Three TV Shows For Those of Us Who Can't Get Enough of Roadies

Roadies is my new favorite show.  Not just my favorite show airing now.  In just a couple of episodes it became my favorite TV show ever.  The Showtime series about life behind the scenes of a roots-rock tour was created by Cameron Crowe and perfectly captures the same spiritual fervor for music that made his magnum opus Almost Famous my favorite movie.  Unfortunately, the critics have not been impressed by the show at all.  That's okay because Roadies isn't for critics.  It's for and about fans; people who love music or anything else more than they can stand, who keep coming back to that thing that stokes their fire no matter how many times they get burned.  The enemy be damned, Roadies struck a chord with me and I would wager it did the same for a lot of other people.  If you love the show and want more, if you'll need something to fill the void after the season ends or even to get you to the next episode, I have a few suggestions for your melodic fix.

Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll

It's not as bad as it sounds.  The title of the FX series comes with a hint of irony.  Most of the characters are past-their-prime rock stars.  Their lives and careers get a boost when Heathens front man (series creator Denis Leary) Johnny Rock's daughter shows ups and takes over.  Gigi, played by Nickelodeon alumnus Elizabeth Gillies, turns the Heathens into the Assassins and inherits the lead singer position while Johnny Rock becomes the offstage songwriter.  Gigi quickly enters a relationship with Johnny's best friend and guitarist Flash (John Corbett).  Together with back up singer and Johnny's long-term girlfriend Ava (Elaine Hendrix) they make up a strange family unit that is creepily comfortable talking about sex with each other.  Meanwhile, the rhythm section, Bobby Kelly and John Ales, has quirky side adventures.  The biggest problem is that it's mostly written by old dudes like Leary who think Lady Gaga is just another pop star and don't realize she released the best rock album of 2011.  There's a fair amount of rock star debauchery but Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll is mostly about people who love music and who love each other.

Mozart in the Jungle

Mozart in the Jungle could almost have the title Sex&Drugs&Baroque.  Amazon's Coppola Family Production centers on New York's cutthroat, hard partying classical music scene.  Remember the lunch room scene in Mean Girls when the defining trait of the band geeks is that they're oversexed?  Mozart in the Jungle is about those grown up horny nerds.  The first episode features a montage of Saffron Burrows' cellist sleeping her way through the different sections of the orchestra.  The main character is Hailey Rutledge, an oboist played by Lola Kirke who joins the ensemble after a last-minute hungover audition.  She only gets the chance after a new wunderkind conductor, Golden Globe winner Gael Garcia Bernal, starts shaking things up after taking over from his jealous older predecessor played by the iconic Malcolm McDowell.  I'm still not convinced Mozart deserved the Best Comedy Golden Globe over Transparent but it's a really good show about people who care about making music.

Sonic Highways

Dave Grohl is just annoyingly talented and he's too likable to blame him for it.  The drummer for the iconic, world changing band Nirvana turned front man for America's best and most consistent rock band of the past two decades, the Foo Fighters, proved himself to be a good director with his 2013 rockumentary Sound City.  The film about a legendary music studio in Los Angeles was followed up by an HBO series.  Sonic Highways follows the Foo Fighters on the great American road trip as they record eight different songs in eight different studios, each track an attempt to capture the soul of the city it was recorded in.  The result is a concept album that might be the Foo Fighters' best work ever.  The accompanying series is a marvelous journey through the history of music in the United States.  In spirit Sonic Highways is the closest thing to Roadies next to Almost Famous.  It's for fans, by fans.  It's rock and roll and it's divine.

Mad Men Report: New TV with 'Roadies,' 'American Gothic,' 'BrainDead,' and 'Uncle Buck'

Previously on Mad Men Report: Brian came up with a convoluted idea for a TV review feature where he judges new shows based on their capacity to distract him from watching Mad Men.  He really committed to this idea even though somewhere in the back of his head he knew he would have to explain the concept every time.  Also, he promised to focus on good shows rather than trash bad ones but that was three months ago and he didn't expect American Gothic to be so bad.

