[10 for 10, that's 10 tv shows which we give ourselves 10 minutes
apiece to write about. Part of our problem is we don't often have the
spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie
or TV show we watch. How about a 10-minute non-review full of
half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable? ]
In this edition:
1. Supergirl Season 4
2. His Dark Materials Season 1 (HBO)
3. Locke & Key Season 1 (Netflix)
4. Titans Season 2 (Netflix)
5. Avenue 5 Season 1 (HBO)
6. Queen Sono Season 1 (Netflix)
5. Avenue 5 Season 1 (HBO)
6. Queen Sono Season 1 (Netflix)
7. The Last Dance (Netflix)
8. SNL at Home (NBC)
9.Star Wars: Clone Wars Season 7 (Disney+)
10. Shrill S2 (Crave)
aaaaallonz-y
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The DC-CW shows (colloquially referred to as "The Arrowverse" because Arrow was the launching point for all of it) have become... how best to say... cumbersome I think. There's a lot of them with more on the way, each with differing season lengths, but most of them running longer than necessary. With the end of Arrow, I've felt exhausted with the majority of them. Short dips back into the Flash continue to be more aggravating than enjoyable; Legends of Tomorrow has gone on a non-superhero path I don't really love (though it does have a great tone and fun stuff); Batwoman I fell off of early and haven't been able to get back on; and Black Lightning I tend to leave for summer binging on Netflix. Which leaves Supergirl.Supergirl is the show I watch with my daughter but she's become a binge watcher and doesn't like to wait, so I had to find time to set aside so we could catch up. As I write this, Season 5 is just shy of its finale, withheld because of COVID-19, but we only just caught up on Season 4. We got a few episodes in when they originally aired and then were sidetracked for, like, a year. It wasn't anything to do with quality or content, as I think Season 4 may be the best yet for the show.
The season features a very heady anti-immigration storyline, where an angry and xenophobic professor starts up both a street gang under the guise of Agent Liberty, and later becomes a right-wing mouthpiece talk show host, followed by a political opportunity under Bruce Boxleitner's equally xenophobic presidency (ripped from the headlines!). The show handles this subject matter tremendously well. It's upsetting the level of manipulation and lies that anti-immigration mouthpieces perpetrate, but the show makes it clear that the root their hatred is actually better recognized as fear.
Meanwhile at the DEO, Alex and Kara have to deal with their new boss, a woman who is so buttoned down as to be impossible to read or guess her motivations or actions. She's very much a duty-over-dignity, follow-chain-of-command type, even when it disagrees with her. She expects the same of her subordinates. It creates a lot of meaty conflict for the team to work through. Especially when your commander-in-chief is obviously in the wrong, do you follow your conscience or your sworn duty.
The season careens into left field in the final third as they deal with the Russian copy of Supergirl created during the "Elseworlds" crossover, and Lex Luthor enters the fray. I don't think anyone thought Jon Cryer would make for a good Luthor, turns out we were all wrong. He, dare I say it, may be the best live action Lex of all time. He's absolutely phenomenal, and even showing he's been pulling the strings of almost everything all season still doesn't satisfy the fact that there are so many xenophobes still calling for aliens to go home and ready for violence against them, but it just shuts down their most prominent propagators. It's definitely a subject Supergirl can't just muscle her way through.
[12:20]
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I initially gave up on His Dark Materials after two episodes. It was plodding and kind of boring. I didn't understand the rules of the world or the intent of what I was being shown. The book series by Philip Pullman has a very good reputation but the Daniel Craig/Nicole Kidman film was panned both by critics and fans of the series, and this HBO series was supposed to get it right. If this dull intro was getting it right, I wasn't sure I could stay in. I thought better to wait for the series to complete, so I could binge it, rather than try to follow week to week.
It took its time, but I suppose it did do justice to the source. I've never read the books, but just past the halfway point, the series took on incredible weight, and what seemed like misguided kiddie fare turned into a deeply disturbing, dark roam through alternate realities. I'm not sure how to get to where they did by the end, showing all the crushing disappointments and disasters in Lyra's life, without first taking her through the early journey, as tedious as it was.
