I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching -- Wot? No Movies P3

 I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(him) 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.  That dog in the fiery house bad.

What I Am/Have Been Watching is the self-admitted state of typically Toast (not him), spending too much time in front of the TV. Sure, the Great Pause is winding down (culturally if not virally) but habits have been formed, doors have been locked and going outside is soooo pre-2019. The weird thing of late is not committing to movies. Sure, we add them to Watch List, we Download them, we say, "Let's watch xxx instead of TV tonight," but then we just either re-watch something classic or I find something else to download. 

One Episode is a segment in which we talk about shows we have watched one episode of (and sometimes more). We would like to watch less volume and more quality Television but that involves wading through a bevvy of meh to get to the good stuff. Sometimes we find gems which, for one reason or another, we don't (or haven't yet) watched another episode of.

P1 is here. P2 there.

The Boys, S3, 2022 - Amazon

(Wot? I never wrote about S1 or 2 ?!?!)

Has The Boys run its course on the amount of shock and shock and repugnance it can deliver? Whatever you answer, they will try to overcome it.  Shows like this, that come with a very distinct premise (superheroes are actually just the biggest, most amoral celebrity assholes and someone has to put them in their place) need to complete a story and move onto another one. Alas, they will likely be stretching out this plot (Butcher needs to take down the worst superhero, the Homelander) as long as they can. I haven't finished this S3 yet, but TV being TV means they need to go on and on and on.

The enjoyment (and I say that out loud with only a twinge of embarrassment) of season one came from the "OMG they did that!" factor. I had already read the comics and knew what to expect but the choices they made in order to adapt and give something new were astonishing, but the plot also felt tighter than I expected. But season two was all plot-stretch, and seemed to be doing some of the themes over and over. The Deep was a pervy dumbass, Homelander is unstable, Starlight is troubled by the life she has to navigate, A-Train is just utterly clueless, Butcher is an abuser, Hughie is naïve, etc. Much of the season felt like it didn't know where it was going, with only one subplot of any impact, in the resurrection and downfall of literal Nazi Stormfront.

Season 3 picks up with lame attempts at closure. Butcher is off the bottle and taking care of his kid, Hughie is working for the congresswoman who runs a dept that holds supes accountable, and Annie is doing her best to navigate... yeah, a lot of again a retread. But they blow some people up, go over the top on the sex stuff, and shock and shock and gross us out even more. But at least the plot seems to be directional -- in that Butcher is using a resurrected thought-lost-greatest-american-hero Soldier Boy (Kripke's buddy Jensen Ackles, Supernatural) to build a plan to take down Homelander. And things are going awry.

The Boys does not lend itself well to being attentive to the plot. So many of the beats are the same, over and over. Character choices are repetitive, the shocks begin to become numbing, and few people learn from their mistakes. But as someone who watch many MANY seasons of Supernatural, that seems to be a Kripke thing. How many times were the Winchester lads going to die or almost die or be altered, only to come back to Save The World. I will watch to see what it is done, but I will burp a sour burp and be done with it.

The Umbrella Academy, S3, 2022 - Netflix

(Wot? I never wrote about S1 or 2 ?!?!)

Seeing a trend here. 

I recall really liking most of season 1, especially anything to do with the time agency, The Commission, and the assassins Hazel and Cha-Cha. They did a pretty good job of adapting a rather non-sensical, whacka-doodle comic book series (it's often more style than substance, which has always had a strong place in comics) into a rather whacka-doodle TV show. I also recall it running out of steam before the end of the season, which worked out as an intro to all the characters. You see, The Umbrella Academy were 7 of 43 spontaneously born children, all at the same moment, all from not-pregnant mothers, from around the world. They were adopted by the strange, proto-typical comic book father figure Reginald Hargreaves (Colm Feore, Bad Cop Bon Cop, who disappears utterly into the role). He is not a good father. He is a "scientist" raising experiments to be super-heroes. The children have more emotional connection with the sentient monkey Pogo (Adam Godley, Powers) and the robot mom (Jordan Claire Robbins, 12 Monkeys), than with Reggie. As adults, the children are very very broken.

Season 3 brings on yet another apocalypse that they are causing, yet also have to save the world from. Seeing a trend here. They have returned from the 60s (season 2) to see the impact their meddling in Time (yet saving the world from apocalypse) has caused. There is no Umbrella Academy, instead Hargreaves has raised other children, calling them The Sparrow Academy. But he was expectedly also a dick to them, and they are, as adults, very very broken.

