Alt-Media: Undertow: Narcosis

2022, Realm

While The Harrowing was running week to week on Spotify, I found this one that was already completed. I am liking these shortish, horror audio dramas. They are along the lines of the B-movies we watch during our 31 Days of Halloween events. Horror has an audio drama, has its pro's and con's. Without the need to have big special effects and grand set pieces, they can explore a wider range of ideas. But they have to make sure they can convey the horror of a situation entirely through dialogue and sound production, and are not always as successful as they hope to be. And a good or bad voice actor can make or break immersion entirely.

Veronica West is a deep sea diver, head of a team that just proved themselves top of the game, and destined for greatness. And then she gets a call that a childhood friend has passed away, but not any death -- she was lost diving in caves under the Bay of Fundy (caves? isn't all just mud down there?). Her husband is hoping Veronica can help recover the body. 

So, Veronica returns to the island of the coast of Maine, a place she hasn't been since she ran away. The place is both exactly how she remembered it -- a summer getaway entirely focused on the resort and its guests, run by the Macklin family, but also, something eerie is happening underneath all their friendliness, especially at such a tragic time.

What is happening is very Lovecraftian inspired, both in its chosen location, the New England aspect of America, but also the idea of something very ancient, very unknown lurking under the sea. This unknown is disturbed by human interlopers hoping to control it, but only end up losing everything. 

Narcosis is meant to take place under water for the most part, so they had to nail the sound portion of "being under water" communicated to us, the listener, via two-way radios and how the mics could pick up the ambient sound. They do a great job on that, but I have to admit, the ever present darkness of a visual media would have lent much more.

The ending of the drama ended being rather muddy as events on the surface are told to us via rather spare details and sounds that leave a lot to the imagination. Sometimes some description just goes a long way in making something audio-only coherent. Basically something rises from the sea and ... well, kills a lot of people. I was never sure quite what. Meanwhile the very close, very personal events under the water, in the caves, is what proved the best in the creepy, claustrophobic tale telling.

P.S. No credits here because they IMDB entry is so terribly done, its not differentiating between the different seasons of the entire "Undertow" series, and the actual individual entries for this season are ... empty.

But, great poster. Creepy AF.

Alt-Media: Undertow: The Harrowing

Storyglass, 2020

Podcasts are weird. I was listening to this on Spotify, where it was being released week to week. But that is now, and according to IMDB this came out in 2020, but likely on another release platform? So, if Spotify just got the rights to it, why not just release as one big season?

Also, while listed on Spotify as the "current season" of the horror series Undertow, it is not listed under Realm's (production company) list of podcasts, but only listed under Storyglass's collection. So, podcasts license podcasts from other production companies to round out their seasons, and then release on different platforms at different times? Sort of like Netflix will say "Netflix Presents" on something they just snatched up from a provider in another country?

Having heard the trailer for this audio drama at least 900 times as I listened to other podcasts, I guess.... advertising works?

The story is told as the recalling of events, while Sergeant Jackie O'Hara (Joanne Froggatt, Downton Abbey) is being interrogated about a tragedy she was part of, from which she only recently recovered.

Toll Mòr is an isolated island off the coast of Scotland. Sergeant O'Hara, a police officer assigned to the island, is brought there in the face of a coming hurricane level storm, by a call from farmer Frank Guthrie. O'Hara is familiar to the islanders, not one of them, but friendly enough to be teased. She works hard to build a relationship with them, which is why she took a boat there even though a storm was brewing.

Frank tells her that the Ward family, neighbour to him, a family he doesn't exactly get along with, has been quiet / absent for a few days. The horror they discover in the farmhouse, the slaying of the family in a ritualistic fashion, shakes the two of them, especially when soon after, a figure burns down the house, and all evidence, and then just stands by. Added to the tragedy is that the young girl called "Twig" (Sorcha Groundsell, Shetland), daughter to the Wards, is missing.

