1-1-1-KsMIRT: not enough and too much

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month(ish) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  It's back(!), because I'm feeling too scatterbrain to think unfettered.

This Month:

Fallout Season 2 - AmazonPrime [8/8 episodes watched]
Daredevil: Born Again season 2 - Disney+ [8/10 episodes watched]
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season 2 - AppleTV [10/10 episodes watched]
Scrubs Season 9 - Crave [13/13 episodes watched]
Widow's Bay Season 1 - Apple TV [10/10 episodes watched]
Dark Winds Season 2 - Crave [6/6 episodes watched]

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Fallout Season 2
season 1
[created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet]

The Plot/What 100: Lucy travels the wastelands with the Ghoul, looking for her father who has run off to Las Vegas to enact the next phase of the plan. Whatever that is. Maximus tries to prevent a war, and in the process, probably starts a war. Stephanie, now overseer of Vault 32, seems to have her own machinations in play, while Betty in Vault 33 finds resources dwindling and an inbred uprising fermenting. Lucy's brother Norm has awakened the management, and finds his leadership skills wanting. Something big is about to start, and it probably can't be stopped.

[1 Great] Often flashbacks in a TV show serve as information dump or as a means of exploring a character's backstory a little more thoroughly. It's often aside from the main plot, maybe thematically connected, but having little bearing on the progression of the in-world story of today. The flashbacks in Fallout have served to show us the world before the wasteland, and the life of The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) back when he was a famous movie star, war veteran and pitch man for Valut-Tec. This season, though, Cooper Howard is brought in through the back door of the conspiracy to blow-up the world...you know, for profit! And he has to navigate not only the twists of the shady people involved in the conspiracy and those trying to prevent it, but also his wife's part in all of it. It's actually pretty gripping, and since it's largely all from Coop's perspective, we only really know what he knows and so the rug gets pulled out from us both multiple times. It's pretty awesome and Goggins is fantastic.

[1 Good] Since I don't play the games, all of the world of Fallout is new to me. So I never knew that there was a war between USA and Canada, as the U.S. tried to annex my country. Toasty filled me in that this has long been a part of the lore of the games, so it's not just a reactionary bit to the Trumpian whim of terrain expansion. It's not explored too deeply in the season, but we learn that Stephanie's nefarious machinations are all in the service of Canadian resistance, and while the show tries to play her off as the bad guy, I'm firmly on her side. "Don't think of them as human beings, think of them as Americans...." That line gave me chills and really speaks more to how the teaching of American Exceptionalism others everyone else to Americans, rather than any desire for Canadian aggression towards our neighbours to the south (many of whom are really good human beings).

[1 Bad] There's nothing really bad about this show. I found myself pretty enthralled by this entire season. I was maybe a little frustrated at nebbish Norm and his inability to level up, not at all like Lucy did. But that's Norm's character flaw, he's just not very good at stuff. Lucy on the other hand wants to remain an optimist but boy does the world grind her down. It's a little tough to watch, but her confrontations with Hank (and the Ghoul) when she's finally had enough, well, pretty great.

Meta: It had been over two years since I watched Season 1 and I had forgotten how richly constructed the world of this show was, all the different threats it weaves together in a way that may feel loose but is surprisingly cohesive.  The addition of Justin Theroux as Robert Edwin House, the billionaire Coop is told is going to blow up the world is an excellent addition, and the character's impacts both in the past and future are deeply felt. Funny, gross, and richly satirical about both capitalism and totalitarianism, it's a surprisingly deep show for how ludicrously fun it is.

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Daredevil: Born Again Season 2
Season 1
(created by Dario Scardapane and Matt Corman & Chris Ord)

The Plot/What 100: Daredevil attacks a secret shipment of weapons through New York's harbour, a deal Mayor Wilson Fisk had made with the CIA (?), and now it's causing headaches. Anti-vigilante laws are enforced with brutality, anyone suspected of allying with a vigilante (or anyone Fisk just doesn't like) is rounded up and caged. Bullseye has turned "friend" to Daredevil, but his violence is too extreme for his liking (and people get caught in the crossfire). BB Urich manipulates Fisk's protege, Daniel Blake, in to revealing classified information, which she then uses as anti-Fisk propeganda. It's not going to go well for either of them.

[1 Great] I still think Charlie Cox is the perfect Daredevil, even if he's not written so perfectly.

[1 Good] Jessica Jones is back. Loved seeing Kristin Ritter back, if only for a minute.

[1 Bad] It's all just so goddamn tedious. It's a show that just keeps hitting the same points over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It's so damn exhausing. Matt doesn't want to kill anyone, but he's always debating with people whether he should. And debating with people whether he should let them kill. His conflict is now not even a religious one but one of a guy who has to decide whether he believes in the law and legal institutions of the country in the role he performs, or, you know, puts on a costume and doles out concussions on a nightly basis. We've seen it all before. And it's a show that just teases and teases and teases out it stories and threads as if it had 25 episodes to fill. It doesn't and there's so many of these characters we don't really care that much about (sorry BB, sorry Daniel, sorry Heather, sorry Karen, sorry to the rest of you...) mostly because  they're so boring. The sombre, sober tone of the series, the smug self-satisfaction over even attempting to comment on modern times and governmental descent into fascism, it's all so off-putting.  Fisk needs to be put aside for a good long while. He's not Daredevil's only villain, but outside of the Hand in season 2, it's been nothing but Fisk, and it's gotten stale. Nothing new is said about their relationship this season. And they totally mishandle Jessica, severely underusing her and ...depowering her in fits and starts? Why? Ugh.