I still don't fully understand some of the fantastical structures of the world (namely the sort of spirit animals everyone has, things the book likely clarifies outright), but the religious authoritarianism, and the callous disregard for life and well-being in their pursuit of suppressing thought and exploration of heretical ideas is literally bone-chilling. This isn't Harry Potter-style high-adventure magic, it's a deeply tragic world that's devoid of really any humour and it's only Lyra's perseverance through the darkness that sheds any light. The young cast is really great, and of course Ruth Wilson is always compelling to watch.
What I find most curious is, in the midst of world building this entire other reality, the story also introduces a character in "our" reality, an Earth more familiar to us, and another character who has found the soft spots that bridge the two. The title sequence, hoping for - but not quite reaching- Game of Thrones highs, folds over with the idea of layers of realities, which seems to indicate that there's a multiverse happening, and that as much as anything leaves me intrigued.
It's definitely a slow, slow start, but the latter half makes for an enthralling journey overall. It feels like there's a snowball effect at play and it's just going to get bigger and bigger from here.
[21:21]
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The complete 6 volumes of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez Locke & Key had been sitting on my bookshelf for years, left unread by me, for no other reason than I have too many things sitting on the shelf to read with more usually coming every week. There was a false start to adapting the series to network television a few years ago but thanks to Netflix it found a new life. In anticipation of its release I binged, and binged hard the six volumes, finding a bit of a messy narrative but otherwise engrossing story full of weirdness and cleverness.
It's the story of the Locke family who, after the tragic murder of the family patriarch, move back to the familial home in Massachusettes (?). The matriarch and three kids are each in their own way experiencing PTSD fallout from the murder, and the weirdness of the family home (and some of the people in the town) are potentially just distorted images as a result. But the youngest, Bode, his imagination the most liberated, finds the strange keys around the house and their really absurd uses. One unlocks a door that, when stepped through, turns that person into a spirit. Another unlocks the mind, presenting a doorway that others can step into to look around. Another still opens a cabinet that can repair anything to its original state. And one even will open a doorway to anywhere. The keys have powers, large and small, and there is a malevolent force in the wellhouse that wants them all.
The graphic novel series paints a history for the keys that leads into the reveal of their true origin and purpose. The TV show does also, but has a much more difficult time negotiating the past and present, really not developing the history well at all.
As well, the show seems to have difficulty with tone. Where the comic book flirted with elements of adventure and horror, name checking both Lovecraft and Richard Matheson, the TV show doesn't really angle for any specific pastiche. It just kind of happens. It seems to lack guidance and concrete direction. It progresses through the story but without any style or enthusiasm. Its versions of the characters, like Tyler, Kinsey and Nina are all stripped down from the complexity of their comic book counterparts. The graphic novel makes an attempt at exploring race issues (to muddled, potentially wrong-headed results), looks at depression, and alcoholism, where as the show pretty much avoids any difficult subjects.
It's not a very complex or challenging show, and actually not anywhere near as fun as it should be. It wasn't uninteresting but I think reading the comics first made it harder to accept the choices the show made, even if they did make some improvements here and there.
[34:07]
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Titans airs in the US on a streaming service called DC Universe, which gives its audience access to thousands of digital comics, and much of its back catalog of movies, cartoons and TV shows. The big draw, however is its original programming - Titans, Doom Patrol, Harley Quinn, Young Justice and Swamp Thing all debuting on the service. The rest of the world does not have DC Universe available to them so we have to hunt out our own sources for these shows, with Titans being the most accessible via Netflix. However, Netflix only airs Titans after its seasons are complete on DC Universe, which means there is plenty of reviews and reactions to try and skip past online while we wait.
One of the things I noticed, though, was that week-to-week there seemed to be a lot of frustration with season 2 of show, and it's understandable. It builds an over-arching narrative but it jumps and diverts to different characters and puts focus on side stories while leaving cliffhangers unresolved for an episode or two at a time. On a week to week basis I can totally see this being aggravating, but in a binge situation, it's not even a thing. In fact one of the biggest side diversions, a whole episode introducing Superboy to the program 9while we wait to see the resolution of Jason Todd's fall off a skyscraper rooftop from the end of the previous episode), is easily the series' best.
