Al Pacino hunts Nazis, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns for one last season
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Friday, February 21, and Saturday, February 22. All times are Eastern.
Top picks
Hunters (Amazon, Friday, 3:01 a.m., complete first season): “As grindhouse-inspired projects should, Hunters has a killer premise: A secret society of multi-ethnic vigilantes dispenses bloody justice for Nazi war crimes in 1970s NYC, decades after U.S. intelligence services allowed thousands of ex-Nazis to change their names and emigrate to America after the war. Working backwards from this nugget of historical truth, Hunters builds an ensemble that revolves around Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman), a comic book nerd aimlessly drifting through the old, dirty New York of 1977.” Read the rest of Katie Rife’s pre-air review.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Disney+, Friday, 3:01 a.m., seventh and final season premiere): Here’s how Sonia Saraiya said goodbye to The Clone Wars back in 2014, when we thought (with good reason!) that it was gone for good:
It’s a little regrettable that The Clone Wars couldn’t instead tell the stories of some of its less central characters in these Lost Missions—Ahsoka Tano, in particular. But this last journey with Yoda allows the series to come to a conclusion that has been sadly lacking in the intervening years between 1983’s splashy Return Of The Jedi and today’s action-packed, gadget-obsessed, video-game-spinoff-filled Star Wars franchise: There are no real winners in war. Pitting the Empire and the Rebellion as Manichean stand-ins for light and dark worked for a while, but closer inspection revealed many shades of gray between the Dark Side and the Jedi. At the close of this series, it looks that Star Wars and Lucasfilm kind of, sort of, maybe get it: But now that Star Wars: The Clone Wars is being put to bed, for the brave new world of Disney’s Star Wars, it remains to be seen if future iterations of the franchise will be able to tell this story as gracefully as an animated series did.
A lot has changed since then, but our enthusiasm for this series has not waned. Better still, based on the trailer at least, Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) will get a more substantial sendoff than the one that the lone Lost Missions season had to offer. Regardless, we’re excited—for this one last glimpse into The Clone Wars, and for Kevin Johnson’s recaps. Episodes will air weekly.
Regular coverage
Wild cards
Fresh Off The Boat (ABC, Friday, 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., two-part series finale): Normally this is where we’d tease a little bit from the episode description, but there’s someone much better equipped than us to let you in on what’s happening, so we’ll turn it over to him.
We’ll miss this show, which is bringing in guest stars Jaleel White and Andy Richter for its two-part finale.
Harley Quinn (DC Universe, Friday, 9 a.m., first-season finale): Harley’s mission to establish herself as Gotham’s most wanted outlaw has been a wickedly fun ride right up until the final moment in “Devil’s Snare.” After suffering a tremendous loss, the queen of mayhem finds herself less equipped to block The Joker’s path to total domination. As her ragtag team of sidelined villains suffers, the city succumbs to the tyranny that was once kept at bay with some semblance of balance, and we quickly begin to long for the—get this—calmer, more rational effect the now-toppled Legion Of Doom once provided. Will Harley’s waning fight for independence actually require her to save Gotham? More importantly, will Harley ever get a proper nemesis who isn’t a literal child? The last episode is a fittingly explosive end to a stellar inaugural season. [Shannon Miller]
Gentefied (Netflix, Friday, 3:01 a.m., complete first season): “Three years after screening at Sundance, Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chávez’s Gentefied has found new life on Netflix… In its latest iteration, Gentefied succeeds as a “love letter” to the Chicanx community in Los Angeles, highlighting the hybrid language, portions of history, and the (occasionally contentious) meeting of cultures. But the half-hour dramedy often struggles to tell a cohesive story across its 10-episode first season, hindered by hair-trigger turns from pointed commentary and life-or-death stakes to broad humor. Like its characters, Gentefied doesn’t have to choose one domain over the other, but its heartwarming story would only benefit from evening out the balance of silliness and melodrama.” Read the rest of Danette Chavez’s pre-air review.