10 for 10: telehell

[10 for 10... that's 10 consumables which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]
 
In this edition:

Mindhunter Season 2 - Netflix
The Boys Season 1 - Amazon Prime
The Wire Season 1 - HBO/Crave
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus- Netflix
Swamp Thing Season 1 - Showcase
A Black Lady Sketch Show Season 1 - HBO
rewatching Cougar Town - ABC Spark
Arrow Season 7 - Crave
Legends of Tomorrow Season 4 - Crave
Black Lightning Season 2 - Netflix

 aaaand....go go gadget blog

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Mindhunter Season 2 was great.  But also problematic.  And weird.  Though touted as a "season" this really felt like the middle of a season.  If Mindhunter were an old school detective show on network television it would be cranking out 22-26 episodes a year, and this "season 2" would be the middle chunk of it.

And that's just what it feels like...a middle chunk.  It doesn't have a proper start, really, nor does it have anything close to approximating a conclusion.  That's the "weird" part.  It doesn't feel whole.  It's incredibly captivating watching, but I think it will perform much better if watched immediately following season 1 and immediately followed by season 3.

It took me a while to remember some of the dynamics of Season 1, some of the internal hardship at the FBI Holden and Bill faced at the FBI, some of the personality politics at play.  Season 2 finds a new director in play (the awesome Michael Serveris joining the cast), one much more supportive of the psychology division...almost too supportive if that's a thing.

Holden and Bill get involved in the Atlanta Child Murders and it's the center focus of the season.  It's not presented as such but organically becomes it...and it's this simmering on-again/off-again nature that's both scintillation and frustrating about the season.  It's too true to life, that Holden and Bill would keep jumping back and forth to Atlanta without real consistency and often without real support.  It's a gut punch examination of how the system fails its people, and a reminder that not much has gotten better today.

Bill meanwhile is dealing with some family issues, which turns his wife Nancy into that horrible trope of the nagging wife.  I think the show angles for a more sympathetic view of her, but it doesn't quite get there.  The most unfortunate part is with such a keen focus on Atlanta and Bill, Anna Torv's Wendy takes a bit of a side-seat.  She gets some personal drama and a bit of something to do, but she disappears for whole episodes and her storyline is tacked on with an abrupt conclusion in an equally abrupt episode 9.

[11:50]

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I like the recreation of the classic cover image..."classic"? Really?  I guess

I wasn't too fond of the comic The Boys.  Created by writer Garth Ennis and illustrator Darick Robertson, The Boys allowed Ennis to get his cynical frustration with superheroes out onto the page.  It was his critique that superheroes steal the limelight of comics culture, that there's an egocentricity around them, and that they need to be spanked into submission by more hard-edged, down-to-earth characters.  It was edgy and biting for many, but for my liking, tedious and sour.

So I had planned to avoid The Boys adaptation on Amazon.  The distaste of the comics wasn't even close to fresh in my mouth but the bitter sense memory remained.  After a few podcast and a bit of positive reinforcement from Toast, I gave it a shot.

I was astonished at not just how much I liked it, but how feverishly I wanted to consume it.  The characters in Amazon's The Boys are complex in a way that's very intriguing.  The titular Boys led by Karl Urban all have their own baggage, some of it paints them in a bad light, and some shines a better light on them.  But even the supers, like The Deep, Queen Maeve, and A-Train, all have their own baggage too.  These are somewhat despicable people, but then we see that they maybe don't want to be.  The corrupting power of having powers is certainly what's at play. But also there's a searing commentary on capitalism and structures which seek to exploit and taint what's good for greed.  It's this look at how corporate superheroes and the structures put in place to control them (and their image) that's most fascinating. 

At 8 episodes, it's actually perfect length to be satisfying without being overwhelming.  Hopefully Season 2 is as thoughtful and measured.

[21:30]

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more like "pay attention", this show moves quick

Hahaha, how many years have I been telling people that I've never seen The Wire and people saying "What do you mean you haven't seen The Wire yet?  Get on it!"

Well, this summer we finally got on it.

And, well, this is a show that looks every bit like it's from 2003.

Imagine if that's all I had to say about The Wire?

But no, it's great.  The first episode we found to be extremely overwhelming.  That pilot (if it was even a pilot) is so dense, navigating the structures of the police, the political hierarchy of the criminal justice system, and the street level drug operations.  I likened it to the nuts-and-bolts of it all as seen in The Sandbaggers (a classic British espionage series from the late 1970's that is a frame of reference to, like, a half dozen people in the world).

