31 Days of Halloween: Lamb

2021,  Valdimar Jóhannsson (Harmsaga) -- download

Two things to begin this blog post.

1. THIS is the kind of movie I think most people will call "elevated horror".

2. What the FUUUUCK ? (in my best Robotman / Cliff Steele voice)

Yeah, Marmy didn't call this a horror movie, and was more fully into the WTF exclamations. But I spent most of the movie being so fucking utterly wigged out, I couldn't think about it other than as a horror movie.

So, elevated first. Yeah, this movie is so stylish, and well formed. Its so beautifully shot, the eerie empty landscapes of Iceland taking the forefront, the cold endless daylight just adding to the mood in ways all the overhead forests and still lakes can never do as well. There is so much done in silence, so much done with mostly empty scenes. 

And then there is the premise, presented utterly seriously despite the otherworldly concept. A couple who raise sheep in remote rural Iceland are present for the birthing of a lamb, from a sheep, but with the body of a human girl. Only her head and one arm is ... sheep. Yes, a human baby with a lamb's head is born from a sheep in the flock. But that's not the WTF, as it is only when both of them fully decide to integrate her into their family do we find ourselves WTFing.

There was trauma in their past, as they obviously lost a child at some point. Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason, The Swan) pulls a crib out of the barn when the child, growing preternaturally quickly (as a lamb should), has to be moved from their bed to its own. And eventually Maria (Noomi Rapace, Prometheus) dresses the lamb, who they now call Ada after their dead child, in their child's clothing. They are raising a lamb-child hybrid thingie without questioning it, without summoning authorities, without seeking answers.

And then there is the poor lost mama sheep. She bleats and bleats and bleats the loss of her lamb. She gets out of her pen and sits beneath Ada's window and bleats and bleats and bleats. There is something to be said for the animal wranglers in this movie. The sheep emote more story in their longing glances, in their fearful stares, than all the human actors did in I Am Lisa. I am not being facetious; these sheep say so much in their soulful eyes.

And then Maria gets frustrated by the grieving mama sheep and shoots her between the eyes, burying her in a nearby field. Ingvar never asks about it.

Out of the blue, Ingvar's brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Fortitude) shows up to stay at their farm. He's a layabout type, kicked out of a car by his layabout friends. They introduce Ada to him like she was a normal girl, nothing to see here, we are just raising a lamb headed girl child while eating mutton stew in front of her. Nope, nothing out of the ordinary. Pétur's first reaction is shock, horror and even a brief moment where he takes the child out into a field and points a rifle at her head. Then he stares into those emotive eyes, and the next morning the two are found snuggling together on a chair. They even go fishing together.

Where is the horror? Well, for me, it came from the silent/loud voice in my head screaming, "WTF !! Aren't you wondering about where the child came from? WHAT ABOUT IT'S FATHER ?!?!" Marmy kept on commenting on trolls (it is Iceland) and yeah, there was a few snickering comments about sheep shaggers, but we know something dark must be out there in the wilderness. How could it be anything else but?

And eventually dada sheep-man does show.

I really enjoyed this movie, as much for the way it was directed, as for how much it challenged my brain. Most will not enjoy it, and not many will see it as horror. Most will see it slow and pointless, but for me so much could be said of how the mind, when irreparably damaged, will find anything to cling to, to repair itself. Much is left unanswered at the end of the movie, but also leaves us lots of room to fill in our own stories.

Double Dose: Vigilantes in abstract

(Double Dose is two films from the same director, writer or star...or genre or theme...pretty simple.  Today:  grieving people becoming vigilantes, but in a non-superhero-origin or action movie capacity)

Promising Young Woman - 2020, d. Emerald Fennell - amazonprime
Riders of Justice - 2020, d. Anders Thomas Jensen - rental

I had no expectations for Promising Young Woman.  I hadn't even seen a trailer.  All I knew was that Emerald Fennell won a best original screenplay Oscar, and her acceptance speech was a delight.  Even with no expectations, this is still nothing at all what I was expecting. Somehow it's predictable and surprising at the same time. It deals with trauma and pain by placing it into a revenge fantasy, except it never goes full fantasy. There's always a grounding point.

It's uncomfortable, a raw nerve exposing just how constantly toxic a world women have to live in, where some guy can profess love to a woman and seconds later say the nastiest things to her. Or just walking down the street or driving your car gives men permission to say whatever they want to you. But, the "fantasy" here is Carey Mulligan's Cassie doesn't take it, at all. She knows the insecurity of men that drive them to their actions, and she stares them down, inured to the words, and ready for their violence, knowing that most men are opportunistic cowards.

Though brightly shot, vibrantly decorated, cast with many comedic performers, and very entertaining with Cassie's exceptional take-no-shit demeanour, this is a dark, dark movie. Underlying Cassie's inability to move on from her pain (her friend was gang raped in college and committed suicide, a loss Cassie's never recovered from), she also can't trust men to be anything other than their worst selves. Part of this leaves you questioning, for much of the film, whether she's wrong to have this attitude or absolutely correct. The film makes the obvious answer, and if you don't know what the obvious answer is then you're pretending you don't know what world we're living in. 

Cassie wound up dropping out of school, working at a coffee shop, still living with her parents.  She frequently spends her evening getting decked out in her best "party girl" dress-up - tight skirts, big hair, excessive make-up - and baiting specifically targeted men into thinking she's too drunk to take care of herself, too alone for anyone to notice, easy pickings... only to turn the tides on them once in their home.  Vigilante justice.

He is/was just a stupid kid. He didn't do anything wrong. There's no proof. He's a good guy. It's just a he said/she said situation. What did she expect when she XYZ... and all the other excuses people give for having perpetrated assault or not believing someone has experienced assault (or not believing someone has perpetrated an assault). This film really pulls at those thread-thin excuses, and how people cling to them, showing the hypocrisy is borne out of lack of personal consequences.

What this film doesn't offer answers or corrections to the toxic world, but that's not its job. It's an expose. Very singularly it's a very personal journey for Mulligan's character, but what a character!  Mulligan is superb.  It's a surprisingly fleet-footed watch despite its subject matter, and it certainly sticks with you.

Riders of Justice has a much different impetus for its protagonist(s) to turn to vigilante justice, but it's similarly riding a fine tonal line that sees both charm and laughs from the performances and characters of the film, but the current underneath them is a deadly undertow threatening to pull them under into darkness.

The prologue to the film, oddly, feels like a Christmas fairy tale, as a young teen girl on the freshly snow-fallen streets of Tallinn, Estonia asks her grandfather for a new bike, but a blue one, not the red one available. Smash cut to a quick sequence of men in a truck in Denmark stealing a blue bike from the train station.  That bike belonged to a young woman, Mathilde, and as a result the next day she needs to get a ride to school with her mother, Emma.  But Emma, upset after just finding out from her husband, Markus, stationed in Afghanistan, has just agreed to another tour, convinces her to take the day off together.  This puts them on a train later in the day.

Meanwhile, Otto and Lennart, deliver a presentation to their superiors showing that the algorithm they've devised has the potential to predict human behavior, to predict the future.  We've seen this idea of determinism recently, in Devs and Westworld, but clearly their superiors have not seen these shows, and both are terminated from their job.  Otto winds up on the same train as Mathilde and her mother - shopping bags in hand.  Otto offers them his seat and then a tragic accident happens, killing Emma and about a dozen other passengers.

Otto, putting together evidence, is convinced that this wasn't happenstance, and the information he gathers with the help of Lennert, and stubborn, isolated hacker Emmenthaler, seems to point that it was an engineered accident by the biker gang "Riders of Justice" meant to take out a prime witness in a court case that would imprison their leader.  The police don't buy into the improbable-but-possible scenario.  Otto takes it upon himself to advise a returned Markus of the fact that his wife was killed by the "Riders of Justice", and together with Lennert and Emmenthaler, they plan their revenge.

It's a hell of a set-up and barely scratches to the surface of what is going on in this film. Where it could have been an easy riff on "a man with a certain set of skills" and his tech support buddies, instead it's a rather potent examination of trauma, post-traumatic stress, and grief, and how these emotions, when repressed turn into toxic attitudes that push people away.  But the opposite becomes true, that in opening up to these experiences, that sharing and understanding can bring people together, however reticent and reluctant they might be.

A lot of bad things happen in this story, some of it happened before we even meet these characters, some of it happens on screen, and some of it the characters are the perpetrators of.  It's not always easy to watch, or hear, but it does connect you to the events, and there's an intensity in figuring out just how to feel about everything you see and learn about these characters.  But there's a beauty in the togetherness, and there's a catharsis not in the vengeance but in finding a family who see your rawest nerves and accept them.

The main cast, Mads Mikkelsen as Markus, Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Otto, Lars Brygmann as Lennart, Nicolas Bro as Emmenthaler, Andrea Heick Gadeberg as Mathilde are all wonderful in how they both mask and cannot mask their inner selves.  There are layers in the perfomances that are so often understated until they explode out in ways sometimes hilarious, and others heart-wrenching.

With subject matter as complex as both these films are dealing with, it's remarkable how well they both manage to entertain in spite of the heavy weight the characters are carrying.  These films are of a kind, and as we as a society get more liberated in discussing and examining mental health and trauma honestly, we're likely to see more of.  

31 Days of Halloween: The Seventh Day

2021, Justin P Lange (The Dark) -- Netflix

Well, poo. We finished another season and I am not sure we ever really hit any stride. Next year we should do a month of Shudder and milk it for what it's worth. 

