1-1-1-KsMIRT: odds on endings

KsMIRT=Kent's month in reviewing television. This month, the definite end of one series, the probable end of another, the first seasons of two others, and one show I've been waiting some time to get eyes on.

This Month:
The Bear Season 5 - 2026, disney+ [8/8 episodes watched]
Deli Boys Season 2 - 2026, disney+[6/6 episodes watched]
Spider-Noir Season 1 - 2026, amazonprime [ /8 episodes watched] 
Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Season 1 - 2026, appletv [10 /10 episodes watched]
Year of the Rabbit Series 1 - 2019, tubi [6/6 episodes watched]

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The Bear Season 5
[created by Christopher Storer]
Seasons 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

The What 100: Carmy has told Sid he's quitting The Bear, she's now head chef, so it's time for a change. But uncle Jimmy's made some bad investments and has no money left to prop the Bear up, and is looking to sell the property. The credit cards are cut off, the cupboards are practically empty, and a heavy duty storm is wreaking havoc in Chicago. This could be the Bear's last night, but nobody wants it to end, and they're all going to fight for it's survival.

[1 Great] There is a moment in the penultimate episode that had both Lady Kent and I sit up and say "holy shit!" A literal magic trick that blew our minds.  I don't know if this particular feat is something that's famous in the fine dining world, or if it's an invention of Storer (or someone on staff), but wow. If you're not immediately aware of what I'm talking about, well, Marcus (Lionel Boyce) totally big-times his estranged father, whom he invited to the Bear (as he said, because he couldn't invite his mom, who passed away last season), but also to show off his talent, to show up his father, and possibly even reconnect (but that seems far down the list) and with the Bear's impending doom hovering overhead, he doesn't have much opportunity. A pretty great arc for Marcus this season.

[1 Good] Last season had a literal ticking clock over its head, a countdown to profitability issue by Uncle Jimmy (Oliver Platt), though his reasons weren't as clear as they are within moments of this season's start. In this season of eight episodes, seven of the eight episodes take place on the same day as the staff need to battle their own insecurities, their anger and disappointments, the weather, other failures in the building, and fight not just to make it through the day but to hold their family together. While Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) quitting was supposed to remain a secret through to the end of the day, it gets blurted out in the heat of the moment, and it just raises awareness to the fact that Carmen wouldn't be a bonding agent, but one of division. He's immensely creative, and assuredly talented, but the job brings out the worst in him too, and he recognizes that his heart isn't in it, not like the rest of them. "I can't stay", he says to Sugar (Abby Elliott). "Nobody's asking you to," she replies in the way only a sibling can. It's not to injure him, but it's a double edged sword that is both supporting his decision, and cutting down his egocentricness. This season is propulsive (as many of the seasons have been) but the "all in one day" motif really, really makes it feel like a necessary binge. It could have been a four hour movie, but I think it works well with chapter breaks, as each episode still has a distinct and defined segment of the day.

[1 Bad] There's a lot of great things happening in this final season of The Bear. Every main character gets their spotlight, but the secondary characters don't quite get the same spotlight. Uncle Jimmy becomes the comic relief as he and his investment manager/best friend Computer (Brian Koppelman) and Computer's business savvy niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher) try to sort out how Jimmy can get some money, any money, out of the only asset he has left (the Bear). Last season Ebraheim (Edwin Lee Gibson) had a subplot working with a mentor (the late Rob Reiner unable to return this season) to develop a plan to franchise out The Original Beef of Chicagoland, and this season Ebra spends his time fretting over presenting his pitch to Carmy and looking for a spoon thief. The scenes of him practising his pitch are great (the running gag about him being bewitched by Carmy's blue eyes was fantastic), and the resolution to this plot is satisfying, but it's Cheese who finds Ebra's proposal and then it cuts past what should have been a great scene of Ebra and Cheese talking, leading to Ebra and Jimmy and Computer meeting. Ebra gets so shortchanged, the only bad thing about this otherwise terrific season.

META: Finales are hard, but this one nails it. I don't usually like it when a series spends the whole final season acting as if each episode is a finale, giving each character a specific spotlight to go out on. I much prefer it to be business as usual with a big final episode, but season 5 of The Bear has it both ways, and it works. It mostly works because it's not trying to close out individual character plots one by one, it's teeing up each character arc in the first episode or two, working through it through the single day, and winding it down by the end of the day. It's all about pacing and it is so very well paced.  The finale then give us moments that follow. We know that pretty much everyone in the cast is still working at the restaurant, making it work, but it's Carmen's story that we need resolution on and we see what's next for him. But we also see hints at where everyone else is going, and showing them still progressing, and reinforcing the found-family dynamic of the Bear.  It's an uplifting, hopeful, and celebratory ending that actually satisfies. I wish I had written this out as a fine dining metaphor.

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Deli Boys Season 2
created by Abdullah Saeed
(Season 1)

The What 100: Brothers Mir and Raj Dar have successfully taken over their deceased father's business and are now the cocaine kingpins of Philadelphia. District Attorney and mayoral hopeful Andrew Chadwater seems all too aware that the impact the Dar family is having and, more than for the social good, just wants the good press of taking them down. The only problem the Dars have is they are making too much money and can't launder it fast enough. They approach mobster/casino owner Max Sugar, who hits it off with Lucky. And then Uncle Ahmad - who the boys discovered was responsible for their father's murder - winds up dead and Raj is arrested, and becomes the internet viral sensation, the "Fuck Me Felon". Mir wants to buy a golf course for some semblance of legitimacy.

[1 Great] Deli Boys is a farce. It's not taking the world of drug dealing, money laundering, corruption and murder seriously in the slightest. In fact it's perception is that it's all very silly. The trick is to have the characters take it seriously, even if some of them are buffoons, or hyper-serious to the point of ridiculousness. Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Saagar Shaikh) are incredibly entertaining characters, with Mir being the more nebbish but also educated but also still out of his element, while Raj is very of-the-moment and, well, often high...and charming, but usually not charming enough. The show is not a joke machine like 30 Rock and its ilk, but instead is a character and situational based comedy, and the characters, pretty universally are wildly entertaining, and the situations are constantly surprising. It's an incredibly funny show which many might be put off simply by the premise (which requires us two root for two outsiders succeeding in doing everything illegal, including murder).

[1 Good]  I don't know that this write-up is much different than the season 1 write-up, just saying the same things in a different way. Of course Poorna Jagannathan is the show's superpower. She's a commanding screen presence, a gifted actress, and an absolutely stunning woman. It's almost unfair to put her in a relationship with Fred Armisen (playing Max Silver) because, at least in attractiveness, she's so far above him (she was paired up briefly with Common in Never Have I Ever and that felt more appropriate), but Armisen is a wizard of comedic characters and so she has to go toe to toe with him in these comedic situations and holds her own. I'm excited to see she's appearing in Lanterns this month.

