Welcome back to FlixWorthy, your weekly guide to Netflix streaming. Yet again we're bringing you a handful of new or notable selections from Netflix's streaming catalogue. Some will be classics, some will be little-seen gems, some will be shows you might have missed, and some...some will be crap so awful they simply has to be seen to be believed.
If you haven't checked out the New Arrivals over at Netflix, the past couple of weeks have seen the arrival of a ton of great television shows, most of them including full series runs. We've scoured the catalogue and we're here to hip you to the latest and greatest in our first ever all-TV installment of this column. I hope you've got a lot of free time lined up, because here's what's FlixWorthy this week, kids.
We're approaching two decades since FBI Special Agents Mulder and Scully began investigating the strange and unexplained, and X-Files is still a template that's being imitated, referenced, and flat-out copied by other shows hoping to capture its addictive blend of the procedural and the supernatural, with a liberal dash of quirkiness to keep things interesting. The entire series is available, and having rewatched the show back-to-back last year, I can say it's a great ride even all these years later. What's interesting to me in hindsight is that all those "mythology" episodes that everybody spent so much time obsessing over are actually some of the show's weakest moments. But even if all the Big Questions had received a more cohesive resolution, the show's finest moments would still be the unforgettable one-offs like "Humbug" or "Home." When it was hitting on all cylinders, X-Files did "monster of the week" outings better than just about anybody before or since, all carried along by the amazing chemistry between leads David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. All nine seasons are available, but if you want either of the movies, you'll have to send out for the actual discs.
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Lost is arguably the first genre show since X-Files that crossed over into the mainstream enough to become a true phenomenon. Sure, Joss Whedon's programs have plenty of die-hard fans, but Lost is one of those shows that, at its height, damn near everyone was watching. I could make a smoke-monster reference to my mother and she would know what I was talking about; that's frankly amazing. The first five seasons of Lost are available to stream in HD. It's not Blu-ray quality, but it's still damn purty.
Here's the show that launched a TV empire...a frustrating, hilarious, often-canceled empire. Without Buffy, there never would have been Angel, or Firefly, or Dollhouse, or Dr. Horrible...or whatever comes next. On the surface, the concept sounded more than a little shaky: a supernatural teen drama based on a shitty horror-comedy launching on an unproven network starring a young soap-opera actress and created by a guy who used to write for Roseanne. Little did anyone know that the name Whedon would eventually have an "esque" appended to the end in order to describe an entire style and genre of TV storytelling. Love him or hate him, Joss Whedon's indelible impact on the TV landscape started right here, with one girl chosen to defend us against the undead while facing an even more terrifying challenge: high school. The entire run of Buffy is available for your streaming enjoyment. Show the Twilight fan in your life what a human-vampire romance can look like when actually, you know, written well.
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From one end of the Whedon bookshelf to the other. Dollhouse didn't enjoy nearly as successful a run as Buffy, partly because it took a while to find its stride and partly because it was on the genre-TV elephant graveyard known as Fox. Some may question the wisdom of casting Eliza Dushku in a role that requires her to play anything other than Eliza Dushku, but she was buttressed (you heard me) by a phenomenal supporting cast and writing that only got sharper as the show went on. Only the first of the show's two seasons is streaming at this point, but it's available in HD, so bonus. And if Buffy and Dollhouse haven't sated your Whedon cravings, Netflix has also posted full runs of Angel and Firefly on demand.
Fox's 24 is winding down its last few hours of terrorism, double-agents, and triple-crosses, with the two-hour series finale set to air Monday, May 24. It's a show I've had a love-hate affair with over the years. The last few seasons that's meant starting out each season with renewed hope, growing increasingly frustrated, and then bailing when the writers resort to one of the same old tricks they've used damn near every season. Seriously, whoever is conducting employee background checks for CTU must be an ancestor of the guy in charge of repairing the holodeck on the Enterprise. Still, the first few seasons are gripping, breathless entertainment, and Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer is one of the definitive badasses of our time. 24 is a show that was designed to be watched back-to-back, and thanks to Netflix, you can hunker down for seven straight seasons of Jack screaming and shooting people. Season eight isn't up yet, since it's still unspooling, but you can likely expect it to turn up around the time of the DVD release, if not sooner.
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If you make a show called Prison Break, which is about a prison break, and that prison break occurs at the end of the first season...what do you do when the show continues for three more years? Prison Break didn't seem to have a good answer for that, so we got a batch of "on-the-lamb" episodes followed by a muddle of conspiracy theories and secret organizations. All four seasons are up; the only thing not streaming is the final movie, Prison Break: The Final Break.