I was raised Catholic, and for a time actually subscribed to it. I was thoroughly frightened of an actual embodiment of Evil being out there. I was also mesmerized by the idea that there was a branch of the Church assigned to combating it. Twelve year old Toast ascribed them to being D&D Clerics, warriors of Holy nature who fought with spells and Holy Right. Alas, the exorcist as portrayed usually fights the demons via yelling repeated holy phrases over and over and over. Most of their power comes from knowing the enemy they are dealing with. And faith.

In The Seventh Day we are given Father Peter (Guy Pearce, The Rover), a seasoned exorcist who witnessed his mentor die at the hands (influence?) of a very powerful demon, who then burned alive the young boy it was inhabiting. Peter is portrayed as a very cynical, grizzled noir detective style priest wearing old sweaters and driving a run down Park Vic. He is handed the fresh out of exorcist school Father Daniel (Vadhir Derbez, Dulce Familia), one of many new priests rushed through the school of exorcism due an uptick of Evil in the world. Previously, the Church had been stepping away from exorcism as a tool due to all the bad press it had received, likely referring to all the failed exorcisms in 90s and 2000s movies.

After a brief intro where Daniel fails to recognize a demon inside an outreach worker, their first case is a young boy who has murdered his family. Peter keeps on tossing Daniel into the fray without an ounce of training, or any real advice. People have catch-phrased this "Training Day meets The Exorcist" but considering how little seasoned knowledge Peter passes onto Daniel, its not at all. Peter is more about Daniel experiencing everything first hand, unprepared, so he can say to the Church, "See! Your two week school of exorcism is a fucking sham!!"

But of course, Daniel perseveres. He recognizes that something has the boy, and despite the abuse he had heaped upon him by his family, he really is possessed. And the demon is just having fun hinting that something else is coming up. The world is ripe for the picking, Evil has been increasing and they are getting ready. This sounds more like the first episode of a pretty decent exorcism TV show.

In a end-of-second-act scene, there is a horrific amount of violence and death where I assumed Daniel was having a dream, seeing the demon emerge from the boy and slay a ton of cops and doctors. But no, it happens. They all do die, and Daniel & Peter escape, barely, with the blood covered kid in the backseat of the Park Vic. They take him to his house, and prepare for battle.

But really, they go where I didn't expect, but if I had given it just an ounce more of attention, it would have been obvious. Father Peter has not been so much as fighting demons as he has been playing the long game, himself having been long term possessed. Daniel recognizes it and does battle and does the Good Work. 

Still despite rather standard tropes and nothing truly scary, the movie was solid as a exorcist thriller. I just wish it had done something more with Father Peter as the the seasoned grizzled exorcist, perhaps even keeping on with the "he's already possessed" idea by having a war going on, and having the grizzled warrior work with Daniel to defeat what was within him.

Horror, Not Horror: The Empty Man

2020, d. David Prior - crav

Let's start at the end, and work our way back and then jump around a bit.

I don't understand.

The last 20 minutes of this film, it's not that they're challenging, but literally I don't understand. There is a thread of thought versus reality that runs through this film from about the 25 minute mark through to its conclusion, one that I noted when it was mentioned, but didn't pick up on the multitude of visual (and otherwise) clues presented throughout the piece.  Where it ends, it seems like where we began was not exactly what we thought it was.

It seems a cheat. 

Back to the start.  Well, the 22-ish minute mark.

James Badge Dale plays James Lasombra, our point-of-view character.  He is, by all accounts is an ex-cop (undercover) and a widower, having lost his wife and child in the past year.  He takes medication for insomnia (I looked it up).  He runs a gun/self defence shop.  When his neighbour's kid goes missing, he starts to look into it.  He once was carrying on an affair with this neighbour.  It's a source of guilt for him, because he was with her when his wife and son died. Apparently.

As he talks with the missing teen's friend, he starts hearing the tale of The Empty Man, who, if you whistle through a bottle on a bridge it will summon him.  On the first day you will hear him, the next day you will see him and on day three he will touch you.  Or so the local(?) children's(?) fable goes.  The missing girl, this friend, and a group of others summoned The Empty Man, and now they're all missing.  Bad things happen and are discovered.  A lot of the warning signs point to the Pontifex Institute.  I won't sugar coat it...it's a cult.

James gets some bad intel, he makes some disturbing discoveries out in the woods, he's chased and escapes, and the St. Louis cops...well, they certainly know how to dance in circles.  James starts to think something really bad is happening, and the mental mojo unleashed upon the world seems to be fracturing him.

Back before all this, in the beginning times (the first 20ish minutes of the film), in the mid-90's in Tibet, an American tourist hears a whistling and falls in crack. There's some pretty strange stuff down in that crack.  He's rescued but three days later his friends are very dead.

This film is a lot.  There's a lot of mythos-building involved, though it's not exactly the mythos you think it will be.  There are shades of dozens of horror movies within, but the mythos seems to be a Candyman riff for a little bit, then perhaps it's more of a thought virus like It Follows or it might actually be more ancient Lovecraft-style madness-imbuing entity. The cult aspect then warps it more into a Wicker Man fashion while there's also aspects of delirium , possession, hauntings, conspiracies and more.  

Director Prior worked on many a behind-the-scenes featurette/documentary for various David Fincher films.  I'm not sure if he counts as a protege, but it's a definite that Prior has learned from Fincher.  He is a patient director who lets his shots breathe, he likes a visually clever scene transitions, he knows how to play with shadows (and in one particularly great sequence, steam), and his composition can be quite beautiful.  But most of all, Dale's investigation in the film feels like it's channelling Fincher's Zodiac, the frustration of not finding answers, of facing an intangible evil that can't do much but weigh on your brain the more you explore and end up with more questions than answers. 

In the end it's all tied back to James, it loops back in the opening short film in Tibet, and solves the mystery of the disappeared neighbour in a way that I just couldn't make sense of.

In a scene where James talks with the disappeared girl before she's disappeared, she tells him about her enlightenment.  I rewound that scene multiple times, knowing, just knowing, that it was the thesis for the remainder of the film.

I don't really know what Prior is trying to say with this story.  There's a sense of paranoia, that everyone is in on the cult, but then how to explain the moment in which James basically accosts a teen, pepper spraying him and throwing him in the back of his vehicle, only to look around the street and people everywhere are paying no attention to anything but their phones.  But the whole "Empty Man" thing can't just be a critique of techonology, else how do you explain the events of the technology-free cold open in Tibet?  And then who and/or what the Empty Man is...?  Just shrug?

It's hard to tell, given how intentionally obfuscated the film is in its intentions and how it never settles into a particular space, but I enjoyed it...to a point...that point being the last 15 minutes where time and memories seem to loop back in on themselves, calling themselves into question.  What is the reality of this film? What is our reality? Can we trust what we see on screen, or out in the world?

I guess the question, though, truly is ... is it horror?
It is.  What kind of horror, is more the question.  All kinds of horror, I suppose.  

31 Days of Halloween: I Am Lisa

2020, Patrick Rea (Conspiracy World) -- Amazon

Remind me next year, horror fans (myself included, I guess) are the worst judge of what is considered "good" in the genre. This flick showed up on a small handful of "best werewolf movies", and either there were just not any "good" werewolf movies or their judgement is impaired. Probably a bit of both.

This was a terrible movie. Bad plot, bad acting, bad directing, even fucking terrible photography. Jaysus dude, either get a better camera or don't shoot those types of night scenes. There was so much snow/grain on that shot we thought it was actually snowing for a second. Also, solid colour filters do not make mood.

And yet, we gave it the full run. It seemed like an indie flick, a low budget dear, that would rise through story and performance. Don't get me wrong, this was not so low in the barrel, so low-budget, that it felt like the student flicks Amazon is littered with. In fact, you could see by their pretty decent cast size and different sets that they had some money to play with. AND you would think that the director, with so many shorts and other features under his belt would have ... learned something? Alas... 

How is it, that we can watch so many horror movies where the director is getting his first feature, after a few critically acclaimed shorts, and whether its The Best New Thing or not, at least you can see the skill played out. They have potential. This guy is pretty much like me writing this blog -- still doing the same terrible stuff after a looooong time doing it. The 10,000 hours to expertise thing doesn't always apply.

OK, what was the movie about? Lisa has come back to her small town to run her grandmother's used book store, after getting a "fancy degree" in records management in Spain (?!?!). The town skanks/bullies show up and drive all her customers away and steal a first edition. Maybe not have the first editions lying around in random stacks? But nobody will do anything about it because Head Skank is the daughter of the town Sheriff. And the Sheriff is corrupt. Also, we got a preamble where a girl in bad pseudo-werewolf makeup (y'know, plastic teeth, contact lenses) is killed by said Sheriff.

The bullying escalates where Sheriff decides to let Head Skank beat her up, pull out fingernails, let her son rape Lisa (crass; not needed, another sign of a bad director to let that choice stand) and leave her in the woods to die, eaten by wolves. But instead she is bitten by a werewolf who can be driven away by a thunk to the head with a rock. But Lisa is bitten!

