Write about entertainment long enough and confusing themes emerge. Is adolescence a nightmare to be endured and transcended? Or a permanent state? Just watching the past week’s new and returning series may leave one bewildered.
Only last Friday, Apple TV+ introduced a series, “Me,” about a 12-year-old boy (Lucian-River Chauhan) beset with pimples, insecurities and bullies, but who gets through this difficult stage by the superpower of shapeshifting, an ability “triggered” by emotional trauma.
While that series depicts tweendom as a hot mess of hormones, the Amazon Prime comedy series “Sausage Party: Foodtopia” essentially tells us that the crude phallic obsessions of junior high locker-room banter are the be-all and end-all of adult sophistication. Created by Seth Rogen, a talent who has made the most of foul-mouthed dude-talk marinated in a cannabis haze, “Sausage Party” is an all-you-can-eat junk food buffet of arrested development.
Rogen’s comedic banter generally involves long, childish motor-mouthed asides. This style also informs the depressingly violent cartoon action comedy “Hit-Monkey,” returning today for a second season on Hulu. Featuring a plot too scabrous and idiotic to describe, it follows a higher primate trained as a professional assassin who is mentored from beyond the grave by the ghost of an American professional killer, voiced by Jason Sudeikis (“Ted Lasso”).
As anybody who reads, or reads between the lines, of this column can probably detect, it has been some time since I was 12 years old. But I distinctly remember that when I was 12, the notion of staying 12 was not my chief ambition. I was eager to grow up and do all the things grown-ups did in sophisticated books and movies.
Pity the contemporary adolescent who sees “Sausage Party” and “Hit Monkey” as the work of “adults.” No wonder the kid in “Me” wants to shapeshift.
— Perhaps adult humor can be found in films from an earlier century. A master thief (Herbert Marshall) joins forces with a pickpocket (Miriam Hopkins) to fleece a high-society woman (Kay Francis) in the 1932 comedy “Trouble in Paradise” (8 p.m., TCM, TV-G), adapted from a Hungarian stage comedy and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, a German immigrant who brought a European sensibility to his comedies, known as “the Lubitsch touch.”
Some years back while attending a film festival, I had a chance to ask director Peter Bogdanovich his advice on the one director contemporary audiences should discover or rediscover. Without hesitation, he suggested Lubitsch.
The sophisticated thievery continues with the 1941 comedy “The Lady Eve” (9:30 p.m., TCM, TV-PG). Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn pose as a wealthy father and daughter to bamboozle a naive tycoon (Henry Fonda). Directed by Preston Sturges, a playwright, screenwriter and director who had a brief but brilliant run of movies in the early 1940s blending dark slapstick humor with witheringly quick dialogue.
His influence on the Coen Brothers is well documented. In his 1941 Depression Hollywood comedy “Sullivan’s Travels,” Joel McCrae portrays an earnest Hollywood writer who wants to depart from comedy to make a movie about the destitute. His effort, “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” became the title of the Coen Brothers’ 2000 musical comedy.
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— “American Ninja Warrior” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG).
— Jenn takes her bevy of suitors to Melbourne, Australia, on “The Bachelorette” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
— Grovel-to-grovel coverage of the Republican National Convention (8 p.m., PBS; 9:30 p.m., NBC; 10 p.m., CBS, ABC).
— A very bad day for Knight on “NCIS” (9 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14).
CULT CHOICE
A circus strongman (Anthony Quinn) purchases a naive peasant woman (Giulietta Masina) to be his wife and co-star in director Federico Fellini’s 1954 drama “La Strada” (noon, TCM). Composer Nino Rota’s haunting theme for this highly regarded film is very similar to one he would later write for “The Godfather” — one seems to echo the other.
SERIES NOTES
On two episodes of “The Neighborhood” (CBS, r, TV-PG): Gemma holds a school fundraiser (8 p.m.); squabbles (8:30 p.m.) … “Name That Tune” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG) … … Patton Oswalt hosts “The 1% Club” (9 p.m., Fox, TV-PG).
LATE NIGHT
Adam Kinzinger and Bikini Kill are booked on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” (11:35 p.m., CBS) … Jimmy Fallon welcomes Natalie Portman, Julio Torres and Pete Yorn on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Anna Faris and Colman Domingo visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC) … Taylor Tomlinson hosts “After Midnight” (12:35 a.m., CBS).