You've made a huge mistake if you've never sat through what is hands-down the funniest, most sharply written sit-com of the past decade. Thankfully, here's your chance to rectify that mistake. For three seasons, Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) does his level best to defend his eccentric family from themselves while maintaining his own sanity. But what chance does he have against a clan that includes a shrewish, passive-aggressive mother (Jessica Walter); a felonious father (Jeffrey Tambor); a Segway-riding wannabe magician (Will Arnett); a vain, self-promoting sister (Portia de Rossi); her neurotic, never-nude husband (David Cross); and an idiot manchild (Tony Hale) who loses a hand to a seal? And that's not even counting his own son (Michael Cera), whose burgeoning love life tends toward the incestuous. There isn't a weak link to be found, from the dialogue to the direction to the amazing cast, resulting in a comedy that can only be described as "too smart for television." If for no other reason, you owe it to yourself to watch Arrested Development just so you can start catching all those references that have been flying over your head these past few years.
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Speaking of too smart for TV, Better Off Ted is like Arrested Development if it spent more time in the office and less amongst the Bluths. Ted (Jay Harrington) is an R-and-D executive at Veridian Technologies, a corporate behemoth that seems to make a little of everything, but none of it terribly well. In between deciphering corporate doublespeak and dealing with the fall-out from the company's latest ill-conceived products, Ted pines for colleague Linda (Andrea Anders), manages the machinations of boss Veronica (Arrested Development's Portia de Rossi), and reassures ever-fretting researchers Phil (Jonathan Slavin) and Lem (Malcolm Barrett). Only the first season is available so far, but I'm sure season two will follow eventually.
Based on the 1979 Stephen King novel, The Dead Zone stars former Brat Packer Anthony Michael Hall as generically named psychic Johnny Smith. After a six-year coma, Smith awakens to discover that he can see glimpses of the future of anyone he touches. Hall is great in the same role Christopher Walken played in the 1983 David Cronenberg movie version, even if his take involves slightly less cowbell. For the most part the show unfolds in a "mystery of the week" format, with the ascension of doomsday politician Greg Stilson serving as the long-term arc (Stilson is played by former Young Indy and Boondock Saint Sean Patrick Flannery). Until his death in 2005, late and lamented Trek writer Michael Piller ran the show with son Shawn, demonstrating just how talented he could be when working in a sandbox not stunted by franchise demands and a stagnant status quo. All six seasons are available streaming.
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Shiri Appleby stars as a cute-as-a-button high school student in (where else?) Roswell, NM, whose life is turned upside down after she takes a bullet to the gut and is restored to life by classmate Max (Jason Behr). Max, you see, is an alien-human hybrid, one of three teenaged visitors from another planet who survived the 1947 Roswell crash and have apparently had nothing better to do during the ensuing 50 years than lurk around high school eyeballing human jailbait. The writing staff included a pre-BSG Ron Moore, and a young Katherine Heigl spent several years as an extraterrestrial here before moving on up to Seattle Grace. All three seasons are streaming.
Ah, Riches, how I miss you. For two seasons, FX brought us the adventures of Irish/gypsy con artists Wayne (Eddie Izzard) and Dahlia Malloy (Minnie Driver), who, along with their three children, seize on a bit of fortuitous happenstance to assume the identities of an affluent suburban family. Unfortunately, hiding the truth from their new neighbors isn't nearly as daunting as dealing with the old "friends" and associates eager to get their cut of this very profitable pie. Created by Dmitry Lipkin (Showtime's Hung), The Riches is a fascinating look at a subculture most of us probably know nothing about, a darkly hysterical take on one particular family's efforts to carve out their slice of the American dream. Anything that keeps Eddie Izzard on my TV on a regular basis is golden in my book, which is only one reason why it was a huge letdown that this show didn't return for a third season...especially since the second season only lasted seven episodes. FX has a proven knack for quality drama, so it's a real shame this one didn't take off. Both seasons are available streaming via Netflix. Now if somebody would just get around to releasing FX's excellent, short-lived Las Vegas comedy Lucky.
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Like The Riches, Showtime's Weeds merges family drama and suburban life with a life of crime. Mary-Louise Parker stars as Nancy Botwin, a typical mom who helps make ends meet by dealing pot on the side. Naturally, it isn't all good buzz and munchies, and Nancy's entrepreneurial spirit often sets her against shady characters and interested law-enforcement parties. The show's sixth season is set to begin on Showtime this August, but in the meantime you can stream the first five right this very minute. Perfect time to light up and catch up. A scented candle, I mean. Ambiance is everything.
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