So, typically indie plot where girl bitten by werewolf begins to change slowly and takes revenge on those who wanted her dead. We can take those kind of plots as long as they do some fun things. But nope; they don't. They also continually hint at some darker story going on behind the Sheriff's rise to power and why she seems to make werewolves. BUT THEY NEVER EXPLAIN ANYTHING ! There is literally no reason, no motivation, nothing behind what the Sheriff and her horrible family does other than corruption. Werewolves? Meh, just something they play with. Sheriff's sister is all knowledgeable on the supernatural and at odds with her sister. Why? No fucking reason. This is one of those situations where someone says "let's have the evil sheriff make werewolves!!" and then not actually come up with a reason why. Many of the decisions in this movie were in the same tone. This movie was just bad.

10 for 10: Something Something TV Something Something

  [10 for 10... that's 10 movies  TV shows which we give ourselves 10(ish) minutes a piece 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  TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?]

In this edition:

1. Never Have I Ever s2 - netflix
2. The Bad Batch s1 - D+
3. MODOK s1 - D+
4. Black Monday S3 - Showtime/Crave
5. Clickbait - netflix
6. Brooklyn Nine-Nine S8 - NBC
7. Locke & Key S2 - netflix
8. Wellington  Paranormal S1 - 3 - crave
9. Lego Masters Season 1&2 - fox/ctv scifi
10. Doom Patrol S3 - space

GO!

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 Oh boy do I ever love Never Have I Ever.  It hits all the teen rom com sweet spots for me and teen rom coms are kind of my least favourite of the rom com genre (because teens are kind of awful). 

I indeed loved season 1, so much so that I happily did a binge re-watch of it just as season 2 was hitting Netflix, after which I was SO excited for season 2...which I was already SO excited for.

The problem now is, I'm writing about it and I can't remember much of what happened...oh, except Devi tried to date both Paxton and Ben at the same time, which wound up in her losing both of them rather quickly, returning Ben to nemesis status. Then her mom starts thinking about moving them to India to be closer to family, and also Devi having a crisis of identity when the new cool girl in school, Aneesa, is also Indian like her but kind of better in every way (or so she thinks).  She accidentally starts a nasty rumour about her which she has to atone for.  It all leads to Devi being forced to reconcile her behavior towards Paxton, Ben, her mom and all her friends, as well as finally addressing the trauma of losing her father last year. (Mississauga native Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is a powerhouse this season as Devi).

Meanwhile Nalini (Devi's mom) discovers that maybe India isn't going to be the supportive return home she's looking for.  So back in LA, she starts getting closer to a super-handsome competitive dermatologist (played by Common) much to Devi's disgust.

Devi's BFF Fabiola starts dating, but hides that she's queer from her mom.  Devi's cousin Kamala, now in a seemingly happy relationship with the man her family arranged to marry, starts having issues at work and he seems less than supportive (traditional roles get examined, and feminism within tradition prodded).  Paxton gets a spotlight episode (with Gigi Hadad doing the narration), and Ben and Aneesa start dating, which sets off alarms in Devi's head?

It's all complex drama, and watching Devi handle these twists poorly over and over, yet still learning from them is both frustrating and rewarding.  She's a fascinating central character, but a complicated one for sure (which is what makes for interesting, entertaining television).  John McEnroe providing her inner monologue is still the most entertaining thing, and he's such a bang-on suitable choice because of his own hot-headed temperment, and his asides into his own personal tennis accomplishments - sometimes related, sometimes not - is just good comedy.

I love this show.  Repeat viewings needed. More episodes needed.  I kind of want to go rewatch it all right now.

[16:14]

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Time was I could spend hours upon hours thinking and writing and talking about Star Wars, any Star Wars.  I have thoughts and feelings about all of it, and a lot invested into that crazy universe.  But, I don't have a lot to say about Star Wars: The Bad Batch.  I don't have complex feelings.  I like it.  It entertains me.  But it doesn't rock the boat, and maybe that makes it just a little... bland.

Picking up from the recent Disney+ release of The Clone Wars Season 7, The Bad Batch follows a quintet of, let's say, aberrant clone troopers at the dawn of the Galactic Empire.  The clones are Hunter (an expert tracker with a strange face tattoo), Tech (he's got super smarts and is good with gadgets), Wrecker (who is big, abnormally strong, and kind of dim), Crosshair (a sniper with a chip on his shoulder), and Echo (a "regular" clone who was experimented upon and decided to join with the Bad Batch).  

In the pilot, the Batch meet their sister, Omega, who was not rapidly aged as they were so is still a pre-teen girl.  Together they escape the dismantling of the cloning facility by the Empire, as well as manage to avoid the effects of Order 66.  Except that Crosshair swears loyalty to the Empire, and becomes their number one enemy/pursuer.  They take on mercenary work-for-hire roles, including rescuing a rancor and facing down bounty hunters (Cad Bane returns).

There's a lot of emphasis on found family, and they meet new friends along the way (Rhea Perlman plays their handler, and she's great).  The show operates within the era of the building of the Empire, so it's intriguing to see that in its nascent form, an element I wish they would hit even harder.

I was iffy about Omega at first (as I always am when Star Wars introduces a youthful character) but she fast becomes utterly endearing and is never grating (the New Zealand accent is one of my favourite things).  This show is almost entirely devoid of The Force which makes it stick out from most other Star Wars.  

I like what happens in this show, but I'm not as enamored with it as I was with Rebels.  It's very much a continuation of Clone Wars, if only more focussed.  The animation picks up much of the Clone Wars aesthetic with a bit of a paintbrush feel.  It often looks outstanding, there's some great set and environment designs.

[30:44]

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The animated series MODOK is, of course, an anomaly in the current Marvel catalog.  Since Disney+ launched, basically all Marvel programming has fallen under Marvel studios careful watch.  All other programs that were running had stopped and any in-flight productions were cancelled (RIP New Warriors...they robbed me of a live action Squirrel Girl).  

MODOK (as well as a handful of other projects, including the upcoming Hit Monkey) were announced around the same time as all these other things were winding down, and the new slate of Marvel programming at Disney+ was ramping up.  These shows would not be Disney+ shows, but airing on rival streaming service Hulu (in the US at least), and all would be adult animation.  It was a weird decision, but not an unwelcome one.

Behind MODOK is comedian(/actor/writer) and nerd extraordinaire Patton Oswalt along with Jordan Blum and produced with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios who also make the long-running animated action figure sketch comedy Robot Chicken.  The series uses the stop-motion puppets that Soopid Buddy has perfected, and employs a lot of the physical comedy language that series has used for over a decade and a half.

The story of MODOK, the "Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing", is surprisingly a dual family/workplace comedy.  It follows MODOK as the leader of AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) where he has no shortage of rivals looking to usurp him, and no shortage of minions who he feels are completely undermining him.  At home, his marriage is falling apart, and his children have no respect for him.

What could have been a bog standard animated show, which resets its norm after each episode is instead an ongoing character study of this very, very unusual man, as his life crumbles before him and he needs to build it back up.  He gets his greatest enemy in himself (thanks to some wonky time travel) and manages to team up with his former greatest enemy, Iron Man (Jon Hamm).  He also has a rivalry with Hollywood superstar superhero Wonder Man (Nathan Fillion) who starts dating MODOK's wife.

It's a funny show, featuring occasionally extreme puppet violence that somehow is surprisingly endearing in painting a portrait of a sad-sack killing machine, but it's one for the nerds...like me.

[42:39]

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I just recently wrote about Black Monday Season 2, which was a wild, sometimes very bloody mess of a run set in the fast-times world of a Wall Street stock brokerage firm in 1990 (and rapidly expanding outside of that).  Season 3 we watched hot on the heels of Season 2, and it presented a story of even greater scope and ambition, with more extremes, that managed to somehow still feel overly contained.

Dawn (Regina Hall) is fresh out of jail.  Mo (Don Cheadle) is running his own record label now, and ready to settle down with Dawn.  But the nature of their relationship makes progressing it a very painful experience and Mo winds up engaged to one of his new musical prodigies instead.

Blair (Andrew Rannells) meanwhile, is now a politician (sacrificing all dignity and integrity posing as a Republican gay) but gets shot at a rally. Following the attempt on his life is more attempts on his life as well as a few more successful attempts on the lives of others in the orbit of the "Jammer Group".  Oh, yes, there's a serial killer on the loose.

So the gang, having all fractured by late in the season (as they do every year) must come together and devise an absurd plot to out the killer.

Stepping away from the Wall Street satire, Black Monday does lose a sense of purpose, but it doubles down on its characters and the arcs in presents them.  Thinning out the peripheral cast by killing them off just further emphasizes the show's commitment to this likeable if nothing-but-flawed group of not-friends.

I like Black Monday a lot.  I want to love it but it's characters maybe a little too cruel, and too lacking in self awareness, and the outlook a little too bleak to be something I want to celebrate and view over and over.  That said, it is pretty damn outlandish, and there's not a lot of that type of comedy going around (at least in live action).

[56:58]

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Clickbait  was HUGE for Netflix a few months back, one of those limited series that people binged in one or two sittings, just pulled through its tawdry story, and ironically a viral sensation.

But it's also one of those shows that's all empty calories, a tasty meal you don't even remember having a couple days later.

So what the hell is Clickbait?

Ah, right.  This guy (Adrien Grenier - Entourage) is kidnapped, and his kidnappers put him up on a video on a youtube analog, with him holding signs saying "I hurt women" and that at 5,000,000 views, he dies.

His family, and the police and others start digging into his past, into his web history, into his accounts that start to reveal a history of joining dating sites and carrying on relationships with women who are not his wife.  There's also insinuation that may something inappropriate happened between him and one of the college-age volleyball players whom he is a sports massage therapist for.