The figure, who calls himself Kai (Stewart Scudamore, Carnival Row), is your typical horror/mystical antagonist -- a giant of a man with unruly hair and beard, a body covered in scars, muttering constantly about Biblical happenings and events. He's a stranger who the islanders do not trust, and the murders are unlike anything they have ever experienced, and there is a storm raging, which has cut them off from the mainland, physically, and as they soon discover, communications-wise as well, as the towers have been sabotaged.

Being a serial drama, things unfold at a nice pace. There are only eight episodes so it switches to action very quickly. Unlike the audio book I just listened to, I didn't have to wade through the author's long, banal attempts at characterization. What matters here is the story. And what is unfolding on the island is indeed Biblical.

SPOILERZ.

Kai is one of those mystical immortals that pop up in fiction. He is Longinus, the Roman soldier who stabbed Jesus with the spear, and in some stories, was condemned to eternal life, as the Soldier of God. Once in <a time period> (millennia? century? I forgot that...) Lucifer has an opportunity to leave Hell and come to our world via a ritual called The Harrowing. If the right rituals are done, if the right number of people are killed, if the right sacrifice is prepared, he will be able to escape permanently. Kai exists to stop this from happening. 

O'Hara is just a random stranger who got caught up in all this supernatural drama. And Lucifer has followers on this world, a cult I guess, who has come to  the island masquerading as British soldiers, to make sure this Harrowing completes. Twig is the sacrifice, the young body Lucifer is to inhabit should the ritual complete. But between Kai and O'Hara, it is indeed once again scuttled, but not before the island is laid waste, and many, if not all, die.

O'Hara, having been recovered from the island, is interrogated so we have a vessel to hear the story. But also because she was a witness to something, and she also interrupted the event. Once her story is complete, her interrogator has all he needs. And we know who he works for, and we know that Jackie will never escape. But Kai and Twig have. The world was saved.

Its a nice little story. Its the kind of thing I enjoy. My Catholic upbringing allows the weight of Biblical stories to carry through, while my D&D and adventure side loves the idea of a violent, immortal anti-hero existing to undo anything The Devil would have happen. The voice work was done well, and for the most part, the sound design was done so you could follow the action, and feel/envision what the characters were.

I was also spurred down a rabbit hole of my own making, finding out that Longinus (or Casca, as the Barry Sadler books called him) was but one eternal character spawned by The Crucifixion. There is also The Wandering Jew, apparently a man who taunted Jesus on the road to The Crucifixion and was condemned to wander the world until the second coming. I envision an interesting dinner party where Longinus, The Wandering Jew, and Melmoth the Wanderer (19th century Maturin character) discuss the state of the world. I wonder what other mythical immortals are out there wandering, potentially fighting off The Devil?

Alt-Media: Ancestor

2006, Empty Set Entertainment

At the beginning, what I wanted was a light thriller, horror or scifi audio drama. What I got was more akin to an audiobook, which I have never actually listened to before explicitly -- a read-through of the novel by Scott Sigler. No, not quite that. Sigler is a bit of an empire builder, a pathfinder, having been doing audio drama podcasts for over 15 years. This started as one of those, a serialized podcast in 2006 and has since been published as novel. Also, from the brief amount of the podcast's 2010 Q&A I listened to, he is prone to tweaking and rewriting his stories to tie them all together, update them, etc.

I think this was added to Spotify in 2023, where I listened to it.

I said, at the beginning. In the end what I ended up getting was a hate-listen to something that enraged me as much as it intrigued me. He's got a solid grasp on pacing and structure and how to depict apparently realistic scientific terminology and "action". What he cannot do is write people. In all my decades of watching B and Z grade movies, and reading trashy novels, I am quite aware of writing cardboard characters. And for the most part, I accept them as they are meant to be. And even enjoy a lot of them. But this book had zero characters I actually like, and only a couple I ended up enjoying. Each character comes across as the worst of the worst of cardboard stand-ins for real people, like the most terrible character in an Uwe Boll movie.

And he persists in doing "the voices" of the characters, even the women. Nothing can break me from the immersion than him switching into a "funny voice" because every single one of his fucking characters has to have a distinct accent or voice. A few he can pull off, but most just ended up grating on my nerves, furthering my dislike for many of the characters. 