Meta: I really gave Season 1 a pass. I decided I liked it because I was happy it was back. I really, really like Cox in the role and was just so plussed to see him again. But, in hindsight, Season 2 only highlight that Season 1 was just as much of a drag. I recall Lady Kent and I taking a day off work, ordering enough pizza for two meals and just binging 16 episodes of a season of Daredevil. It was exciting to us. By the third episode of this season, watching Daredevil felt like a chore, like something we had to do, and it was definitely not something we were enjoying. We were counting down the minutes until Jessica Jones' arrival and that little baloon of hope deflated almost instantly.  Cox's best appearances as Matt and Daredevil were not in the 17 episodes of his own series but in an episode of She-Hulk and a cameo in Spider-Man:No Way Home. 

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Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2
Season 1
(created by Chris Black and Matt Fraction)

The Plot/What 100: Keiko Mura has been rescued from Axis Mundi, 60 years after she disappeared into a wormhole, and she's only 60 days older than when Shaw last saw her. Her world is rocked to be reunited with her son and meet her granddaughter and grandson having missed most of their lives, but Monarch, the organization she founded with her husband Bill Randa, is not what it once was, and faces some stiff private sector competition.  Not just competition, but organizations looking to control the kaiju for their own agendas, and developing the technology to do so. But the immediate crisis is the reappearance of Titan X, last seen by Keiko, Bill and Shaw a lifetime ago.

[1 Great] It's never not awesome watching giant monsters fight, and the show does a pretty decent job of showing scale when it's happening.  Obviously the show doesn't have the budget of a Godzilla x Kong feature, or even the budget that Season 1 had, so the fights are few and far between, but pretty great when they happen. 

[1 Good] There is an episode where Shaw, in trying to figure out how to lure Godzilla out of Axis Mundi, winds up receiving an S.O.S. from himself decades before when he was briefly trapped in there. Since Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell are playing the same character, there's no reasonable way that they could share the screen together, but this is the next best thing. A novelty episode but still kind of great that has some real emotional elements for both performers to work through in completely different times in their characters' life. The show does a pretty good job throughout this season finding consistency between the Russels' performance of the character. 

[1 Bad] Much like Daredevil: Born Again this show frustratingly treads water because it needs to bide its time between its big budget setpieces. This results in some incredibly stupid (and sometimes very confusing) character threads where certain characters go off and do their own thing for reasons that never truly feel justified, and then return to Monarch for reasons that never truly feel justified, only to get into arguements that never truly feel justified, and then to do really stupid things that never truly feel justified. Most of this shit is our young cast of Kentaro, Cate and May. They make my eyes roll involuntarily far too often.

Meta: Monarch is not a good show. It's wildly inconsistent and seems to lack purpose other than to be an in-world flourish to the Legendary series of Kong and Godzilla features. The characters amble so much one has to often ask what they're actually contributing to the story.  The scenes set in the 1950s and 60's are far more interesting, as the setting gives a pastiche for the series to play into and often it seems like it would be a better program had it firmly set itself in that time and explore the Kaiju with their technological limitations.  I honestly don't know if I would watch a third season should it return (maybe if they get Bill and Lewis Pullman to play, like, an adversary to Shaw...that would be enough to get me back in).

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Scrubs Season 9 (aka Scrubs: Med School Season 1)
(created by Bill Lawrence)

The Plot/What 100: Sacred Heart teaching hospital now has a whole campus, where we see J.D., Turk, and Cox all hold classes, and Elliott is pregnant so she's on light duty. The new batch of recruits includes Lucy Bennett, a midwestern, daydreamy "horse girl" who's naive and optimistic, which Cox wants to drum right out of her, lest he wind up with another John Dorian. Drew dropped out of med school a half decade ago, had a rough bit of life experience, and is back with reinvigored focus, only Cox has taken an unsettlingly deep interest in him. Cole is a SoCal-bro all the way, a prototypical rich kid whose parents funded half the wings in the hospital, so despite how annoying he is, he's teflon (he finds a friend in retired and sexually rambunctious [to the point of sexpest-ery] Dr. Kelso), and Dr. Denise Mahoney, the sarcastic, and jaded T.A. It's Scrubs but with new people, and some of the old people.

[1 Great] I was honestly surprised at how quickly the Scrubs formulae worked being reworked like this with a nearly whole new cast. I think having some of the old guard around some of the time works quite well (especially John C. McGinley whose Perry Cox is maybe the most critical ingredient to the show, though Eliza Coupe as Denise certainly could have filled the void in the eventuality of McGinley's departure). Dave Franco nails perfectly the irritatingly entitled dirtbag Cole but never fully as the villain, and the writing staff find ways to round down his sharpest edges to make him pretty much a likeable character. Kerry Bishé as Lucy is and isn't just a female J.D. And putting them side by side for a few episodes early in the season (before Braff departed) was the perfect way to highlight both. The new cast, gels pretty quickly, and it helps that they're all pretty talented performers (Coupe and Franco, obviously, go on to bigger and brighter things) who settle into their roles quickly and the writers find a voice for really fast. It's basically Scrubs-by-way-of-Community just maybe a year too early. 

[1 Good] My favourite part of the season was the blossoming relationship between Denise and Drew. Denise is a Tough.Nut and is such an Eliza Coupe role that's perfectly suited for her. Drew has a hardened past and his own embarrassing secrets, but can almost go toe to to with Denise in the cynicism department. They find very quickly that they have similar world views, and yet they're two quite different people that have a real challenge with compromise or, you know, emotional vulnerability. Watching them actually negotiate being together is the biggest joy of the season.

[1 Bad] I haven't watch original flavour Scrubs in a very long while, but did it have so much gender-based "comedy" as well. There's so much name calling and put-downs, mostly to the point of calling someone (usually a male character) a "girl" or a "bitch" or something more clever insinuating that the guy is soft and/or feminine. There's also one episode that has a B-plot rotating around Turk and Cox dealing with a lesbian couple (both played by very attractive actresses of course) and being total children around the idea. It's pretty embarrassing for the show and the characters.

