Ty Watches "Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail" Season Premiere

The newest season of "Miracle Workers" premiered on TBS this past Tuesday. I love this show. I have sung its praises on the website. I think it is a super interesting and unique way to make a show. I like the subject material very much the first two seasons, and I like how they skewered said subjects. Simon Rich has proven himself very capable of broad humor, and "Miracle Workers" may be his best creation yet. The cast is dynamite, the writing is superb, the directing is top notch and I don't mind having to wait a year or two for each season. This show is so different from everything else on TV right now, so writing and filming it has to take a good amount of time. Add on the pandemic and that must have made it harder to get done. But the third season premiere was just as good as the first two, and it has me pumped for what is to come this third season.

This time around they tackle the Oregon trail. I remember playing this game on a computer when I was in elementary school. I loved it. I have tried to find that high again on my iPhone or Xbox, but it is not the same. I need that floppy disk and those super old school graphics. What "Miracle Workers" did in the premiere was give me that feel. The set was super old school. It looked like a western from the 50's. The clothes are very of the time. The actors actually look like the people in the game. I heard words like dysentery and plague and complaints about not enough crops. They mentioned all the walking that needs to be done. They talk about how long the journey will be and how they will lose people along the way. In the town in the beginning they are losing people to disease left and right and they even make a joke about being six feet apart. Someone in the town gets cholera and the reverend wants everyone to stand six feet apart at the funeral. They don't and another person dies during the service. It was timely, but also how it probably was back in Oregon trail times. I also appreciate that the writers and actors talk and act like modern people. They dress how people dressed back then, they use what people would have used, they live the life but they talk like people I know. They make funny modern jokes. Geraldine Viswanathan, who is awesome, portrays this the best of all the actors. She is really great on this show, and this should definitely lead to more starring roles for her. I think that this is my favorite part of the show. They are putting modern day people in crazy situations that actually happened in history. I always wonder how I would act during ancient times, they did that in season two, or how I would work if I worked in a "heaven" type of place, season one. And I would always talk about my strategy of how I would have done things had I been alive during the Oregon trail computer game.

I love this show. I cannot recommend it enough. I'm pumped it is back. People need to start watching this show so they can do more and more of this. "Miracle Workers" is a fresh Tv show that deserves so much more love than it is currently getting. Check it out. It is so worth your time.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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Ty Watches "Miracle Workers" Season 2

Yesterday I finished season two of “Miracle Workers”. I really enjoyed the first season, but didn’t know if they’d do another one. I thought it was going to be one season and out. Then it was rumored that they were going to do an anthology type thing, with the same actors playing different characters in different stories. I loved this idea. When I found out they were going to do a dark ages season, I was even more on board. I enjoy reading about that time, and throw in the fact that Simon Rich was going to put his spin on it, this was a home run for me.

This season two experiment did not disappoint. As I said, they brought back all the main people, Daniel Radcliffe, Steve Buscemi, Geraldine Viswanathan, Karan Soni and Lolly Adefope. But this time around they had different roles. Buscemi and Viswanathan were father and daughter, and Jon Bass, who had a smaller role in season one, was the son. Buscemi was a hard working guy who was just happy to be alive and have healthy children. He was great. Bass was a dolt and a dummy, but he was also super nice and really loved his family. Viswanathan was the smartest person in the town, a hard working idealist they wanted bigger and better things. She was so good in this part of the anthology. She was great in season one, but she excelled as the star of season two. She had the funniest moments of the season, she had the most growth, she revealed the most, she crushed it. I was so impressed by her performance. Adefope, who was quietly amazing in season one, was great here as well. She had a bigger role this time around too. I really enjoyed her stuff with the convent, and his into it she got. She was fun, grounded and kept a level head. Radcliffe was great, as usual, as the black sheep prince of his royal family. He was all about love, affection and helping others. His family was filled with murderous tyrants, his dad, the king, played by Peter Serafinowicz expertly, was the most vicious of all. But Radcliffe was just different. He wanted what was best for the town, the people and, mainly, Viswanathan’s character. Their scenes together were so sweet, even when they fought. Karan Soni was solid, like he always is, as the Lord who works for Radcliffe’s family. He was funny, dry and quick witted. The episode where he goes to trial to help out a goat is hilarious. He truly owns that whole episode. He also had a heart of gold, and was rewarded greatly in the season finale. As for the other actors, they did great in their small roles.

