Pandemonium In Detroit

 I finally found a current sitcom worth watching, and it's "American Auto."

"American Auto," which airs on NBC, is set in the fictional Payne Motors, a Detroit automaker having to deal with the foibles of the American car business at large with an impetuous new CEO from the pharmaceutical industry - Katherine Hastings, played by "Saturday Night Live" alumnus" Ana Gasteyer - who knows next to nothing about cars.  Payne has a motley crew of characters trying to steer the company in the right direction with hilarious consequences.  They include the chief commercial officer, Sadie (played by Harriet Dyer) who needs to figure out how to market dubious products, the insecure engineer designer Cyrus (played by Michael Benjamin Washington), the company's British chief lawyer Elliot (played by Humphrey Ker) and - this might be my favorite character - Wesley Payne (played by Jon Barinholtz), the family scion of Payne Motors whose only qualification for being at the company is having lived through birth.  Among other characters.

The storylines involve a botched car rollout, dealing with sudden expensive recalls, labor relations, and the general stupidity of car companies who think they know their customers.  As a car buff, I probably find it more laugh-out-loud funny than many people would, especially the occasional references to the, uh, special relationship between Detroit and any car-testing magazine not named Consumer Reports.  Series creator Justin Spitzer says that "American Auto" is not based on any one company, but Katherine Hastings is clearly based on a hybrid of General Motors CEO Mary Barra (the first female CEO of a major American automaker) and former Ford CEO Jim Hackett, who came to Ford from the furniture business (and got rid of Ford's sedans and hatchbacks and put the company on a course to make mostly SUVs and pickup trucks for North America, a goal achieved just in time for Russia to cause gas prices to skyrocket with its invasion of Ukraine).  Wesley Payne is clearly based on the more useless members of the Ford family, of which I'm sure there are many, as well as any other VIPs in Fortune 500 companies who are VIPs because their names are on the product.  I find "American Auto" delightfully amusing for all of these reasons - and because of Ana Gasteyer.

The season finale of "American Auto" airs this Tuesday on NBC  at 8:00 PM Eastern, and I hope its not the series finale.  You can watch all of the episodes of "American Auto" on Peacock.

The Last Episode of "The Middle"

Okay, it's been a week since the one-hour series finale of "The Middle" aired, so I'm going to go right ahead and spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen it yet . . . because if you haven't seen it by now, you're not going to.

Axl did in fact move to Denver for a new job, and the Heck family drove him there from their hometown of Orson, Indiana . . . but before they could even reach the Mississippi River, Sean Donahue - originally on his way to Africa for the summer as a medical volunteer - dropped everything and caught up with them once he found Sue's snow globe present and realized she was in love with him as much as he was in love with her.  The moment of Sue and Sean coming together that no one saw coming or imagine would happen did, in fact come . . . and it happened. :-)   On a rural highway in the middle of nowhere.

Too bad the snow globe broke. 

But the bigger surprise was that Frankie's voice-overs from throughout the series had taken place looking back from some time around 2030 or so, because we learn what happened to the Heck children after - long after - 2018.  Sue and Sean married after two breakups, Brick became a bestselling children's author, and Axl eventually returned to Orson and had three sons that were more like miniature Axls than the three Douglas brothers.  And Mike and Frankie - well, their lives pretty much stayed the same. They never got any of their appliances fixed.  But the Heck family - for all of their dysfunction - stayed together in spirit as much as in the flesh, and when all was said and done, they still love each other.

Except that they have a funny way of showing it. :-D

This was easily the best series finale in a quarter century.  You have to go back to the last episode of "Cheers" to find something as classy and as satisfying.  And Frances Heck is the luckiest mom on earth. :-)       

How I Got It Wrong

Last night's season finale of "How I Met Your Mother" was a surprise. Not just because Lily's "food poisoning" turned out to be morning sickness - she's pregnant!!! - not just because Ted briefly pondered reconciliation with Zoey, and not because he finally met his future wife when a farewell gift to Zoey was inadvertently given to another woman (actually, the joke was that the other woman was not his future wife, future Ted was just teasing in his narration), but . . . it turns out that Barney is preparing to to reconcile with his British girlfriend Nora after all.

And the wedding at which Ted does meet his future wife is not a minor character's wedding, as hinted before, but . . . Barney's!

Well, you have to figure that a libidinous letch like Barney would have to settle down eventually. And it looks like I was wrong. Nora is back in the ongoing storyline again, and Barney is going to marry her.

Or is he? You never can tell with the plot twists in this sitcom. I'm still trying to figure out whether Marshall got that environmental law firm job he tried out for.

And was that George Harrison's "The Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll)" I heard as the finale of season six faded out?

This all should make the next two years for the series very interesting.