Meta: Having just watched the reboot of Scrubs earlier this year, I was curious about the ill-fated season 9 that was intended to be an independent spin-off but ABC chickened out in letting it be its own thing. I don't know if it was ever going to be successful, as people had a certain idea of what Scrubs was and that centered around Zach Braff-related silliness, of which this is in shorter supply. Maybe it is just having watched the reboot, which, quite frankly, feels more like a reboot of this season of Scrubs: Med School than it does of Scrubs proper, but this went down pretty smooth (dated jokes aside). I had a really great time with this and would have liked another couple seasons with this crew.  Maybe it's because I knew half of this cast already from elsewhere or maybe it's because this season of television the writers pointedly made a decision to focus on the new crew (as opposed to the reboot, where it's more than half about the old crew, and less than  half about the new crew) but I think I like this season better than the reboot. A little bit more at least.

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Widow's Bay Season 1
(created by Katie Dippold)

The Plot/What 100: Tom Loftis is mayor of the remote New England island town of Widow's Bay. Unlike most people who live there, Tom wasn't born there but married into island life, his wife having died during childbirth 17 years ago. Tom has lofty ambitions of being the new Martha's Vinyard, and rallies the town behind his new tourism push. The only real objector is Wyck Crawford, a grizzled fisherman who vociferously insists that the island is cursed and that outsiders should definitely not come. He is correct on both counts. 

[1 Great] It's so very hard to choose one single thing that is great about Widow's Bay since it is uniformly terrific. Merging horror, comedy, and emotional drama the show very ably builds a small island community where it makes sense whenever any two or three cast members share the screen and the personalities are so well defined without being too trope-y that we kind of know exactly who these people are, until we get to know them more. Any character can be given a spotlight and ably hold it, the performers on the show all very keenly get the assignment, while the directors (including Atlanta's Hiro Murai and horror director Ti West), writers (including comedic performers Colton Dunn and Neil Casey) and crew all seem to be completely enthused to be  working on the show that lets them toe so many lines, and step over them, and step back. By the show's third episode there was already a stand-out episode, and then they deliver another, and another.  It's still very much a genre show, but it's doing it as if it were Parks and Recreation crossed with Midnight Mass, and it's even been told that creator/showrunner Katie Dippold originally gestated this idea as a script for Parks & Rec, but just couldn't make it work).

[1 Good] The music by David Fleming is incredible, absolutely nailing the assignment. He's able to strike a tone that is ominously lighthearted when it needs to be but can go strange, mysterious or intense when necessary. His score leans into the conventions of scores from the more mass-audience friendly horror of the past like Poltergeist, Jaws, the Omen, or the Exorcist without ever directly referencing any of them. He's found the vibe, the tone of those scores perfectly, and using their most cliched aspects as much for terror as for punctuating the humorous or absurd. It's a very deftly conceived soundtrack, one that makes me take notice without pulling me out of the moment. 

[1 Bad] The premise of the series is sort of a Jaws scenario, where there's danger lurking but the mayor won't sacrifice the town's economic prosperity for the possibility of danger. There's also an X-Files set-up where certain people in the town are aware of its curse, and are pretty comfortable with it, in fact, but Tom wants to just shrug it off. Within three episodes, though, Tom can no longer shrug it off. As we get deeper into the season Tom may be in denial at points, but it's clear he knows deep down what's true about this island. And then it's staring him plainly in the face...

I don't generally agree that TV was better when it was 25 episode seasons, as that type of American TV show created a lot of bloat. What we lose in going down to 10 or 8 or 6 episode seasons is the ability to focus more intently on secondary characters, or sometimes, as with Widow's Bay things move a little bit faster than you had expected. Tom's journey from disbeliever to skeptic to true believer happens in about 7 episodes and while I wouldn't want this season to be split into two to slow the pace of his progression, if the season were longer, with more time to expand its focus to the town at large it could really have benefitted from such a scope increase, even just three to five more episodes. The "bad" is, basically, I want more.

Meta: Widow's Bay is probably the best season of television this year. Just a lightning bolt of a show that comes out episode one firing on all cylinders and then injects the nitrous oxide into the tank in the second episode. Matthew Rhys has had a trio of prominent dramatic series over the past 15 years, but this show lets him step out of being miserable and deadpan and instead into a funnier misery, and he absolutely excels at it, both physically and verbally... he has great comedic timing...who knew? While he's been a revered dramatic actor for years, Kate O'Flynn, playing Tom's assistant Patricia, steps out of small-time character actor shadows and into the limelight, and completely destroys. Patricia can be weird and off-putting to start, but O'Flynn is able to elicit deep compassion and sympathy for Patricia, eventually turning from loser to unlikely hero (though Patricia is still incapable of going full badass).

Episodes 4 and 5 jockey for best episode of the season, with episode 4, "Beach Reads" putting Patricia and her high-stakes party planning front and centre, while episode 5 , "What to Expect on Your Trip" finds Tom accidentally getting dosed with mushrooms and blinking in and out of consciousness (I don't think I've ever seen an episode of tv told from a POV like this, where it just keeps jumping ahead in time, the viewer as disoriented as the character). It's like season two of The Bear all over again ... "Fishes" or "Forks"?

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Dark Winds Season 2
(created by Graham Roland)

The Plot/What 100: Jim Chee has left the feds to be a private investigator, and gets called to look in on a robbery at a wealthy landowner's home by his wife. Jim's case dovetails into a truck bomb investigation Joe Leaphorn is investigating, the clues to which lead him to believe Jim's client is somehow tied into the murder of his son. Joe's deputy, Bernadette, looks elsewhere for growth opportunities, while Emma and Sally ward off a white reporter from L.A. looking for a story around the heinous eugenics practices at medical clinics and murdered and missing indigenous women.

[1 Great] Each season is adapted from one of Tony Hillerman's series of Tribal Police books. Much like Slow Horses six episodes seems to be the perfect length to fluidly adapt the story without any padding. It does lead to the feeling that time has passed between seasons/stories, and I really enjoy how the first episode works as both catch up on what's happened to the characters in the interim as we as the place-setter for what the thrust of the season will be. The only one who doesn't seem like they're on a different path this season is Joe Leaphorn, who seems all to settled in his ways. But a pretty serious blow-up with Emma as well as confronting the man who may have killed his son sets him on a new path by the season's end, and his relationship with everyone in the show is different by the end (or at least our understanding of those relationships is).

