I watched and finished watching Josh Thomas earlier series, ‘Please Like Me,’ and I was very much into it, so when I found out that he had another one that just started (on Freeform and Hulu) I knew I wanted to check it out right away. And after watching the first episode, ‘Seven Spotted Labybug,” I am once again smitten. I admit it took me a while to really ‘get’ Thomas. He could be a tad annoying as an actor, and maybe the bitter in me is always jealous that he gets so many cute leading men, but I have to say his characters, almost always gay, are always interesting in a humane way. They can grate at time, but more often than not, they are relatable, even for someone like me who is years older than these characters. In this new show, he plays Nicholas, who is visiting hos father (and his two stepsisters) in America when, on the eve of his departure back to Australia, his father confesses that he has pancreatic cancer. All of a sudden, Nicholas’ life is upended, and he is thrust into taking care of his two step-siblings. (His father dies by the episode’s end) Nicholas, like Thomas, has a wry dry voice and everything doesn’t come off smoothly, but we see him try to do the right thing, and by the end of the first episode, we are all in on the new set up. Sure, this set up is a little too comfy (they are wealthy, so…) but the rough road ahead is inviting, and I am more than enthusiastic to find out what happens next. The two siblings are your typical precocious kids, but also flawed – one is socially awkward and the other is in the spectrum – which makes the characterizations very interesting. I’ll explore life with them…
Tag Archives: freeform
The Bold And The Beautiful (Television Thoughts: The Bold Type, Freeform)
Yes, on paper, you can really spot a lot of cliches on Freeform’s new show ‘The Bold Type,’ but really the show is not as bad as I feared. In fact, this is the perfect summer show – a group of beautiful people living their lives in that fairy tale version of New York City where everyone is clean, well-dressed and the city doesn’t seem to have any smells but their perspective perfumes. Who wouldn’t want to live in that world, and for an hour a week perhaps you can experience it.
This show is executive produced by Joanna Cole, who I know from her appearances on Project Runway. Her counterpart character here, Jacqueline, does not speak with a British accent, and although initially categorized as a Miranda Priestley like character, shows a lot of humanity here, and Melinda Hardin plays her with a lot of warmth and compassion. I love her.
And then we have the three young women – Jane, Kat, Sutton – who play the millennial young women with varying storylines that vary from ordinary (inter-office affairs) to surprisingly fresh (one interacts with a Muslim lesbian) They’re identifiable enough to be appealing even to me who is as old as the hills. All they need to add is more cute young men and I will be forever hooked.