Subsequent episodes get less nuts-and-boltsy.  It's still pretty nitty gritty but it follows the path via the personalities involved.  The characters of the wire are what make it so great.  The way things shake down aren't just standard operating procedure, they shake down the way they do because of the way the people in the procedure operate.  And the show does a great job of distinguishing how they operate.  This isn't Law & Order, there's no formula at play.  The characters dictate how things go down.

This leads to a lot of unexpected situations, and a genuinely exciting series.  It is, however, kind of alarming seeing a very young Michael B. Jordan as a drug runner in the yard.  He's a significant player in this story (filled with almost a Game of Thrones density of cast) and a tremendous actor even as a young pup.  Also, Micheal K. Williams Omar is one of the best characters on TV ever, and Andre Royo's Bubbles is so loveable, the guy you root for the most. Sonja Sonns' Greggs is such a badass, and now I know what the hell a McNulty is.

[31:46]

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you can tell there's a lot of yelling just
from the poster

It's kind of hard to believe that the last time we saw an original episode of Invader Zim was 2006.

I came into Invader Zim as a fan of its creator, Jhonen Vasquez.  He made some very darkly comedic and absurd comics called Johnny, The Homicidal Maniac and Squee, and was certainly excited to see what he would do for, effectively, children's television.  Invader Zim wasn't nearly as dark as Johnny  or Squee but then again, being a show for children (well, let's face it, it was made for college kids), Zim in some ways is so much darker.

But as much as I loved Zim and had friends who equally loved it, and we would shout Gir quotes at each other all the time (I still do!) I didn't watch Zim all that often.  I don't know Zim inside and out like, say, the early years of The Simpsons.  As such, I can pop in almost any episode of Zim and watch it with only a little familiarity (and in some cases, no recollection at all).  So in some ways, Zim always feels fresh to me.

An so, 13 years later, we have a new Zim movie.  The animation is a little more refined, and we're talking one big 70-minute episode (where most Zim stories were 11 minutes), and it all still works, and works damn well.  It's Zim but just EPIC-sized, and it's just as great as it ever was.  Vasquez hasn't missed a beat, and the voice cast is in prime yell-y form.  Those Gir lines are just as great as ever "I shot that pug into space."  Yes Gir, yes you did.

I don't want a full Zim revival, I have too much else to watch (and too much rewatching of original Zim to do].  But more of these movie-length specials, even once a year, would be so, so great.

[40:56]

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the show looks good, but never this good

Cancelled before it even really got a chance to prove itself, deciding to invest in watching Swamp Thing was a definite decision on my part.  I mean, the details that first the show was cut from 13-episodes to 10 in mid-production, and then cancelled outright after the first episode aired on the fledgling DC Universe streaming app, how satisfying could this be.  It seemed like the executives certainly didn't have much faith in the show, so knowing that it could all end in huge disappointment, why should I even bother.

Truth was, I wasn't going to.  I heard that it wasn't really connecting with any other DC TV properties (like Titans or the Arrowverse), and Swamp Thing isn't really a character I connect with in the comics.  But then I heard there was more DC connectivity within the show... Madame Xanadu, the Phantom Stranger... Blue Devil!?!  My nerd brain was severely teased.

The opening episode introduces the world of Marais, a small town deep in the Louisiana bayou.  The local industry magnate, Avery Sutherland, who supports the town is trying some revitalization efforts to his slumping business.  This includes basically sticking steroids in the swamp in hope of finding (or creating) some sort of industrial, military or pharmaceutical byproduct.

Instead it creates a contagion which brings CDC agent Abby Arcane back to her home town and back to some serious drama.  She meets Alec Holland - a scientist brought in to help Sutherland in his discoveries, then fired for getting too close to uncovering Sutherland's dirty deeds - and the two have  a connection, a brief flirtation before Alec is killed for finally discovering the dirty secret.

Of course, Alec becomes Swamp Thing, and you would think that Alec's transformation would be the focal of the show, but no, it's really Abby's navigation of the world of Marais that takes center, and the unraveling of Avery Sutherland's dirty deed which is the over-arching narrative glue.  The whole Swamp Thing of Swamp Thing is kind of a side product.

