I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: 2020 Edition: Pt A

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty(¡) attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But every time I try not to write, bad things happen, very bad things. Somewhere. To someone.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. And despite what I said above, I have been avoiding telling you about what I have been watching. Not that you care. But at least I am not telling you about my character

The Dropped

Being someone who watches far too much TV, and there being far too much TV for me to consume, I sometimes drop a show that doesn't keep my attention. Its not that I find it terrible, it just doesn't keep me there. Really really bad is rarely the reason I stop watching, in fact, often a reason I just keep on watching.

Evil, 2019, CBS

David is a Man of God, not quite a priest, not quite an exorcist, but employed by the Vatican to deal with cases of miracle, or anti-miracle (possession) for that matter. Kristen is a forensic psychologist hired by the state as an expert witness. After being drawn together during one of her cases, where the criminal acts as if possessed, she ends up working with David and his team. And together, the fight crime.

The crux of a show like Evil is to supposed to be about exploring which is worse -- the evil that men do, or the evil that men are influenced to do, by otherworldly entities. Y'know, the oldest excuse in the book -- the Devil Made Me Do It. It would be so much easier if we could attach all the atrocities in the world to something other than the nature of mankind. Man kind. The show wants to have utterly objective Kristen fall prey to questioning, to doubt and to come to an understanding there is more than her science. It wants David, with his faith in the Evil his Foe is capable of, to be subjected to how much worse the (more than?) average person can be.

There are some very sweetly evil things about this show, such as Michael Emerson (Lost, Person of Interest) as Dr. Townsend, someone we know right away is A Devil, but who performs all his greatest evils through very earthly acts. Emerson is vile, scathingly so, slick and very serpentine. When I stopped watching, he had just seduced Kristen's mother, making the woman believe Kristen's fear of the man was a daughter thing. Kristen also has her very own Incubus, a demon that invades her dreams, but whose impact carries over into the real world. This is possibly the creepiest aspect of the show, and they really need to draw more upon this aspect and spread it around the rest of the show.

The problem I found was that the show just wasn't sure what direction it wanted to go. The tonal shifts were wrought with a lack of dedication. And I am just not sure whether the characters truly felt committed to their beliefs, which is likely intentional, but comes off as a lack of clarity in the underlining story.

Prodigal Son, 2019, Fox

Malcom is a profiler for the NYPD, a quirky, eccentric man like all profilers are. He's a mild shade of Will Graham (Red Dragon) with one distinct aspect -- he is the son of a notorious serial killer called The Surgeon (Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon; note: how the heck did they get him for mid-grade TV ?!?!). His dad has been locked up since he is a child, and Malcom refuses to interact with him, until he is faced with profiling a copy-cat serial killer.

Once the door is opened to Malcom working with his dad, the door never shuts. The Surgeon, who lives quite the luxurious lifestyle behind bars, feels a need to reconnect with his distraught family. It plays out as manipulative. Malcom is angry, confrontational and fragile. I got the idea they might try and flip the circumstances on us, with Malcom eventually ending up as the serial killer and The Surgeon assisting the police, but alas the show didn't seem that well thought out. It might be worth binging on Netflix, when it eventually ends up there, but not worth the effort of weekly DLing/watching.

Daybreak, 2019, Netflix

Post-Apocalyptic, Zombie drama comedy based on a graphic novel sounds right down my alley. It was diminished somewhat by the focus on teenagers, as in adults all went zombified and all that remains are the various cliques of kids, but I gave it a shot. It was actually better than I thought it would be, having a bit of heart, but only just a tiny bit. So, eventually it was just supplanted by the next shiny, likely more murderous thing -- I am currently on another Murder Show binge.

Josh was the New Kid in a Glendale, California school when the zombie plague hit. He was the nice kid, the Canadian kid, in love with the school dear, Sam, a British girl whom everyone loved. When we start off, Josh is holed up in  his well protected house, stocked full of survival goods, expositioning us everything we need to know, Zombieland style. We learn what we need about the zombies, about the survivors and about how all the high school cliques (jocks, goths, nerds, etc.) have become the survivor factions that control his area of Glendale. Sam is missing and Josh just needs to find her.

This is a bright and sunny apocalypse. Sure, all the adults are dead and/or flesh eating zombies, and sure the clique that once controlled how they went to high school now controls all of their world, but there is plenty of food to be found and chance to recreate themselves. There must have been plenty of prozac in the water, cuz nobody seems all that bent out of shape by the end of the world. Once the first few episodes went past the world building, introducing the gay kid (pacifist samurai), the little kid (genius pyromaniac), psycho kid(s), etc. it held little depth to keep me coming back. And it got cancelled so I doubt it will go far, as too many of these shows save too much for the later yet unknown seasons.

