There are a ton of series out there and even though I don't know how the economics of something like this works, I feel as though these have become more of a hot item than films have become since these days it seems like a majority of films end up losing money at the box office.
Series though, there are a lot of them and as you would expect, most of them aren't very good or if they are good they are more like slightly above decent than they are anything amazing.
I haven't been really blown away by nearly any series that I have seen in the past year save one or two here and there but one of them that I have really enjoyed in called Rooster.
When the series started out, Steve Carell's character "Greg Russo" is a famous action/romance author whose daughter is a teacher at a university and he originally visits because her marriage is falling apart after her husband had an affair. He visits to console her and while visiting an old friend of his that happens to be the President of the university that his daughter works at, offers him a job which he ends up taking.
This doesn't exactly sound like as setup for hilarity, I know. There isn't much going on there but what ends up happening has sort of dramedy appeal that focuses more on dram than on comedy but has a bit of both mixed in that makes fun of modern-day PC culture and how older people are having a difficult time adhering to it.
There are a lot of really good characters in this show. IN fact, there are no truly bad characters and this is a plus for me because it seems like no matter what I watch there is always one of two people that seem a bit out of place and like they don't belong in the cast. I can't say that about Rooster as every character is perfectly cast and the writing is extremely good.
I will admit that my bias is showing here because I have always enjoyed John C. McGinley ever since first becoming introduced to him back when he played Dr. Cox on Scrubs, which is also a show that I feel had / has excellent writing.
There are a lot of things that make Rooster excellent but part of it is the somewhat exaggerated aspect of modern PC-culture that gets taken up to a very high level on college campuses. I think that anyone around my age can kind of find the humor in this because I sometimes find myself breaking certain "societal rules" that I didn't know existed such as the other day when I called my friend a "retard" in public and people were kind of like "shhhh, you can't say that!"
Carell's character is constantly getting reprimanded by HR for violations that he doesn't even realize could possibly be considered offensive as he is new to the college life.
The touching relationships that all of these people have with one another is pretty great too and there are more than a few moments that you are going to have "awwww" moments when you think about how important friendships and family are, and how there could very well be people around us that are struggling even though their outward personality indicates the opposite.
The two relationships that stand out the most to me is the one with Greg (Carell) and his daughter, Katie as well as Greg's relationship with his old friend and now president of the university, Walter (McGinley). I guess I am just a sucker for truly wholesome relationships.
At it's heart this is a drama, but it has plenty of comedic moments that need no laugh track in order to amuse you and this is mostly because the writing is truly top-notch on this show. The music is really good as well and whoever is in charge of hitting us with just the right song to help us feel a certain way at a certain time, is doing a wonderful job.
The reason why I am writing about this again is because with most series, including series that have big names in them like Carrel and McGinley, they tend to start out strong and then perhaps fizzle in the middle. I believe that this series might be immune to this notion because there really isn't a certain point that we are working towards since this show isn't about any sort of real end goal. There is no mountain to climb here and it is just about a group of people and their normal lives and while I know that doesn't sound super exciting, it kind of just WORKS.
I'm going to skip the normal summary where I tl;dr you about if you should watch this or not. YES, you should watch this. It is one of the best series that I have seen in years and since the episodes are only half an hour each, they are going to be over before you want them to be.
This is currently only legally streamable on HBO Max or their affiliates