[1 Bad] This second season of Deli Boys had a reduced episode count...and a significant one at that. Whereas season 1 had 10 episodes, this season only had a 6-episode order. Yeah, that's not good, but the real bad is that the first three episodes of the season feel like they're condensing five or six episodes worth of plot into three episodes and so the events of the show move so incredibly quickly. Raj is barely in jail for a full episode and so they don't get a lot of time to really build upon the scenarios that presents (plus we could have had more of Kumail Nanjiani guest starring as Raj's lawyer and Lucky's ex).  There feels like there was more story, more comedy to be had this season, but whatever plotlines were constructed between seasons weren't reworked but just compressed.

META: The reduced episode count in itself felt like a token gesture from Hulu, and less that they had any faith in the show growing their audience. Unless the series suddenly multiplied its viewership, I don't think it'll be back, which is a bummer because it's a super-talented cast and crew and a hilarious show which could really do with more room to breath and expand (there's so many wild characters they haven't had the time to build out or explore).

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Spider-Noir

[created by Oren Uziel] 

The What 100: In an alternate reality 1930's, Ben Reilly used to be a superhero called the Spider but is now a washed-up private dick who scrambles to make ends meet. The trauma of losing his fiancee Ruby still weighs heavy and he finds it hard to care about the world anymore. In the Spider's absence, mob boss Fin "Silvermane" Byrne has taken control of New York City, but the once meek mayor, seeking re-election, is now fighting back, and things are getting ugly. It only gets worse when new super-powered beings emerge. Reilly somehow winds up in the mix of it all after taking a case from lounge singer Cat Hardy.

[1 Great] Without resorting to heavy-handed exposition, the creatives involved in this series manage to build a world of the 1930s NYC that is recognizable from history but distinctly its own vibe. It doesn't shy away from the ugly nature of segregation and racism of the era, but also never makes it "a very special episode" material. It is just part of the underpinning of the world that these people live in. The sets, costuming, hair, and special effects are all constructed and displayed in a manner to evoke classic noir, all aided by the decision to let the audience choose their own viewing adventure: colour, or black and white. (The series was shot with b&w in mind, so this was the option I went with, and it looks fabulous.)  The aesthetics extend to the sometimes ham-fisted or melodramatic acting which feel very much of the classic noir genre, and the injection of superpowers into the whole thing may be much more advanced than what had been done in the serials of the '30's and '40's but at the same time, there's a baked-in bit of clunkiness to the make-up, the fights, the digital powers to give it a tangible charm even when it might not be so real (the b&w really helps to cover its tracks).

[1 Good] Spider-Noir is not a show meant for kids. It's got a bit of swearing, drinking and smoking, and some violence that goes just beyond the typical MCU cartoonishness. It feels very much like the superhero shows of the 2000s, where a character is either divorced from the greater universe he or she would normally exist in, or is made up from whole cloth. In this case, Spider-Noir has always been an alt-universe character who exists outside the normal "616" and the Spider also has a very minimal history in publication so there's really not much for the series to be beholden to. They pretty much had a blank slate to start with.  We basically know what a spider-man is, what his powers are, so we get a series that begins without necessitating an origin story (but we get that eventually anyway). That frees up exposition for world building. And like the superhero shows of the 2000s, it's able to employ the names and/or power sets of other characters onto pretty much wholly new figures, while still capturing the essence and giving the audience the charge of seeing an "Electro" or "Sandman" or "Black Cat" on screen without requiring fealty to source material. This felt both fresh and retro at the same time.

[1 Bad] Without Nic Cage, I don't think this show was getting made, and given that the actor voiced the character in Into the Spider-Verse and is a lifelong comics nerd (he named his son Kal-El) who really wants to be in comic book properties (eg. Ghost Rider, his ill-fated turn as Superman) it's clear he was putting everything his 60-something-year-old body could into this. It wouldn't be the same without him, and it's a role, once again, without much lore or history to it, that he can own outright and make it his. He sure does. In all honesty, he does a really great job 90% of the time.  He gets to be a smartass with a bit of a mouth, he gets to be a drunk, he gets to have trauma, he gets to act aloof or detached from repercussions (until they hit home)... and he delivers on everything...almost. There is a romantic sub-plot between himself and Cat Hardy that flows in and out of amenable chemistry. Sometimes there's a real flame cooking, and other times Cage seems in his own goofy world of amour. But the hardest part to accept in the series is that Ben Reilly seems like he should be in his late-'40's, not early '60's so no matter how good Cage is, there's always a bit of a disconnect when watching him in the role.  The show does do an excellent job, however, of making Ben Reilly a bit of a broken down veteran. He takes his damn lumps, over and over.

META: I really wasn't expecting to like this show, but honestly I was pretty hooked from the first episode. I watched it in two concentrated viewings, the first four episodes over a two day span and then all the remaining episodes in one sitting a few weeks later. It's a show that seems like it has very little fat on it, but that's just how good it is at hiding it. The flashbacks, and some of the side-quests aren't altogether essential to the story so much as understanding the Spider and where he came from, and yet, the way the show bakes in the origin story is as much about the supervillains the Spider is facing this season as it is about him. There's not much backtracking in this show, it maintains forward momentum excellently and it winds up in the end right where it should. It's quite satisfying in a way that, say, Daredevil was not. The pastiche really helps.  I hear a second season has been ordered. It doesn't need it, but it's not unwelcome.

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Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
[created by David J. Rosen]

The What 100: Paula Saunders is an ace fact checker at a New York-based magazine. She's a divorced, friendless mother who puts all her energies into her job and her daughter, Hazel. With what little time she has left, she finds relief with a cam boy, Trevor, with whom she's intimate with both visually and emotionally. And then Trevor is assaulted on camera and Paula is called for Trevor's ransom. The police say it's a scam. Paula puts her researching skills to the test and tracks down Trevor, only to find him dead. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[1 Great] Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a very modern series, both in subject matter and in storytelling style. It's an exceptionally taut thriller, bristling with intensity, but also it has a wicked comedic streak that helps balance out its heavier impulses. And it's very well balanced. It's obviously a product of the streaming era where episode lengths can be whatever, but most of MPG clock in at around a half-hour. These shorter episode lengths make for a propulsive series that, more often than not, feature an final shot or sequence at each episode's end that just kind of slaps you in the face and makes you want to know what happens next. I honestly can't think of anyone other than Tatiana Maslany who can negotiate the tonal shifts of this show so effortlessly, and manage the many, many demands on her character to be an isolationist, to be snarky, to be an emotionally devoted mother, to convey the stress of the situations thrust upon her, but also find the resolve to quite literally work her way through them. Maslany doesn't make a single false step in the entire series. She's riveting, and the show, while, excellent, is twice as good because of her.

[1 Good] The end of episode 6. I jumped out of my seat and applauded.

[1 Bad] The series spends 9 episodes putting Paula deeper and deeper into trouble and in the end she manages to work her way out of it, and never manages to feel like cheating (well, save for that one cliched moment in the penultimate episode). In the process she uncovers a whole other world of trouble that it seems like she manages to side step, but in the closing moment of the season, Paula receives an alarming text that indicates she's falling right back into the intensity. Hey, it makes sense for Paula to have found her way out of the hole she dug for herself, but not completely escaped it. The layers are many and we've only seen a few without full context. I don't have any issue with this. Really what bothers me is the video Paula was sent. It is confounding in its origin. Where did it come from? Why was it not unveiled before? We know exactly what trouble it spells for Paula and I'm keen for her to once again use her research skills and tenacity to keep her head above water and eventually find the shore.