What I liked most about this part of the anthology was how they joked about the dark ages. Be it war, religion, money, entertainment, it was all done so well. To open a series with a live execution, and to play it for laughs, I mean, it was perfect. The stuff with school, and how it was so ridiculous, simply hilarious. The “concerts” and live entertainment was downright absurd, and I loved it. The way they represented class was also done so well. I love this series, and I want it to stick around.

I’m a humongous fan of Simon Rich as well. He did some great stuff while writing for “SNL”. I am one of the biggest fans of “Man Seeking Woman”. And now he has “Miracle Workers”. This one seems like it has the most staying power simply because Radcliffe is attached. But everyone else is fantastic that is involved with this show. I cannot recommend it enough. Watch this show so TBS will continue to let them make more and more. It is so good.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

Come and support Ty and the podcast on Patreon.

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Ty Watches "Miracle Workers"

The new show "Miracle Workers" on TBS premiered last night. I just finished watching it, and I have to say, it ruled.

For those that don't know, the show is about God and the angels that work for him. That is the simple premise of the show at least. According to the "coming this season" at the end of the episode, there are going to be plenty more story lines. That aside, as I said, the premiere was excellent. It was magical. It was funny and absurd and goofy in all the right ways.

God is played by Steve Buscemi, and this has the potential to be one of his best. He is disillusioned. The world is going to hell around him, and he just seems fed up. He is over it. At points in the premiere you see him chugging beers, calling his lazy Susan the best thing that he has ever owned, he's watching TV just waiting to hear someone call him out and thank him. He is over it all. He wears sweats and sleeps pretty much all day long. His assistant, Sanjay(Karan Soni), clearly loves his job, but you can see the cracks starting to form. He is there to do whatever is asked of him, but the ideas coming from God now seem insignificant and, quite frankly, stupid. At one point, when God is pitching him a restaurant idea, you can see him and his anger starting to boil over. That being said, he is still by God's side when he decides that he is going to blow up Earth. I have a good feeling his story is only going to grow and grow throughout the season.

We also meet a few angels during the episode. Angela Kinsey plays what seems to be a human resource manager, and she is great. She is callous, but also caring. The main 2 angels we meet in the episode are Eliza(Geraldine Viswanathan) and Craig(Daniel Radcliffe). Eliza is an opened minded, go getting type of person. She wants to change the world, and asks for a new job. She wants to be moved from the dirt department, where she literally just messes with dirt, and Kinsey decides that she should be sent to the Prayers Answered department. She is pumped by this news. She now really feels that she can, and will, make a difference. When she finally gets to her new department, she finds that it isn't all it seems, and she only has one other co worker, Craig. Craig is good at his job, and likes what he does. He only answers small prayers, like helping people find lost keys and gloves because that is fulfilling to him. He has been doing this job for centuries, and he has gotten good at it. But, he is also in a rut, not going after big prayers, just the small ones. He just doesn't realize the rut. He has no friends, he has never had a cheeseburger, he doesn't know what a happy hour is and he barely goes outside. He and Eliza form a fast friendship, and when they make a bet with God that they can answer an impossible prayer, you can see that they genuinely enjoy one another's company. I love when shows take this route with religion. I myself am not a religious person, so when someone makes jokes about the afterlife, and really embellishes it, I am on board.

As I said before, Buscemi is so perfectly cast for this role. He is tremendous. But so are Soni, Viswananthan and Radcliffe. They really add a great deal of comedy to the show. I found myself laughing out loud watching the episode. I am so excited to see where it goes from here. Simon Rich, who also wrote for "SNL", "Inside Out" and the very, very underrated "Man Seeking Woman" has what seems to be, at least in my opinion, a great show with loads and loads of potential.

I cannot recommend "Miracle Workers" enough. It is awesome, and I assume it will continue to be.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. He, like his idol Homer Simpson, practices his own kind of religion. Just the other day he took the day off for the Feast of Maximum Occupancy.

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