So it's actually a testament to how finely crafted the show is that it's immensely engaging even when it's only dealing with the supernatural and metaphysical about 15% of the time.  It keeps the budget down, I know, and it is disappointing that Swamp Thing doesn't just morph up out of the ground or keep changing shape.  It's also kind of sad that the grand romance between Swamp Thing and Abby isn't really put in focus either (which was always the main centerpiece of the comics, their relationship).

The show wants to be a suspense-horror first and foremost and does a pretty decent job for what's effectively mainstream TV.  Lots of cool little effects, creepy and disgusting references to John Carpenter's The Thing.

I find all the night boating in the swamp to be excessively tedious, and a little absurd, but hey, maybe real bayou folk do so much night boating, I'm not in the know.

It has some real problems, repetitiveness and spinning wheels, mostly, but it's well made and gets fairly comfortable in its own skin fairly quickly.  Oh, and Madame X, Blue Devil and the Phantom Stranger are all very disappointing representations of their comic book counterparts, and yet, they work for the show (though Ian Ziering's Blue Devil's larger purpose is never truly fulfilled).

[57:50]

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I've said before that reviewing sketch comedy is a difficult task, since the tendency is to want to review every sketch.  That would take forever, certainly longer than 10 minutes.

A Black Lady Sketch Show is named as such because it's never existed before, at least not in North America.  There haven't been many all-female sketch shows, nevermind one whose cast consists entirely of black women.  It's pioneering, and it would be easy for something pioneering to be lazy and pandering.  But this is HBO, it's got to be another level of quality.  And it is.

Robin Thede, Quinta Brunsun, Gabrielle Dennis and Ashley Nicole Black are the show's primary performers, but behind the scenes Issa Rae, Amber Ruffin and more have their hands in the pie.  And they also pull in some great names in black lady celebrity, like Angela Bassett, Jackée, Marla Gibbs, Lena Waithe, Gina Torres, Yvette Nicole Brown, Nicole Byer and one glorious sketch about a break-up featuring Patti LaBelle.

I love the show's opening credits, which feature the quartet as muppets, I watch it every time when I could easily fast forward.  There's a recurring interstitial sketch throughout each of the 6 episodes of the first season which find the quartet dealing with life after the apocalypse as the only survivors.  Mainly it's drinking and talking shit, but little aspects of the outside reality do seep in.   There's a great sketch in the church where people use the open mic for asking for prayers to hawk their wares, perform stand up and try to arrange a date for their lonely daughter.

The great thing about A Black Lady Sketch Show is obviously perspective, seeing things from a point of view that isn't very prominently represented in comedy or on television.  But that perspective is backed up by actually being funny, and with production values that heighten the entertainment.

It's not legendary comedy at this stage, but there are definitely a few classics in the offering.  The production by episode six seems to have gelled and the cast certainly has chemistry to keep this thing going.

[1:15:39]
(that took a long time because I had to look too much stuff up)

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bad poster, good show

I don't know how I came to watch Cougar Town the first time around.  It's hard to remember a time when we weren't so inundated with content, and with new about content that we already had our viewing time planned out.   I'm assuming that when Cougar Town came out back in 2009 that I was looking for things to watch.  For many years I would investigate all the new offerings television had to offer in the fall, and pick out the ones which seemed intriguing.  In 2009, the big highlights were obviously Community and I would have to say Cougar Town as well.

While Community would be an immediate favourite, Cougar Town was something I stuck with.  It was just funny enough to start.  I wasn't a huge Friends fan so Courtney Cox wasn't the biggest draw, and Bill Lawrence's Scrubs was a series I enjoyed quite a bit...for a time... so I did think there was something possible here.

But the coneciet for Cougar Town was Cox, newly divorced, would be prowling around her small-town oceanside Florida community preying upon men 20 years younger than her.  By the half way point of the first season, it was obvious that the writers, performers, and creators weren't really feeling that.  The cast dynamic (Brian Van Holt, Busy Phillips, Christa Miller, Dan Byrd and Ian Gomez) was pretty phenomenal pretty immediately, so the show wisely started twisting more into that friendship.  By the end of the first season the show was starting to regret its title (and in subsequent seasons there would be some joke made over the opening title card at the title's expense).

The phrase "Cul-de-sac Crew" is coined in Season 2 and is basically the center of the show.  It's a group of goofballs who are more family than friends that love to sit around drinking and doing a lot of goofy shit for their own (and our) amusement.  As much as any show, Cougartown grew to be one of those things my wife and I would quote in our daily life.

