I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: A Long Long Look Back, Pt. D - Randomalia

 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.  Freedumb Convoy 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 the last few years about? Sure, we got a few breaks from being confined at home, and might have actually gone outside (gasp!) and socialized with (double-gasp!) human beings (faint-dead-away) but we always ended up back on the sofa, flicker in hand, trying to find something to watch amidst the 35 shows we downloaded, and the 5 or so streaming services we are subscribed to.

Part A is here. Part B is here. Part C is here.

The problem with watching too much TV, is that it goes in one eye, and out the other (the left one, my bad one). I start forgetting what I am watching. Or it might just be Marmy choices, that allow me to walk in and out of the room at leisure. Here are some that I am just randomly remembering I have watched or have to get out of my head before I forget again.

Hawkeye, 2021, Disney+

The most annoying thing about watching this series was being three-quarters of the way through before I recognized that the quality was REALLY low. It was then that I found out that the Disney+ app on my Hisense Android TV does not show 4K, and in fact, lowers 4K content to 540p. For a brief moment I had thought they were going for a rustic look, but I switched over to my xBox and lo-and-behold, 4K in all its glory.

Anywayz, the six episode series ran just before Xmas 2021 which means we were watching it while deeply embedded in T&K's XMas (2021) Advent Calendar. So, forgive me if things are a little fuzzy. Remember, I never intended on writing about TV this year, but what the hay, I am easily influenced otherwise.

Full disclosure, my comic reading days are long behind me, but for the occasional before-bed digital reading via a pirate site. So, I am not all that familiar with the source material for this series. I was aware of it, but unlike Kent, I could not be disappointed at how badly they adapted it. Also, the MCU is not known for being gentle with its adaptation of existing source material, more like wolfing it down and picking out the choice bits from the litter box (ed note: ewwwww, nasty "metaphor"!).

All that is to say, I rather liked this series, and it might be the one I am likely to re-watch.

So, Hawkeye / Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner, The Bourne Legacy) is in NYC to recover some missing items from his 5 year stint as Ronin... or just to do some Xmas shopping with his kids; cannot remember, maybe both? Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld, Begin Again) is his Number One Fan, a little rich girl who lost her father during the Battle of New York and pseudo replaced him with Hawkeye. She's been getting into trouble and becoming a great archer since. She seems to believe its only a matter of time before she's a superhero in her own right.

The two become acquainted when she blunders into an underground auction selling off Ronin stuff, and it is attacked by the Track Suit Mafia. She shows herself as being more than capable, but still, an inexperienced kid. But, Clint has no choice, as something else is also going on, and she's wrapped up in it. Clint delays Xmas with the family and stays in NYC to unravel the caper.

Hawkeye is showing his age; remember, he is one of the superheroes without any powers, and time has caught up with him. He's mostly deaf in one ear, muffled in the other, and being bounced around by baddies night after night wears on him. Meanwhile Kate just bounces back like all 20sumthins do. He's not all that into her hero worship ideal, but the best way to keep her from getting into more trouble is by keeping an eye on her until this who escapade is worked out.

The best thing, and yes I am extremely biased about this, was Yelena (Florence Pugh, Midsommar). She's in NY tasked with assassinating Hawkeye whom she personally relishes killing, blaming him for cutting her time with her sister Natasha short. Yelena is also an ex-Black Widow, and only recently reunited with her sister before blipping out, returning to a world where Natasha died to save it. She blames Clint. She's going to kill Clint. But that doesn't stop her from bonding with Kate in the most charming, amusing, confounding manner. I swooned a wee bit.

Highlights of the show were Aleks Paunovic as Ivan (bro!), one of the Track Suit Mafia, and one of the quartet of my favourite Canadian Supporting Actors (including Chris Heyerdahl, Michael Eklund and Ty Olsson) and the liberal use of trick arrows, in both purple and green flavours. The LARPers were also worth a chuckle.

The Expanse S06, 2022, Amazon Prime Video

I am a huge fan of this series, both the books and the TV show, but I have to admit that by the time the series hit this stage, I was bowing out. In fact, I haven't read much beyond this point in the books. As the stories moved away from the troubles affecting a crew of a small ship in a single star system (our own) and towards the troubles of the entire star system, all its planets and peoples, and even out into the myriad of worlds now discovered via the Ring Gates, I began to lose interest. But don't get me wrong, I still love the characters and the world, its just now its too big, too familiar space opera ground covered by a hundred other books I haven't read.

So, micro-recap. James Holden (Steven Strait, Sky High) and his ragtag crew on the Rocinante, a Martian warship (as in, built by humans on Mars, not little green men) having saved the system from an alien (first contact!) organism that took over an entire asteroid space station, by redirecting it into the sun, had garnered system wide acclaim and celebrity status. And then they never stopped getting mixed up in the political affairs of the three powers running our little solar system: Earth, the mother planet who prefers boots on necks, Mars, the first breakaway planet who maintains military superiority and a single planetwide devotion to evolving Mars, and The Belt, all the little asteroids and moons and space stations populated by peoples who were pretty much serfs to Earth. The latter were not happy, like REALLY not happy, and a revolutionary leader arose among their factions, uniting them by tossing stealth shielded rocks at Earth, basically creating his own weapons of mass destruction. They broke Earth's spirit, but that doesn't stop the coming war.

