I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: A Long Look Back: C (Saw)

 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 we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  2020 bad.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else was 2020, and 2020-Extended (2021 on the calendar) about? Well, beyond baking bread and not cutting hair. Didn't do much on the former, and only one cut in one year, on the latter.

A is here. B is there. 

C is for Binged, because I am not clever.

If any show is more "what we needed for 2020" than Ted Lasso then I don't know one. And this is from someone who has no interest in sports nor any interest in fiction about sports. I may even say that this is the best show I saw in the last year or so.

Ted Lasso spawned from a TV commercial, about an American football (football) coach who comes to the UK to manage a football (soccer) team. Problem is that he knows very little about football (soccer). Why is he invited? Because he has a reputation for pulling terrible teams out of the gutter, and because the new owner of the team, who acquired it in the contentious divorce from her philandering husband, actually wants the team to fail miserably, destroying what her husband loves dearly. Ted is amiable, unflappable and seemingly a loveable American buffoon. But there is something there behind his bright smile, something few see, and thus he and coach Beard (his co-coach) begin to shape the team earnestly.

Ted has some die hard ideas on what a team should be and do and act like, that remind me of those "everyone wins" mentalities in pre-school "sports" teams. Or at least that is how we are meant to see it, I gather. I know very little about sports and sports teams, so in a way, Ted's approach means more to me. But really, the approach he takes is not what makes the series so good, but Ted himself and the way people end up reacting to, and eventually supporting him. Along with Ted, I was entirely surprised by the stand-out performance from Juno Temple, whom I know mostly playing ditzy girlfriends, which is exactly what she is here, but again, like Ted, she is so so much more.

And then there was the show I liked a whole lot more than I expected to, even though it was right down my alley, starring & created by people I like a lot, but I just wasn't expecting Truth Seekers to be any good. 

And then I enjoyed it. Immensely so.

Nick Frost is Gus, the best installer at the nation-wide UK broadband internet service provider Smyle. Gus's boss is David (Simon Pegg, Shaun of the Dead) who trusts Gus implicitly, and wears an astoundingly obvious toupee. Gus lives with his grumpy father-in-law (minor joke, he calls him Dad and it takes a few episodes to learn he is dad-in-law) Richard (Malcom McDowell, The Mentalist). Gus's new partner (Samson Kayo, Timewasters) Elton John (yep) has a mysterious past, which connects to Gus's real passion -- investigating supernatural events for his podcast/YouTube channel.

It begins as a simple "let's investigate a ghost" show, half-hour run, amusing but unassuming, and that is all I expected. But then it digs deeper, adding plot layers and conspiracies and intricacies not just to the story, but the characters and their connections. Frost deftly plays the lead, but really it was his supporting cast that allowed it to rise up higher. You would think McDowell would be wasted in a role like this, but no, it really is one of his best, TV-wise. And the brief appearance by Kelly Macdonald (Brave) is just hilarious.

I liked it more than I expected, and more than Kent, I guess.

Utopia is another one of those shows which suffered from unfortunately being released during a pandemic, but even if it hadn't, probably wouldn't have done any better. Also, being a remake of a British cult classic, didn't help.

I admit, I went into this version of it, expecting it to be all meta, as in, an American remake of a British cult-series, wherein the new version was referencing the original British series, sort of a reboot-meets-sequel. Alas, it was just a run of the mill remake. Even saying that, I did enjoy it while also being simultaneously utterly disturbed by it. It was not a good viewing choice for the heart of the 2020 pandemic paranoia "what could happen next" mindset.

The plot begins with a bunch of geeks dedicated to an old, beautifully illustrated graphic novel attending a CON where they believe they can purchase the latest issue, or more precisely the original artwork for a never published final issue. Meanwhile the emergence of the new issue also spawns two assassins working for a shady figure, who.... well, kill everyone involved with selling the issue. It gets very dark very quickly, not fun & quirky like a nouveau Dirk Gently as I was hoping. 

The central plot, and yeah I am spoiling something which IMO was pretty obvious, involves a megalomaniac corporate visionary (self-styled) and cult leader manufacturing an epidemic, so after which he can also become the heroic purveyor of the vaccine, wherein it will contain something that sterilizes most of the world. So yeah, antiVax support on steroids. 

The graphic novel is the coded ravings of a scientist who worked with the cult leader, and who created his own pseudo-cult, centered around his own daughter who would fight the BBEG. The geeks are obsessed with the codes in the comics, but let's say, while they end up the central heroes of the story, very little works out for them. It is bleak, bleak bleak bleak, so yeah maybe not the best viewing for the Spring/Summer of 2020. But the performances were good, and the beats of the story were solid. So, skillfully crafted if somewhat unfortunate timing.