The show starts off Season 2 needing to resolve the Trigon/Rachel's Dad situation from season 1. What seemed to perhaps be building to a new story arc is instead kind of haphazardly disposed of making for an inauspicious start to the new season. But from there it just kind of crackles with energy and then keeps going, as it introduces new players (like Superboy, Deathstroke, and Rose Wilson), advances the storylines of older players and, more than anything, feels kind of like classic Wolfman-Perez soap-opera Titans of the 80's, but with a bit of (some might say unfortunate) Zack Snyder edge to it. But the "fuck Batman" grit that misguided its first season is basically gone, and instead it really goes into its teen sidekick trauma, and the family that forms out of it.
We get so much, it's a loaded season, mostly centered around being unable to let go of the past, or forgive one's self for past sins, or escaping one's history. This includes Bruce Wayne (played by Game of Thrones Iain Glen) helping Dick Grayson to resolve the issues that caused him to quit being Robin, steeling him to lead a new team; Starfire facing ghosts from her home; Hawk and Dove unable to escape from "the life"; and Jason Todd unable to escape the shadow of his own reputation. The show gets so much right, that what it actually gets wrong makes it all the more glaring. It's still trying too hard to be edgy with its swearing, and there's a bit too much moping about by superheroes (mopey superheroes are the worst *cough*The Flash*cough*) but it seems to slowly be crawling out of the darkness it started out in. Despite a tragedy the conclusion leaves the promise that maybe bigger, brighter adventures are ahead next season.
[50:29]
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Avenue 5 was a straight-up recommendation from Toast, and one I was grateful for. I hadn't bothered to watch Veep but I did see Armando Iannucci's Death of Stalin (review sadly lost to the dark year), which was hilarious and right in my humour wheelhouse, full of clever wordplay, the sly back-biting between horrible but not unlikeable people, and grounded absurdism. Taking place on a galactic cruise ship, Avenue 5 has all those Iannucci trademarks that made Veep so popular (I'm guessing), but placed in a satirical future setting. The problems on Earth are only hinted at and get shut out as the troubles on board the starcruiser become myopic.
It's been a long time since I've seen a good comedy of errors, one that manages to build in surprising and unexpected ways. As one disaster after another occurs, the crew and guests aboard become embroiled in personality politics. The disasters themselves range from massive to minor but it's the fallout from those that generates the intrigue and comedy. Some disasters have silver linings, but sometimes silver linings can reflect deadly rays. I love the character building here, and how all the characters slowly lose any pretense or artificial edifice they may have had.
Everyone is good in this, yes, even Josh Gad. Hugh Laurie manages to escape the grizzled doctor drama and worm his way back into his comedy origins with the role as "Captain" of the ship, a role that allows him to mock his own fake American accent and grizzled persona.
Underneath the absurdity is a show that is examining class structures and how they affect modern politics. As well it looks at the mindset of people that distrust the people in power, that perhaps is justified but which also mistakenly leads them to distrust experts in science and technology to their own detriment. But it never hits you on the head with its commentary, it's just ugly and representational of modern times...and also funny. The show is also not above a galactic-class poop joke.
It's certainly got its own unique tone and rhythm so I get why it hasn't caught on bigger, but it's pretty great, ridiculous fun. Oh, and the soundtrack by Adem Ilhem is astounding, intoning horror at some of its biggest points of comedy. It's very deftly handled.
[1:06:31]
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You had me at South African spy. Queen Sono follows the titular character, the daughter of a legendary revolutionary murdered when she was a child, who has since become a top operative for the country's Special Operations Group. She's super competent but also a little overconfident which makes her a little sloppy, and perhaps she's even a little suicidal. Her best friend from childhood is a psychologist so she gets him to sign off on her psych evals even though something is clearly wrong.