This is a critique on the nature for people to pile-on to a situation with only the thinnest of information, to form judgements without facts, and to treat clickbait headlines as "all the information I need to make a decision".  It's actually pretty sharp in that regards, though the series needs to work some serious gymnastics to get to the ultimate reveal and then pile on some stakes that, seriously, just don't feel right, or earned.

That said, it is a compelling view, one that deliberately pulls you through it. Each episode shifts point-of-view to a different character, hitting harder that idea that even with multiple perspectives you may still not be getting the whole truth, the whole story.  There is a savvy statement underneath this pulpy, trashy show.

It's not a must watch, but it certainly fits the bill if you want something propulsive and bingeable...it's the TV equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

[1:06:24]

---

I can't believe that Brooklyn Nine-Nine has run for 8 years, and that it's over.  I still remember putting it down as a show to watch in a Fall TV Preview back in 2013.  Looking at the other shows that I listed along with it, only a few lasted more than a season or two, and none of them lasted as long as B99...and none of them I really enjoyed except B99.

About 2 or 3 years ago, I let my daughter start watching it, and she immediately became obsessed with it.  She's watched every episode at least three or four times over, some of her favourite episodes I'm sure she's seen dozens of times.  It was really hard for her to let go of the show.  She put off watching the final 2-part episode, until I convinced her of its greatness and sat down and watched it with her.  There were tears.  Michael Shur has given us three of the greatest series enders with B99, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Place.  He's figured out how to close out a long running/beloved show with satisfaction and sentimentality, without being treacly.  He knows how to deliver series enders that feel important, grander than just another episode, yet still fit as part of the whole.  

Here he does that with one of the show's famous "heist" episodes (where the key players of the department participate in a friendly competition that means more to all of them than it logically should).  I might even say that it's perhaps the best of the heist episodes, and they're all highlights of the show.

Even before the two-part finale, the show had a lot to deal with coming back: Black Lives Matter, defund the police, COVID-19... they all are brought into the series opener, and then put down a thread underneath the show that is not just story beats, but actual resonance with the characters.  The stress of BLM and systemic racism in police structures took a toll on Holt and broke up his marriage to Kevin (poor Cheddar lives in two homes now).  Of course Jake makes it his mission to reconcile them but it's not as simple or easy as he thinks.  Rosa quits the police force and becomes an advocate for marginalized individuals who experience police harassment.  They face off against a police officers union representative (John C. McGinley in a most disgustingly earnest repeat role), which hits its climax when Jake makes a wrongful arrest, and has to decide whether he wants to fight via the union or accept a semi-just punishment... does he take advantage of a broken system or set an example no one will notice or follow?

B99 still stayed funny and absurd in spite of the weight of the changing world on its back, and not a lot of sitcoms have ever managed serious issues without sacrificing the comedy for the "very special episode".  I'll miss you B99, it was a good run, but it was your time to go.

[1:23:12]

---

 

I wrote my history with the comics of Locke and Key in my season 1 10-for-10 write up, my general sentiment being that the show did some things the comic did well and did its own things well but had a general problem with tone.  Was I excited for season 2 of Locke and Key? Not so much, and the first episode was a big soggy noodle of an episode that threatened to stop me watching altogether.

Season 2 returns with an all-teen-drama all-the-time episode that just drove me bonkers.  I turned to my wife and said "I'm here for the magic keys and demon fightings, not teen drama".  The show used the first episode as a cleanser as well as a refresher for the second season, a way to establish that Tyler's girlfriend Jackie is aging out of her understanding of magic, that Kinsey is still painfully unaware that Gabe is Dodge (and some other love triangle crap), that Bodie is lonely, that Uncle Dunc is having trouble adjusting to life in Keyhouse, that Nina, having put her alcoholism into remission, needs something else in her life, and that Gabe is escalating his plans... he wants to make his own key.

These threads then play out over the subsequent 9 episodes, and there's a lot of fun magic key action.  What's frustrating is the sheer ineptitude of the Locke family to use the keys effectively.  I mean, it's believable enough that these kids aren't warriors, they're not really experienced in fighting demons or crafting elaborate plans, but geez.  They're the new "Keepers of the Keys" and they manage to lose SO MANY of them to demons who can't forcefully take the keys from them.

The actor playing Gabe/Dodge, Griffin Gluck, I've liked in other projects, and last season he was fine as Gabe (before we knew he was also Dodge), but here when he has to go into menacing he only sometimes pulls it off.  He looks like a young Joseph Gordon Levitt, and there's not a lot of sinister happening in that face.  That all said, you really do just want to give him a smack all.the.time.

There's some absolutely great moments of intensity this season, some real pulse pounding sequences of the Lockes putting themselves into jeopardy, not because they're being stupid, but because they're being daring.  There's also some good creepiness here, but the show's production design doesn't really lean into it.  It was part of the complaint about season 1, that horror should be a definite element of the show and it's by and large side stepped.

The first episode not-withstanding, as well as a late in season 2 flashback episode that really doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, this was really quite fun.  Not perfect, but fun.  It deviates wildly from the comics while still utilizing much of what the comics established, so it's not feeling like a retread. I've come out feeling more positive about season 2 than I did season 1.

[1:38:12]

---

It's always hard to write about comedy in a way that actually sells the comedy and does it justice.  I have in the past described whole scenes or tried to detail jokes which I know don't really serve the actual comedy well.  Comedy is not meant to be explained.  Explaining why something's funny only dulls the potency.  

So, that said, for the three seasons, 18 episodes (so far), of Wellington Paranormal, I'm just going to hit upon some touch points that will either give you the reader an "I'm in" or "Pass" result.

Wellington Paranormal was created by Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement and super-director Taika Waititi.  Clement acts as showrunner, I believe, and has a more active hand in the series, while Waititi is just an executive producer.  It is actually an offshoot of What We Do In The Shadows, the 2015 movie (which itself spun off into the ongoing FX series of the same name).

Wellington Paranormal is set in Wellington, New Zealand and follows O'Leary and Minogue, two police officers who have been tasked by Maaka, their Sergeant, to head the "Paranormal Crimes" division.

Wellington isn't a super metropolis so the type of crime that Minogue and O'Leary are used to facing is mostly domestic disturbances, street crime, break-ins that sort of thing.  They have a very particular demeanor when handling people they encounter in these situations (it's asking a lot of rhetorical questions) and they approach the paranormal with the same casualness, until situations escalate and Minogue typically freaks out.

The same conceit of What We Do In The Shadows is employed here, which is that the officers are being followed by a documentary crew.  Toasty mentioned in a recent review how he prefers found footage to this documentary style, but for comedy (not necessarily horror) it works well enough (see also The Office, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family etc).  The thing that Wellington Paranormal does with its documentary footage that is unique, however, is it acknowledges that documentary footage is/has been captured (in one episode in season two and another in season three, the cops reference the fact that they've seen the documentary What We Do In The Shadows, which I love).

I found the series to be hilarious from the get go, right in my wheelhouse humour-wise.  I giggle incessantly during the show.  The storytelling and the types of paranormal encounters they experience get ever more creative as the series progresses, to the point that season three has many of the series highs (though I did like the pod people of season 1 and the follow-up episode even more...there's actually some continuity).

The show is goofy, silly comedy, relying a lot upon the officious mannerisms of O'Leary and the denseness of Minogue, but it also is very often exceptionally clever with its use of paranormal activity and later episodes toy with horror convention much more than the earlier ones do.

This will go on the "rewatch often" pile.  I think it's funnier than What We Do In The Shadows.

[ok, one joke... one of my favourite lines in the show.  Sergeant Maaka asking his assembly of officers if anyone has seen his missing box of jam donuts his grandma made. "My name was clearly written on the side of the box! 'Maaka' written in marker."  The New Zealand accent truly is one of my favourite things.]

[1:53:57]

---

 I'm long past my point of enthusiasm or interest in "reality TV".  There are some people who subsist almost solely on them for their entertainment diet, and I pity them. In recent years the only "reality TV" I have watched/binged is Nailed It, a baking show where the contestants are knowingly set up to fail in trying to bake elaborate cakes and things beyond their capacity, yet try their best anyway (in a time too short to *actually* accomplish it) with hilarious results.  But I'm not here to talk about Nailed It.

Lego Masters I started PVRing for my stepson, who is a Lego buff and seemingly more so as he ages.  I thought the show would be something he would really be keen on, programming directed directly at him.

Alas, he mostly plays video games, and occasionally watches murder procedurals.

I just put an episode on while killing time, just to see, and while all the usual manipulative bullshit editing of reality TV is still there (just show me the people building!) by the half hour mark of this hour long show the projects are built and the judging commences.

And wow, what some of these people build is outstanding, and like any specialty form of art, whether it's cakes or blown glass or metal forging or home renovating, you have to have at least a passing interest to really care, but it's probably possible for anyone to appreciate the skill and craft put into these Lego diaramas or constructs.

Lego Masters is a rare show where it's relatively clear who are the strong and who are the weak each episode.  There's no upset-for-sake-of-drama, and the contestants are all very, very supportive of one another.  The challenges they face are frequently very challenging and even though they may sometimes cater to a strong skill of one designer or another, it doesn't guarantee anything.

Some of the challenges, my favourites actually, involve stress testing the designs, whether holding up in strong winds, or to a shaking foundation, or to weight put atop them.  It's impressive what those little plastic bricks can do.