Meanwhile NEXT was just not very good at all, not in skill nor craft nor ... well, anything, beyond being solid, mid-grade thriller TV. But I am always charmed (that's a weird word choice) by an Evil AI story, so I persevered, just to see where it was going. It never really ever went anywhere.

John Slattery (Mad Men) is our eccentric tech mogul who Ted Talks about the need for cautions around AI. But when he speaks about AI, he does not mean Machine Learning, as we IRL know it, but big, spooky, self-aware computers that always want to wipe humans out. His own company, he himself in fact, created some code that he worried was going to become Eeeevil. So he shelved it, but now, after he has been ousted from his own company by his brother and a shady Board of Directors, have resurrected it.

This idea was done well in Person of Interest but that show took its time laying out the probability and outline as to how an advanced program could... evolve. This one just throws it into our faces by episode two, as people and systems are manipulated to death, and the code quickly talks back to us in a HAL9000 style voice. Note to coders, choose disarming voices for AI's, and no, not Alexa which the show ALSO obviously alludes to.

Anyway this paranoia-as-entertainment show was setup to be a series initially but rolls along at break-neck speed implying mini-series, as only the tech mogul and the FBI cyber-squad who believes him try and isolate the AI, or destroy it. There are some fun bits, some decent tension but for the most part the drama is ludicrous and the technology references laughable. The season ends with the AI seemingly destroyed and the world saved, but we know better don't we?

If 2020 was horrible and going to be remembered for The Pause, someone will also have to remind future historians that it was also the era of The Mandalorian. The show began in late 2019 (despite the incorrect air dates in IMDB) emerging almost at the same time someone in Wuhan, China ate a bat, regurgitated it in a lab and made the super-flu we have all come to know and love. I was able to get my 3D printed Baby Yoda before we donated the work 3D printer to a PPE coop, and we all went home. Since then, we have had the boon of a second season, a welcome respite to the bleakness that was 2020.

I unabashedly love this series. I love the central story of a Mandalorian obsessed with honour, going all Lone Wolf & Cub with a child creature that can only really be called a baby Yoda. I love the western stylistic approaches to many episodes, and in saying that, the trope filled choices for all the episodes. I love how it plays with the canon, taking place between Episode 6 and Episode 7 of the movies. I love how it ties into the other properties that Dave Filoni was central on. Mentioning this show deserves its own long post or series of posts, as Kent did, but I am not going there. Suffice to say, even if I don't call this one of the best things on TV throughout 2020 (and we rewatched S1 at least twice) it was one of the things I enjoyed the most. I mean, c'mon it was Star Wars on TV !!

Star Trek Discovery S3 came, and went, with far less enthusiasm on my part than I hoped for. While I loved experiencing the series, I felt this one suffered for what it seemed intent on doing, as if they had a Story Book they had to ascribe to, where they were supposed to end up by S3, but didn't really like any of the plot notes, so only gave them a passing nod.

S2 ended with Michael Burnham and the Discovery, crew included, being tossed into the far future, some 900 years. They hoped by dragging the "sphere data", which was embedded into the computer core of Discovery, into a far future, they would change their era's fate from being destroyed by an Evil AI that would make of use of the sphere data to become all powerful. As we know many years of Star Trek after this series, chronologically, we can only assume they succeeded, even if you consider the Kelvin timeline. 

Not sure if this was brave or foolhardy, because .... Time Travel !! Anyways, dramatic choice that actually makes use of an idea that Gene Roddenberry wanted to use, but actually ended up butchering via Andromeda, in that they are so far into the future, the Federation has collapsed and everyone is barely surviving... galactic scale.

It starts interestingly enough, in that Burnham is alone and makes her own way in a world that not only has no cohesive Federation but also a severe lack of warp travel. Many many worlds are isolated by a catastrophic event called The Burn, wherein pretty much every warp capable starship exploded simultaneously because of something to do with unstable dilithium. This is a weird world of newer tech, but also more chaotic and dangerous, as different factions vie for control of what is left. So Burnham has to find out where Discovery is, what happened AND CAN SHE FIX IT. Because, what else is her purpose but to make everything alright. She really thinks she's a main character in a YA novel.

Alas, the series reunites her and Discovery and the Federation faaaar too quickly and the season devolves into just another run of Burnham breaking ranks, doing her own thing, damning the (photon) torpedoes but always saving the day despite it. There are some great new characters, so great episodes and a lot of fun to be had, but I was still left inevitably unsatisfied, as Kent was, but for other reasons.