[1 Good] People take their bloody lumps this season. It's a pretty taxing and brutal affair that Leaphorn and Chee get caught up in, and they pay the price. But determination, resiliency, stubbornness, and, in Joe's case, pure blind rage, get them through. It's a little harrowing to be honest, but the fifth episode trek through the desert is an epic 40 minutes of TV.

[1 Bad] I do not begrudge the series at all for attempting to tackle some of the horrific and disgusting practices that indigenous women have been subjected to, past and present, in America (and most of the colonized lands of the world, frankly), it's pretty necessary to put a spotlight on it. It's only "bad" in that it's unfortunate how tertiary this story line is to the show. Despite having not read the books, it's still evident that this plot doesn't come from the source, as it just doesn't fit with the rest of the events of the show and is of a different tone entirely. It gives something for Emma (Deanna Allison) and Sally (Elva Guerra) to do this season, but it almost feels more like that (needing to provide a story for the characters) than to hit hard on raising the awareness of these atrocities. Such a thing deserves its own central spotlight

Meta: Such an easily consumable, enriching and entertaining show. The three leads, Zahn McClarnan, Kiowa Gordon and Jessica Matten, are all incredible performers and have such a great rapport.  McClarnan's face is one of the most captivating on TV, while Gordon and Matten are just so damn good looking, and ridiculously charming together you just want to see more of them as a romcom (although the show's just looking for reasons to keep them apart). This season features Jeri Ryan in a guest-starring role and she's superb as a middle-aged femme fatale who may or may not be playing games with Chee. Veteran character actor A Martinez also turns up as Sherriff Gordo, Joe's friend and mentor. We also meet Joe's father (Joseph Runningfox) this season, an ex-cop and a hard man who Joe's still trying to live up to. Joe tries to fight his father's influence while also actively emulating him. It's a fascinating dynamic which we need to see more of. 

Watching: Dark Winds

S01 2022, download

This is another one that probably should be relegated to a I Saw This (!!) post, as I barely remember it. I am sure I will recall more as I re-read more, starting with the One Episode style post from when we first attempted, and failed, to watch the first season. I also swore Kent wrote about the first season, but that must have been in an alternate reality.

I won't repeat what I said in that older post, but suffice to say, we really like Zahn McClarnon (Doctor Sleep). We really liked the idea that he both got to play a familiar character AND be presented, finally, as the Main Character. I was less jazzed by it being set in the 70s, as I would rather explore our current tumultuous (if getting better?) relations with indigenous culture, and surprisingly, also less interested that it had supernatural overtones. But we gave it more time, and it was worth it. I really enjoyed the series, and its about time we downloaded the subsequent season.

So, Joe Leaphorn, head of the Navajo Tribal Police, is investigating a murder of an elder in a hotel, as well as the daughter of an old friend, a girl his own late son used to date. The sole survivor is an old, blind, traumatized woman. Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon, Blood Quantum), who we know is an undercover FBI agent, is assigned to the reserve as the new deputy. Chee is university educated and hasn't been back to the reservation since leaving to go to school. Chee has been sent into the reservation to find bank robbery money.

There's a lot going on in the show. The show is not afraid to tell the stories happening on the reservation, not as individual episodic plots, but intertwined into everything as life is. Leaphorn's wife (Deanna Allison, Accused) has taken in a young pregnant woman, afraid the clinic (where Emma is a nurse) will sterilize the young woman after she gives birth. The father of the murdered girl is at odds with Leaphorn because he was shot during an altercation after an explosion at the mine where Leaphorn's son was killed. Leaphorn's deputy Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten, Tribal) is not fond of Chee as he dismisses her strong connection to her people's spirituality -- you see, there are witches about and Chee mocks the idea. Money from the robbery is being cleaned through a local gift shop and cheesy used car sales lot, and a visiting Mormon family runs afoul of the robbers. Yeah, a lot is going on.

But yet, the show still excels better than most of pulling it all together without seeming far fetched. I like my murder mystery shows, the ones that involve pulling at multiple threads, but I also like being exposed to a world I am not entirely familiar with. I have already mentioned my great fondness for Longmire, which McClarnon is a part of (similar role, but Leaphorn is more sympathetic if less complicated) and it was my original attraction to the show, but they are two very very different shows, only connecting through the lead actor and an exposure to the challenges of Native Americans just trying to live their lives.

Of note, I might try to give "Tribal" a shot, a very Canadian crime show also set on a reserve and starring Jessica Matten but... I expect it to be so very very Canadian. There was a time when Canadian scifi dominated the small screen, but had a very very distinct style and production level which had it dismissed by most. I kind of feel that way about Canadian crime shows now.

1-1-1's - Another One (plus)

"Another One" is quick thoughts on subsequent seasons of things I've already watched/reviewed on the blog.  I'm going to reread (and link to) my review(s) of previous seasons and see what, if anything, different I have to say about them in comparison....

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For All Mankind Season 2 & Season 3 - AppleTV+
[season 1]

The What 100: As this alternate reality view of the space race continues we venture into the 80s, where a moon base has been established, and then the '90's, where the Cold War has reached the Red Planet, but it's not just USA and Russia out there, a third-party capitalist has thrown into the race.

1 Great - in the second season, shit goes down on the moon. It's really freaking intense. In the third season, there's three ships racing towards Mars, and, well, things don't go well as the contention to be "first" sees the crews pushing their vessels to their limits (or beyond).  There's some incredible space-based (and space base) tension.