And furthermore, I expect its partially because he has an audience (white male machismo mongers), what can we expect from the female characters? If the male leads are cardboard, the female characters are vastly stereotypical blow up dolls.

OK OK, so it was terrible but why did you keep on listening, and even, almost, briefly, consider listening to / reading his prequel "Infected" series?

Again, for a scifi thriller, its not bad, more akin to the B-scifi & horror I watch.

Essentially, a biotech company intent on creating surrogate creatures for human-matching organ harvesting instead ends up creating monsters, monsters that get loose and eat everyone. Its up to a couple of scrappy "heroes" to survive and kill the monsters before they get loose.

The story opens, setting things up. After the events of the Infected trilogy where something got loose in Detroit and ended with the government nuking much of the city, the President sets up a new taskforce, something mostly off the books, to monitor and stop scientific situations before they "blow up". It was  this premise I was onboard with, and somewhat disappointed it ended up only being the B-plot. But it establishes the kind of pressure the Bad Guys, a biotech company called Genada, are under.

The Genada story starts on Baffin Island, where we establish the characters: PJ Colding - head of security, his asshole security guards made up of ex-military goons - OK, Gunther is not that bad a guy, considering he is writing vampire romance novels in his spare time, a bunch of asshole scientists -- Jian is less asshole, more an utterly broken genius plagued by hallucinations and racial stereotyping. But that act ends soon enough due to sabotage. The owners of Genada, the Paglione Brothers, fly out the remaining team on a modified C5 plane to a remote island in Lake Superior. That is where the real story takes place.

Scientist Liu Jiandan, or Jian, has invented a powerful computer system that can model evolutionary traits with almost magical speed. With it she has brought a few species back from extinction but its primary purpose is to create animals capable of producing human-compatible organs via xenotransplantation. Except, she's suffering from paranoid delusions and ends up creating something less passive organ host, and more uber-predator.

As the small island is cut off by a massive winter storm system, the implanted cows used for the experimentation start showing signs of being dangerous. But of course, the asshole scientists have already ignored all the warning signs. Dante Paglione, one of the heads of the biotech company and a raving muscle-headed psychopathic military type, shows up to make sure things go well, and if they cannot, wipe out all signs of the work -- because B-plot still is there, somewhere, in the background.

The cows begin giving birth after an aborted attempt to escape the island. And they are massive, quickly growing, bigger than ever conceived, land-sharks. They eat everything in sight: their cow mother's corpses, people, other cows, their own dead. They do so quickly, violently, consuming everything even bones & hide. Our few sympathetic character survivors have to survive not only the monsters, but also the human monsters working for Dante. Not a lot do.

Again, decent pacing and good description of the action allowed me to stick to the story even as almost every character, even the sympathetic ones, grated on my nerves. The monsters are scary, and I have always enjoyed a good science-gone-wrong story, I just wish the B-plot had played more of a role, but it was more tacked on as part of Sigler's world-building reboots. I can respect his alternative approach to fiction building, and rebuilding, even if it annoys me.

Normally I would now go back, in the writing of this post, and add in the actors, or voice-actors, for each of the characters, and while I was attempted to amusingly do a -- Clayton Detweiler (Scott Sigler) -- for each character I mentioned, I resisted the urge. Probably for the best.

Wimp. But don't forget to mention that the fandom for this writer is likely to come commenting on your less than favourable (catch phrase of the month) writeup, much like the "fans" of "Tomorrow When the War Began" used to.

Go-Go-Godzilla #33: Godzilla vs Kong

Director: Adam Wingard
Year: 2021
Length: 113 minutes

The Gist:
I guess because of the understanding of how the Titans communicate and sense each others' presences, Monarch is protecting Kong on Skull Island within a gigantic dome from alpha Titan Godzilla. Kong isn't stupid though, and he knows his fortress is actually a prison. Dr. Ilene Andrews is Monarch's chief Kong-ologist, and her deaf adopted daughter, Jia, seems to have a special bond with Kong. She's taught him some sign language, but they keep that between them.