Oh, and I finally found a copy of the French/British War of the Worlds. I had seen the (period) British series, titled The War of the Worlds (notice the lack of 'The' in this one?) after the source material, which is set in Edwardian times, so 10 years after the original? But I never wrote about it, because it had little impact on me. I also had trouble finding this other series, until sometime in 2020 when it appeared on CBC. Set in the current era, it was also ultimately unsatisfying as it is obviously a setup for a longer series that never came to be.

The premise is rather horrific. The martians (or aliens, to be precise) send down orbs but these ones emit a signal, that once it reaches a peak, basically kills everyone on the planet, but for those fortunate few who were underground, or those with an altered brain chemistry of some kind, which protected them for unknown reasons. We are introduced to a few key families, some in France, some in the UK, who eventually end up having some connection.

It was a rather bleak, death filled show that again, I wondered why I was watchin during the height of 2020, and while I liked the intense drama of the series, as well as my usual (yes, weird) attraction to empty cities, in the end I was again left without much attachment to the series. So many final survivors being assholes to each other. The show was leading to a reveal, one that fell flat with only a minor because it only revealed that the "aliens" were somehow connected to us, but it didn't go any further. Were they from our own future? Were they capturing and manipulating humans? And given that it is never to have another series, we have no idea. The end.

Finally, a small CBC series Trickster, set around indigenous mythos, but recently marred when it came out the creator gained support and funding by identifying as Indigenous. She is not Indigenous. But the show she left behind was pretty decent.

Jared lives in small town/reserve BC with his talking-to-people-not-there mother, barely attending high school and making & dealing E (MDMA? I am not up on my street drug terms) on the side. Like Blood Quantum, the story is not afraid to show us the underbelly of Indigenous Canadian lives, a little on the seedy side, a lot below the poverty line. But like Taika's Boy, they get by. That is until Jared starts seeing and being exposed to the supernatural.

Like many coming of age supernatural stories, Jared learns of his heritage only after it comes calling for him. It's not much of a spoiler to learn that his mother got mixed up with a Trickster, and Jared is the progeny of that coupling. And the victim. Tricksters are mythological immortal beings, not quite bad, not quite good, but definitely trouble, and they can shapeshift. Jared's dad tells him he is only there to reconnect with Jared, teach the boy who & what he is, but really, he is there for himself only. Jared's mom won't have any of it. But she is dealing with her own demons.

I found the show really compelling, both for the characters it created but also for the not-entirely-myth mythology it presents. These are beings that have been around for a long long LONG time, and just happen to be tied to the Indigenous folk of North America, well, because they were here as well, when the white men bulldozed their way in. This show doesn't shirk away from the damages done, but also doesn't dwell on them, letting the stories and the characters stand for themselves. Too bad it had to be marred by someone pretending to be something they weren't, weirdly much like the Trickster in the story...

And finally, finally The Stand 2020, as I finished watching it while this post was sitting in drafts mode, after having forgotten entirely of its existence and pretty much binged watching it over a week or so.

During my King days, The Stand was my favourite, an ensemble quest story of Good vs Evil in an empty world. I have always had a post-apocalyptic fascination; apocalypse as well, for that matter. Captain Trips was terrifying and overwhelming but the story that followed was completely in my wheelhouse. I even read and enjoyed the 90s retrofit King did, despite it not being entirely successful. Those were the days when publishers thought King could do no wrong.

And then there was the 90s TV mini-series which I don't really recall too well, but do remember disliking and loving it in equal parts. I just didn't feel the book could be portrayed in the PG world that TV allowed for back then. So when it was announced that a new series would come around, I was enthralled. Then we got our own pandemic and I was less enthused. Again, bad timing, dudes.

That said, having powered through it, and surprised they actually did as much ending the world plague story as they did, I am once again in the "liking some bits, meh about other bits" boat I was for the first series. All in all it seemed to suffer from being a mini-series of its own, as vast amounts of characterization and plot seemed washed away to further moving the story along. King's characters have always been his main strength and while the portrayals are great here, especially the casting of Amber Heard as Nadine (which allowed many to immediately dislike her) and Alexander Skarsgård as Randall Flagg, the actual presented characters lacked incredibly. Its like we were just given enough of each character to know their place in the story, and that was about it. I just felt... nothing for any of the characters. In the end, it all felt rushed and not very committed to the horror and awe (magic, religious or otherwise is real) it was supposed to depict.