So it was always disappointing that the show only ever emerged on DVD for Season 1, the weakest season.  But finding out that Showcase  ABC Spark(?) in Canada was airing 2 episodes daily, we set the PVR and have dived right back in, remembering things we had forgotten and discovering the origin of in-jokes that we hadn't remembered. 

We love this show.  It's comfort food.  We started our rewatch at episode 11, which is the halfway point of Season 1.  We weren't too sad to miss the floundering first dozen episodes.  By this entry point, the show is on its way to becoming its silly self.


[1:28:49]

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It starts out very strong in jail, but once he's out, moof

Season 7 was a pretty wild ride for Oliver Queen, but for the most part made for pretty lousy viewing.  Arrow has been a wildly uneven show throughout its run and Season 7 typifies both the good and bad of the show.  It opens with Oliver Queen in jail, which made for some very entertaining stories.  But then he got out of jail, and he retired from being Green Arrow... again.  But then he had to come out of retirement because someone was impersonating him, and not doing the most stand-up job.  Then Team Arrow got deputized.  But that deputization was a tenuous relationship.  And then it turns out the new Green Arrow was Oliver's half sister he didn't know exist and she still has daddy issues and wanted to take it out on Oliver and his city.

There's so much cycling nonsense in Arrow, overpowered characters with silly motivations that are doing big damage to Olver and everything he loves.  Oliver has wrestled with fighting his family and friends so much that at this point it's exhausting to see him go through it again and again and again.  Especially when he's come to a resolution on an issue, like his no killing policy, only to wrestle with whether he should kill again, and again, and again.  So many dramatic moments are revisited that 7 seasons in its tired and lagging.  At least Oliver in prison had stakes, had some of that magic of revisiting his past and dealing his present sensibility.

Consistency of chracterization was never Arrow's strong suit, but it's at its worst in Season 7... just a thoroughly frustrating ride with moments of inspiration.  The "flash forward" this season takes place about 20 years in the future, and follows Oliver and Felicity's adult daughter Mia in a dystopian Star City.  It brings Roy Harper back into the fold and is generally filled with some fun ideas.  Its story is actually far more fulfilling than the rest of the season (even though it mainly takes up about 7 minutes of any given episode...if it appears at all).

The biggest problem with Arrow is its episode lenght.  Sustaining things for 20+ episodes a season is too big an order.  It survives not on story (which, as noted, can vary wildly) nor character (they do wrong by these characters just as often as they do right) but by sheer charisma of the performers.  Stephen Amell primarily went from being the weak link of season 1 to the show's MVP pretty much the rest of the series.  He's a very captivating, charming, likeable performer.

Season 8, with the Crisis on Infinite Earths looming, is only 10 episodes and I thing should be a much tighter, better executed, more entertaining story that is Oliver Queen's swan song ending with someting spectacularly epic.  I'm actually super excited for it, and hopefully will not be too let down (as I always want something more out of these Arrowverse shows and crossovers that I never seem to get, but Crisis seems determined to deliver)

[1:42:14]
(I should be done by now but ...superheroes)
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this poster is sadly more exciting than the show

I'm not sure what to say about Legends of Tomorrow at this point.  Season 3 took a big turn for the weird and I embraced it for it.  It got very silly at times but it understood how to use that silliness to provide maximum entertainment.  I mean, the giant Beebo fight was one hell of a payoff.

But season 4 continues on a path I wasn't really thrilled about for the show.  What should have been a huge showcase for bringing live-action versions of DC's B- and C-list pantheon to the big screen has instead become about goofball magical creatures and can't-take-it-seriously demonic bullshit.

The draw of having Matt Ryan's John Constantine seems to be the impetus for the show's direction the past two season.  But where as last season had the cast having to adjust and deal with their new magical reality, this season they seem way too comfortable within it.  And it get's corny, very very corny.  Like, 90's syndicated TV corny.  With effects to match.

The show doesn't want to be a superhero show anymore.  Things that would be logical for a superhero with superpowers to do seem to never cross the characters' minds in this show, and it's utterly frustrating.

The cast now consists of over half original Arrowverse or Legends creations, like Ava, Gary, Nora Darhk, Mona, Charlie... who are these people infecting my "DC's Legends of Tomorrow" series?  There's fewer and fewer references to the DC universe and when they do they tend to botch it (this season's take on Neron was duuuulllll).