The I-Land, 2019, Netflix

The trailer for the show mocks the Fyre Festival debacle, but doesn't tell you much more. Luckily, Netflix does trailer-independent previews when you mouse-over, which revealed a Lost rip off with a bunch of pretty people waking up on a tropical island, not sure who they are nor how they got there. Insert instant conflict. Insert lazy channel-flicking fodder, or at least the new digital version of it, as Kent referenced. What the Hell, let's see what it's about. Its likely to have A Twist.

Episode Three revealed this somewhat expected twist, but not before pitting all these pretty, amnesiac people against each other. Yep, almost instantly they reacted to each other like it was an episode of the other popular island TV show, Survivor, which I assume is intentional but just ended up being batshit. It was supposed to be subtly hinting at he underlying people sans memories, but it came off as these people people being stupid and antagonistic. For example, in Episode Two, one of the characters discovers what looks like an abandoned hotel or apartment complex -- instant shelter and likely some mouldy supplies. Instead, one alpha character yells about having just finished building a beach side camp for them, so they never go to the buildings.

Episode Three's twist, that they are all inside a chemically induced virtual reality, that they are all convicts participating (against their will) in an experiment, to prove that without the life baggage, they can be Good People (bzzzzzt), proves to be even more inane. After the reveal and the stupidity around it, I was out. Maybe some rainy, channel flicking day will bring me back.

V Wars, 2019, Netflix

After a couple of successes, Netflix must just be looking for the next graphic novel adaptation they can fund or just snatch up. As highlighted above, many are likely to be terrible. But the comic landscape is vast and genre-plenty, so there is lots to try out. We may be post-vampire, but there are still a couple of years to milk it before all the vamp fans fade out.

Dr. Luther Swann (Ian Somerhalder, The Vampire Diaries) is an epidemiologist who is asked to fly north quickly, to find out why some of his counterparts at an Arctic research site have gone silent. Sounds odd, but its entirely a plot of convenience. They need to get Swann to the site of where everything begins; the show doesn't care about the logic of that. So Swann, and his best buddy the pilot, fly off to find the base abandoned, signs of violence and a weird, black ash/mold/motes floating in the air. Be worried? Weirded out? Yes. Protect yourself? Bzzzzzt. But eventually they clue in and admit what they have exposed themselves to.

Back in civilization, they are quarantined. Pilot Buddy shows signs of suffering from some unknown disease, while Swann is just fine. They are released, as nothing shows up to have caused their discomfort.

And then the killing begins. Way Up North, the site dug into old ice and uncovered frozen prions. Both men are infected, but Swann is immune. Meanwhile Pilot Buddy turns into a vampire, which is slowly revealed over the first few episodes. The best friends become enemies when Swann won't help cover up his buddy's blood hungry murders. Things get worse when Swann transmits it to his wife, after some recovery sex, and has to kill her to protect his son. Thus the vampire plague is released.

I stopped watching before I knew the exact path this show was to take, but I assumed it was going to spread as quick as a cold virus, eventually separating the new vampire species from the cattle. Thus, the Wars of V Wars. It was so very very Canadian, and not in the fun, self-aware state of so many shows I watch. It was overly serious, not well thought out, conspiracy trope filled and definitely C-grade. Not being of any higher quality, The Strain, the Guillermo del Toro penned (with a co-writer) series from a few years ago at least had a more compelling plot. This did not. Again, it might end up being a rainy day or flu day (Corona? Vampire?) binge watch.

The Feed, 2019, Amazon

This is the only British show in the mix, and the only truly scifi show. It is set the Near Future when the Google/Facebook/Twitter analog technology The Feed is everything. This is your Black Mirror level creepy technology that is implanted in your brain at birth giving you constant, instant access to the social media tool, communication and even being able to augment reality by replacing what you see with what they/you want to see. Sounds scary/grand until a conspiracy begins to grow, one the points to someone being to control the Feed and anyone connected to it.

The show centres around the Hatfield family (I really hope the McCoys show up) who invented the tech and are the Bezos/Gates analog family. They are at the point where the technology is starting to become more than just social media, where it is beginning to play a part in world politics, so of course it has its protestors. Something seedy is going on, and Daddy Hatfield (David Thewlis, Kingdom of Heaven) seems to know what, and its affecting his family, but he won't let them in on what he really knows. But Tom, the son who really didn't want to have anything to do with the family, gets directly wrapped up in it when his wife shows signs of being manipulated through The Feed.

The problem with shows like this, whether American or British, is that they like to dribble out the actual story while piling on the fictional technology. But, being TV, they only have so much budget so they can really only show you so much, which ends up with us being stuck with lots of lots of filler scenes. Unless you get a stellar cast, great directing or at the very least, a very atmospheric style it gets boring real quick. This one was definitely Black Mirror-lite and I tired of it.

***

And that was just the shows I dropped throughout 2019. Imagine what I can get bored with as this year proceeds !