We watched about half of season two before catching a marathon of Season 1 (only catching the latter half of Season 1) and then finishing season two.  They're immensely interesting to watch, to see what they're asked to do and to see what each team comes up with.  Will Arnett hosts and is amiable enough to not be annoying, and smart enough to know when his dumb jokes are dumb, and play into them.

I kind of got hooked.

[2:06:06]

---

Doom Patrol, season 3 baby!  It's still airing as I write this, but I'm just so enthused that I have to say that the best special effect on the show is Brendan Frasier's swearing.  

As the series progresses, the showrunners seem to be on a mission to have the most swears per minute of any form of entertainment ever (they've got to have beaten Deadwood by this point).  Frasier is the king of swearing in the show (and now in real life), but he's obviously been training the rest of the cast because all of them have gotten very, very good at hitting those swears for maximum comedic punctuation.

But Frasier's voice coming out of Robotman/Cliff Steele is just one of the absolute best things on Earth.  The way Cliff swears makes me laugh every.time.  It's like when a child swears not knowing that what they're saying is inappropriate...that's how Cliff swears.  And he does it so, so much, and with such gusto. [Edit.  Just watched episode 8, and there is, what may be, the best scene on TV this year, with Robotman (the guy in the suit) meeting a physical subconscious entity of Cliff Steele (actual Fraser) and the "What.the.fuuuck?" exchange is fucking goddamn deliriously fucking glorious.]

This season has been an interesting affair, with a lot of plot lines that don't seem to really go anywhere and a main plot line that has unseen purpose.  The arrival of Michelle Gomez to the cast has been a fucking delight.  She's just an absolutely compelling presence with the driest of dry British humour.

The show has sent Rita, in search of purpose, time traveling.  It's sent Larry off into space and back again with a little lump inside him.  It's solidified Cliff's reunion with his daughter and welcomed in a grandson he loves to bits, but also given him something more serious to avoid (or deal with irrationally).  As for Jane, she's trying to liberate her host, Kay, to help her be well and take control, but the other personalities are ready to go to war in a fight for self-preservation. Cyborg struggles with his identity, and identifying the trauma of what his father has done to him.  Oh, and Chief's dead, and the Sisterhood of Dada are brought in as their main ...not antagonists, but, rather...thing... for this season (with the Brotherhood of Evil, led by a petty, petty Brain [he's a brain in a big, immobile, metal skull] and Monseur Mallah [a French-speaking gorilla wearing a beret] rearing their heads).  

[Edit: episode 8, even ignoring the great Robotman/Cliff "what the fuck?"-off, is maybe the best episode of the series yet as each character has to face off with their subconscious self, and it gets, real, real deep.  It's a potent, but still very very wild episode].

Doom Patrol is not a superhero show.  It's a comic book show, yes, and it features people with super powers, yes, but they're quick to point out they're not superheroes.  Early in the season one of them points out that they won't bother to intervene in something bad happening because they seem to just make things worse whenever they do... so they're just going to sit it out and veg, loaf, whatever.

It's a bizarre entity but always unexpected, and even if a particular plot doesn't resonate, man all that swearing will elicit more than a few hearty chuckles.

[2:18:29] (only 60 minutes over..sigh)

---FIN---

31 Days of Halloween: The Night House

2020, David Bruckner (The Ritual) -- download

Marmy downloaded this and had it on the To Watch list, but I wasn't considering it fully until Kent watched it (just below; scroll!). Still not sure why he would watch a very standard haunted house / spirit from the beyond supernatural thriller, but I will let him reply to this post :)

Its not until you have watched hundreds of supernatural thrillers do you see how the tropes get used over and over. I mean, its not like the political thriller or survival thriller has a wide variety of plot types either, but lake houses and grieving loved ones play a strong part in these types of movies. The past always comes back to haunt you.

Now, you may have noticed I did not say "horror", and this is where I split hairs. Despite many scary setups and a nasty supernatural entity playing out in the movie, I didn't consider it very "horrific" so whereas Kent who does not watch horror movies very often would call this a horror, I would not. But again, fine line and I choose this side of it.

Beth's (Rebecca Hall, The Awakening) husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot) kills himself just before the movie begins. We meet her as she returns from the funeral. After she throws away the unwanted casserole, like all good widows do, she begins pondering their past, watching taped videos of their wedding and raiding his brandy stash. That it was not whiskey, usually single malt, was a surprise. But maybe its because he was a snooty architect who was obviously doing well for himself. Owen shot himself in a rowboat they have moored at foot of the long stairs leading down from the house. She also ponders that empty flat lake and that foreboding rowboat.

Almost immediately she hears voices and feels a presence. Owen, of course, back from the dead or at least just on that side of the veil, and seemingly here to protect her from something. She has your requisite number of sleep walking experiences, you know the ones where the plot sets you up to believe she is actually experiencing something really scary, and then she wakes up in a location other than where she went to sleep? Something isn't right, including her finding Owen's notes about labyrinths and mirror houses; he seems to be setting up a trap for something. And then she finds the photos of women who look like her, but are not her. And plenty of them.

And then she finds the "night house", a shambles of a half built structure on the opposite side of the lake from their house. It is a mirror of their house. In it she finds a strange statue, a bound figure pierced with many spikes. Her friendly neighbour explains that he found Own wandering this area, with another woman, complaining about urges and begging him not to tell Beth. Owen's past is getting pretty fucking dark. But is the presence endangering her or is it Owen protecting her from something?

Like Kent mentioned, there are some really fun, eerie elements to how they played with the design of the house, to solidify the otherworldly presence. I noticed the silhouettes in the moulding when I was supposed to, and actually paused to point it out -- it was really neat, almost as if Owen had built this house with supernatural intent in mind, but really, I think it was just horror movie set dressing. But effective!

The summary of the movie, and I will strangely enough not spoil it, was really appealing to me. What is on the other side? Is it nothing? Is it dark or is it light? This is where the movie is going, and it all ties back to Beth's past and the twisted role Owen decided to play in it.

Now, to also comment on Kent's post. Is this "elevated horror"? When I mentioned this in my other post, my reference was to movies considered artistically or creatively above the usuals in the genre. Midsommar is a good example, and to be honest, the artistic elements surpass the plot and horror much more. To be elevated, you need to tell a horror story but in a much more critically appealing manner than the usual fare, not just going from jump scare to psyche out to eerie sound or visual, like most horror movies, and like this one did, for that sake. So, not elevated from my use of the term, in relation to horror movies. Oh, this was a good supernatural thriller, and all the elements used were effective and fun, but it was not anything more than I am used to seeing. If anything was elevated, it was Hall's performance, but considering we were introduced to her by the genre (The Awakening) I was happy to see her return here.

Horror, not Horror: The Night House

 "Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold.  I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.

2020, d. David Bruckner - rental

In his write-up for In The Earth, Toasty brought the term "elevated horror".  There's no single defining definition for this term, and it's one that causes a lot of frustration in both the horror fan and film critic community.  The way it is used, it's not a subgenre but a way of trying to single out a horror film from the piles and piles of other horror films that are made each year (I think next to Hallmark-style holiday romances, cheapo horror is the next most overproduced). 

"Elevated" means lifted or raised above, so it's a snobbish label to try and apply to a film, inferring that it is somehow better-than just by applying the label.  In the past few years it has come to imply some form of artist merit or that it's more palatable to a general audience, not just a genre fanbase .  At this stage the general critical opinion on "elevated" is that it's a bullshit term, but it's in the ether now, and will continue to be used.  If anything the term will likely wind up as a derogatory term for a horror movie where the creators are trying too hard to escape the genre, be too clever about their horror, or appeal to an audience at the exclusion of horror fans.

For me, I guess "Horror, Not Horror" is my toying with some of the same conversation around "Elevated Horror".  But "Horror, Not Horror" is broader than that.  I could easily put a TV mini-series like Dr. Death through the "Horror, Not Horror" ringer, as it is pretty damn horrifying and upsetting, but it falls under True Crime, Docu-drama labels because it's not employing standard horror tropes.  If there's no metaphysical, paranormal element, or if it's not using kill/maim/torture gags, can it still be called horror?  

The Night House I'm sure has been reviewed with the "elevated horror" label, if only because it's a sort of haunting story with some clever directing tricks and a recognizeable lead.  Rebecca Hall stars as a grieving widow, now alone in the semi-remote house-on-a-lake her husband built himself.  He committed suicide out on the water in a boat, with seemingly no warning signs, leaving behind a cryptic note.

As Hall is left to deal with her grief, she starts experiencing paranaormal phenomena in the house -- stereos turning on at random, creaks and noises that sound like more than just the house settling, wet footprints -- as well as dreams where it seems like her husband is trying to communicate with her.  It's all kinds of disturbing (the cel-phone bit early on got me pretty good).

Then she discovers pictures, pictures of women who look kinda-sorta like her, and strange designs in his book of architectural drafts of the house, and some books on the occult.  These threads start connecting back to her own history of having survived an accident, though being technically dead for a few minutes.

That's a lot of little details, some of them seeming quite disparate.  Is this a ghost story, or is it a past trauma returning story, or is it a discovering secrets of someone you love story?  Yes, the answer is yes to all of these, and it is quite intriguing, if sometimes hard to marry these all together (though the film believes it does this in a pretty pat fashion). Standing on their own there's three very different, very good stories to tell here.  Brought altogether, it's still good but, yeah, a lot.

One of the best elements of the film is the set design which, when viewed from certain angles, elements form the shape of a human body, and then the shape moves.  It's creepy as hell, but kind of underutilized, and very fleeting.