META: I've watched a bunch of giallo films recently, and some commentary on the subgenre of Italian cinema. Giallos are horror-tinged murder-mysteries where there's a killer on the loose and a non-professional everyman (or woman) either gets thrust into the position of figuring out what's happening or thrusts themselves into the position of investigating. In some respects, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a sort of Giallo, only the killer is a professional cleaner and not a crazed murderer. MPG has much in common with The Flight Attendant, a show with a magnificent season one and a middling season two, but had its title character launched into a Hitchcockian murder mystery but with a heavy side of humour. I genuinely hope MPG is able to avoid the second season curse and find its way into a stellar second chapter.

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Year of the Rabbit series 1
created by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley

The What 100: In 1887 London, Rabbit is a police detective whose violent and self destructive impulses get in the way of his sometimes astute sleuthing skills. He's saddled with a new partner, the keen and upbeat new recruit Wilbur Strauss, as well as receiving the unsolicited aide of the Chief Inspector's adopted daughter Mabel, who wants to be a copper (but, you know, 1887+sexism+racism). Rabbit has a nemesis on the force in Tanner, makes enemies with public officials, and is only starting to see the signs of a secret society of puppet masters pulling strings around London.

[1 Great] It's always going to be Matt Berry. The man just has an incredibly distinctive way of delivering lines and the characters he inhabits are always a very Matt Berry type. Here Rabbit is boorish and dismissing and self-aggrandizing and hyper-sexual but also on the right side of gender and social issues (well, kinda) and ignorant of the advancements in technology and politics and the social contract around him. His ability to sleuth and deduce are sometimes very Get Smart/Inspector Gadget where he gets it so wrong based on assumption but the people around him direct him the right way. He's a delight to watch, even in the fithy surrounding of grimy 19th-century London.

[1 Good] For a sub-30-minute comedy series, the production values are pretty great at making a particular corner of Londing circa the 1880s look like an absolute shit hole (not to mention the amount of times over six episodes they drop into the sewers or meet filth merchants). But it's the setting that makes everything turn in this show. Playing with the realities of the era in juxtaposition against modern sensibilities is a great source of humour (there's a particularly incisive takedown of the anti-immigrants, the Brexiters and Nigel Farage joke throughout the series). 

[1 Bad] I don't know if making the "big bad" of the series a secret society of women seeking equality with violence and manipulation is really the message that we need today. But hey, Keeley Hawes makes for a great nefarious master manipulator and we get Sally Phillips adopting a deliciously ridiculous accent as a Bulgarian Princess.  Plus this main storyline gives Susan Wokoma's Mabel her narrative thrust and Wokoma is an excellent second lead, and Mabel the show's most interesting and well developed character ...in other words, not all bad.

META: I'm not sure why Year of the Rabbit didn't get a subsequent series. Perhaps it was scheduling with Barry in Canada working on What We Do In The Shadows for years. Maybe it was budget, as period pieces always cost more. Or maybe it was COVID related given the timing of the series 1 release. The show works, though, and it could do with another two or three. I've been wanting to watch the show since its initial release but as far as I know Tubi's the first North American streamer to pick it up. Happy to have finally seen it.

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. 

31 Days of Halloween: Revival

2025, download -- 3 / 10 episodes

I once said, "It wouldn't be Halloween without something by Mike Flanagan." I should have kept my big mouth shut as all his shows and movies are still forthcoming, while 2024's The Life of Chuck is not Halloweenish, nor watched yet. But, its nice that there is usually something on TV, this season or this year, that is genre appropriate. And people coming back from the dead is Halloweenish, right?

A reporter and a crematorium/morgue staff member have a traumatic beginning to an event in the rural Wisconsin town of Wausau -- the guy being toasted kicks the door off, and then the person in the body bag sits up. Meanwhile across town, Deputy Dana Cypress (Melanie Scrofano, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) is trying to quit her job and leave town, but her dad, the Sheriff (David James Elliot, JAG) won't have any of it. Revival Day interrupts her plans.

A month later, the town is still under quarantine, nobody coming in or going out. No mention of food logistics, but at least their lockdown has been lifted. The month has proven that all the people who died within a two week period of the fateful day woke up. Miracle or supernatural or freak physics phenomena? Nobody knows, but the CDC has sent Dr. Ibrahim Rahin (Andy McQueen, Mrs. Davis) to investigate. One doctor, and maybe some support staff? Seems underplayed.

Like most SyFy / Canadian specific TV, its focused on the people element, so the first three episodes are about getting to know the characters, including Em Cypress (Romy Weltman, Slasher), the younger sister, who turns out to have also revived, waking up from drowning in the river, but with no memory of how she died. But she's having weird visions and filling sketch books with ominous imagery. All the Revived are normal, but for an encounter with old Arlene Stankiewicz who has been pulling out her own teeth, watching them grow back -- oh yeah, side effect of being revived -- you are now invulnerable, and heal from any wound; ANY wound. Arlene goes bonkers and kills her own daughter in law, which leaves the town nervous that maybe other revivers are going to go off the rails.

Its not bad. Its been a while since we had some familiar Canadian scifi/horror/specfic, so its almost like comfort food. I covered some of the plethora of fictional media that deal with this same topic back in 2014, and the graphic novel from which this was adapted is 2012, so right in there. Unlike many TV shows, where three episodes is enough to determine whether to give it a pass, I have a feeling, again like much Canadian produced TV, this will be OK enough but satisfaction will come only if they handle the final few episodes of the season well. I mean, something is going on, we just have to slowly reveal what it is and stretch it out enough to last more than one season. I am not convinced so far this will get its second.

1-1-1: Peacemaker Season 2

2025, 8 episodes - HBO
created by James Gunn

The What 100: Peacemaker Chris Smith, failing at love and rejected as a superhero, sinks into a deep depression when he discovers a gateway to an alternate reality where his father loves him and his brother is still alive. Rejected by Harcourt, Chris decides to leave his world behind and assume the life of his alt-reality self, except the 11th Street Kids aren't ready to let him go, and this other reality isn't as peaceful as it seems. Plus, Rick Flagg Sr., now head of Argus, seems to be putting all his efforts and resources into fucking Chris over.

(1 Great) Season two backs off of the conflicts among the core cast and instead delves deeper into Chris' traumas, his regrets, and his desire to be someone else. He's dug himself into a pit that he can't seem to climb out of. This season, despite some very big ideas and having to deal with being the immediate follow-up to Superman, manages to center itself around Chris' emotional journey, and highlight the impact Chris has had on his friends. John Cena, almost always a likeable comedic presence reaches deep for pathos and melancholy that shows what a strong actor he has become. He has gotten to the point where he can deliver multiple emotions at once, having his face express one emotion, his eyes another, his physicality another, and his voice yet another. I don't think 10 years ago when Cena appeared with a facecloth covering his junk in Trainwreck that we ever would have expected this out of him.