The show works through Queen's history, her family, her trauma, but she tries to avoid working through any of it, and avoiding it seems to be causing her some serious harm. As she starts to look deeper into her past while working on a case investigating a militant liberation group that uses her mother's name and visage as its rallying point, she starts to see inconsistencies in the story she's been told about her mother's death, lies that lead back to her own employers.
There's a tremendous character story with Queen Sono, but also its central adversarial story leads to a lot of intrigue that affects Queen and her supporting cast in different ways. As well the story leads to some insight with South African politics and sub-saharan relations, as well as continental relations with particularly European interests. It's not something I've been exposed much to, and with Netflix's backing it's a story told with quality production values. Beyond that, the characters and situations have complexity, shades of grey that cause some debate as to what's really bad, and what other alternatives are there.
There are a couple drawbacks, mainly when the show tries to get invested in side stories of certain secondary characters, it's not handled very cleanly, often feeling forced and unnatural (Frederique's search for his missing sister always feels jammed in). The other is it's very brief six-episode run leaves the viewer wholly unfulfilled as most of the balls juggled remain in the air.
The biggest revelation is Pearl Thusi who plays Queen. She's damn charismatic, utterly captivating, fierce, intimidating and gorgeous. Not that playing a super-spy is small potatoes, but she needs to be in a big profile superhero film, like, now.
[1:17:30]
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I flirted with watching basketball in high school. I don't know if it was to fit in, or if it was out of genuine curiosity. Lord knows I had no interest in playing it, and generally I avoided televised sports because of its lack of special effects. But I was into hip hop, and hip hop was so integrated with basketball you couldn't see a music video without an NBA jersey, and then in '93 Shaquille O'Neal started rapping with the Fu-Shnickens (a group I really liked at the time). Michael Jordan was everywhere, and the 92 dream team was just the most high-wattage sports star power of all time, it was hard not to be caught up in it all.
So yeah, I watched and even lived a little basketball throughout the 90's. Not deep, deep into it, but I watched some regular season games, some playoff games, and most of the finals throughout the decade...I was still an outsider though, not fully invested. I believed the hype, the unstoppable Bulls, the unconquerable Jordan, and I so desperately wanted the underdogs, pretty much any other team, to beat them.
The Last Dance follows Jordan and the Bulls through their 97-98 season in which they would go on to win their sixth championship in 8 years, and their second three-peat, an unheard of achievement in the history of the sport. But in telling that story, mired with intrigue and furor internally and externally, the docu-series intercuts telling the history of its key players - Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Steve Kerr, Phil Jackson, Denis Rodman - and taking a hard profile look at each of the championship years (as well as the tumultuous two years between while Jordan was "retired".
It's a fascinating documentary, well told, despite the confusing leaping back-and-forth between 97-98 and all other periods. In its efforts to concentrate narratives on specific players and time periods it has to tell the overall story out of sequence which leads to more than a bit of fuzziness in how it's all connected and how it all played out. But I was rapt the whole time watching it. We binged the first 6 rapidly then had to wait a week for two more and another week for the final two parts. It's not like there was any question that the Bulls would win their 6th's championship, but it's the unparalleled insight into the team and its players, both from outside perspectives and from their own recollections.
Produced by Jordan, he had a hand in dispelling his own myth with this series. He's a man of preternatural talent in the game, with unparalleled ambition and drive and that led him to be a very dominant and domineering force on the court and behind the scenes. The astounding rise of his celebrity impacted everything around him and he had to accommodate for that. As such he seemed distant from his teammates instead preferring the company of his security team. He never talks about his family and we only meet his kids briefly in the final episodes as young adults. A much as the series reveals about him, there's still a lot of mystery there. But despite popping the bubble of his smiling, Looney Tunes-playing, Coke-shilling facade, he's still an endlessly captivating person.