1 Good - The unexpected shake-ups that the show gets into are really what make it worthwhile. It's not a completely predictable show, which makes the tension very palpable. Being an astronaut (or in the proximity of an astronaut) is just a dangerous existence, and it's good to be reminded of it.  When you're accelerating as quickly through time as this show is, the characters can't be held so preciously. It did feel like a few characters were being cycled back into rotation a little unbelievably at times, but there's still dramatic narrative to service.

1 Bad - I still think the decade leaps from season to season really, really help keep the show cracking along from season-to-season, but that still didn't eliminate the core problem of the show, being its hefty cast (it rival Game of Thrones for the amount of players on the board), which it largely keeps around from season-to-season. The finale of season 2 cleared a few players of the board, and season 3 a whole bunch more, but given there's been a nearly 40 year time-span, it's hard to buy that some of these characters are still around in the capacity they are.  As such it gets a little lost in its narrative thrust as it spins wheels circling around character drama, particularly in the second season (oh, and those Stevens boys in Season 3...gah!)

META:
There's a particular hump to get over in season 2, where the melodrama gets slathered on way too thick, and we had to take a good long break and psych ourselves up for a return partway through our bingeing of the series. But the latter third of season 2 crackles with tension, like everything is ready to fall apart any second (and it does).  The third season is much more pulpy, and the better for it. The melodrama still persists, but it never overshadows the narrative's desire to keep moving forward at a rapid clip.  Very enjoyable.

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Mythic Quest Season 3 - AppleTV+
[season 1| season 2]

The Plot 100: Ian and Poppy's new business is failing to materialize, and their friendship is suffering for it. David, now in full control of MQ, is a see-saw of power-mad and ineffectually anxious. Rachel takes on a new role, Dana takes on a new role, Brad takes on a new role, Carol takes on a new role, and Jo keeps redefining what her role is.  CW dies.

1 Great - Every season of MQ has their 1-off episode which is essentially a short film that don't really feature any of the regular cast. Here it's a step back into Ian's difficult childhood with an adoring but manic-depressive mother, and Poppy's childhood where she has to negotiate the push-pull of a strict mother and a fun-loving dad.  Each of these 1-offs are absolutely fantastic, stepping outside of the sitcom setting and getting some resonant emotional backstory for these otherwise comedic character (season 1 was sort of a backdrop for the workplace, while season 2 gave us CW's backstory).

1 Good - What has worked for the past two seasons, more than anything, is the fraught relationship between Poppy and Ian, as the linear-thinking coder and the free-thinking mastermind obviously put them at odds but also are necessarily complimentary in their endeavours. It's only after the 1-off episode that we get a sense of just how long these two have been working together, and how long it's taken for their professional animosity to be recognized as mutual admiration.  Whenever the show gets to the heart of Ian and Poppy caring for each other utterly platonically, I melt. 

1 Bad - There was something behind F Murray Abraham's departure from Season 3 of Mythic Quest and I don't know what it was. At this stage nothing has come out that would "cancel" Abraham (he's been involved with high profile Moon Knight, White Lotus and Cabinet of Curiosities since his departure) but even though CW has always been a sporadic presence, the show is not the same without him.

META:
But then again, the show is not the same as it had been in season 1 or season 2.  The second season, wading through the pandemic, sort brought a cohesion to the cast, tightening them up as a unit, and really making it a workplace comedy. It blew it up at the end, having Ian and Poppy leave to do their own thing, and really everyone left doing their own thing, from Rachel and Dana going to college (maybe) to Brad going to jail. Everyone's kind of apart or coupled up this season, and not in organic or often complimentary ways. It doesn't work like it once did, so hoping reuniting Poppy and Ian on the MQ floor will help rekindle the spark.

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Slow Horses Season 2 - AppleTV+
[Season 1]

The Plot 100: Another season, another book to adapt. Dead Lions. In this one, one of Lamb's old associates is murdered, and fingers a Russian espionage group long thought gone, or never having existed in the first place. The Cold War has been over for 30 years, but some refuse to let it go. River gets sent to rural town in the middle of buttfucknowhere undercover, and totally Slow Horses the gig up. Louisa and the new bloke need to arrange security for a meeting Spider sets up with a Russian power player. Catherine and Roddy try to prove their worth in other ways.

1-1-1
1 Great: I mean, you can't not say Gary Oldman, right. The man seemingly gets consumed by the roles he plays, and Jackson Lamb is, I'm sure, nothing like Oldman. Crude, rude, and devilishly cunning, he's not like the others, demoted to Slough House because of some massive failure or faux pas...no, he chooses to head up Slough House because it pretty much keeps eyes off of him and he can do his own thing.  As much as he outwardly projects his indifference (the gentlest word for how he treats them) towards his people, it's clear from a sky-level view that he is fiercely loyal to them and feels they're his responsibility (far more than anyone would expect he should).  The main plot here kicks off because an old, retired colleague is murdered and, more than unfurling whatever plot is in play, Lamb wants at the very least justice, if not revenge. And he didn't even particularly like the guy.

1 Good: The twists in these stories are right solid, and unpredictable. This is spy-thriller that has burned the handbook before even reading it. It's got its own flavour (I mean, it's missions put in the hands of proven fuck-ups, so, y'know, they're bound to fuck up...James Bond they are not) and its own wry sensibility. After season 2, the biggest signal is that there seem to be no sacred trees here, anyone could be cut down. Lamb and River Cartwright may be the series leads, but I wouldn't be surprised if either one were killed.

1 Bad: It's not James Bond, so the action does tend to peter out rather than accelerate. In its unpredictability it likes to twist its action scenes (I wonder if it's fully following the novels or if it is just budget) and they can be a little raw and clunky (and perhaps a tad unsatisfying) as a result.  It's a minor quibble, to be sure, for what is otherwise a great series.

META:
There are currently eight Slough House novels and five novellas by creator Mick Garron, as well as four novels in the same world but operating outside the sequential frame of the other books in the series. There's a lot of material to mine here, and it would be wonderful if each book were adapted in the six-episode mini-series format, but if the novellas were perhaps adapted into a single or double episode length.  There's committed at least 2 more seasons, so the horses aren't slowing down any time soon.  We'll be getting Mick Jagger's awesome ORIGINAL(!) theme to the show for a while longer.