The foundation of Peacemaker as a series has always been about the character's guilt over killing Rick Flagg Jr. (Joel Kinneman) in The Suicide Squad. He's built a whole show and cast of characters around Peacemaker's attempts at reform, and this season really is about setbacks after saving the world last season. This season, that guilt starts to multiply, as Chris has to come face to face not just with other people from Flagg's life, but seeing and feeling for the first time the impact his rather extreme actions have had on other people. 

It has always been about a traumatized man confronting his trauma and how it's shape the person he has been on the path to reinvention if not necessarily redemption.

(1 Good) We'll get to the downside of James Gunn's scripting this season in a second, but the really good elements of Gunn's scripts this season is not falling into the Marvel trap of making everything so obviously a setup or callback to something else. My biggest worry for the season, following Superman, was that Gunn would be so obviously setting up tent poles for future DC movies or TV shows. And it's not like he isn't, as he has said as much on the official Peacemaker podcast, but it never feels like it's stepping outside the fundamentals of the show.

Rick Flagg Sr. (Frank Grillo) was seen in Superman and Creature Commandos before this, but here he is treated as cast, not simply relying upon past appearances. Gunn does call back to The Suicide Squad and Superman, among other DC references (there's a Lex Luthor cameo, and the character's presence is really felt in the endgame of the season) but Gunn makes all the actions and events a part of the show. Even if there are reverberations that might be felt outside of the series, Gunn primarily focuses on the immediate impact on the characters at hand.  The finale, which I was worried would be just a big tease for something in the future, never actually feels like it's stepping outside of the Peacemaker slice of the DC Unverse.

(1 Bad) Gunn's scripting this season, however, is far from perfect, and is a step down from both the previous season and Superman. I can't help but feel like Gunn, writing two TV series and a film to kickstart this new branch of DC on TV and in film, as well as being chief creative and producer of all things DC, has overextended himself. The Peacemaker season 2 scripts are not as tight as season 1, they're not as funny, and they don't manage to balance the characters out nearly as well as season one. The season largely focuses on Chris and Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) to the expense of Vigilante (Freddie Stroma), Adebayo (Danielle Broosk),  and especially the new characters like Flagg Sr., Sasha Bordeaux (Sol Rodriguez) and Langston Fleury (Tim Meadows). With many of the episodes clocking in at barely 30 minutes, it's not really a surprise the season feels a little under-baked compared to the series before. There's nothing *bad* here, but it's clear that Gunn is an incredibly busy man, and if the show struggles, it probably in his ability to commit his full energy to one project.

META: The highlight of Season 1, a damn entertaining season of superhero-based television, was absolutely the opening credits. The dance sequence to Wig Wam's "Do Ya Wanna Taste It" was an immediate sensation, and I looked forward every week to a new episode just to see the credits. (Yes, I know I could have watched them any time on YouTube or social media, but it was so perfect at amping me up for the episode that followed). This season Gunn selected a new song, Foxy Shazam's "Oh Lord", to open the show. Unlike "Do Ya Wanna Taste It", which is modern Euro hair metal at its most infectious, "Oh Lord" is an epic power ballad that feels much more serious than fun. It took me aback, and I didn't know what to think of it for weeks.  But with each episode, I warmed to it, especially how the production would overlay the start of the song in the cold opens, and the end of the song's "La la la's" acted as a segue into the main episode. It did have the effect of making the show feel at once more epic and more intimate.

Also, I keep forgetting that the main city of Peacemaker is Evergreen...like in the Hallmark movies, lol. Isn't it delightful to think of Peacemaker existing in the same reality as Christmas in Evergreen (of course it's much more like the alt-world there... *tugs at collar*)

Also also, it was hilarious and very disarming that the first episode of, well, anything DC-related following the almost-wholesome Superman includes a pretty graphic orgy scene. Tits and dicks and simulated sex everywhere. Gunn has never lost his provocateur nature, and this is very provocative.

[Poster talk... the main poster is the "painted billboard" version that appears in the back of comic books, while the bus ads I've seen have been the banner with Peacemaker and Eagly touching noggings. The latter is just kitschy while the former is kind of brilliant. The alt-reality that Chris finds himself in has "The Terrific Trio" (Alt-Chris, his father and his brother) painted in a similar mural in the town's square, so this poster recollects that, where it feels like a celebration of heroes admired by the people rather than propaganda. Here, it's got Chris, in his full regalia, looking up at the image of the 11th Street Kids, again they are like a group of heroes, and yet that small image of Chris is on the outside looking up, hoping to one day live up to that image. It's really really good, very effective act capturing the emotional journey of the season in a nutshell.]

1-1-1: Marvel Zombies

2025, 4 episodes - Disney+
Created by Brian Andrews and Zeb Wells

The What 100:In an alternate reality, a zombie plague has ravaged the earth. The survivors are few and the struggle grows increasingly dire. The zombies are not just mindless, hungering hordes, but being controlled by the Scarlet Witch. Despite seeking complete assimilation the witch has set her focus on Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan who seems to be more important than any other survivor, and not just because Kamala has the maguffin that may just cure the whole thing.

(1 Great) It's no secret that for many Avengers: Endgame was a definitive stopping point and that the MCU has largely been pointless excess since. The "Phase 4" expansion, introducing new characters across movies and television, and introducing new "grand arc" threads of the multiverse proved too much for not just much of the general audience, but also too much for Marvel Studios to replicate the success of the past.

But for all the wobbliness of Phases 4 and 5 (and the uncertainty of Phase 6) what has never failed the Marvel Cinematic Universe was great casting. Marvel Zombies, an animated series spinning out of an episode of the animated multiversal anthology What If?, puts a spotlight on all those great casting choices, starting with Iman Vellani, who has never been anything but spectacularly charming and delightful in the role of Kamala Khan. (Also, in recent years in the Marvel Comics, Ms. Marvel has been portrayed as one of the main survivors of many different possible apocalypses, so it's nice to see that into play here as well).

The series opens with Kamala, Hawkeye Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), and Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) finding food and resources while dodging regular zombies as well as "turned" superheroes. They discover a Pym-particles-shrunken unit that may just be Earth's last hope at salvation and they meet the Blade Knight (a Blade-Moon Knight hybrid, designed to be Mahershala Ali's Blade-that-never-happened, but voiced by Todd Williams) who helps them on their journey to try and find a rocket that will get them into space. Along the way they meet Russian heroes Yelena Belova and Red Guardian (Florence Pugh and David Harbour) as well as Shang-Chi(Simu Liu), his friend Katie (Awkwafina), Jimmy Woo (Randall Park) and the silent assassin Death Dealer. They hitch a ride on the floating prison, the Raft, operated as a survivor's community by Baron Zemo (Rama Vallury subbing in for Daniel Bruhl) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell). Eventually they meet up with Spider-Man (Hudson Thames, voice mimicking Tom Holland) and head-in-a-jar Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and make their way to New Asgard seeking the assistance of Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson).

I don't usually write so much plot in a 1-1-1 review, but this is just a super-stuffed four 20-ish-minute episodes that really explore the post-Endgame MCU, but in a very different capacity. It's all built out of Phase 4 -- so no She-Hulk, no Fantastic Four, no Thunderbolts, no Red Hulk -- but just looking at that superstar voice cast just showcases how stacked Phase 4 really was, and that's not even talking about Zombie Namor, or the setpiece of zombie Captain Marvel fighting Ikaris from The Eternals in a seemingly endless battle. This is a butcher looking to use the whole cow.