The show excels when it embraces the whacka-doodle, being so utterly unlike other "superhero" shows, in that nobody ever really does anything heroic, except on the most grand scale, and usually only in reaction to trouble they caused themselves. Unlike other whacka-doodle (Toasty, do you need a tag?) shows, such as Dirk Gently, there is little in the way of charm here. These are not likeable characters. And yet, I find myself absolutely loving so many of them. Of course, Klaus (Robert Sheehan, Misfits) the drug addled medium is my favourite followed closely by nihilistic Five, the old man in a teen's body. And I find myself sighing in contentment at the setting and design choices -- so many other shows, The Boys for example, barely even think about their set production. But all the anachronistic, grand choices in The Umbrella Academy set it aside from other shows. When was the last time that a background character was so distinct, I naturally assumed they were going to play a part in the plot?

Alas, as the show progresses, my enjoyment of the chaos and bizarre plot choices diminishes, as the story once again seems to lose steam. They seem to suffer from a stretching of available plot, needing to fill more and more space with endless moaning & groaning about all the bad choices offered, and bad choices they make.  I live that, I don't need to watch it.

Season 3 ends with another apocalypse averted (but really, was it?) and yet another Universe/Time-Line that the kids are shunted into.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel rewatch, 1997 - 2004 - Amazon

We have series we wait weekly for, we have series returning from seasonal hiatus, we have series we spontaneously download & watch, we have series randomly discovered, we have access to so much TV, and yet we still feel compelled to rewatch some stuff. Marmy has her crime shows that she rewatches on a regular basis, I have own staples (Firefly, Band of Brothers) and yet, for some reason, since they became digitally available, it didn't include Buffy and Angel.

But of late, given the circumstances around Joss Whedon and the challenge of art vs artist, I wanted to revisit the shows, to see if the difficulty was visible, and also to see if the show withstood the test of time.

We are mid-way through season 4, when it was appropriate to watch Angel though not trying to watch time periods concurrently, just keep the threads together. This was the season, post highschool, that the show hits its groove. The literal growing pains were moved through, childish things were put away and some beats had been established. And yet, the whole Adam as BBEG is one of my least favourite antagonists. Just the whole science-meets-mysticism seemed uninspired, but they were also working through the idea that the numerous human-comingled-demon races were not all cut-and-dry Bad Guys. And even that idea, which was presented by the now questionable Watcher's Council, that all demons walking on Earth were mixed bloods, seems challenged, as plenty of demons are dimension-walking so, they could be pure blood examples of their own race, unlike the mongrels that vampires are. I wish The Initiative had been exploring that, instead of just looking for walking weapons.

Part of the fun in watching a 25 year old show is pondering how the show would have differed if set now. Willow is using the Internet in its infancy (also hacking into proprietary databases) but imagine the knowledge that would be stored in today's massive connected data source, let alone what would be now accessible from the ubiquitous cell phone. The show today would have been attacked on Twitter for being too woke, and likely tackled some of the issues we are dealing with now, while embracing the topics considered ground breaking then. And yet, probably still tainted by the whole Whedon "white knighting"; much of the show seems to suffer in retrospect from now knowing where Whedon's headspace was at the time, especially with the female characters. The creep factor is definitely there.

Angel introduces the idea of greater forces behind the Monster of the Week. Angel himself finds his own "chosen one" destiny as he begins prowling the streets of LA as a weird pseudo "private dick", led by another mongrel demon Doyle, and assisted by Cordy who has run away from Sunnydale after her father went bankrupt / went to jail. In watching so many of the characters, Cordy is the one that seems to be given the most room to grow, and yet still retain her core selfish-self-centered-vapid core personality, but not allowing that to be only what she is.

The first few times we watched, I always adored the tragic love affair that is Buffy and Angel, the pathos of an ageless man in love with a woman who will eventually grow old, the creepiness of an "old man" falling for a 16 year old girl -- even if Angel is forever stuck in the mindset of when he was turned, he was still a man in his early twenties, not the age one should be going after teens. Enter Joss Whedon creep-factor. So, now that I watch it, I am just rather tired of the whole thing. Buffy just needs to move on, and Angel, I believe, is more attracted to the Tragic Love aspect, not her in particular. And that garners some truth, as he moves on to rather different choices later on in his own series.

We have a long way to go, especially to season seven of Buffy, wherein something that was surprisingly introduced early on (The First, season 3, "Amends") becomes the end of the series. I had never thought of Whedon doing the long haul on stories and plot, but how quickly he moves Spike from being the biggest & baddest of the baddies into an almost kicked-puppy role set him up for redemption in the long run. He also minorly does it with the introduction of uber-outsider Jonathan, who comes into the background rather early and is hinted at by season 4 of going to play a greater role.