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Reservation Dogs Season 2 - Disney+/Star
[Season 1]

The Plot 100: Elora and Jackie have left the rez for California, but find themselves in trouble. Bear is pissed Elora left him behind, and starts looking for a job. Cheese's uncle gets raided and Cheese gets tossed in foster care. Willie Jack isn't so keen on Jackie and puts a curse on her, only to regret it. Everyone gathers in a vigil for Elora's grandma after which the aunties go to a conference and party. Big accidentally ingests drugs on duty and cracks the case of the missing catfish with help from Kenny Boy. 

1 Great: The unexpected. Each episode of Reservation Dogs is a short film all on its own. While some of the character stories may continue throughout the season, the main story of each episode is self contained, and you can never quite tell where it's going to go. It's a style of storytelling that worked very, very well for Atlanta across 4 season but I dare say Reservation Dogs has maybe figured it out even better.  Where Altanta would often have fully disconnected short films, often detached from known reality into semi-Black Mirror territory, here it's always in-world, always following the cast (though not always the main cast). In both cases, there's healthy doses of "magical realism" liberally sprinkled throughtout to add a whole other flavour level to the show, be it metaphorical, dramatic, or comedic.  

1 Good: Performances. Most of the most prominent Indigenous actors in North America are making appearances in this show, and not just fluffy cameos, but great spotlight roles.  Gary Farmer (as Uncle Brownie) and Wes Study (as Bucky) get a spotlight rivalry in the second episode which is one of the funniest things I've seen in years, especially their rendition of Tom Petty's Free Fallin' (which then gets a beautiful callback in the final episode). Kaniehtiio Horn from Letterkenny and Jana Schmieding from Rutherford Falls (rip) return, Prey's Amber Midthunder comes in for an ep to coach the kids on connecting to one another, and Tamara Podemski has a powerful role as Elora's aunt who has been estranged from the Rez for some time.  The list just goes on and on, with familiar and new faces and all the young performers who are all so fantastic. Creator Sterlin Harjo also taps into his comedy background, bringing in non-Indigenous comedic performers like Bobby Lee, Megan Mullaley, and Marc Maron.  

1 Bad: Not enough. This is a show with a massive roster of players, and, as this season has proven, there are stories to be told with each of them. Ten episodes, an improvement over Season one's eight, is still not enough.  The show's creative team makes the absolute best with every minute they do have, to be absolutely sure, but I still want more. I want to see an episode with Mose and Mekko in the spotlight, or go full magical realism into what spirit guide William Knifeman does in his off time (does he live in that gas station convenience store machine, dispensing shaky wisdom?)

META:
This is in the top ten, probably even top five best shows on TV right now. I'm not sure why I sat on it for 8 months...but hopefully the good news is it means a shorter wait until Season 3...?  I have a hard time picking a favourite episode of the season... I was about to settle in on Big and Kenny Boy's drug trip misadventures, but then I feel like Cheese's time in the group home was pretty wonderful in how that character affected those around him positively, but also the Elora's grandmother's vigil was just powerful and beautiful... and I could make a case for almost any episode here. 

The second episode really fucked up my brain a bit. Elora and Jackie's misadventures become pretty dire as they're chased by gun-toting rednecks in a truck after a half-hearted attempt to steal a car. They've lost everything on their trip, they're starving and things look bleak. They happen upon a homestead whose recently separated, lonely matriarch (Mullaley) takes them in. A white saviour. But from moment they step foot in the house the temptation of the keys to her truck is put before them. She lets them shower, gives them fresh clothes, feeds them, preys with them, and gives them rooms to sleep in, asking nothing from them.  She expresses her admiration for both of them, their freedom and liberty (hard to feel so free and liberated given their highway misadventures as young Indigenous women).  In the middle of the night Jackie steals the truck and Elora tags along.  As a white person I wrestled with this... I mean the show's sympathies are always with the girls, and not for anything, stealing the truck is their only move, and it's a justified one.  But then I think "but isn't that just playing into expectations, or even stereotype?" and I wrestle with the question. What made even more complicated is Mullaley, awake and at the window, uttering "Those little sluts" in a manner that could be construed as anger but possibly even envy.  Jackie later states she doesn't feel bad for stealing the truck, she doesn't really feel bad about anything (visiting Jackie's mom, we see why she's so detached), but also notes that "that lady seemed happy. Big ass house in the middle of nowhere, no one else around, talks to God and shit, I'd take that any day"... and it provides a sense of perspective. Mullaley's character seemed kind and well-off, but miserable, and lonely. It speaks certainly to Jackie's lack of understanding of happiness. I'm still unpacking it, with no solid conclusions. Fantastic TV.

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The History of the World Pt II - Disney+/Star

The what 100: Mel Brooks' classic sketch comedy anthology on the history of the world returns as an 8-episode TV series, but led by the creative team of Nick Kroll, Ike Barinholtz and Wanda Sykes.

1-1-1
1 Great: About 10 years ago a sketch comedy show debuted that viscerally chewed upon the absurdity of reality TV. It was called Kroll Show and it was created by and starred versatile comedic performer Nick Kroll. It wasn't just funny, it was brilliant. It really toyed with the media landscape of 2013, and in a smarter society, would have been the last word on TV shows about anyone shameless enough to dramatize their real lives for television. The formula was sketch, but it wasn't one-and-done sketch, it was repeating sketch, with storylines built over the three seasons as the sketches would intermittently appear, often reaching new levels of absurdity and hilarity in the process. The History of the World Pt II isn't nearly as sharp or daring as Kroll Show, but the sensibilities are definitely shared. What could have been eight episodes of one-off sketches twisting historic characters or moments into a modern context, instead follows much of the Kroll Show model of building character and story arcs across the episodes, while also allowing for one-off silly sketches to sneak in. Also like Kroll Show, it's simultaneously being ridiculous while also casting its gaze on the modern media landscape, as it has the exiled Russian tsarina Anastasia running a 1910's sepia-toned version of a TikTok live stream, while Rasputin (played by Johnny Knoxville) participates in Jackass-style extreme stunts (but with a not to Rasputin's mythos) in a series called "Jackrasp". There's ongoing tales about the Russian revolution and the Civil War, that all serve up delights and surprises by building characters that are meant for more than a single sketch.