(1 Good) Animated movies and tv often struggles with creating action sequences that truly pop, mainly because in animation nothing is real or tangible, and often the animators are limited by time and budget (and sometimes technology) into how much effort they can put into a sequence to give it some physical weight. As well, you can do anything in animation, and sometimes that limitlessness means that there's no reference point and creating something out of nothing can lead to messy sequences that move awkwardly or don't feel human enough. Marvel Zombies does struggle with these problems at times and also overcomes them other times. As such there's some wildly thrilling sequences of heroes facing incredibly overwhelming odds against them, swarms of zombies, regular and superpowered, that just spell doom before them.

If there was any doubt that this would be a "soft" show because it's MCU and the MCU is for kids...well, it's not so soft. It's tepidly gory, but there's still gore, and the oppressiveness of this nihilistic scenario was still enough to give Lady Kent nightmares after only one episode.

But at least once per episode I couldn't help but react out loud, either in appreciation or shock or surprise as to something happening on screen. The Pymed-up zombies in the Shang-Chi flashback were astounding, as was the Captain Marvel/Ikarus backdrop, and the Blade Knight is such a fabulous extension of both Blade and Moon Knight (F. Murray Abraham returns to voice Khonshu). This whole series really impressed me...

(1 Bad) ...Except I don't really understand what game Wanda was playing. I don't really understand why Kamala was so important to her. Kind of the whole build-up of the series was around this confrontation between Kamala and Wanda and I don't think I understood the purpose of it.

META: Zombies, the took a little break for a while, but with 28 Years Later and Marvel Zombies they're back in the spotlight again. Let's hope this doesn't spark another zombie trend though, because zombies get overexposed and derivative real quick. 

I read the original Marvel Zombies mini-series when that debuted 20 years ago, and it was a gross, fun, funny romp through a po-ap Marvel Universe. But then the powers that be at Marvel started milking that property on a regular basis and I don't think I followed along past a few issues of Marvel Zombies 2 in 2007 which were really bad.

This was super fun, but it could have been a movie.

[Poster talk... the ten Marvel Zombies posters all feels pretty drab to me. there are ones that are show-focused which center largely around Scarlet Witch as the queen of the dead, and there are the parody posters mimicking The Avengers, or Ant-Man or Age of Ultron posters with the undead, even though Cap and Iron Man and most of the others aren't in the series in any meaningful way. they avoid altogether promoting the show with any of the Phase 4 characters, which I guess reflects how the studio thinks the audience feels about those characters, which is too bad, because I think these are some of the best MCU characters and deserve to be celebrated. gimme a Kamala poster, a Kate Bishop poster, a Blade Knight poster, a poster spotlighting the zombie Namor attack...so much cool shit happens in this series with great characters, that it's a real shame they focus more on looking back on many of these posters)

1-1-1: Ironheart

 I've fallen way behind on my KsMIRTs (Kent's Month In Reviewing Television) so I'm going to catch up by 1-1-1-ing shows as single posts. Like Toasty does. Which probably makes more sense anyway from all sorts of algorithmic angles. But whatever. I do this for me.

Also, SPOILERS AHOY for Ironheart

The What 100: Riri Williams is expelled from her Stark Grant at MIT and returns home to Chicago to pursue her work of replicating an Iron Man suit outside of the rigid confines (and access to resources) of academia. She's spotted and tapped by Parker Robbins, a small-time gangster who's making big strides thanks to a demonic hood that grants him special powers. Riri is tempted into joining his squad because she needs money to build her Iron Man-esque prototypes. Her dream is to commercialize her warsuits for first responders, motivated by the loss of her beloved stepdad and best friend as a result of a drive-by 5 years earlier. However, in trying to achieve her goals, she seems to make the wrong decisions time and again and the weight of the toll is greater and greater.

(1 Great) I was very impressed by Ironheart, a superhero show that refused to fall into the usual superhero tropes, especially where its main character is concerned. Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) is a genius, but she's not infallible and she doesn't have Tony Stark's generational wealth, corporate legacy or public notoriety (nor his old white man exterior) to come out of a myriad of bad decisions relatively unscathed. So when we first meet Riri and she's selling her old school work to lesser-than students to pass off as their own, and gets caught, she's rightfully expelled. She owns it, but not really. Returning home, she feels like a failure, and despite her smarts, she's unable to achieve her goals without capital. Alternatives are limited. Even without explicitly showing us, the show is aware that systemic racism will not consider a young black woman for any high profile tech internships or whatever (all you need to do is look at the most toxic of comments about this show's very existence to see that mentality is so alive and thriving in our current societal hellscape). So yeah, when Anthony Ramos' The Hood presents her with an offer of so much riches, it is undeniably tempting. A conventional superhero would resist temptation, because that's what makes them heroic, but that's boring and basic. The choice Riri makes is a selfish one... selfish with good intentions, but still selfish. She quickly realizes that she's in over her head and working with The Hood doesn't sit right. But throughout the show, she makes one not-great decision after another which just sinks her further and further into situations not easily escapable and certainly not rectified by anything a flying personalized mech suit can do. We see this in so many origin stories for young superheroes... making bad decisions then having to spend the rest of their career atoning for them. Usually by the end of the movie or the origin arc, they have become a hero, but that is decidedly not the case in Ironheart.  Riri is not a villain, by any stretch, but a character so traumatized and driven by that trauma that it misguides her, and makes her more susceptible to manipulation.  The people she hurts, the trust she breaks, the damage she does, these are things not easily undone (some are outright irreparable) and these are all lessons she kind of learns, but she never gets to the root of why she made these decisions in the first place. It makes her both a frustrating and fascinating and very human lead character. When she's got one final decision to make, the traditional hero's journey tells us which decision she *should* make, but the show stays true to her character, and what has motivated her all this time, and, yeah, it goes there, leading to a finale that melted my brain.

(1 Good) It's been rumoured and hinted and suggested for years now that Marvel's devil himself, Mephisto, would be appearing in the MCU, and many were speculating that, because Parker Robbins' hood is made of dark magic, that Mephisto would finally be appearing in the MCU via Ironheart.  But in the comics, The Hood's hood was actually created by Dormammu, who appeared in the MCU in Doctor Strange way back in 2016, and was basically dealt with in that film. But Mephisto hopes became dashed in episode 4 of Ironheart when Riri consults with a magic wielder who confirms the Dormammu connection...with a 50% accuracy.  It was a fake-out, but a beautiful fake out that seemed to imply Robbins was indeed a manipulated tool of Dormammu to aide in his return to earth or some such. But no, it's episode six where we finally see Mephisto in the flesh for the first time in a flashback to The Hood's origin...and it's none other than Sasha Baron Cohen who, immediately, screams the absolute right choice for the role. Cohen is chameleonic and able to move in an out of different characters and even somehow warp reality around him when he's in a character like Borat or Ali G. From the second he steps on screen you know exactly who he is, and by the time the episode is over I wanted nothing more than an anthology series of Cohen's Mephisto making offers to Marvel characters.  Mephisto was subtly and brilliantly seeded into Riri's story and I don't mean through the Hood.  His fingerprints were there early on and I clocked it pretty quickly.  The finale of the season (and probably the series, which makes it an even bigger whopper) feels explosive. 