American Gothic

Early on in CBS's new horror series a character makes a joke about his daughter's family looking like a Norman Rockwell painting.  You see, the entire Hawthorne clan seems perfect but (WARNING!!!  SPOILER ALERT!!!  DO NOT READ ANY FARTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS FOR American Gothic!!!) they're not.  This family has deep, dark secrets.  Like one of them is a serial killer.  The only question is "who done it?"  Wait, that's my bad.  There are two questions: "who done it?" and "why should anyone care?"  I have a feeling only one of those questions will be answered by the end of the series and it won't be the latter.  On the bright side, Virginia Madsen is fun to watch as the family matriarch.

It would be more exciting to watch this gif for an hour straight.

Mad Men threat level: 3/10

BrainDead

In CBS's defense, they also recently debuted the more than respectable political comedy BrainDead, starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and created by the duo behind The Good Wife.  Winstead plays Laurel Healy, a struggling documentary filmmaker who enters the family business of politics to earn some cash.  Her role in her brother's Democratic Senatorial staff points her towards an infestation of alien insects who are getting inside politicians brains and taking over.  Along the way she embarks on a love/hate relationship with almost admirable Republican staffer Gareth Ritter (Broadway star Aaron Tveit, recently seen on screen in Grease: Live).  Ritter's boss, Tony Shalhoub as Senator Red Wheatus, is a slacker but he's willing to reach across the aisle until the bugs get in his brain.  That makes for a good cast and with smart writing and a quirky sense of humor BrainDead feels like it could be a cult classic, but it isn't quite exciting enough to be an instant one like Winstead's 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  No, if this series becomes a cult classic it will have to earn the title by standing the test of time.  Is it up to the challenge?  We'll have to wait and see.  That's how the test of time works.

Although, this is promising.

Mad Men threat level: 6/10

Uncle Buck

I didn't have high expectations for the ABC series based on a John Hughes/John Candy classic but with the very funny Mike Epps as the star I though it might surprise me.  Unfortunately, it did in all the wrong ways.  Epps is charming enough but the writing is clunky and dull.

You're better off watching the original Uncle Buck but
that's pretty much always true.

Mad Men threat level: 3/10

Roadies

I absolutely love things that are about music.  I love movies about music, TV shows about music and songs about music.  That's why my all time favorite movie is Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe's loving tribute to the world of rock in the 1970's.  That's also why I was so disappointed by Vinyl, the recent HBO series with more or less the same setting created by Martin Frigging Scorsese and Mick Goddam Jagger.  Vinyl and Almost Famous both treat listening to music as a religious experience but in different ways.  For Crowe music is radiating bliss consciousness but for Scorsese it's fire and brimstone.  Enter Roadies on Showtime, Crowe's spiritual sequel to his magnum opus.

The first episode,written and directed by Crowe, opens with a quote from Tom Petty; "I think the general public has no idea what roadies do. Bless em' all. I just play the songs. They make the show happen."  This show isn't about the hi-jinks of the drug addled rock stars who make the music you love, it's about the people behind the scenes with broken backs who make the music possible and love the band more than you'll ever know.  And their hi-jinks.

Tom Petty's words fade into Luke Wilson's tour manager Bill giving an orgasm to a 22 year old before production manager Shelly, played by Carla Gugino, barges in.  Bill and Shelly act like a married couple but as of now they're just a will-they-won't-they-they-will.  It would feel forced if Gugino and Wilson didn't have such great chemistry.  Actually, the entire cast is great apart or together, largely thanks to Crowe being a master of feel-good film making.  Imogen Poots plays the show's young protagonist Kelly Ann in the midst of a quarter-life crisis considering a move from the road life to film school in New York.  Poots exudes intelligent coolness even in her dorkiest moments.  Even her skateboarding stunt double seems cool as hell.  Everyone down to the number-crunching suit-wearing villain played by Rafe Spall is entirely endearing but the real scene stealer is Ron White's lovable loose-cannon Southern-rock cowboy Phil.

And of course, the music is great.  Where Vinyl grabs you by the throat and shouts "remember this song?!  Do ya, punk?!" Roadies uses music to create an ethereal journey.  A journey full of Pearl Jam.  All this leaves me with the question "do I love Roadies because it's good or because I love Almost Famous?"  I know this: it's certainly not a bad show.  I can't imagine anyone watching it without a smile on their face (unless I imagine watching that Luke Wilson scene with my parents, but let's just not do that).  I can't be totally objective about it but the more I think about it the more I think Roadies is genuinely a very good show.  Dare I say, it's all happening.

So cool.

Mad Men threat level: the first ever 10/10