What I Watched This Week: 25 Apr 2021

NEW SHOWS
93rd Annual Academy Awards (B-)
There were some interesting new directions with pacing and structure. No songs and only one bit of banter that resulted in eight-time nominee Glenn Close putting that backfield in motion. But then they whiffed the ending. Moving Best Picture was a big mistake, and ending on an award where the expected posthumous winner lost, and the actual winner was MIA was an outright disaster.

Mare of Easttown – “Fathers” (A)
Basically on par with the tremendous premiere, only now there’s an even more potent mix of humor and dread. We’ve got a new partner (Evan Peters, finally getting to work on a miniseries that has an idea of where it’s going), a stalker (the parent of an especially nasty girl who assaulted the murder victim) and another possible homicide (courtesy of the father of the dead girl). Oh, and a potentially horrifying revelation about the father of the dead girl’s baby.

The Handmaid’s Tale
“Pigs” (B) / season premiere
“Nightshade” (B+)
“The Crossing” (A-)
Takes a while to get going, but it all culminates in an intense third episode. It would get an A were it not for the last-second killing of two characters that came out of nowhere and felt cruelly unnecessary.