Walter Simmons is the megalomaniac head of Apex Cybernetics, a very powerful tech organization. He recruits ex-Monarch researcher and Hollow Earth theorist Dr. Nathan Lind after telling him he's created a  vehicle for safe entry into the centre of the planet but what they need is a Titan to lead them to the gateway.

Using his connections they manage to get to Skull Island and convince Ilene that this mission is a good idea. On the way to the gateway, Godzilla attacks a drugged, dazed, and seemingly depressed Kong. Kong fights valiantly, enough to ward Godzilla off, but it's no victory. To continue on the path they've chose would risk another attack. But tracking Godzilla, they discover a gateway, and airlift Kong there.

They make passage into middle earth where they discover Kong's home territory, seemingly abandoned, but just laced with stones full of a new form of energy.  Unknown to Doctors Andrews and Lind, this is what Walter Simmons was really after. Apex Cybernetics created a giant remote controlled Mecha-Godzilla that uses a hybrid cybernetic mind link between a human host and one of Ghidora's skulls from the previous film to control it, but it needs the raw power of the Hollow Earth to power it.

Godzilla knows that Kong has found a hotbed of power and, from Hong Kong big G revs up his atomic blast and opens up a hole right to Kong's homestead (that's 6000+ KM for reference). Armed with a super-charged axe, Kong makes his way to the surface to battle Godzilla (basically hopping up the tunnel Godzilla just bore into the Earth...all 6000+ KM), and once again finds he's just not a match. Godzilla nearly kills him.

Meanwhile, Simmons is out to prove man is the Apex Predator once more and sets MechaGodzilla out into the wild. It's a brawl, and Godzilla's about to lose, but Nathan uses the HEAV as a defibrillator and revives Kong. Jia explains to resurrected Kong that Godzilla doesn't have to be his enemy, and that he needs help. Kong steps in, and the two decimate Mecha-G in a pretty nice tag-team (Godzilla charging Kong's axe with his atomic breath was just aces). They reach an uneasy truce, an understanding of cohabitation, and go their separate ways.

Oh yeah, Mark and Madison Russell from the last film are in this as well. Madison is obsessed with a Titan-focussed conspiracy podcast run by Bernie Hayes, who works for Apex Cybernetics. Along with Madison's friend Josh, they manage to meet up with Bernie and go on a fruitless and meaningless adventure which culminates in them dumping a flask of whiskey on a computer to give Mecha-Godzilla a moment's pause, which is just enough to make a difference it the big finale.

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
He's the same Godzilla as previous, a massive force of nature, but we get the sense that he's not *just* a force of nature. That he can think a bit too, and even socialize with others.

The Samesies:
Just like the previous Godzilla eras, the continuity here ain't so tight between the films, especially when you add Monarch: Legacy of Monsters to the mix, it's not easy to fit all the pieces together of what humanity knows about the habits and behaviours of the Titans and Hollow Earth, and when they knew about it.  I'm sure it's all fudge-able, in the same way one has to fudge Star Wars continuity to make it make sense, but it's not all there on the screen.

Like many Godzilla films past, the technology available to mankind has gotten really advanced. There's some heavy investment into "super science" and research infrastructure, even way beyond the previous film. King of the Monsters toes the sci-fi waters, where GvK just jumps right in. It's pretty unapologetic about it, too, which I like a lot.  

Mechagodzilla having a connection to Ghidorah is right out of the Heisei era Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, as is the idea of Ghidorah taking over the robot from its human controllers.

Like King Kong vs Godzilla, there's lore introduced here that suggests the two beasts have an ancient rivalry. This film goes into it a lot more than the 60's film did, though. 

The Differences:

The Hollow Earth was teased in the previous film and even visited via an underwater portal (which I guess explains why there wasn't all the topsy-turvey-ness others have reported. The reason they don't go back to that gateway is, well, because they blew it up with a nuke.  Anyway, the visit to the Hollow Earth here is very adventuresome and exploratory. It's vibrantly realized and I really dug this sequence.

The HEAV (Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle?) is not too far off from the Super-X hovering tanks of Toho films past, although these are strictly transportation meant to accommodate the flippidy-doo journey into Hollow Earth. I like the Tron-like light trails it leaves behind in its wake.

