. 20 years is a lot of time to remember anything accurately. The emotion from the friend of the concert goer who died was genuine and the notes the lost goer left were heart breaking. The bad: - There were a lot of explicit images while attempting to decry the abuse lodged at female attendees. What happened to some was awful and is not helped by exploitation today. - The stupid attempt to frame it within today’s social norms. Again, 20 years is a lot to ask for anyone to remember anything accurately. This isn’t so much a documentary as it is a bunch of interviews framing everything that happened as another way that white males are awful and responsible for everything bad. - Idiot promoter John Scher blames Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst for supposedly “inciting a riot” with no evidence because of the band’s song “Break Stuff”. - Kid Rock is accused of being the epitomy of so-called “white privilege” because he wore a white fur coat. - The end is weirdly an advertisement for Coachella. Why? There’s no point. The two festivals are not comparable, especially comparing the first Coachella to the events at Woodstock 99. This is also stupid because there were approximately 1/10 the number of attendees at Coachella 99 compared to Woodstock and Coachella was only 66% as long in duration. - There is no acknowledgement of the fact that they finished. The event is depicted as a disaster but they finished! And many people had a good time. This does not erase the bad things that happened, but they did pull it off. - It’s not really a documentary, it’s mostly interviews with a bunch of woke types projecting their “feelings” onto something that happened 20 years ago, tying it to what happened at Columbine and other unsavory events. Certain artists get treated with kid gloves while others are accused of causing all the supposed problems then and today for simply existing. Verdict: A dumb and incomplete look at an event with a complicated story that cannot be told in two hours with any clarity especially when relying with interviewees talking out of their woke butts. In hindsight the promoters could have done better. It seems that there were too many people. It looked gross. I was 20 when it happened and traveling cross country would have been awful even though I liked just about every band whom appeared.

A really good show that grows over the course of the season that demonstrates the dynamic between brothers who are very different, loyal friends with interesting pasts and the one guy in the office who leaves it all at work and is always a blast.

Peter from Office Space and Shawn from Psych, what could go wrong? It's not that this show is bad. It's ok. The problem is that it's misery porn. These poor characters go through every messed up thing in the world and it's damn depressing to watch. There's no lightness, nothing positive, just misery. From that first scene with Peter.

The problem with Mr. Mayor is that it is effectively a remake of Parks and Recreation with no balance. Instead of a bunch of odd city employees (which now actually makes sense considering the size of Los Angeles vs. the tiny town in Parks) you have a bunch of woke true believers. There are no Ron Swanson's. Almost every character is a true believer Leslie, more woke than the next. The one saving grace is Bobby Moynihan, the Jerry of the show. He's funny.

An entertaining movie carried by the supporting cast. Because this is kind of his story, Pete Davidson isn't really acting and even with that gimme remains wholly unappealing. He plays an annoying child person in an annoying way and the viewer is left rooting against him. Marisa Tomei and Bill Burr are delightful, as is the group of friends supporting a bum.

A fun show about two best friends who are terrible at advertising yet somehow persevere in Detroit.

Incredible. I don't know how Gilligan did it but Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad. The similarities between Walter White and Jimmy McGill are striking and satisfying making this show successful as a predecessor series. The motivation behind McGill's descent is less straightforward but somehow more heartbreaking than that of Walter White's. McGill is more relatable. The end has been telegraphed since episode one and again at the beginning of each subsequent season. We already know the end of the Saul Goodman story, fortunately the continuation of Jimmy McGill's doesn't look like it will take "New Mexio Nazi's" to make him the good guy again.