And into the darkness we go....

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Doctor Strange

2016, Scott Derrickson (Sinister) -- download

OK, Marvel, stop. Just stop now. No more "just OK" movies. No more resting on your laurels. No more accepting "good enough" as good enough. We need more Winter Soldier, we need more Guardians of the Galaxy. In a world where guys my age still remember that genre flicks were few and far between, especially superhero movies, these movies will always make a certain amount of money, enough money to justify the next one. But no, let's stop right now.

This is another origin story. It is another mostly standalone movie, mostly independent of all that came before but has enough threads to connect it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have meaning in the overall. Magic gets officially introduced to the MCU, while it has already been hinted at in season 2 of Daredevil and the current season of Agents of SHIELD. We get the threads that will connect the super-science of Thor's homeland with their cosmic science of Guardians. Magic? Super pseudo-science? In a superhero world, it all blends together. And we also get another big bad guy, one that will probably connect to the coming stories.

Dr. Stephen Strange is Tony Stark 2.0, even from visual design. Egotistical, arrogant, incredibly endowed with intelligence and brought down low by an injury of his own making. And he has to dive deep within himself, with the help of an ancient mystical leader (The Ancient One, who I actually loved coming from Tilda Swinton) to not return to his previous state, but find a new much more important one. And he will definitely need the help of others like him if he is to protect the world.

And while he might not be a likeable guy, he sure is in a pretty pretty movie. Set design, colour scheme and settings are just incredible! The translation of the 70s woo-woo mystical arts into the pretty lights and glowy bits is spectacular. While the different realms may lift from previous other worlds we have seen before (I am talking about Inception of course) it is well handled, and fits into this movie's milieux very well. The problem is that all the good bits, the characters and the effects and the cast, just all come together in only an OK movie, a slight bit above "meh".

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (Pt. 6)

In this new trend of "leaking" things early, I am surprised I did not give the first episode of this alternate history series a brilliant review.  Brilliance on part of the show, not the review. Anywayz, I loved the first episode of this PK Dick story adaptation about a world where the Nazis won WWII, along with the Japanese. The Americans entered into the war too late for Europe, which in turn allowed the atomic bomb to fall into the Nazi hands. The war ended when they dropped it on Washington DC. We enter the story in the early 60s, a generation into America living as an occupied country -- Nazis controlling the east coast, Japanese the west coast with a neutral freezone (but still not America) in the Rockies.

This is an uncomfortable show to watch. Sure, we are still deeply seated in accepting Nazi Germans as bad guys (with no argument of them being so, but they are so deeply embedded in our forefront Bad Guy brain, more so than any other historical force) but the Japanese are generally considered decent, hardworking if a bit pervy these days. But in this world, both cultures are dominating, ruthless and downright scary. But the Nazis come out on top for the Bad.

The story focuses on two young people: Juliana, in San Francisco, whose sister is killed as a resistance agent and Joe, in NYC, a truck driver for the resistance. Both are quickly caught up in a conspiracy involving movie reels from The Man in the High Tower, the leader of the resistance. These reels show an alternate history where the Allies won the war -- our history.

The uncomfortable part is watching the show depict societal norms, even more upsetting than some we already had in the 60s. Joe drives his truck west, through a light snow fall, that is not snow. They are burning the old, the infirm and the insane. Just good population control for the Nazis. And in San Francisco, Juliana's boyfriend is detained & tortured, his Jewish ancestry used as leverage to have him confess to a conspiracy he knows nothing about. His sister and her children sit in a nearby room, a room with gas vents. He knows this. A generation under an occupation and most just ... accept it.

I love alternate histories, where you get to explore all the little bits of change. You can postulate how bad things can get, and how things could have just been different. And of course, you can comment on how some people just accept the world as it is, no matter how horrible it gets. Ahem America, we are all talking to you.

Time to binge watch the rest of the season.

Doctor Who started a trend, well at least in North American eyes -- maybe the Brits have been doing it for ages?  It is the Xmas special. No, not like us, where we have a themed Xmas episode, but a single episode that stands alone from the other stories, usually why the show is inbetween seasons or on a long hiatus. A tasty snippet while we wait.

The Abominable Bride is the first such for Sherlock. It picks up the continuity from last season, in that plane. But really, it takes place in the mind of Sherlock, in the Victorian era, giving us Sherlock and Holmes in their original timeline.

Hee! As a fan of the original books, I loved revisiting that setting.