The time travel element has become a cheap and easy mechanism for the show and it doesn't really have logical purpose anymore.  And it's not that I don't sometimes enjoy the show (the cast is very, very fun) and characters like Gary and Ava are actually my favourites on the show, the whole thing just seems aimless, and not really what I'm looking for.  It does a lot for representation, which I love, but I wish it represented in a less chintzy package.  If not for the looming Crisis, I would be out for Season 5.

[1:54:33]
(...I like talking about superheroes...)
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Thunder...the best superhero character on TV

Because I pretty much took the year off from reviewing in 2018, I don't have a write-up of Season 1 of Black Lightning.  It's a superhero show on the CW, but it's built outside of -- or at least to the side of -- the Arrowverse proper.  If we're talking multiverse theory, it's an alternate Earth in the Arrowverse and therefore unlikely to interact with or be interfered with by the events of Arrow or Flash or whatever.

That's probably for the best as Black Lightning builds its own reality in the city of Freeland.  If Metropolis is Chicago, and Gotham is New York, Freeland is Atlanta (where they shoot the show).  It's a city divided by race and having a black superhero has some real meaning.

Season One established the city, it established its struggles with violence, it established its politics, its police, its crime.  It established Black Lightning as a retired superhero who must come out of retirement, it established his family dynamic as Jefferson "Black Lightning" Pierce successfully reconnects with his estranged wife and his daughter.  It establishes his daughters discovering they have superpowers, with Anyssa becoming like her dad, a superhero, while Jennifer's powers are beyond her control.  It established Tobias Whale, a ruthless gangster with super strength who never ages who has been running the town for 30 years.  It establishes Jefferson's role in the community, as a leader and principal of a high school.  It established a lot, even more than all that.  But by the end of it, the show has turned so much of what it established on its head, and season 2 has to deal with that.

Season 2 deals with the ASA (some secretive government thing) that was responsible for giving Jefferson his lightning powers, and the discovery that there's more like him, some out on the loose in society, some still contained in pods after 30 years.  Tobias has a keen interest in obtaining these "pod kids" and using their powers for his profit, but as always Black Lightning is a thorn in his side.  Lynn Pierce starts working for the ASA to protect and help the pod kids, which is its own world of trouble.  Anyssa, starts moonlighting as another Robin Hood type hero, Black Bird, stealing from the mob and giving to those in need, while also dealing with the disappearance of her girlfriend, Grace.  Jennifer has an encounter with her childhood crush Kaleel who has since become the mob enforcer Painkiller, only for him to about face and the two go on the run, but not before Jennifer learns to control her powers...somewhat.  Gamby (Jefferson's foster father) fakes his death as he becomes the target of a mysterious organization.  Meanwhile Jefferson has lost his Principal job, and the new principle is...difficult.  Oh, and Markovians, a rogue nation with a lot of black book metahuman projects, is starting a war in freeland.

A lot happens this season, and it's actually pretty great.  The show structures itself in "books" with multiple chapters, so it makes binging a contained effort, with starting and stopping points.  It's generally well constructed and doesn't tread familiar ground too often, which is a real problem for these CW shows.

The acting is hit or miss, with the Pierce family, thankfully all being incredible with a fantastic dynamic that feels like real family, with them supporting and fighting with each other with knowing familiarity.  Some of the other cast though, like James Remar as Gamby or Marvin "Krondon" Jones III as Tobias Whale being a little iffy, if not sometimes really really bad in their roles.  Jones I can understand, as he's not a very experienced actor who has to hold most of the scenes he's in on his own, so it's a lot.  But Remar, man, has been around forever, and with Gamby it's never close to believable that he's a bad-ass superspy, nor someone who is intimately connected with the Pierce family.  The Pierce's sell it on their end at least.

Season 1 was good, but season 2 was exciting.  The show negotiates the drama of superheros and family and relationships exceptionally well.  It deals with the community of Freeland also very well, with the Church playing an important part of guaging the impact of crime and superheroes on the community.  If there is a weak spot in the story, it's in believing that Tobias Whale is a really good mobster.  He's to impetuous and prone to some stupid ideas that should have found him in jail a very long time ago.

By the end of the season the show has gotten deeper into its superhero mythology without taking its boots off the ground. It's introduced a lot of familiar concepts from the Outsiders comic book but in its own way, and it does so with a clear focus on representing the African-American experience in so many of its facets.

It's a very good show, close to being great.  It's still genre television, but it's smart and cool.  Looking forward to season 3, and to Cress Williams showing up in Crisis.

[2:19:37]

(...so much for 10 minutes per...but you got me talking about superhero shows,man...)