Russian Doll Season 1 (8 episodes)
Umbrella Academy Season 1 (10 episodes)
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TITANS
In 1982 Marv Wolfman and George Perez revamped the Teen Titans concept -- that of a club for superhero sidekicks -- into one of the decade's most popular titles. The New Teen Titans title didn't just stick with established sidekicks, it also introduced new characters... instant fan favourites like Cyborg, Raven and Starfire. The series was a full-blown drama about coming out of the shadows of more famous heroes, finding one's own identity, dealing with feeling like an outsider or freak, and more interpersonal squabbles. It wasn't Degrassi, but it was certainly inspired by the trend of adult soap operatic TV of the era (Dallas, Falcon Crest, Dynasty) and predated the teen soap operatic of Beverly Hills 90210 and 21 Jump Street by at least a few years. For over a decade in Wolfman's hands the Titans saw various teammates get killed, married, and retire, and they got older, dropping the "Teen" and just becoming "Titans". As they aged, they introduced a new generation of heroes into their midst, who became Young Justice. Aging legacy heroes like Dick Grayson, Wally West and Donna Troy would on new identities, making room for new teen sidekicks to take on roles like Robin, Kid Flash and Wonder Girl.This then, is the very awkward template for Titans, DC's inaugural show for their content platform, DC Universe. Rather than starting at zero, the series establishes that characters like Robin, Wonder Girl, Hawk and Dove have all been operating as vigilantes for some time, in a world certainly not devoid nor unaware of its superheroes. However, Dick Grayson has fled Gotham for Detroit and ditched his "R" crest for a detective's shield. The darker impulses of his mentor were seeping in too deep and so he rejected the heroes life. But the heroes life comes calling anyway when he meets Rachel, a girl with even darker impulses and powers that manifest as a result. She's on the run from a cult of abductors, as well as on a journey of self discovery. Along they way they meet Gar, a kid with green hair who can turn into a green tiger, and eventually their paths cross with Kory, an amnesiac looking for clues to her own past, which seems to have ties to Rachel as well. Also, Kory can unleash very destructive bolt of energy from her body.
As they come together, a band of misfits with the one shared goal of keeping Rachel safe, they start to uncover some truths about themselves. In each one's case, there's trauma and tragedy (and in some cases, guilt) that they're burying, that threatens to consume them. This is even more evident in the story of Hawk and Dove -- Hank Hall and Dawn Granger -- friends of Dick's from his crimefighting days. Hank's need to bust heads is a way to focus his pent-up rage into something good, and it's Dawn's calm and compassion that keeps him from self destructing altogether, but Hank's lack of discipline is starting to take its toll. Robin's reappearance into their lives with Rachel in tow is full of good intentions, if ill executed. We also meet ex-Wonder Girl Donna Troy and the new Robin, Jason Todd, each having a different profound effect on Dick's mindstate... though certainly not even close to providing any resolutions for him.
After the infamous "Fuck Batman" trailer, I had put my expectations in check for this series, and as such, came out pleasantly surprised. That "Fuck Batman" scene, even in context, just feels like a series that's trying its god-damnedest to be "mature", and there are more than a handful of moments throughout (so much digital blood spatter in the fight sequences) that scream "trying too hard". But it's not, actually. The series establishes its tone quite well by the third episode, and is unapologetic for it. It's a teen/sidekick/superhero story designed for an audience who is already familiar with teen/sidekick/superhero stories. It's not dumbing anything down and it's not playing nice for a young audience. It wants its heroes to be scarred and it wants you to see the role the life they lead has on scarring them, and likewise how the scarring in their life has led them into the roles they play. Titan's greatest triumph is its focus on characters and understanding them.
A far as the characters go, they a bit off brand from their comics and animated precursors. Dick Grayson isn't as charmingly good natured, Gar Logan isn't the fun-loving goofball (and he only transforms into a green tiger, perhaps the aspect of the show that perturbs me the most), Rachel is on-point (if de-aged), and Starfire is more the warrior of the comics than the sweetly naive alien of the cartoons. Hawk and Dove are bang on point (even if I don't remember Hank and Dawn being in a relationship in the comics, it really works here), as is Jason Todd, and Donna's arrival made me very happy (a most assured representation of this character). The only thing that is clear with the main cast is they are all suffering to different degrees with PTSD, and although the show never explicitly calls it out, the effects of their abilities, histories and lifestyles have a brutal, grinding down effect. While I wish there was more costumed villains, and more in-costume action, this was a thoroughly engrossing, pleasantly surprising adaptation, of which I'm greatly looking forward to more.