[1:35:15]
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Saturday Night Live operates in waves, talent comes in, talent blows up, talent gets lazy, talent leaves. It's rare for the show to go from megawatt talent to megawatt talent without some waning in-between. At this stage in its run, the current cast is largely long-in-the-tooth, most having been on board for more than 5 years, and the new talent, while good, are certainly not blowing up the spotlight. The biggest buzz the show has these days is the Alec Baldwin impersonation of Trump (and the many many guest stars who come on as Trump cronies or adversaries like Robert DeNiro, Ben Stiller, or John Goodman), which unfortunately casts too much of a shadow over the main cast. I struggle remembering faces and names at times, while of course Kate McKinnon has broken out as its current cast superstar, she's failed to transition that into successful other media as of yet.
What's kind of critical to Saturday Night Live is both it airing on Saturday night, and it being live from New York, in front of a studio audience. Following the dire spread of COVID-19 in NYC and shutting the city down, SNL couldn't verily proceed as scheduled, could it? I think we were all expecting SNL to just call it a season. But they did perhaps the most daring thing they could do, which was let their talent be as creative as possible given the restrictions, and put together a show that was not broadcast live, nor recorded on a Saturday Night.
Veterans McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Cecily Strong and new recruit Chloe Fineman easily shined, and seemed to garner more individual time than any of their co-stars, producing skits that seemed deeply personal (or in Fineman's case, as impressive show reel for the breadth of her talent).
Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, and Kristen Wiig were "hosts" of the three SNL at home episodes, but beyond introducing the show with a monologue and closing out the show Hanks (still recovering from his coronavirus infection) didn't do much. Pitt portrayed Anthony Fauchi in an opening sketch, and Wiig managed to participate in a sketch or two, delivering perhaps my favourite sketch of all - Beauty Waves (in which she plays a beauty youtuber facing downward into a phone camera, flopping her hair about to increasingly absurd effect). Oh, we also got a "What's Up With That" which is my all-time favourite recurring sketch, maybe even just for Jason Sudekis' dancing
Weekend update was the best its first week, with both Colin Jost and Michael Che seeming very loose and a little goofy. Che piped in a small group into the feed as an "audience" to hilarious results. Subsequent weeks got more produced and polished which takes away from the charm. Che works best rolling with punches, not buttoned down (and losing his grandmother permitted him a great dunk on Jost). Jost is never better than when things aren't going as planned.
It's not sustainable, SNL at Home, because it takes them away from their core conceit but it's a definite shot in the arm creatively and feels so much fresher than much of what they've been doing in recent years. If SNL has been playing too into youtube-friendly sketches (ever since Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island crew jumped aboard), this may actually be the unexpected evolution, where SNL is pretty much all youtube sketches. Perhaps the show will branch out into both maintaining its live Saturday night show, and it's "At Home" self-recorded skits from its very talented crew.
It puts talent in the spotlight, gives them some much needed freedom to go a bit wilder, weirder and more personal. Plus I loved gawking around their various houses/apartments.
[1:55:20]
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Welcome back, Clone Wars, you'll be missed, again.
You know I love Star Wars. I also like Star Wars. And at times I'm not too happy with Star Wars. When The Clone Wars first came out, I was in the "not too happy" camp. So it took me a long, long time to get into. About a decade or so. Once I got into it, I had to get past the animation, which I only recently learned was designed to resemble Greek relief carvings. That makes sense, but still, it's really wonky to look at. By the end of Season 5 and the subsequent "lost Season" I was more or less back in "happy mode" with the franchise.
But if there's one thing I love about Clone Wars, it's Ahsoka Tano. If it's another it's clone Captain Rex. And this final season gives us plenty of both. It kicks off with a 4-part arc, "The Bad Batch", which is a completed and updated version of the arc that ran in animatic form on starwars.com for a number of years. I can see why they went with this, first given that it was almost complete already it's probably cost-efficient, plus it throws the viewer right back into the reality of the clones, and their complicated existence.
The second arc finds Ahsoka having a hard time, befriending a mechanic in the lower decks of Coruscant, only to become between sisters and get embroiled in a spice run gone wrong, and face down a nasty criminal empire. To be honest, the arc is a little corny, and heavy handed at times, but in between its action and intrigue, it provides exposition as to Ahsoka's position in life, how she got there, and why she chooses to stay. Together the two arcs successfully lead into the final arc of the series.