But it doesn't stop there, as they twist and turn, mixing the stories together with a bit of breaking the 4th wall. As Sherlock investigates a mystery of a bride returned from the dead, he uncovers a rather odd conspiracy of .... feminists?

This episode was for the fans, as it just dives into the characters and their playful interaction with each other. The juxtaposition of 19th century versions vs the current ones, the contradictions and the ever presence ghost of Moriarty. The mystery is just a canvas unto which the characters paint themselves. Great fun! And yet, we are still connecting seasons together, considering how things went last season.

And from great fun to great-gawds-this-is-terrible we get Shadowhunters. This is the TV adaptation of the YA chicks-with-knives genre book series. Yes, the one that had a failed movie franchise attempt starring Phil Collins daughter Lily. Chicks with knives? You know, those books in the store that have a girl in tight, dark clothes usually with tattoos (often a tribal tramp stamp), a sword or dagger and she gets mixed up in Urban Fantasy, usually vampires.

The Mortal Instruments, as the books were called, is about a group of attractive, counter culture youth descended from Angel blood, who are charged with protecting the human world from Demons, and other monsterish creatures. Great idea. No idea about the execution, but boy does it lend itself to a CW style TV show. These shows practically are born on this station. But this one comes from Freeform, formally ABC Family, which might explain why it is so so so terrible.

The main character Clary is coming of age and bumps into Shadowhunters (the pretty kids in leather an abs who fight demons) in a nightclub. Before she can drag out her true history from her mother, the woman is attacked and taken. Clary is left piecing together the story by stalking to Shadowhunters back to their CSI style lair (lots of glowing set pieces, monitors and equipment) and learning of her heritage.

Help me find my mother! Help me find out who I am! Tell me what a Mortal Cup is! These are the strained cries of Clary as she goes from pretty highschooler in jeans and tees to Shadowhunter in short skirts and leather. Its not much of a transition for she looks ridiculous in the outfit, which is not surprising because she got it from a girl who seems to want to look like Vampirella in a pair of tight leather pants. Like the original movie, the boys put and argue over Clary not wanting to get wrapped up in her anguish but knowing they must.

The Vampire Diaries does it better. And yet I have watched a couple of more episodes, not to see if it got better but to see if the incredibly terrible was a fluke, a bad first episode. Nope. Stinker. Not even "I'm on a horse!" Isaiah Mustafa can raise it from the filthy floor.

The most annoying thing about the whole show, movie and book series is that it stole MY idea for a d20 Modern campaign that was also called Shadowhunters, stole its idea from Buffy but used the template of Angel blooded vs Demon blooded. Mine was better. But still had a chick with a dagger nee sword.

The Lego Movie

2014, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

It's easy to be cynical about The Lego Movie, ostensibly a 100-minute commercial for a product that, at this stage, needs very little help in advancing sales.  Lego is a juggernaut in the toy market, some stores dedicating an entire aisle to its output, not to mention the fact that Lego stores have begun to pop up in shopping malls the world over.   There are a few competitors to Lego, but over the past few decades Lego has drilled it into kids minds to accept no substitute, to the point where getting a Kree-O set is a disappointment.  In the past decade Lego has taken great pains to expand its scope, particularly by licensing, taking on all sorts of established and popular brands like DC and Marvel Superheros, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and more.  Beyond these obvious sorts of properties, Lego has also developed kits that replicate famous landmarks (one I saw recently, in a gargantuan box of just under 3000 pieces, was a recreation of the Sydney Opera House for roughly $350), which only confirms both at price point and subject matter that Lego has extended itself beyond just appealing to children, sustaining and promoting itself among adult collectors and builders as well.

However, with the proliferation of all these building kits, for the most part gone is the idea of free play.  Instead the richly detailed visual instructions have taken over.  Follow the rules rather than create your own. In may ways, Lego has become 3-D puzzles, where the only real challenge is finding the right piece in a pile, and following along.  Hidden in the Lego aisle, if available at all, are simple kits of just blocks, and encouragement to do your own thing.  The Lego Movie, which could have so easily just been a vehicle for selling new model kits and "gotta get em all" mini-figures, instead wisely acknowledges the reality of Lego's branding, the conflicting ideas of following the instructions versus doing your own thing.

The moment I heard that Phil Lord and Chris Miller were involved, I knew that The Lego Movie was going to be something more than crass commercialism.  Lord and Miller were responsible for the way off-beat, short-lived but cult-favourite cartoon series Clone High, and went on to make Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs not only a surprise hit but one of the best comedy features (animated or otherwise) of the the past decade.  Their comedic sensibility is well honed, and they excel at the surprise gag, delivering laughs from the unexpected as well as toying with cliche and convention.  Even more, they are masters at building a running gag, one that continues to pay off the more it's used.  Even if the film wouldn't deliver on the story, I knew long before even the first trailer appeared that it would be a funny movie.