I've given a lot of the dots that are placed down in this film, but not all of them, and how they all connect together to form the whole picture may be just a little too much, but it's certainly not uninteresting.  Hall is really good, having to hold so much of the film to herself.  There's one point in the film that goes a little too far in its paranormal activity and what Hall is asked to do looks pretty goofy (the poster attached kind of spoils what I'm talking about).  It's supposed to be a powerful scene for her but, oof, it just doesn't translate (and the fact that they use it on the poster is kind of a double oof).  That short sequence alone drops the whole film down a whole notch.

Back to the idea of "elevating" horror, director Bruckner dances around really going full horror in the third act, and tries instead to settle in with the emotional impact all these revelations have on Hall.  But it would have been a much bigger standout had it leaned even more into the moving shapes and the paranormal, punching home these elements built up over the film.  It's a solid, solid watch but if it wasn't so concerned about "elevating" itself, it could have really been something special.

But, but, but...is it horror?
Yes, it most definitely is. But it should be even more so.

31 Days of Halloween: Muppet Haunted Mansion

2021, Kirk R Thatcher (Muppets Now) -- Disney

Yes, this is 31 Days of Halloween so nothing is more Halloween than a Halloween themed special.

Without Googling to add veracity to my thought, I am thinking that Disney has decided that the current Haunted Mansion attraction is lacking and will relaunch it as a Muppets related attraction. Maybe add in Eddie Murphy to make things more facebook meta.

So, the plot is that Gonzo and Pepe are invited by someone to stay the night in the house where one of Gonzo's heroes disappeared a hundred years ago. If they can survive a night in the house, they get ... something. If not, they will be trapped forever. Should be no problem as Gonzo is not afraid of anything. Did I mention Gonzo's hero is The Great McGuffin?

Of course, being a Muppets special means lots of special guests like Taraji P Henson, John Stamos, Yvette Nicole Brown and Darren Criss. And Will Arnett as the Ghost Host. Also, Ed Asner as a ghost is very ... sad/appropriate.

Like everything post original Muppets it's cute and on point but I am not sure if the special is meant for kids or for the parents who remember the original. There are some really fun points, and lots of allusions to other horror / haunted house flicks. My favourite connection is crossing the whole The Shining ballroom with the classic At the Dance segment, featuring Wayne and Wanda as dancing ghosts. But overall, just cute is just not Muppets sustainable. 

But there was a screaming goat. Those goat eyes are freeeeeaky.

Podcasts: Fact and Fiction - Only Murders in the Building b/w Dr. Death

Only Murders in the Building - 2021. Disney+/Hulu
Dr. Death - 2021. Showcase/Peacock

Podcasts are mainstream at this point.  Even the proverbial grandma who isn't hip to what's happening today knows that podcasts exist, even if they don't quite know how to access them.  There's a podcast for everything, and it seems like a podcast from everyone.  Do I have a podcast? (Our dear friend Jeremy tried to provoke Toast and I into turning this blog into a podcast, like, 10 years ago).

Comedy podcasts, for a long time, were the chart leaders, with political podcasts coming up closely behind. That all changed with Serial in 2014.  Suddenly True Crime podcasts supplanted them both and started drawing in a whole new audience to the medium, one that wanted not to be entertained, but titillated with sensationalized stories.  Over a half decade later and True Crime is still topping the charts.

Only Murders in the Building is not a podcast, but a TV show created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, and starring Martin, with best friend Martin Short and Selena Gomez as an unlikely trio of True Crime podcast buffs who come together in their New York upscale condo building to investigate a death that happened there... and then create a podcast to document it all.

Martin plays Charles Hayden-Savage, a long out of work actor who starred in a semi-popular detective procedural ("Brazzos") for a few years in the 1990's (I'm disappointed in the show's restraint at not producing more "cut-to Brazzos" jokes).  He's become a bit of a hermit and isolationist, without any real friends or family to speak of.  He's a sad figure who seems to miss both being out in the world and connected to people, but also afraid to do so again.  Short as Oliver Putnam, meanwhile, is his polar opposite: vociferously upbeat and outgoing, a producer/director of multiple failed broadway productions, and destitute despite his austere apartment (he subsides off of, specifically, dips).  Gomez is Mabel Mora, a young woman who is fixing up her aunt's condo while she's living in Europe.  Mabel is secretive and sardonic, deflecting most attempts at getting to know her, but endearing in her dark sense of humour.  They are an unlikely trio to investigate what they think is a murder, and an even more unlikely trio to create content about it.

Rather than just being a whodunnit, Only Murders... is more interested in the when, whys, hows, and whats.  They investigate fellow tenants (famous person Sting is among them), other incidents that may or may not be connected, plus personal connections get teased out.  The podcast could have proven to be a wrong move on the creators choice, but the show handles the absurd production, distribution, commercialization and audience reaction quite well and basically Only Murders in the Building itself is structured largely as both parody and homage to True Crime journalism.

It's been a while since I watched anything with Steve Martin in it.  His general tastes in stories that he wants to participate in (or get paid for participating in) aren't really my wheelhouse or demographic.  Martin Short, on the other hand, is held up as a comedy legend, but one I've always found a little grating.  The pair of them are longtime friends and collaborators and they clearly love working together.  Here they start as virtual strangers, as noted quite opposite personalities, but they do form a bond, their shared background in show business, but also their loneliness bringing them together with similarly lonely Mabel.  As much as the murder mystery pulls you through the show, it really works because of the connection these three characters form.  Martin is both sympathetic and funny, every now and again edging into the goofier side of himself that made him famous so long ago, but also which he compartmentalized sometime around the turn of the millennium.  Short is as aggressively extra as he always is, yet there's a potent undercurrent of pathos that really undercuts his more annoying predilections, as if to say he acts the way he does to hide the darkness within.  Gomez I have limited experience with but her performance here is very understated and used well as a counterbalance for both Short and Martin.  There are times I'm not sure about Gomez's performance only to discover that her behavour was intentional because of the hidden depths to Mabel that slowly get revealed.

There's some great guest stars in this - the aforementioned Sting, Nathan Lane as Oliver's benefactor/neighbour, Tina Fey as a celebrity True Crime podcaster of the Sarah Koenig mold,  and a surprise late-stage appearance by Charles' stunt double that is best left as a surprise (but it's so great, and not just as a sight gag, but as a character, just fantastic).  It's also not just celebrity guest stars, but smaller roles, like Mabel's mother or the group of "Only Murders in the Building" podcast fans, and of course the cadre of other tenants with their own quirky personalities that really make the show feel lived-in rather immediately.

The show also toys with format a little, and even gets daring with a brilliantly executed "silent" episode that focuses on Nathan Lane's son who is deaf, a contemporary of Mabel's.  The episode is told from the perspective of Theo (played by actor James Caverly) and therefore largely silent with some audible percussive sounds.  All the dialogue is inaudible and only if you're able to lip read do you know what is being said, you have to pick everything up from context.  When Theo is signing with his dad, or others, that is subtitled, since it's from his perspective.  It *could* be gimmick-y, but it definitely leans more towards empathetic than sensational or exploitative.

The show ends with resolution but also with a big, BIG set-up for season 2, but also a set up that is not just sprung on the audience but teased innocuously throughout the season.  It's exciting to know there's more on the way.  Streaming services almost made "appointment television" disappear, but Disney Plus (mainly with Marvel and Star Wars shows, but with surprises like this...I should note that Only Murders aired weekly in Canada, but I can't say how it was run in the US on Hulu) has really brought them back, to the point that I checked way too early every week for the new episode of Only Murders....

Dr. Death doesn't actually feature any podcasting within the show, instead it is based on a True Crime podcast of the same name.  It was a podcast I heard a random trailer for and became rapidly intrigued because of how different it was.  It wasn't so much a *murder* podcast, but one of medical malpractice, and of a system that allowed surgical butchering to happen to far too many people in far too many places.

The podcast ran in 2018 and presented over 6 episode a profile of Dr. Christopher Dunsch, giving voice to his victims, detailing the horrifying ineptitude of the procedures he performed, celebrated the two doctors who found the courage to speak out when no one else would, and scrutinize the industry norms that make it far too easy for someone like Dunsch to persist.  He would bounce around from hospital to hospital, becoming someone else's problem, because any hospital reporting him would face liability lawsuits from the patients that were supposed to be under his care.

The TV miniseries (streamed on Peacock in the US this summer, airing weekly on Showcase in Canada this fall) places Joshua Jackson in the role of Dallas-area neurosurgeon Chris Dunsch, while Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin play Dr Randall Kirby and Dr Robert Henderson, two experienced neurosurgeons who encounter Dunsch's fallout and decide to do something about it, risking reputation, primarily, and possibly lawsuits in the process.

I recall the podcast being much harsher on Dunsch, whereas the TV show seems to take a lot of pains to try an understand him, at times even paint him as someone who struggles with his own intelligence.  And that's the think, Chris is incredibly intelligent, but also incredibly egotistical as a result.  He has a brilliant mind for medical thinking, but there's a blocker in his brain when it comes to spacial orientation and hand-eye coordination, among other things.  It's a limitation he's blind to, and he has a stubborn tenacity to persevere through adversity, without ever seeing the true problem before him.  