(1 Bad) The weakest part of Ironheart is its opening episode, having to deal with what was set up for Riri in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In hindsight, the "synergy" of introducing Riri in that film did both that film and this series a disservice.  For the most part, Ironheart has to spend its first episode disconnecting Riri from the MCU at large, shrinking it down to her small world within the world. The first episode wasn't great, but setting the table is a dull task especially when you have to clear it first. But once all the players are introduced, the show really cooks, starting with the final beat of episode one leading directly into the emotional fallout in episode two.

META: It's not unheard of but pretty rare for me to watch a comics-to-film/tv show that I don't already have some familiarly or knowledge of the character and the world they inhabit. In the case of Ironheart, beyond having an action figure of her for some reason and playing her in Marvel Puzzle Quest, I'm unfamiliar. I don't think I have read a single comic with her (or at least not with her in any meaningful role in the comic). As well, the Hood is a great damn mystery to me (again, outside of Marvel Puzzle Quest - a match 3 game without much story or characterization). Hell, I don't even have that much familiarity with Mephisto. So this was all discovery for me, and I had no preconceived notions of who these characters were, what motivates them, what their backstory is or where they wind up. 

Riri's hero's journey is, by the end of the season, still really incomplete, and I loved that the show runners made the choice to end it that way. Riri is a flawed character, and that's not something easily rectified. The Hood seemed pretty boilerplate, but, just as with Riri, it sets up who he is and seeds in visual info in the background to provide more context that comes to light in the final couple of episodes where it really puts his journey into focus. Both Thorne and Ramos are very, very good...not explosive, but really good. 

The supporting cast in general, especially Lyric Ross as N.A.T.A.L.I.E., the AI who is borne from Riri's memories of her dead best friend, is the standout (she's widely cited as a standout performer from This Is Us as well). In this world where we're really struggling with accepting AI as anything other than a portent of doom, and another tool for the capitalists to manipulate and corrupt, making an AI character that is charming, loveable and, at times, heartbreaking is a real challenge, but Ross definitely accomplishes it.

The show also features Alden Ehrenreich as Joe McGillicuddy, a collector and dealer of black market technology that Riri blackmails/befriends. Ehrenreich is such a charming performer, and it's so disappointing that his very, very enjoyable, very brief stint as Han Solo not only didn't turn him into a big star, but in fact had a detrimental effects on his promising career. He hasn't been out of work, but his profile has been quite low. Here, he's like, 7th banana in the series, but he definitely stands out, just like he did in Solo and Hail Cesar! We need more of him.

One final great casting note, Regan Alyah as Zelma, the young witch(??) who helps Riri out with her magical dilemma, is so damn charismatic and delightful. It's an even smaller role than Ehrenreichs, but she absolutely pops.

I get that there are a lot of people burned out on Marvel and superhero content. I get that this is a character most people, even comic book nerds, don't care a lot about and weren't clamoring to see on screen, and I get that this isn't the hero's journey most expect to see, but that to me is what makes it so exciting. It's not without action, but it's also not action-packed. It's a character-centric story about the choices one makes in life, the trauma that leads us to those choices, and having to deal with the ramifications. If you just want to see iron suits bashing into each other, that's been done.

KsMIRT: well...maybe I do

 KsMIRT=Kent's Month in Reviewing Television in which Kent (that'sa me) reviews the television series he watched in the past month (*cough* April *cough*) in the patented 1-1-1 format. I have been writing these things rather expediently at the beginning of each month and yet, for some reason, sitting on them for weeks (and weeks), and posting them at the end of that month, so they're, like, a month behind (*cough* now, like, three *cough*). Whatevs. Let's do this:

This Month:
The Residence (8/8 episodes, Netflix)
Mythic Quest Season 4 (9/10 episodes, AppleTV+)
Yellowjackets Season 3 (7/10 episodes, Crave)
Dark Winds Season 1 (6/6 episodes, Crave)
Daredevil: Born Again Season ? (9/9 episodes)

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created by Paul William Davies

The What 100: There's been a murder in the White House (not the president this time) during a state dinner with the Australian Prime Minister. The victim is the Chief Usher of the White House (Giancarlo Esposito) and the suspects are plentiful with, like, 60 staff members and residents plus nearly 200 guests. Given the sensitivity of the issue the chief of the Metro PD calls in a favour and brings world renowned detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) on the scene where she takes control locking the premises down for as long as she can against mounting opposition and unrest.

(1 Great) I haven't ever really considered myself a big fan of murder mysteries, but the recent spate of eccentric detective mysteries like the Poirot films, Knives Out mysteries and, especially, Poker Face have certainly brought me closer to fandom. Uzo Aduba makes for a wonderfully eccentric detective, as Cordelia Cupp obsesses as much about her birding as she does the case, and often applies her vast knowledge of the birds of the world to the case at hand.  She is exceptionally observant, patient, and never gets ahead of what she knows (she never identifies a suspect, more just persons of interest). She's certainly not a people person, but at the same time, Aduba manages Cordelias frankness as something more charmingly humorous than rude or abrasive. She puts some very powerful people in their place.  8 episodes is a long time to maintain a murder mystery like this given that most of these kinds of stories are done in a 2 hour movie or 1 hour TV show format, but the show makes it less a whodunnit and more about Cordelia's process.  She's an exceptional detective and she knows it, and has a little bit of an ego about it, but it's also clear she enjoys the challenge the work brings.  I also appreciated that amidst it all she remembers that there's an actual person who lost their life in all this. It's a pretty breezy watch.

(1 Good): I do find myself enjoying these big ensemble murder mysteries, and here we have a sizeable cast of recognizable faces. They're not all big, big stars, but if you've watched any TV/streaming in the past decade (or even just the 80's) you're bound to recognize at least a half dozen faces, if not more. You've got Jane Curtin (3rd Rock From the Sun), Jason Lee (My Name is Earl), Bronson Pinchot (Beverly Hills Cop), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (The Wire), Randall Park (Aquaman), Ken Marino (Party Down), Taran Killam (Saturday Night Live), Al Franken (Saturday Night Live), Eliza Coupe (Happy Endings), Mel Rodriguez (Last Man on Earth), Mary Wiseman (Star Trek: Discovery), and even Kylie Minogue as herself, among so many others. It's a sprawling cast that makes you point and say "heeyyyy!" over and over again throughout the first episode or two, and nobody is so obviously outsized compared to the rest to be the immediate obvious choice for who did it.

