Monday Media Musings - 11/08/21

Only Murders in the Building: Another show I watched with my Tuesday TV group. We ended up watching the last four episodes in one night because we had to know how it ended. Both hilarious and engaging, the television equivalent of a page-turner, Selena Gomez is wonderful, and her chemistry with Steve Martin is spot on. All of the cast was great, really. This show is one of my favorite genres: it parodies a genre while being itself an exemplar of that genre. I think that's what literary analysts mean by pastiche? Jane the Virgin is the example that immediately comes to mind -- a telenovela that simultaneously pokes fun at the conventions of telenovelas. Anyone have any other recs in this vein? Anyway, I don't listen to enough true crime podcasts to have a good sense of exactly all the references, but some were obvious even to me (I recognized the plinky piano theme music as a send-up of Serial immediately). ( Spoilers. )

I had been wondering how they would pull off a second season, but the final moments set up the turn perfectly, and I can't wait to see what's coming next.

My Fair Lady: Our most recent theater experience. I've never seen this show before, nor have I seen the movie, but I was familiar with many of the songs, and I knew the basic outline of the plot -- or at least I thought I did. An English professor of linguistics (Henry Higgins) makes a bet with a colleague that he can teach a Cockney woman (Eliza Doolittle) "proper" speech and behavior well enough that she can pass for upper-class at a society ball, hijinks and romance ensure. And while that's not wrong, exactly, there are a lot of reasons the story wasn't what I expected. ( I'm sure we're well beyond the statute of limitations on spoilers here, but I'll cut it anyway. )

As usual for these productions, the staging was gorgeous, the performances were all excellent, the costumes were amazing (clearly modeled on the costumes in the movie, many of which are so iconic that I recognized them immediately even though I've never seen it). Glad I saw it, if just to have finally experienced a show that's such an important part of Broadway musical history. But I do wonder whether some of these shows from the earlier part of the 20th century ought to stay a part of history, not be continually revived.