![]() McClarnon makes Leaphorn an iconic figure, a Native American update on the Western hero, tough, wise and not necessarily beyond taking revenge. Joining him is Sgt Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) and his former partner Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), now a private detective. The new series has him tracking the man he suspects of causing the tragedy. Based on Tony Hillerman's crime novels set in the US South West during the 1970s, the first season revealed that Joe's son had been killed in a suspicious oil drilling explosion. After all, I wasn’t sure how long Moreno was going to want to do the show.One of television's best under-the-radar series returns for a second season, with Zahn McClarnon (Reservation Dogs and Fargo) as Lt. It was a ludicrous expectation-I see now that the show was never going to break its basic promise to its viewers-but at the time it made sense. It’s hard to explain how hard I was emotionally bracing myself for the death of a character whose marvelous frivolity was central (and whose bursts of seriousness were correspondingly wrenching). I expected, in short, that Lydia would die, and that the show would spend the aftermath careening toward a more prestige-oriented concept of itself. An all-too-frequent twist in these genre-bending days is to thwack the viewer for having formal expectations by subverting them in the aftermath, you feel silly and naïve and sad. I spent most of One Day at a Time’s third and final season fearing that the show would take a right turn toward grim realism, hollow out the pleasures that kept me watching, and discipline me for thinking they mattered. Send me updates about Slate special offers. It also demonstrates why that structure works. As sitcoms go, it’s almost laughably obvious and structured and plain. One Day at a Time isn’t philosophically or generically ambitious. ![]() When depression and alcoholism show up, they’re problems to be dealt with rather than states to poetically interrogate (or indulge). When Lydia wants anything at all, she makes an entrance. (To be clear, these are all fine subjects, but they’re all over TV right now, and a great way for a genre to sag under philosophical mission creep.) When Lupita’s sinking under the weight of things, she talks it out with her support group. There’s no digging into inchoate masculine impotence, or feminist frustration, or ennui, or a gnawing disappointment in the American dream. The crises are real and plausible, but they’re also refreshingly (and maybe artificially) concrete. When One Day at a Time portrays desperation, for instance, the source is evident: It’s money. Not even its most poignant moments-and there are many-leave you feeling empty or even confused. Everyone just shuffled along, gamely and with humor. In a TV landscape suffused with difficult, semi-philosophical programs, One Day at a Time has no dark nights of the soul, no jagged dramedic turns, no plot twists, no prestige antiheroism. Irony and dystopia sell, so I figured audiences would find One Day at a Time to be both too classically a Norman Lear sitcom and too direct, bordering on preachy, about the subjects it addressed. Some of that pushback can probably be chalked up to the infelicitous way Netflix made the announcement-over Twitter, using that chummy brand voice that implies corporations have feelings to offer a “just business” justification. But the outcry has been bigger than anyone anticipated, especially for a show that (per Netflix) just didn’t get enough viewers. I didn’t expect many to share my disappointment: Grateful though I was for each season we got, my hunch was that One Day at a Time was too niche and too light for its disappearance to matter. There is a universe, then, where fans of Gloria Calderón Kellett and Mike Royce’s Cuban American reboot of Whitney Blake and Allan Manings’ One Day at a Time-and I count myself among them-could have taken the show’s cancellation by Netflix in stride. Great shows get canceled all the time, and the world keeps spinning. Netflix’s New Show Stars Matthew Broderick as Richard Sackler. The Famous “Runaway Train” Music Video “Saved” 21 Kids. How a New Disney Princess Managed to Piss Off Both Disney Fans and ConservativesĪmazon’s Hit New Movie Is Being Praised for Its “Radical” Sex Scenes.
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