His brilliance also make him a borderline sociopath.  He's completely incapable of registering any fault in his work, or accepting any blame for anything in his life.  He explains away his botched surgeries with hand waving, deflection, or reassigning blame to staff or even patient.  It's upsetting how nonchalantly he does this and Jackson is very good at showing the darting eyes as he spins his lies.  For all his nefariousness, Chris can also be very, very charming, and it's another large part of the problem.  His charm and smarts allow him to talk circles around his patients in such a casual demeanor as to push them past any doubts about him they may have.  He manages to tap into that part of our nature that defers to authority, and he knows that if he talks a big enough game people will believe him... until they don't.

The cast of the show is wonderful.  Slater, as the sarcastic and witty Kirby hasn't been this alive in a role in a long time.  Balwin, for all his gameshow mugging and Trump impersonating, and 30 Rock-era Republican lampooning, returns with his former steely smolder and shows he still has the acting chops to hold focus and attention on screen, while still having a light touch when needed.  The remainder of the sprawling cast are likewise great, imbuing a humanity into some small roles that represent real people.  These are just archetypes or cliches, and the show adopts a lot of the text direct from the podcast for the scripts, putting the real emotions into place.

If there's a weakness to the proceedings it's the time-jumpy nature, where it bandies back and forth in time, and inconsistently so.  The podcast did this too, but host Laura Bell managed to compartmentalize the episodes thematically and talk the audience through the different cases and the background information with relative simplicity.  The show has a harder time keeping the audience's clear on where it is in its timeline (despite on-screen dates, which become a jumble of letters and numbers very quickly), especially as it relates to the medical cases and Dr.s Kirby and Henderson investigate and or try to get Dunsch shut down.  Did Dunsch perform more surgeries even after Kirby and Henderson started intervening?  I honestly couldn't tell you because of the show's structure (but I believe he did, which is terrifying).

The show seems built for the "drop-at-once" streaming methodology, it is an inherently bingeable watch.  It's been painful watching it week to week because the hour, to hour and a quarter really fly by.  It's captivating and upsetting, and while Dunsch is ultimately punished for his crimes (which isn't really a spoiler) there's a whole lot more people complicit in the situation that will continue within their prosperous careers, within a system that leeches upon the people who need them.

(Didn't know where to fit it in, but the composer on the series, Nick Chuba, also does a bang-up job).

We Agree: Halloween Kills

 2021, d. David Gordon Green - in theatre

If you were to tell me that I would not be able to see a film in the movie theatres for almost two years and that, were I to go back, I would have a choice between yet another entry in the Halloween franchise, the latest James Bond movie, and catching up on any of a dozen other films that had bypassed theatres to home streaming rentals, I most certainly would have put the Halloween film near the bottom of my must-see list.  So why was Halloween Kills my first theatrical experience since December 2019 (Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker)?  Simple: convenience.

During a virtual lunch date with friends one of them mentioned wanting to go see the new Halloween (being a huge fan of the franchise) but that he was having a hard time convincing anyone to go with him, more out of disinterest than any COVID scare.  I had started thinking that it was time to get back out in the world, that COVID isn't going away and that we can only protect ourselves so much...life isn't life anymore if we're not really living it.  I was just having a hard time figuring out when to pop that cherry (that's a gross metaphor, isn't it... how about pop that Pringles top?).  This was an opportunity.  I told my friend, excitedly "I'll go, you just have to figure out a ride, I'm not taking public transit AND going to the movies".  There's only so much of the public one person can take in an evening.  

And so, he took care of the tickets, and transportation and away we went to see the new Halloween entry.

I've heard people say how their first movie back in the theatre is perhaps viewed with rose colored glasses, that their reception is more favorable because they're just back in the theatre dammit!

I didn't have that with Halloween Kills. 

As we well know, I'm not a horror guy (I state it often enough). I just don't think I get out of the genre what most horror fans get out of it. I have, however, watched most of the Halloween series.  I think Carpenter's original is indeed a masterpiece of film, and the rest are...well...there, some entertaining, some boring, some stupid, some ...just... whatever.  The first entry in this legasequel/reboot trilogy I thought was pretty good.  

Rereading that review, it seems like Halloween Kills was made by a completely different team.  Much of what I praised Halloween 2018 ("H2018") for is absent or overblown in Kills.  The restraint director David Gordon Green showed with H2018, the kind of adherence to the chilliness of John Carpenter's original, the off-screen or obfuscated violence all showed a level of artistic thought and consideration.  Kills abandons restraint from the get-go, it's a just violence stacked upon violence, falling into the grotesque for the sake of cheap thrills for gag junkies.  Michael Meyers seems to kill without any sense of reason, invading homes and murdering and murdering anyone on the street just to do so.  As my movie going companion pointed out afterwards, they turned Michael Meyers into Jason from the Friday the 13th series, and that kind of wanton psychopath isn't what Meyers should be.

I noted with H2018 that "there are all these people fascinated with trying to figure him out, understand his psychology and motivations...and it gets them all killed."  Here it's not the people who are trying to figure him out, but the filmmakers themselves.  We're back in the deep sequel territory (Halloweens 4-6) where the idea of Michael Meyers, the Shape, the Boogeyman, has become something they're exploring, or rather, demystifying.  The film ends with Meyer's having been stabbed, shot and beaten and not only surviving but getting stronger.  He is not human, and that's kind of a problem for the series.  This whole exercise of Kills seemed to be about getting to that point, of establishing Meyers' otherness, and it leads me to believe that the closing chapter, the in-production Halloween Ends will spend far too much time delving into why Meyers' otherness is.

One of the good things about H2018 was three generations of Strode.  Laurie, her daughter and her granddaughter, each with a complicated relationship to each other.  They, as a trio, are cast aside in Kills though tangentially involve.  Laurie is wounded from her confrontation with Michael last film, her daughter is grieving her lost husband (and shattering of her reality...remember she never believed her Mom's paranoia), and her granddaughter is just out for revenge.  There's a good movie in exploring each of these three and their trauma, and then thrusting them right back into the mix.  However the filmmakers chose to instead make the lead protagonist Haddonfield, the town, and to throw a dozen or so returning and new characters into the mix, but without imbuing much personality in them...they're just there to die.  There's something inherently cynical, or maybe just insensitive about taking these survivors of past trauma and then just putting them in the same situation only to die horribly this time.

For all its missteps, though, the greatest is its foray into mob mentality.  At a bar, and later at a hospital, Anthony Michael Hall, playing H1978 survivor Tommy Doyle (one of the children Laurie babysat) works the crowds up into a Frankenstein-style, kill-the-beast, frenzy about taking on Michael Meyers themselves, Trumpian-inspired chants at the ready.  There's no real commentary here, just aping the effect of frustrated people following the loudest person in the room (and leading them to their doom).  There are three mob scenes in the movie, the second of which eats up all of the second act.  It's overblown and tedious, but the intent is to get the audience to shake it's collective head "no, that ain't right", only to cheer the same mob on towards the end of the film as they take turns doing their thing on the series boogeyman.  

Look, Kills is unfocused, but it's not unentertaining (not to not use a double-negative). It's not the same kind of lower budget bad as the 4th through 6th entries in the franchise were kind of bad, there is craft to this, but it just doesn't satisfy.  Going in knowing there's a third entry, there's no stakes to rooting for the hero(es) to kill the demon in a Shatner mask.  Everyone is just fodder, with the only untouchable being Laurie.  Hell at one point Laurie even says that it ends with the two of them.  She's clearly taking Meyers down in Halloween Ends, and going down with him. This just feels like a holding pattern until then, biding time, building to that final confrontation.

As my first film back in the theatre, I have no rose-colored glasses about the film I watched, but I was so very happy to be back.  I felt safe (in a theatre of over 150 seats there were maybe only 30 people in the audience), vaccination records were checked upon entry, and it all felt very casual and relaxed.  I just want to go to the theatre all the time now but I need to have patience and avoid crowds for my optimal comfort.

[toastypost]

T&K Go Loopty Loo: Star Trek: Discovery

[Toast and Kent love time loop stories.  With this "Loopty Loo" series, T&K explore just what's happening in a film or TV show loop, and maybe over time, they will deconstruct what it is that makes for a good time loop]

Star Trek: Discovery, Season 1, Episode 7, "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"

[Toast] I have been in need of a happy place of late, and since the new TV (as in new physical TV replacing the one that died) has proven itself to be lit with the oh-so-bright-pretty colours, I started re-watching Star Trek: Discovery. But I didn't recall that they Harry Mudd return episode was so early in the series, as it feels like a later episode, maybe something Season 2 or end of Season 1. Either way...

[Kent] Same! When you mentioned that we were doing this episode I went looking for it on my on-demand service, and where did I start? Season 2, then, yeah, backtracking to the end of season 1, perplexed that I couldn't find it.  I then thought, was this a Short Trek mini-episode?  But no, episode 7 of season 1.

[Toast] Harcourt Fenton Mudd !  Harry.

Mudd was introduced in an earlier episode when Lorca and Tyler escape from a Klingon jail. Ever opportunistic Mudd gets left behind, to pay for his sins against fellow inmates. Lorca never expected him to survive let alone escape, and here he comes bearing quite the grudge, but also finding another way to regain his wealth -- capture and sell the Discovery to the Klingons.

The episode begins as a character exploration episode, Burnham finding herself at a ship party, a social occasion where she is forced to consider her feelings for Ash Tyler. But before they can get beyond awkward, alarm bells save the day and they are called to the bridge. A "space whale" is blocking their path, but instead of going around it, Star Fleet regulations require them to beam the thing onboard and take it to a preserve. Gormenghast Gormaganders are endangered because they don't have much interest in procreation. You would think species dying out because of their own nature would be covered under the "do not interfere" aspects of Directive One, but no matter -- lonely space whale!

