Hal & Harper

This makes a really strong case for having a sibling -- I feel like as an only child I maybe have both a Hal and Harper existing within me. What a weird show, not surprising at all that it took a while for a streamer to pick this up, it's entirely coasting on emotional buildup that doesn't pay off satisfyingly in 8/9 episodes, there are no cliffhangers and the episodes totally bleed into each other -- effectively, there is nothing particularly TV about it other than Cooper wanting more time to develop his characters. I am obvs Cooper-pilled for life since he praised my 'Best Films of 2020' video and I think he continues to do some great work here - his acting is the best it has ever been, and a lot of the writing is really strong. He gets great work out of Lili Reinhart (someone I was unfamiliar with until she was cast in this) and Ruffalo. But there's no denying this doesn't come together the way his features do. It feels like 10,000 hours of footage were shot and the order of things was only figured out in the edit. It largely feels this way because the best parts of the show are fast-moving montages covering wide breadths of time, namely when we see Harper's relationship with Jesse develop throughout college, and when we see Harper hang out at her classmate's house for the first time -- both of these completely broke my heart. But then there are entire episodes that take place out of sequence, kinda incoherently, attempting some sort of Eternal Sunshine memory remix that I think you can only pull off when there's a sci-fi premise. He's also trying to do the Little Women (2019) trick with two timelines, but constantly having "2009"/"NOW" flashing on screen demonstrates a lack of confidence in the clear distinctions that is, unfortunately, warranted. Everything involving Cooper and Lili playing children works really well, and given that's the show's biggest challenge to pull off, it's quite the success. Unfortunately the present day stuff is wonky, a plot focused on Hal's one functional male friendship is kinda abandoned before it takes off, Harper's relationship with a single mother co-worker (distractingly played by Cooper's real partner, who also looks exactly like fellow cast member Betty Gilpin) fails to ignite any real spark, and there's a bunch of stuff involving an uncle in England and inherited mental health issues from the dead mother (?) that doesn't kick in until the final episode -- there was a lot of time to explore that stuff! About 45% of the show is just Ruffalo with his head in his hands looking depressed, and he's the best in the biz at that stuff, but it becomes a bit exhausting. Ultimately it's a really worthwhile experiment to try create That Cooper Raiff Feeling in a small-screen setting with TV pacing, but I'm just not a fan of TV pacing in general, so I hope in future it's feature films all the way. Definitely worth a watch if you like his films and I'll certainly be including it in my Cooper-approved Best Films/TV of the Year montage :)