Nine Perfect Strangers can’t pick a lane
Nicole Byer delights in Netflix’s short and sweet Nailed It! baking competition
You shouldn’t watch Nine Perfect Strangers — I’ll just get that out at the start.
The heavily promoted Amazon Prime exclusive, by way of Hulu, is a boring, drawn-out yawn of a thriller drama that has no idea what it’s trying to say or be.
You may get lured in by the cast and the scenery, with Nicole Kidman, Melissa Mccarthy and Michael Shannon sharing in their misery on a beautiful slice of California, but the allure pretty much stops there.
The story centres on nine people that for various reasons find themselves at a beautiful rehabilitation spa/resort called Tranquillum that treats the mostly white and wealthy for various mental health issues ranging from addiction to anxiety.
We’re given a glimpse into these character’s lives — for example, Frances Welty (Melissa Mccarthy), probably the most interesting of Tranquillum’s clientele, is an author who’s dealing with the emotional trauma of being catfished and swindled out of money and receiving some less-than-positive news on her latest novel.
So, she goes to this place to try to get away from all of that, but the facility’s powerful and ghostly director Masha (Nicole Kidman), with a completely unbelievable, fourth-wallbreaking Russian accent, seems to believe in addressing trauma head-on through immersion therapy and an assortment of rigorous treatments that seem to cause more problems than they solve.
There’s just a lot of things going on in NPS and none of it quite works, we have several characters going through their own struggles, intersecting with others, jarring flashbacks, vaguely religious imagery, an ominous tone and mood, a strange conspiracy of threat against the director, love triangles, critiques of wellness culture (or is it parody? approval? It can be hard to tell sometimes).
And despite those multiple layers it can be difficult to find interest or excitement in anything that’s happening on screen. It’s both convoluted beyond hope and in desperate need of something, anything to hold the viewer’s attention.
There are some great ingredients here, but when put all together, it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Nine Perfect Strangers is available on Amazon Prime Video with new episodes out weekly.
FANTASTIC BAKING FLOPS
Sometimes you need a short and sweet show that you can rely on, have on while you eat supper or while you’re waiting to head out to an appointment or whatever it might be. Usually, I rely on old standbys like The Office, but one show that has fit into that slot nicely is Netflix’s Nailed It!
Nailed It! gathers three amateur bakers and sets them up on an impossibly complicated task, to which the host, judges and viewers get to witness the hilariously terrible results.
It’s a formula that’s as predictable and comforting as chocolate chip cookies. We know they’re going to mess up and create barely edible abominations, with confectionary characters that look nothing like the original, but that’s the fun.
The glue that holds it all together is host Nicole Byer, whose hilarious facial reactions, improv skills and commentary is simply delightful.
The latest season, which launches on Sept. 15 seems to hone the formula, focusing more on the comedy that makes Nailed It! so easy to keep hitting that ‘play next episode’ button, even after you’ve told yourself it’s time to go to bed.
One episode that really got me has contestants baking a cookie with their likeness on it, which provided one of the most intense belly laughs I’ve had this year, prompting multiple rewinds and rewatches.
If you’re looking for something simple, silly and joyful, it’s hard not to recommend Nailed It!
Season six of Nailed It! launches on Netflix on Sept. 15.
FANDOM HITS RANDOM
Marvel’s continued domination of the cultural zeitgeist takes a new spin in the latest Disney+ animated offering called What If…? Which asks exactly that.
What if Agent Carter got the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers? What if T’challa was abducted by Yondu instead of Peter Quill? What if?
It’s a fun question to ask, especially when you get most, not all, of the original actors to return to voice these iconic heroes in mostly new settings.
The resulting answers to What If, though, can be misses.
The pilot episode, which imagines a world where Agent Carter (Hayley Atwell) essentially becomes Captain America, though this time with a Union Jack on the iconic shield, is neat but treads too closely to the original movie.
It’s great to see Carter given her due, but the episode doesn’t go far enough to show how monumental this change would be, replicating some of the same beats, perhaps for fan service but it just comes off as a bit tired.
Luckily, What If…? at least so far, seems to get better with each subsequent entry. A personal highlight was hearing Chadwick Boseman portraying T’challa one last time, though this time as Star-lord rather than the Black Panther, but still.
A connecting tissue through each episode is The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright), a celestial being that narrates and explores these different realities. It’s hard to tell if these new universes will amount to something larger, perhaps play a role in a multi-verse storyline or not, but larger ramifications aside, it’s still fun to ask the question and see what happens, especially with so many of the original cast members coming back to answer.
What If…? is available on Disney+ with new episodes out weekly.