1 Good: My favourite ongoing sketch would have to be "Shirley", a 70's Black sitcom pastiche starring Sykes as the first Black congresswoman Shirley Chrisholm, who also ran for president in the mid-70's. The visual flavour as well as the comedy stylings are bang-on of the era, even bringing Marla Gibbs in as Shirley's mothers. The apex of the "Shirley" is the "episode" where Shirley is having to run between two very different Watergate rooms as she tries to secure support for her election. One room is a feminist assembly led by Gloria Steinem, the other a Black caucus led by Jesse Jackson, all while keeping her husband contained to the hotel room.  It's classic madcap 70's sitcom hijinks and it's executed perfectly. It's not even ironic, it's post-ironic. It knows exactly what it's doing, and it's doing it lovingly. When I thought it was just a one-off sketch I thought it was pretty lacking, but it builds beautifully over time.  

1 Bad: In any sketch anthology, you're going to get a few weak-tea efforts, ones where the jokes are too easy, or the performances just don't succeed.  There are those here (the cavewomen discovering fire, or the Alexander Graham Bell crank phone call bit that goes on too long, but thankfully the rest of the show is amusing enough to offset the not great entries. Thankfully all the ongoing sketches are really fun, and at times, really sharp ("Curb Your Judaism" was brilliant).

META:
I am not a Mel Brooks guy. Never have been. His humour is too obvious for my liking. He tends to take the joke that most could see just sitting there and he makes a massive meal out of it. He's also fond of over-the-top silly...and I like silly, but over the top silly, most slapstick, just doesn't strike me as funny. So I had no interest in HotWpt2, because I haven't even seen HotWpt1, nor do I really care to.  But upon hearing that Kroll, Barinholtz and Sykes were leading it, not Brooks, I saw the potential.  They're definitely trying to lean into Brooks' style, but it's still flavoured heavily with their comedic senses (which I much more receptive to).  Good fun.

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Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 2 - Disney+
[Season 1]

The Plot 100: The Bad Batch continue doing jobs for a small-time crime maven named Syd, but they tire of the risks, the low reward, and the lifestyle. Opportunity presents itself for the crew to escape and just live, but once they start catching wind that the Imperials are kidnapping and experimenting upon Clones, they start to think that maybe they have a larger mission before retirement.

1 Great: Honestly, the best part of Bad Batch is Kevin Kiner's music. He's been getting more and more experimental with his Star Wars scores in recent years and I love hearing what he's come up with. He's dealing with a lot more synths and tones rather than Williams-esque orchestral, angling more towards Blade Runner's Vangelis-composed score.  As the Empire continues its dystopian spread across the galaxy, these sounds are more ominous and weighty, accompanying well the brutalist architecture starting to prevail.

1 Good: After threatening us with the tedium of mission-of-the-week story structure, the show does move forward and start to tease out ideas related to one of the biggest questions raised by Lucas' prequels: what happened to all the clones? Where are they? The answer does not appear to be a very bright one for them. It's pretty bleak in fact (the Empire considers them "property" with which they can do as they please).  It also ties very loosely into the cloning sub-plots of both The Mandalorian and The Rise of Skywalker.

1 Bad: The early episodes are a bit of a slog, as they are truly "mission-of-the-week" structure. They're tedious and after a couple of them in a row, I was ready to quit the show. But a surprise mission involving a Wookiee and a story set on their planet of Kashyyk was enough to swing me back on board. 16 episodes may be too long for a season of The Bad Batch it seems, as it a similar problem I had last time.

META: 
I like the Bad Batch, but I want to like it more. I wish it were spending more time exploring the changing universe instead of dabbling in the character-centric stories it's striving for. Any time they want to sit with the characters and their feelings, it just kind of drags and the sentimentality feels hollow.  But the weight and oppression of the Empire, when it's felt, packs a real punch, and I guess the show has to balance between that heaviness and remembering it's a cartoon that is meant to appeal to all ages. (It annoys me any time the Bad Batch go into a firefight with their guns set to stun...like, who are we fooling?

Thunder Bay

2023, 4 episodes - Crave
created by Ryan McMahon

I grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. It's "home" to me, but I've never loved it there. I've always said it's "8 hours from nowhere" (because in the North, we measure distance in time, not kilometers): 8 hours west to Winnepeg, 8 hours east to Sault Ste. Marie, 8 hours south to Minneapolis.  The city has around 110,000 people, so it's not huge (for a weird contextualization, the largest football stadium in Korea can hold 150,000 people), but it's still the hub of Northwestern Ontario, what all the smaller towns to the northeast and west call "the city".  

Around the time I was born there, Thunder Bay was largely blue collar - pulp and paper and as the last port stop of the great lakes, transferring shipping from boat to train and truck, and vice versa.  That all started to die in the late 80s, and it took just shy of two decades for the city to reinvent itself, now more of a medical and educational hub. It's gone through a lot of changes in my lifetime. 

One thing seems to be a constant though, and that's the tension between the Indigenous peoples of the area and everyone else.

Thunder Bay started life as a podcast, in which host Ryan McMahan examines closely and critically a city he has fond affection for, and tries to understand the dark heart beating under the Canadian shield. It's focused on primarily the topic of the city's systemic and institutional... and societal... and cultural racism towards its Indigenous people, but it also looked at other stories of political corruption, media debacles and legal failures to paint a picture of what sort of horror show the place is when you look past its environmental beauty.