But there's something to The Lego Movie beyond product placement and gags, there's both a message (or two) and some sentimentality within, and further to that, some great world building, creating a "universe" that I actually wanted to see more of and spend more time in.  The central figure is Emmet, an nondescript construction minifigure who goes with the flow, follows instructions to the letter (err, image) and seems to have no desire for independence.  He lives in a city where it seems everyone is pretty much just like him, until a chance crossing with Wyldstyle draws him into a whole new reality, exposing the walls between dimensions and awakening him to the threat of Lord Business.  Lord Business has forced the different brands of Lego to remain separated, and those who seek to undermine this segregation will be punished.  Emmet and Wyldstyle meet up with the crazy and blind wizard Vitruvius, who unveils the prophecy that the wielder of the Piece of Resistance, (naturally Emmet) will be the one to stave off Lord Business' evil plan to destroy the universe through stagnation (by literally gluing pieces in place).

The band of rebels (joined by 80's Spaceman Benny, cyborg pirate Metal Beard, a cutesy hybrid unicorn/kitten Unikitty, and Batman... Wyldstyle's boyfriend) are all "master builders" and Emmet, being the "chosen one" of this piece, should be preternaturally gifted at building objects, but he constantly disappoints and questions his own validity.

There's heavy shades of the Matrix at play here, and I can't really tell if it's overtly intentional or if it's just retreading the same heroic prophecy-type story elements.  While it's definitely a tale we've seen before, it's not been seen quite this way, where the characters are constantly undermining seriousness of their journey by acknowledging the cliche of it without fully undercutting the intensity of their plight, it still means something to them.  Emmet's journey is one of finding self confidence and learning to think for himself, exploring creativity and problem solving.  As far as character journeys go in these types of films, it's a good one for kids (and most adults too).

The plot sticks firm to "stopping the bad guy's plan" until midway through the third act where it side steps into a stimulating meta story that explores the main theme even further.  There's more than an acknowledgement that Lego, for all it's increasing fanciness and complexity, is still just a toy, a building block system meant to stimulate children's creativity.  Lord Business represents an adult's sense of conformity and compartmentalization, and how oppressive that worldview can seem to children.

The animation in The Lego Movie is phenomenal.  There have been animated Lego features and television shows (Ninjago, Chima) but they're stripped down, feeling like animation.  The Lego Movie feels like the characters are living mini-figures inhabiting environments completely and plausibly built out of Lego.  The level of detail is dizzying, every brick seem accounted for, and it can take a while to visually adjust to the film's environment, but it very quickly defines itself as a unique place.  There's a kinship here to Wreck-It Ralph, where in that film it interconnects videogames into a shared universe.  Here, it's the many realms of Lego colliding, both sensibly and nonsensically, and is responsible for part of the film's charm.

The voice cast is stacked with great talent.  Burgeoning superstar Chris Pratt takes the lead as Emmet, who's close to an extension of his Parks and Recreation character, kind of dumb, but sweet and excitable.  Charlie Day is perfect for the ever keen-come-disappointed 80's spaceman who just wants to build a spaceship, dangit.  Morgan Freeman plays the delightfully daffy wizard Vitruvius, well against type, while Nick Offerman usually recognizable timbre completely disappears under Metal Beard's pirate speak.  Alison Brie is the perfect choice for the cutesy Unikitty who's bottling up her rage, and likewise Liam Neeson shuffles between the temperaments Good Cop and Bad Cop.  Will Ferrell revives Mugatu from Zoolander for his Lord Business, and Elizabeth Banks has a lot of heavy lifting in the love triangle between Emmet and Batman, as Emmet's master builder mentor, and sufferer of Vitruvius.  And one can't forget Will Arnett's Batman, smug, cocky, and a bit of a dink, with a shallow emotional side... Batman's demo tape is brutally funny.  And rounding out the heroes are Channing Tatum's Superman suffering the clingy-ness of Jonah Hill's Green Lantern, and the possible conflict of interest with Cobie Smulders as Wonder Woman.

This is a tremendously enjoyable film, super funny, visually exciting, with a variety of moving parts that make a richer whole than most children's entertainment.  Yes, it's a 100 minute sales pitch for plastic bricks, but it's also a rich little universe both that's at once big and small that's worth spending time in.