Season 5 dealt with the aftermath of the "bombing", and season 6 is all about hunting down Marco Inaros (Keon Alexander, Tyrant), the madman responsible for the rocks. He is a supremely charismatic leader, but also one quick to abandon his own people in favour of his agenda. The once-again leader of Earth, Chrisjen "Chrissy" Avasarala (Shoreh Aghdashloo, 24) tasks Holden and crew with hunting Inaros down, further complicated by the fact that Holden's first mate and lover, Naomi Nagata (Dominique Tipper, Death in Paradise) once had a relationship with the revolutionary and they have an adult son. Also, she just escaped him. Meanwhile, something weird is going on one of the newly colonized planets, something related to the alien organism and another charismatic leader, this time a Martian to disappeared with a bunch of Mars fleet.

Again, not sure how I felt about this season, as I was luke warm about the "hunt for Inaros" in the books, further complicated by the "colonized planet" actually being drawn from the next book, which I have not yet read, further complicated by this being the final season of the show, and that entire subplot being SETUP with no resolution. Sure, they might have movies in mind, or even reselling the show again, but it felt extraneous not knowing this for sure. The season did a good job in having an already amalgam character, Drummer (Cara Gee, Strange Empire), assume the role of a new character from the books, and if anything, I was onboard for this story, as among all the complicated motivations in the season, hers was the most pure.

But we get lots of space battles, lots of kick-ass character moments from everyone (except Cas Anvar, who was killed off last season due to his toxic behaviour with fans) and basically one last "get the gang together" season. And now, I have to back and rewatch on a laptop because apparently Amazon Video did their "x-ray" thingie (where you get info when you hit Pause) and added "shorts", but not on TV apps, only web, which is supremely stupid.

CSI: Vegas, 2021, StackTV

I was never a big fan of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, as it emerged when I expected more from my TV, and even more from my depictions of technology. The show came out at the beginning of the Internet Age, and fully embraced the idea of technology as magic that was such a thing for most of the 2000s, and still is now, to a degree. But uttering the word "enhance" followed by all the chirps and whistles from computers, and my mockery of it, overshadowed any desire I had to watch. Later on in life, as all the sequel series began to come out, I had tempered my dislike, and begun garnering more of a desire to watch easily digested crime TV.

And then I went to LV.

So yeah,  despite being supremely "meh" about the original show, this "bringing back the old gang" short series caught my attention purely because the show is LV based. Annoyingly, most of the show is actually shot on stages and sets in Los Angeles, but what they hey, I can enjoy the stock video they will have to use to establish things. Also, my fondness for LV right now is purely "fond memory" based, not inherently based on a fondness for the location, so any trigger of those memories is welcome.

Unlike the "murder of the week" formula that all the previous shows had, this one has a single season arc, wherein a cantankerous member of the original team, David Hodges (Wallace Langham, The Boys), the tech everyone loved to hate, has been framed for faking all of his results, over his career, including the time when Gil Grissom (William Petersen, Manhunter) ran the crime lab. So, Grissom and Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox, Memento) return from their ... sailing on a boat (?) ... to assist in clearing Hodges name. But it isn't as easy, as politics are at play, and their own reputations are on the line, and also, they are RETIRED. No matter, there are things to enhance.

Amusingly enough, the show tempers its magic-science-technology schtick by introducing a lot of actual CSI technology. Now, don't get me wrong, there is still a murder of the week, as there is an LV crime lab out of which Grissom and Sidle are working, and it still has day jobs, and the CSI staff are still weirdly as much investigators as they are scientists doing field work, but the show felt more... grounded.

The LV stuff was lack luster but still clicked my buttons, but all in all the show was lacking a lot. Sure, for big fans of the show, there was plenty of nostalgia, but me not being there didn't provide.

But the big thing, and I mean BIG, was that it was on StackTV. OMG, I cannot elaborate more loudly on how terrible a service this is. I only had it because they offered Hallmarkies for the season, but U watched a bit more just to get ... my money's worth? I pay for Amazon Prime Video, and I have to pay to get StackTV, but they then toss in commercials, which are intrusive and badly timed, often cutting into the middle of scenes instead of being properly timed like normal commercials. I mean, broadcast TV is specifically spliced to allow such thing, and this is being delivered via TECHNOLOGY, so you would think timing would be easy. And, on top of that, either they cannot figure out their show storage, or maybe their broadcast rights, but some shows are provided with backlogs, some are only the current season, and some ARE ONLY THE LAST FEW EPISODES ! They are selling a service, literally advertising themselves constantly, as nobody has bought any slots, they are advertising shows YOU CANNOT WATCH. I couldn't get to the "cancel" button quick enough.