(1 Bad): I really did enjoy the show, quite a bit, and found it really, really easy to digest. Buuut... it was too long, and there were obvious points in the show that felt like padding. There were at least three lengthy cold opens that take place outside the central mystery, starting with the opening of episode 4 which finds Cordelia on Hawaii teaching her nephew birding. It's a nice mini-story in itself, but it really hastens the narrative thrust of the central mystery.  Likewise, the framing device of a Congressional hearing about White House security turns the whole story into a retelling, and, again, it was unnecessary. It is where we get former actual senator Al Franken and Eliza Coupe sparring with each other, but I don't think any aspect of this framing device was really servicing the story. This could have been 6, or even 5 episodes easy. 

META: The final episode is almost 90 minutes, so, movie length. The majority of this episode is Cordelia assembling her shortlist of persons of interest (not suspects) and then walking them painstakingly through the events of Chief Usher A.B. Wynter's death. It really is a tremendously convoluted mystery and there's no way the casual observer could figure it all out given the clues presented, because there's still clues revealing themselves in this final episode that tie it all together. It mostly works, but if there are more Cordelia Cupp adventures, it can't be a repeatable formula.  I would hope a future series might be movie length individual adventure (Columbo/Sherlock-style) or a series of shorter, tighter mysteries.

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season 1 | season 2 | season 3

The What 100: Ian and Poppy have returned to Mythic Quest but are the runners-up to their former protege Dana who has a massive hit on her hands with Playspace -- a game development tool and user-developed-game sharing hub -- and developed a massive ego along with it...but is seeing none of the monetary rewards. Jo and Brad have gone all-in on backing Dana, but find even their considerable abilities to manipulate David has its limits. David and Rachel are called before Congress regarding an inquiry on whether Playspace is actually child labor. It goes poorly. Oh and Poppy has a boyfriend...and then gets pregnant, and Ian just can't handle it.

(1 Great): This season of Mythic Quest has been, generally, quite fine, and consistently so. It's settled into its character types and their dynamics pretty well and knows how to get the mileage out of them for a lot of chuckels, chortles and laughs. The season's best episode, though, is "The Fish and the Whale", episode six, which finds Brad attending a poker night at David's house thinking he can completely shark David, and win Dana a release from her contract. David's space, vintage 70's decor through-and-through is perfection, and the local first responders that he's assembled as his poker crew, who genuinely admire him no less, baffle and dismay Brad to no end. Danny Pudi's narration certainly recalls the classic "My Dinner With Abed" episode of Community, mainly in how it stands out from the normal structure of the show. Pudi usually only gets the spotlight once a season, but he always makes it count, and David Hornsby is really the show's secret weapon. He's the Charlie Brown of the series, so it's always tremendous when he actually gets to kick that football.

(1 Good): The second best of the season is "Villain's Feast" where the gang are summoned to a murder mystery party by a mysterious benefactor, and sussing out the benefactor becomes more of the objective than the murder mystery. Everyone's dressed up and the manor that the episode is shot in is perfection. It's a real work-outing detour of an episode which allows all the main cast to interact with each other and to really hit those dynamics hard. As noted above with The Residence, I'm liking a good murder mystery and this one is so silly and fun.

(1 Bad): It's not a bad season, but the past three seasons of Mythic Quest have all had a definite highlight in their stand-alone episodes which usually travel back in time and explore characters and subject matter almost tangentially related to the show. Lady Kent and I were really anticipating such an episode this year, and it kept us waiting later in the season than ever, episode 8, "Rebrand"...and it wasn't really worth the wait. It's not a bad episode but it's also decidedly not as good or emotionally impactful as any of the three prior standalone episodes. This one focuses on a now late-teens Pooty, Ian's estranged son and massive YouTube celeb. He's a kid who has everything he could want but realizing that money doesn't buy happiness or a genuine connection with his father.  I dunno, I just don't really care about the struggles of a YouTuber, and even though it finds an emotional core, it still doesn't resonate very strongly. 

META: David might be the glue of Mythic Quest, but the dynamic between Ian and Poppy is what the show has grown to revolve around. It's the heart and the muscle of the show. This season does a really solid job of showing Poppy wrestling with life decisions (ugh, the dreaded pregnancy), and then showing how Ian is wrestling with those same decisions that are Poppy's to make, and thinking he has a say in any of it.  The end of episode seven land like a meteorite, just threatening to crater the show, and I was really curious as to what that would look like, but after stepping back for the Pooty episode, we return to ...not really face the fallout, and to just get back to Mythic Quest's usual chaotic "who's in charge" nature. It's all quite fine, but not the strongest of the show's run.

After writing (and sitting on) this "review" it was announced that Mythic Quest had been cancelled by Apple, but they were giving the show a chance to re-edit the season finale to provide different closure. [edit: the change, it turns out, was the tweaking of the last scene. In the original "airing", Ian and Poppy share a kiss to which they immediately a confusedly recoil from, while in the edit they simply get back to work. I did not like that first ending and was glad for the re-edit]. After writing this I had been thinking how Mythic Quest was a rare show in this streaming age that was surviving beyond the two or three season run, only for it to then be cut down. I will miss it.

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season 1 | season 2 

created by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson

The What 100: In fallout of Nat's death last season, Misty looks to solidify her friendships with Van, Tai and Shauna, but to no avail. Lottie burdens herself on Shauna, only to turn up murdered? The 'jackets investigate. Shauna is harassed by an unseen person, but blames Misty. Back in the 90's in the woods of Ontario, the 'jackets have forged a new life and society  in the wake of the cabin fire that left them unhoused. But finding coach Ben once again starts creating schisms in the group as they put him on trial. And the woods present new surprises.

(1 Great): I can't talk about the surprises that the woods present at the end of episode 8, but it's a fantastic reveal, which leads into episode 6 which may be my favourite episode of the show since season one. I just didn't see it coming, and it's the shake-up the show needed. I had started to tire of the woodland rites and rituals of the now savage 'jackets, but Coach's trial was certainly unexpected and the fallout from that trial (which carried on longer than I thought but mercifully not as long as it could have) is pretty wild and surprising. 

(1 Good): I'm sorry but Shauna and Tai, in the present day, are outright villainous, and Misty, the diagnosed psychopath, is somehow now the most sympathetic character of the modern day crew (you would think that would be Van, given the cancer and, well, being saddled with Tai...but she's kind of riddled with inaction). I've grown up watching Christina Ricci grow up and I've basically had a little crush on her the whole time, and it persists. With Misty she threads a fine line between too much and wounded bird, with woman-of-action wedged right in the middle and she's a delight to watch no matter what's going on. 

(1 Bad): Shauna seems to be getting pushed further and further into being the most awful character on the show in both time periods after, seemingly, being ostensibly our protagonist in the first and second season. I'm feeling a bit jerked around by it all and she's becoming an increasingly frustrating character to watch in both time periods...whether that's self-destruction, the show setting up specific stakes for later payoff, or just the complications of the trauma she's experience, it's all very, very hard to look at her the same way we once did.That her daughter Callie calls this out directly shows an awareness that the show

META:  The weirdest part of the show this season is Lottie's sudden murder. It seemed so out of the blue and not anticipated. It all happened off camera in episode 4 after Lottie being rather present for the first three episodes. It was just weird. Dark Taissa makes another return and she's an unsettling figure...but I find regular Tai to be even more disturbing, just a purely unhinged woman.  These 'jackets survivors are severely fucked up.  I feel like after a very rocky start the first half of the season, the second half really rebounded, capturing some of the wild, go-anywhere sensibility of the first season.