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RUSSIAN DOLL
The trope of living the same day over, or dying and starting again has become a genre of storytelling all its own. Groundhog's Day popularized it, but it's now a trope used in sci-fi (Arq, Edge of Tomorrow) and horror (Happy Death Day) on the regular, and in TV shows seemingly all the time (in the past year Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Star Trek: Discovery have all used this cyclical convention and I'm sure there's many more examples, probably a whole list or two somewhere). As much as I love this convention, and am always game for watching one play out, I have to admit that Russian Doll's look far and away has had the greatest impact.
It's Nadia's (Natasha Lyonne) birthday party, hosted by her best friends. She's a little drunk, perhaps a little stoned, and perhaps a little depressed. She goes home with a guy she doesn't find too distasteful and goes about her day. Then she gets hit by a car and dies, only to awaken back at her birthday party at her friend's place. Is she just way too stoned? Is this some kind of joke? Is she going crazy? When she dies again, and returns to the same bathroom at the same time, it's clear that none of these thoughts are accurate.
So what is it. What is the significance of all this? It seems that no matter her actions, Nadia dies and comes back to the same time. But the details aren't always exactly the same, some elements seem different, or missing, and the story seems to get more and more contained, like a matryoshka, the doll inside a doll gets smaller, the details less refined, until there's no more dolls to crack open, just a small figure left exposed like a raw nerve. It belongs back in the comfort of its ever expanding surroundings but how to get back? And is it truly alone?
This is a dark comedy, with co-creators Lyonne and Amy Pohler injecting some very specific personality elements into the characters and their environment. Nadia is careless to a fault, she's shut down, guarded, defensive and sardonic. She has an unrealistically pessimistic view of the world and her life, but what has the world given her to change that viewpoint? It seems almost intentional then that the friends she has are more carefree and cheerful, and the relationship she most desired was with a good man (a loving father) doing a bad thing (having an affair). It's an old cliche that New York tends to be its own character in any production that shoots there, and it holds here, but the NYC the show captures is so very specific to the world Nadia rolls in, and extends herself to. I can't say that the story would play out differently in, say, Minneapolis, but it definitely would not feel the same.
There's a reflective, meditative element to Russian Doll. Amidst the etherial dark humour and Nadia's search for cosmic meaning for these turns of events, she starts exploring the larger world around her. In Groundhog's Day the point was for Bill Murray to lose his ego and to become a decent man worthy of wooing Andie MacDowell (the counter-arguement to the film's narrative is how thinly played MacDowell's character is, given that she meets Murray's character at most a day before and while Murray has thousands of days to learn to love her, she has maybe 36 hours, half of which are taken up by him being an asshole), here Nadia's quest isn't nearly as clear. Is this a case of live, die, repeat, or is it a case that her consciousness is traversing dimensions? Or is it some form of purgatory? The philosophical implications aren't ignored, and in some respects shares a sensibility with the contemplative The Good Place, and like The Good Place it's the personal journey that comes to the forefront. It's not that Nadia becomes a different, better person like Murray's character does in G'hog's Day but instead she comes to just accept herself, understand herself. But that's not the only key, and to say more is major spoiler territory and the precise point where the show spins from engaging delight to must-consume-it-all engrossing. The show is meticulous in its detailing, with seemingly meaningless details having greater importance later on, revealing themselves like bombshells upon rewatch (and some details requiring an eagle eye to capture...but it shows the genuine love the creators had in making the show).
All told it plays out like a roughly 4-hour movie (give or take) as much as episodic television, with a doozy of a cliffhanger ending. There's a promise of three seasons to tell the full story and I cannot wait.
(David's take on Russian Doll)
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UMBRELLA ACADEMY
With the announcement of a Disney Streaming service back in 2017, Netflix was keenly aware that its time using Marvel properties to draw viewers to its service was coming to an end. Despite the absolute glut of superhero programming on TV (Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, Agents of SHIELD, Krypton, Gotham, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher, The Tick, Runaways, Cloak and Dagger, Legion, The Gifted, Titans and no doubt more that I'm forgetting all had new episodes air in 2018) on top of a dozen or more superhero films per year, the fatigue does not seem to be setting in. As such Netflix went on the prowl for new superhero properties to call its own, and not share with DC or Marvel. They signed a deal with Mark Millar for his existing original properties as well as stake in creation of new ones, and they found Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba's Umbrella Academy, an earnest reimagining of/homage to classic X-Men that set the comics world alight for a year or two then faded away.I recall enjoying the comics, but that's about it. The experience of watching the Umbrella Academy on Netflix was an all-new one. Occasionally I would have a flashback to a specific image, such as Luther's simian form on the moon, but the story was all new to me, full of surprises, and a few obvious hunches.