They don't get far before Mudd steps out and begins blasting. He is trying to figure out why the Discovery is so powerful a weapon against the Klingons, but doesn't get very far before things blow up. Everyone dies.

Bloop. Party time again. Awkward Burnham time again. Drunk Tilly again. Tilly's very confident when she's drunk. I <3 Tilly.

Mudd has a time crystal. He is using it to learn as much about the ship as he can, so he can take control and sell it to the Klingons. Its been going on for a while. Buuuuut, Lt Commander Paul Stamets (LOL I did not know they lifted the name from an actual American mycologist) has been a bit spacey since he injected himself with the DNA of the giant space tardigrade. He's outside the time loop, and the only one aware. He uses the time given to him to educate Burnham and the crew on how to eventually foil Mudd and set things right. 

[Kent] I have complicated feelings about Discovery (Season 1 and Season 3 recaps, season 2 happened in the dark year of this blog).  I love it but I also get very frustrated with a lot of the story and character decisions it makes.  Seeing the "previously on" before this episode brought back a lot of warm fuzzies.  I need to do a rewatch, too. 

Michael Burnham has become a key point of frustration over the second and third seasons, and I'd forgotten how, despite being human she was very Vulcan-like and dispassionate in the first season.  I kind of miss that Burnham.  Also, I'm very glad I watched Discovery before I watched Toast of London, because I could never have taken Ash seriously otherwise ("Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango!").

How did the Loop Begin?
[Toast] Mudd probably kicks off the loop just before he gets picked up by the Discovery, while still in the belly of the whale. That is why we always start back during the party, just before Discovery bumps into the whale. Not quite sure how long the loop should last, but he has to manually initiate a loop by blowing the ship up.

[Kent] The party scene is both great, and a smidge off putting. I find it difficult to believe that 2000's-era party music is still a thing in this Trek era (100 years later and do we still listen and party to 1920's era flapper big band?).  In a later loop Ash and Michael dance to some 70's soul...that I buy a little more for some reason (maybe because it's already aged well?).

[Toast] That is one of the annoying tropes of scifi. Either people listen to OLD music (Kirk in the first Kelvin Timeline movie listening to the Beastie Boys) or they fabricate something that is supposed to be the Future Version of Current Music. I think its best done when they set the scene, and then choose a music style that is entirely dischordant with the setting. What is popular party music in the Federation of the time? How about Finnish Death Metal? No, that's probably too Klingon.

What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Toast] Well that's the fun thing about this episode. The main character, Burnham, is not aware of the loop. She's a supporting element in her own show. Stamets is the aware one, and it takes him quite a few loops before he thinks to engage Burnham. We never see that period of loopy time, just the first (next?) time he engages her and tries to enlist her assistance.

[Kent] I had forgotten the particulars of this episode but it's rather deftly handled at telling a great time loop while also advancing Burnham without including her as the constant in the loop. It is a great differentiator from other loop stories.

WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Toast] Stamets is outside of space and time due to the giant space tardigrade DNA in his system. And no, nobody can be brought into the loop. But he does learn to use the standard trope of time loops, where you learn key interactors to reduce the re-education time for people you enlist in assisting you. Stamets begins each new loop informing Burnham, and assuring her compliance via the secret -- Burnham has never been in love. Space Loopy Stamets is also very empathetic, moreso than his cranky self before the tardigrade DNA injection.

[Kent] I like the very mealy, Trekian way that Burnham exposits how the time loop is happening. 

- Ash recounts from his time imprisoned with Mudd that he pulled off a particularly daring heist: "something about a non-equilibrial matter-state". 

- Burnham thinks for roughly 3.2 seconds and comes up with "A time crystal. We learned about these at the Vulcan Academy. But the decay rate of the lattice is too unpredictable, no Federation aligned species has ever been able to stabilize them.... A four-dimensional race must have perfected the technology, and now Mudd has it."

It's delightful.

How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Toast] The loop seems just over 30 minutes. It is reset by an explosion, which most likely destroys the time crystal and/or its control mechanism.

[Kent] I like the symmetry of this time loop and our previous Trek time loop, in that the ship keeps blowing up.

How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Toast] I think Mudd goes through more than 50 loops before he knows enough about the ship to take her over easily, and finally finds out Stamets is the key to its navigation system. While Mudd does have time on his side, and lots of stolen tech at his disposal, he must be a very bright guy in order to re-code a Star Fleet vessel's computer and bring it under his control.

Mudd enjoys himself immensely during the loops, finding many ways to kill Lorca (shoot, shoot, shoot, disintegrate, disintegrate, beam into space, etc.) and gloating each time. But near the end, even he admits he is getting tired of gloating. He also seems to kill less random crew as he gets into the groove of navigating the loop. Maybe its just because he doesn't want to waste time, and he knows who is going to be around every corner.

[Kent] Just as Mudd gets kind of bored of his superiority trip that he pulls on Lorca, Stamets seems to get out of the weird post-tardigrade-DNA-injection blissful stupor that he was in.  Clearly between the first loop we see and the second loop we see, a few loops have already happened because Stamets acts radically different, a little more frantic as he obviously has spent a few loops trying to figure out who is the key person he needs to help him solve the loop.

Via Stamets, Burnham learns to be more emotionally honest, with herself, and with Ash.  The key Stamets needs to figuring out the loop is Ash Tyler, and Burnham's reciprocated attraction to him is needed in order to get his participation.  Ash, having been imprisoned with Mudd for months, knows him better than anyone else on the ship.  

In becoming more in tune with her emotions, Burnham has a swell of emotion when Ash is killed by Mudd and Burnham offers herself up as even more valuable a target for Mudd to sell to the Klingons but then kills herself, forcing the greedy Mudd to reset the loop, thus restoring Ash.

Obviously each loop, Burnham resets, but Stamets is key to Michael's rapid emotional development with each reset, and it bonds them as well.

What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware?  Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Toast] Nope, nobody but Mudd and Stamets. No, they cannot be made aware, but being Star Fleet officers, once Stamets gets Burnham onboard, the rest fall into line. They trust each other. They work well together. They foil Mudd together.

[Kent] At one point, even though I'd seen this before, Stamets holds Burnham's hand when the ship explodes and I thought that, somehow his holding her hand would allow her to remember in the next loop.  It's illogical and doesn't happen, thankfully, but it easily could have if the writers wanted to short hand a way to get her more involved and to advance her emotionally faster in the series.

What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Toast] Stamets is very very empathetic, but considering this is Star Fleet, strange time anomalies are probably happening all the time. He even has a name for it that Burnham understands immediately. I am sure he doesn't like seeing people die but he knows its only temporary.

[Kent] It's funny, this question, because as you noted before, Michael Burnham is the main character, but Mudd and Stamets are the loopers.  I don't think Mudd ever really thinks beyond himself and his objectives.  Since he's ostensibly in control of the loop, he doesn't really give a crap about anyone (except maybe humiliating Lorca for a time, as well as aware of Stamet's intervening).  

Stamets, for his part, never gets comfortable with the deaths of his fellow crew members.  It's painful for him to watch and at a certain point he says he's had enough of seeing them killed, kind of the opposite of becoming numb to it all.

Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Toast] Mudd interacting with Lorca are the best parts. He finds Lorca's "man cave" including all the nasty weapons and dissected creatures, and he recognizes these things are not quite Federation approved. I think, at that time, he finds a certain amount of common ground with Lorca. Little does he know how opposite that actually is, considering Lorca's facade as a resident of this universe.

[Kent] Yeah, it's funny how probably the first time we watched it, seeing Lorca get killed over and over was somewhat upsetting, but armed with knowledge of who he actually is, it's kind of like, "Please proceed, Mr. Mudd".

[Toast] The most surprising event was Burnham killing herself to move the loop to the next one. Once she convinces Mudd that she is as valuable, or even more, to the Klingons than Discovery, she has to reset the loop because he just killed Tyler. But he will remember, and she knows he cannot give up the money she could get him.

[Kent] Agreed, those anti-matter globs are nasty business.

[Toast] Why is it that extremely painful, incredibly nasty instant-death weapons also clean up after themselves? If the point is killing someone in an extremely horrific manner, you would think they might have it last longer, if not for the killed, but for the viewers they need to convince of something.

How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Toast] I like that it used the trope, but wasn't a typical example. The main character is not the aware one. Its not so much about loop itself, but how the Discovery crew can end up working together to end the loop, with no loss of life. We still get to see some of the most fun aspects of the sub-genre (rapid montage scenes, the sense of glee of playing with the loops) but it uses the plot to move forward other themes in the show. Solid.

[Kent] Total solid. It's only partially approachable as a stand-alone story, but there are enough references and context clues that it's easy enough to pick up on everyone's personality and what the role they play is.  I think the hardest character to grasp, if you were coming in fresh, would be Stamets, because when you first meet him, he's all loosey goosey lovey dovey, but the second time you meet him he's kind of manic, and he's kind of a little different each time we see him.

But yeah, the inversion of the show's main character to an outsider of the loop is a good shake-up to the trope.  Rainn Wilson plays a really fun nasty person, plus there's even a good smidge of a rom-com laid underneath it all and Discovery is a great looking show, so this was really entertaining to revisit.

cheers, Mudd, cheers