Late Night (2019)

Katherine Newbury is not an easy person to work for.  When someone asks her for a raise, she fires him.  His main reason for asking is the birth of a child, who will contribute nothing to the show.  Also, most of her writing staff has never met her.  Many haven’t even seen the stage where she hosts her late-night talk show.

She’s pressured to add diversity to the writer’s room because all of her writers are white and male.  As luck would have it, Molly Patel is looking to become a writer for the show and happens to show up moments after an opening becomes available.  Yes, Molly does have comedic talent, but she’s coming from a chemical plant where she worked in quality control.

It’s a rough ride at first, but Molly starts to find her place.  She even gets a joke in the monologue after convincing Newbury to be more daring.   Success doesn’t last long for Molly.  She has to put up with seven men who aren’t happy to see her there.  Her boss doesn’t really much like her, either.  (Molly finds herself fired twice during the course of the movie.)

She’s also constantly reminded of the fact that she’s a diversity hire.  (The workplace is so dominated by men that they’ve taken to using the ladies’ room, as there are no women there.)  She’s faced with a choice, though.  She can concentrate on the ‘diversity’ aspect of her employment or she can focus on the ‘hire’ part of her employment.  She has the job she wanted.  Does it matter how?

Newbury also has some facts to face.  She’s trying to hold on to a show she’s been hosting for nearly 30 years.  She’s not willing to admit that she’s stuck in a rut.  Just because it was successful before doesn’t mean that it will connect with today’s audiences.  She’s not getting any tweets or followers on social media.  What she is getting is replaced and by a comedian who’s very crude.

The movie comes across as a showcase of problems in the motion-picture industry.  Male privilege, age discrimination and Tokenism are addressed.  None of it seems forced, though.  It’s more a way of using the movie as a way to introduce various talking points while not being too pointed about it.  (Molly finds herself crying in the ladies’ room until she’s kicked out by a man who needs use it.)

So, Newbury and Molly need each other.  They both have similar stories.  Each is trying to make it among a crowd of men.  Each has issues they have to face because of that.  Ultimately, each will succeed or fail on their own terms.

IMDb page

Future Man (Season 1)

If you watch enough time-travel movies, there are certain things that would be good, like stopping Hitler before he becomes the leader of Germany.  If any of us invented a time machine, that’s probably the first thing we’d look in to.  The problem is that there’s no promise that this would be effective.  There were a lot of other factors at play, so there’s no guarantee that someone much worse wouldn’t have come along and done the same thing.

Such is the problem that Wolf and Tiger have.  They live in a world where genetically modified people known as biotics rule.  Regular humans have no hope except with time travel.  They’ve traced the Biotics’ origin to Doctor Elias Kronish,  All they need is a savior.

What does it take to become a savior?  That’s what Josh “Future Man” Futturman finds out when he beats Biotic Wars, a game that no one else has beaten.  Wolf and Tiger show up in his room to recruit Josh into their war.  You see, in their time, warriors play video games for training.  What they don’t realize is that Josh thought it was just a game.  Yes, in a giant nod to The Last Starfighter, they used a video game as a recruitment tool.

The first episode should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect.  There are plenty of references to major time-travel movies, like Terminator and Back to the Future.  There are all manner of sexual situations, like Tiger and Wolf having sex to relieve tension.  This is not a TV series you want to watch with your children.  Or your parents, for that matter.

The series has 13 half-hour episodes, meaning that it’s very easy to binge watch.  I was worried that the series might drag, as several other series have.  This isn’t a problem.  In fact, the series was originally developed as a movie.  It was eventually realized that they needed more time to tell the whole story.

Part of this is that they have several setbacks.  Josh is insistent on not killing Kronish whereas Tiger and Wolf would simply kill him as a baby.  Many of Josh’s attempts result in either failure or making the situation worse. I kind of wonder why Tiger and Wolf needed Josh in the first place, since it should be relatively easy to get that information.  It’s pure chance that Josh works at Kronish’s research facility.

It seems like much of the plot revolves around paying homage to various tropes of the genre.  In terms of time travel, very little is original.  Josh points out that killing Kronish at an early age is the central plot of the first Terminator movie.  There is also an episode that loosely resembles Back to the Future.  This isn’t to say that it’s not entertaining.  Wolf has an instant attraction to pickles and eventually takes up cooking, which leads to an interesting episode.

The series is at least maybe a little more realistic if that can be a thing with science fiction.  The amount of culture shock experienced by Tiger and Wolf is believable.  I also think most people in Josh’s situation would also teeter between wanting to go on an adventure and not waning to screw things up royally.

It did end up being a fun series.  (Yes, I know I’m a few months late in reviewing it.)  I don’t want to ruin the ending, but it looks like there will be a second 13-episode season.  I’ll be looking forward to it.


IMDb page