[Edit: In the spirit of honesty, I had written the above write-up thinking I had just finished episode 9 with only one episode to go, when I had in fact just finished episode six. The radical turn of events that happen in episodes 7 through 10 rather reinvigorated my interest in the show. The writing team upended the status quo twice in those four episodes and, yeah, they quite clearly are painting Shauna as the wickedest of the bunch. That twist at the end of episode 6 perked me up on the show when I was feeling pretty down, and then a special guest star shows up for two episodes that rocks the status quo even further.  The creative team also introduce a new "facing who you were" motif that bridges the character's pasts and presents in an uncertain metaspace that, once again, toys with the metaphysical in a way that is so typically non-committal of the show, but seems presented with real intentionality as to where it's all leading.  For the first time since the earliest of episodes of season 1, it feels like creative is in control and know where it's all going.]

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created by Graham Roland

The What 100: It's the early-mid 1970's and a bold armored car heist in Gallup, New Mexico has drawn the feds to the nearby Navajo reservation.  Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo Tribal Police is trying his best to investigate a murder where the only witness is a blind woman, but he doesn't have the resources. Enter the FBI, who give him a "you scratch my back..." offer if he will investigate the heist. The Feds plant a new deputy in the form of Jim Chee, who seems uncomfortable being out of the white man's world, but slowly finds connection he didn't know he was missing.  

(1 Great): Ever since season 2 of FX's Fargo, Zahn McClarnan has been an actor I'm always on the look out for, and just adore watching him perform. There are some actors who elevate any material they touch, some actors who don't know how to fail in a role. That's definitely McClarnan, and here as Joe Leaphorn, the center of the show, the question is how did it take so long for him to lead a series? (Answer: systemic racism, of course.)  He is the center of gravity upon which this show spins, and he's never seemed more comfortable, like he's been ready to be up front and in charge this whole time. We've seen him play dangerous, we've seen him play goofy, we've seen him play paternal, and here he's playing stoic, intelligent, observational, but with, so clearly, a deep wound inside him that he's pushing through every day. The scenes he has with Deanna Allison who plays Ellen Leaphorn, his wife, are a new take on the strained relationship of a cop and his domestic partner, one that has its own history and strains, but there's still a connective bond that refuses to separate them.

(1 Good): The tone of Dark Winds is integral to what makes it so special. It's a show that is proactively putting Native American culture and heritage as well as trials and tribulations specific to its community front and center. It's containing most of its show within the confines of the Navajo reservation, but the ugly influence of the white man's world - capitalistic greed, systemic oppression - it all is weight in the subtext, as the characters and community can sense it. But it's not a show that buries itself in weight,it's not a message show outright. It's still a detective procedural in its own way. In the sun-drenched New Mexican desert lands - often shot beautifully, and just as often shot with intensity - the subtext is just the sweat running down one's back.  

(1 Bad): This is really nitpicky. Some of the sequences feel under-baked, lacking vision, and so the edits or the framing might feel cheap or out of place in what seems to otherwise be a prestige drama. I'm curious to see if those awkward moments show up in the second or third seasons, or if it was just a matter of the crew learning as they go.

META: My expectations for Dark Winds were set, oddly enough, by an episode of Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries.  Season 3 featured an episode that put the spotlight on the rangers of the Navajo Nation, and the rangers who investigate paranormal activities reported by residents across the grand span of the land. If ever there were a new take on the X-Files that needed to be a series, this was definitely it. I thought Dark Winds would be, if not outright be a paranormal-only show, at least have a foot in the paranormal door, kind of like True Detective.  The interesting thing (and not actually disappointing) about the show is that it's never overt about anything metaphysical, but it's there, they acknowledge that there are aspects to life and culture that have unexplained origins, even if, at least in this season, there's nothing paranormal at all about the events. It's a very human drama.

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created by Dario Scardapane, Matt Corman, Chris Ord

The What 100: Wilson Fisk is elected Mayor of New York City, because, hot take, all elected officials are criminals. He's instilled a ban on costumed vigilantes and assigned a task force of the NYPD's most unhinged and morally bankrupt officers to take down anyone who would dare do some masked crimefighting. Thankfully for Matt Murdock, he's already hung up his horns after the death of Foggy Nelson pushed him to the brink, and Karen Page left, unable to stand by and watch him self-destruct (again). But a series of event in Matt's professional lawyering life force him into doing more on the streets of Hell's Kitchen again, including taking on a mass murderer and paying Frank Castle a visit. Matt also dates a psychiatrist who also happens to be Fisk's marriage counsellor.

(1 Great): It is remarkable how much goodwill there is out there for Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock/Daredevil. He was in three wildly uneven seasons and one definitively not-great crossover series on Netflix in the mid 2010s, but nobody ever questioned how good Cox was in the role. And when Cox turned up in Spider-Man: No Way Home for a brief cameo, people lost their shit, and many cite his appearance in She-Hulk as the series highlight. So it really is just great to have Cox in the role back on the screen any time he wants to play it. It's a pretty comfortable glove for him and he wears it very, very well.

(1 Good): Born Again is not "Season 4" of the Netflix series, nor is it a reboot. It is a hybrid sequel that takes what it can of the past while seeding its characters and setting much more firmly into the MCU, and you know what? I liked it a lot. Fisk making a comment about Spider-Man, Matt getting invited over to Kamala Khan's house for dinner, callbacks to characters from Hawkeye... yes to all. Shared universes still make me giddy (maybe less so than they used to, but I can't help it).

(1 Bad): While I generally enjoyed Daredevil: Born Again it definitely does not hang together as a whole. It fails to find a thematic through-line to build its season around, even though it has so many options. Talking about corruption at the highest levels of government and the people who support them and how just punching and kicking will not take it down would be one theme it could explore. Another would be talking about police brutality and the injustice that takes place when the men in blue use their influence to protect even the worst of their kind. Another could have been just exploring trauma, both Fisk's post-near-death experience and Matt's grief over Foggy (and his fear of his own rage in response)... dating a psychiatrist should have yielded so much more. It winds up taking these elements and more and tossing them into a pot of soup such that no individual piece has its own flavour anymore.  The story arcs are ill-defined, which, in a way, gives it a very 1980's comic book feel, back when serialization was still kind of experimental, but it was somewhat unsatisfying as a week-to-week experience overall.

META: Born Again began life as a much longer project, it was intended to be Disney+ and Marvel's longest single-season series (it was to clock in at 18 episodes) and be more forthright a continuation/season 4 of the Netflix series, last seen in 2018. But around half-way through production, Marvel execs could see that either what they had wasn't working, or what they had wasn't working for the new direction they wanted to pivot to. And so the head writers/showrunners were let go, a new team brought on, new scenes and episodes filmed, and never is that patchwork more noticeable than in the first episode.  But it continues to be felt throughout the entire series where the total whiplash can really wreck your brain.

There's definitely more Daredevil to come, I just hope there's a better plan (and more actual Daredevil in costume) next time around. And I want to see Matt at the Khan's for dinner.

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