I haven't been re-watching Kong films, but doesn't Kong usually have something of a connection with young women? I think this is the first time he's really had a relationship with a child, and maybe the first time he's shown an aptitude for communicating with sign language.

This is the first Godzilla movie to feature a podcaster, and dive into conspiracy theories as they apply to the Monsterverse. Of course, this is the annoying thing where we know more than Bernie does.

Anyone worth caring about?
Oh, so much more to care about than in the previous film. Rebecca Hall as Ilene and Alexander Skarsgard as Nathan are both immediately and infinitely more appealing and likeable than Vera Farmiga and Kyle Chandler. Chandler is still in this film but really tossed into the background, where he should be. Hall, Skarsgard, and Kaylee Hottle (Jia), as well as the Apex and Monarch crews, are all basically team Kong, while Millie Bobbie Brown (returning as Madison), Brian Tyree Henry as Bernie, and Julian Denison as Josh are the largely useless and purposeless team Godzilla but quite likeable. I'm happy to see some of this crew are back in one of two "Empire" movies this March of 2024 in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (see also Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire).

But, really, the best character in the film is Kong. He's so expressive. He's a big, homesick, lonely boy, with such soulful eyes, and every moment he has with Jia made me just a little, teensy bit weepy.

The Message:
Uh, it's possible to make peace with even your longest-standing enemy? *ahem*

Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZZ
This isn't a super-smart movie, and it's sense of scale goes all out-of-whack, but boy does it know how to have fun. If there's a big difference between this and King of the Monsters it is exactly that point. The characters in this film are going on a big old ride and despite the peril they may be in, the performers seem to be having fun. It's contagious. 

The Kong v Godzilla fights are very well orchestrated with a LOT of fun little nuances you could never accomplish in suitmation. That's not a dig on the fun of suitmation, but just part of the comparison. CGI frees the filmmakers up to create more expressive creatures, and have more nuanced fights. Not sure the physics always work out in its favour but who cares!? Big dumb fun is supposed to be exactly that.

I just wish Skarsgaard was playing Tarzan in this.

Sleepytime Factor:
I did have a brief little headbob of a nod during the Ghidorah-head discovery or one of the team Godzilla scenes, but I never went right out.

Alt-Media: The Consumer - Pt B

Despite this blog, for me, being about Movies & TV, I have written a handful posts about video games (yes, that's the Tag, not just the posts about video games proper). But I don't believe I have covered much of other media. I read at a snail's pace, and usually only when commuting. My days of actually sitting in a corner and reading are gone the way of That Guy, and reading before bed causes immediate zzzzz's. I am also not that properly versed with podcasts, them being (in my old man voice) a rather new media that The Kids are listening to. But, given the Ken't description of this blog being about us sharing consumption habits with each other, why not a mixed media [series of] post[s]?

Started here. 

This one is where I cover some podcasts I listened to. I am not Of The Podcast World. I don't listen to True Crime shows, I don't listen to audiobooks as I drive my car into work (for one, I don't drive to work). I don't, despite trying desperately, enjoy live-play D&D podcasts -- I find pretty much every fucking single one of them are more "comedians playing D&D" than "D&D players recording their game" and that irritates the fuck out of me. But in general, I don't consider myself subscribed to the medium.

But...

Something Rhymes with Purple, SomethinElse

I suppose I could include "watched a shit ton of British Panel Shows" in this post, but I was never fully invested, as Marmy plowed her way through most of them on their own, finishing what she could find on legal streaming services (usually Amazon) and then finding YouTube channels that had almost entire show runs, and even at almost that is impressive for these things have impressively long runs. 

One was a show called 8 Out of 10 Cats Do Countdown, which itself is a mashup of two already existing panel shows. Countdown is a show where stodgy people do mental challenges. The 8 Out of 10 Cats bit is a more irreverent show about current events hosted by British comedians. The mashup has the hosts & guests of the latter doing the challenges of the former. The challenges are broken into two categories: words and math.