The first three episodes are absolutely cracking with energy, so full of wild ideas rippling with potential and possibilities. The key conceit is that 43 children were spontaneously born on the same day at the same time around the world nearly 30 years ago to mothers who were no pregnant prior. Professor Reginald Hargreevs, a famed explorer and wealthy eccentric, decided to try and adopt/collect these children, winding up with 7 of them in his family. Hargreevs was not a loving father, instead more keenly interested in the children as sociological experiments and, upon discovering most of them had special abilities, tools for his own purposes, training them to be superheroes and celebrities, all except Number 7, Vanya, whom he convinces is not special.
A decade or more after the family fractured following the death of Ben and disappearance of Number 5, the remaining estranged siblings gather together for the Professor's funeral, reopening old wounds and inflicting new ones. Raised by a cold, uncaring, authoritarian paternal figure, a robot mom and an intelligent talking chimp companion, these children are not the picture of mental health. When Number 5 returns, from a post apocalyptic future he's hoping to avoid (the fact that he's not sure what has happened means there's a mystery to solve first), it provides a ticking clock structure to the narrative that raises the stakes, but also means, at ten episodes, there's aspects which feel laborious in the wake of the countdown to disaster.
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| I forgot this is what they look like in the comics |
The show thrives on the family dynamics, the contentious and acrimonious relationship between most siblings. Luther was Number 1, meant to be the leader following in his fathers shadow, but feels ashamed that the team fell apart, as well as ashamed of his body which was mutated by his father in an attempt to save is life after a disastrous mission. Diego was Number 2, a master of knives. Impulsive and aggressive, he maintained the vigilante lifestyle after the band broke up. Number 3, Allison, became a superstar model and actress, and a mother, but her ability to manipulate people with whispers broke her new family up when her husband learned she used her skill on their daughter. Number 4, Clive, is able to see and hear the dead, but the dead, being everywhere nearly drive him mad, so he turned to drugs instead to quiet the voices. The only one he regularly sees now is Ben (Number 6). Vanya, the one without powers, is the one most lost without her family, and also the one most hindered by them. Told she's not special, and believing it, she lives demurely and quietly, wishing to break out but too fettered by doubt to do anything about it. She also wrote a tell-all book about the family which set everyone against her, despite it being a cry to be closer to them.
Number 5 meanwhile, returns from the future where he had lived into his late-50's, in the form of the 12-year-old boy who had left. He's a teleporter, obviously with the ability to time-jump, but uncontrollably. His life in the wasteland of the future had an impact, and the trauma creeps out in the unlikeliest of ways. He also wound up recruited to be an assassin for a bureau who maintains the order of the timeline, and having just defected, he is chased by Cha-Cha and Hazel. Cha-Cha is a dedicated assassin, while Hazel feels underappreciated by his employers, as his benefits ebb and his well-being compromised.
Any scenes with Number 5, Clive, Hazel or Cha-Cha feel vital, full of vigor and enthusiasm (Hazel, despite being a brutal killer, becomes perhaps the most endearing character in the series). The sub-plots around Luther and Allison's romance and trauma unfold nicely and with meaning. Diego has a hard time connecting with his siblings, and his stand-offishness also pushes against the audience after a while, but his conceding to being part of the family is one of the show's more triumphant moments. It's mostly during Vanya's story where there's drag. It's not that the arc is bad, but there's a predictable element there that seems to take forever to come to fruition. The finale is pretty huge, leaving a cliffhanger ending that makes one very curious as to how the next season will possibly play out.
To coincide with the release on Netflix, Way and Ba have returned with a third volume of their comic series, likely because the first two volumes don't provide enough material for an ongoing tv series, as well Way and Ba certainly had more stories to tell in the universe but were sidelined by other projects. As a replacement for the Nextflix Marvel superhero series, honestly, this is a pretty drastic improvement. Building one's own world, playing by its own rules, rather than having to live up to the expectations of both comic book histories and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, gives this series more storytelling freedom and leads to less disappointment.
I feel I need to write a post, but then I read yours and it pretty much mirrors what I thought. Maybe I should just do a "response" post like we always envisioned this blog being framed around.
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