The denouement, however, is possibly the best in the entirety of this 7-season series. Ahsoka has to face the Jedi council as Mandalor pleads for help in the wake of Maul's rule. The council, already aware that the Sith are in their end game in the Clone War, cannot spare much but give Ahsoka Rex's battalion. They take to Mandalor where civil war erupts, and Ahsoka faces down Maul 1-on-1. It's epic, but that's just the beginning. This arc dovetails with the events of Revenge of the Sith and the moments where both Maul and Ahsoka become aware of a deep disturbance in the Force are absolutely spine tingling. It's not long before Ahsoka has to deal with a ship full of clones responding to Order 66, eliminate all Jedi.
The fight coordination is next level, one particular fight actually animated with motion capture with Ray Park reprising his physical position as Maul. It's astounding. As well, the score from Kevin Kiner is easily the highest watermark in the series. Opting for something more "Tangerine Dream"rather than "John Williams" it's a wonderful deviation into synths instead of orchestral, and it works so damn well. Where usually the music in Clone Wars is forgettable, here it adds to the weight of everything going on, it pushes everything making it feel even weightier than Revenge of the Sith itself.
These two characters from outside the film series are given the full spotlight here, knowing that they'll reemerge in Star Wars Rebels (and beyond?) but providing one hell of a story showing how they got there. It closes out the Clone Wars admirably and gives us more of the two greatest characters in the whole pantheon.
[2:07:30]
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The first season of Shrill gave SNL star Aidy Bryant a vehicle and a voice that seemed to be right where she felt at home. It explored being a fat woman in modern America through the eyes of a journalist attempting to find some peace with herself as well as her place in the world. There are a lot of systemic structures that oppress people, based on skin color, or name, gender or physical size or physical capabilities. We're in a time where we're confronting those structures, more aggressively than ever, but also experiencing almost sinister resistance to it. The first season felt the weight of that offensive - but not immovable - wall.
The second season picks up immediately after Annie has confronted her cyberbully and put a rock through his car window. She's emboldened and empowered, but the reality is she tore her life up. She chewed out her mom, quit her job, and settled down with Ryan, who treated her like absolute garbage when they were first just hooking up. A month later, she's struggling with the fallout of her actions. Her mom took off to Vancouver and isn't talking to anyone, she's cozying up in a love nest with Ryan to the exclusion of her friends, and she's more broke than ever with no one willing to give her a paying gig (offers of interships though) despite acknowledging her talent.
Season 2 of Shrill doesn't lighten up on the subject matter, but the show's tone has noticeably shifted. I think the first season had some reliance up the source novel by Lindy West, but season two feels more like Bryant's comedic sensibilities coming through. What could be awkward or tense situations are disarmed by their absurdity, and the performances are slightly broader comedically. The addition of Jo Firestone (Joe Pera Talks To You) and some other spotlighted minor side characters who fill out the crazy world of the Register (with David Cameron Mitchell's egocentric Gabe being even more overshadowed by Patti Harrison's eccentric Ruthie) makes the world of Shrill feel well rounded, while Annie passes all focus to Fran (Lolly Adefope) for an amazing episode where they attend Fran's cousin's wedding and we get a peek into Nigerian-immigrant culture and Fran has to face down her judgemental family.
Maybe not Shrill's best moment, but certainly my favourite, finds Annie facing down her cyberbully again, trying to interview him for a story, and the dynamic between Beck Bennett and Bryant is probably as broadly comic as the series gets, almost too silly for an otherwise grounded show, but it's for a very pointed purpose, and also results in huge laughs.
I was a little intimidated to venture into Season 2 to start, hoping Annie's train-wreck life wouldn't continue down that path, but the tonal shift, the ability to put focus on other characters, and to truly show Annie's growth (as well as some very pointed commentaries, like the Natasha Lyonne-directed episode dedicated to the commercialization of feminism) made for truly remarkable programming that make me eager for season 3 (confirmed).
[2:18:17]