This new Crave mini-series is more laser-focused on Thunder Bay's treatment of Indigenous youth, and exposing more broadly a police department that has been formally diagnosed as systemically racist.  There have been a string of deaths of teenagers being found in the city's rivers (the seven fallen feathers and, sadly, beyond) and a completely inept handling of the deaths by the police and the coroner's office, and even when the TB Police Department was being investigated, additional deaths occurred, and were handled with similar irresponsibility.  Inept is an understatement. There is a complete dismissal of Indigenous people as people, the police not deeming these victims of whatever circumstance as worthy of their time.

The police dismiss the deaths, pretty much without any investigation, as accidental death by misadventure and substance abuse.  McMahon talks with people who have survived or witnessed the aftermath of assaults of groups of men forcing teens into the frigid waters.  McMahon examines the theories of serial killer or gang violence as the cause, but there's a societal dehumanization of Indigenous peoples in the rural and metropolitan settlers that is more likely to blame.

As a child, I was aware that there were Indigenous cultures around Thunder Bay, and that there was an influence upon the city as a result. But, I can't remember having any childhood friends, though, who were Indigenous (or at least made their Indigenous heritage part of their outward identity). As a teen I was more keenly aware of the Indigenous population, as I drove around the streets, watched/listened/read the news, went shopping...but I didn't have any knowledge of the people or their culture or their struggles.  I also was more aware of the conflict, hearing adults talk about "the native problem", hearing friends with Indigenous heritage disparage that part of their cultural background, and hearing hate speech about Canada's Indigenous populations from people who I otherwise considered decent, empathetic human beings.  I can say I've never held hate in my heart, but I also cannot say that I was an ally confronting these statements. I grew up in the 90's where the idea of entering a "post-racism" society was being shoved down our throats, wilful obliviousness was the path forward, and identifying anyone by their ethnicity or culture, or discussing it with them was kind of taboo.  I still struggle to talk about race or ethnicity openly because I was taught not to. 

I was visiting a friend's family while visiting Thunder Bay a couple years ago, and neighbours of theirs came by.  The conversation started into the wildfire problems in Northwestern Ontario, which caused the evacuation of many reservations, bringing a large number of remote Indigenous peoples into the city for shelter. These neighbours started talking about "the problems", relating stories from their police officer daughter, and there any attempt to steer the conversation into thoughts of compassion were not met, if not outright challenged.  They did not seem like bad people, these neighbours who came by to lend a helping hand to their neighbours, but at the same time, they represent an all-too-common cultural sensibility around the city of Thunder Bay.  There's tension, there's distrust, and there's so much trauma.  For the settler population of the city, it seems what they want, more than anything, is to not think about it. That is how racism and racist structures perpetuate, by not addressing the past and present, by not being open and honest, and by feeling threatened with change. Systemic racism is about there being parties who benefit and parties that not only don't benefit but are actively harmed by those systems.

McMahon had done two seasons of the podcast, which I have to say, were more journalistic in their presentation. This TV mini-series is more emotionally guided. I think after two seasons in Thunder Bay, McMahon is disappointed, frustrated and angry.  That love and sentimentality McMahon expresses for the city in the first season of the podcast (reiterated at the start of the TV series) seems to have given way to powerful emotions, and those emotions fuels the series.  It's been said (and was shown) that many attempts were made to talk with the people in charge of both police and city institutions and they were rebuffed in almost every attempt. They don't show enough of the city not wanting to talk about it, because in showing the reluctance to address its own issues, well no more a potent message can be said. 

After the release of the Broken Trust report from the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, one of the recommendations was to appoint an Indigenous person to sit on its board, to whom the chief of police is answerable to. Georjann Morriseau, is appointed and actually chaired the board, only to find herself butting heads with the chief, and subjected to unlawful investigations and harassment for doing the job she's asked to do. Her time as board chair is harrowing and led to a filing of a human rights complaint against the chief, members of the service, and the board. (My two cents, Morriseau is a fucking hero).

There's a "bombshell" in the show's final episode, a leaked confidential report to the media about an internal investigation shows the police are aware of their mishandling of Indigenous "sudden death" cases. The report identifies 16 cases that require reinvestigation, but McMahon misrepresents this in the show, highlighting the 1700+ cases of "sudden death" in a 7 year period, as if most of them equate to the same level of scrutiny of deaths that have been discussed on the show.  

It's manipulative in the edit, and McMahon is guilty of misrepresentation in this way a few times in the series.  For example, he calls Thunder Bay the "murder capital of Canada", which is not an inaccurate statement, but he equates this title to the deaths of Indigenous teens whose deaths are officially noted as "accidental", therefore not officially on record as murders. McMahon never really touches upon what are the actual murders that give Thunder Bay this shameful title (it was 15 murders in 2022, which when measured means more murders per capita than anywhere else in Canada). There is a substance abuse crisis in Thunder Bay, and gang issues. These aren't subjects that tie into McMahon's narrative for the series, and so they're barely scratched, and the fact that we don't get this kind of contextualization is a reminder that McMahon isn't an investigative reporter, so there's limits to where his production is going to go.

But the purpose of the show isn't to report all the facts. It's raising awareness, and it's a necessary narrative to say that the Thunder Bay Police Department have failed the Indigenous population on a spectacularly unprecedented and embarrassing level.  Yeah, they're not out shooting Indigenous teens on the streets, but that doesn't give them permission to so spectacularly fail or abuse a people, and then both try and hide from accountability and avoid acknowledging their part in upholding racist institutions. 

Recommended viewing for all Canadians with McMahon's podcast required supplementary listening. Throw off the shackles of wilful obliviousness and confront some of our most uncomfortable truths. 

As for me and Thunder Bay, we still see each other from time to time. Still not a lot of love (it's a town for lovers of the outdoors, which is definitely not me), but there's familiarity and that's okay.