For the words bit, they have "dictionary corner" where an astute lexicographer (she who works on dictionaries) named Susie Dent checks the dictionary, for both the mashup show, and the original, since she was in her 20s. She is now in her 50s. Whatever her connections to the dictionary world were she is now truly a panel show host. But she is entirely, deeply, fully invested in the world of words, so much so that I am utterly enamoured with her. So, I began listening to her podcast.

Her podcast, which is technically the podcast of Gareth Brandreth, another staple of the British Panel Show landscape who is also enamoured with words, which will be forever solidified upon seeing him on even one episode of anything, where you will experience him talking, and talking and TALKING. Sure, he has an endless supply of anecdotes and is connected to pretty much everyone in the world. but fuuuuuuck does he like the sound of his own voice. And in THIS podcast, they two discuss words, always around a cohesive topic.

For example, they would do an episode of portmanteau's (e.g. breakfast and lunch, becomes brunch). Or an episode of loanwords vs calques. Bazaar and café are loanwords, words adopted from another language and so in common use they become part of the hosting language. Meanwhile, a calque is when the word being loaned is translated, usually literally. For example, ear worm translated German ohrwurm for the term describing a far too catchy song.

She explains it better, which is why I could listen to her explain such all day. The podcast is fun, as the two do share a common passion and can elucidate it to us (oh, pleeease [can a voice in your head roll its eyes?]), its almost as much fun seeing the relationship between the two played out in the recordings. Brandreth is somewhat insufferable, but so often he has to defer to her, as she is clearly the expert. Meanwhile, Dent is always charming, demure and very very British, even when talking about the word fuck or about how much the cast of 8 Out of 10 Cats are utter shits to her [it's part of the gimmick of the TV show, and she obviously is playing along, but I guess it still gets to her]. For the vast majority of the world, two very British people talking about words would be utterly boring (dude, sometimes it can be) but I just love the passion for the structures of language that they share with each other. I am also rather amused at, how despite both being rather world travelled, how unexposed they are to anything outside of the UK. 

The Cipher, BBC Radio

The above is probably the only non-fiction podcast I have listened to extensively. The rest are "audio dramas", which are not quite audiobooks, which I have always defined as someone reading the text of a novel out loud, even if the modern version of that has added some dramatic effect to the recording. But audio dramas are more akin to what radio dramas were like Back In The Day. A number of people tell the tale, with added sound effects, music and any additional required audio to round out the story. Almost all I have listened to have been specfic to some degree, and all Thrillers by nature.

The Cipher tells the tale of a teenage girl (Anya Chalotra, The Witcher) who begins the story solving a riddle, a challenge, a puzzle going around The Internet. She's good at puzzles and has been working with some others in chatrooms on various aspects of the puzzle. And then she solves it, and is drawn into a much deeper, more chaotic conspiracy that, well, leaves the premise of the show behind.

This is the most recent radio drama I completed, and it pointed out something to me, that is inherent to this form of media. For each show, there has to be a hook, as with all fictional media, but then the hook has to keep on coming up week to week, for each episode. Many feel a need to keep on hooking you. TV can do character episodes, filler episodes, different stylistic choices to break up the flow or stretch out a season. But podcasts seem more beholden to retaining the audience. Each episode ends in a cliffhanger, and some dramas, like this one, have to keep on changing up the game to keep the tension & excitement alive. Not sure it always works, but it is always thrilling. 

The Cipher starts as a tale about a girl solving a cipher but literally ends up being about aliens, robots, Iceland, and genetic manipulation, almost as if they wanted to do a Lost style WTF show where each episode answers little (or nothing) but adds two more questions. The presentation, directing and voice acting is top-notch and. honestly that is what kept me listening. That can truly be make or break.

Solar, CurtCo Media

Preceding the above, was this one, that played on one of the inherent natures of Radio Drama vs TV or movie, as a media -- there can be no cast of thousands, little use of background characters. If they don't have a line, they are not known, and budgets & time reduce the number of bodies available. Oh, there are always "background voices" such as TV reporters, voices on recordings, occasionally a supporting character yelling (henchmen, cop, etc.) but more often the cast is reduced to just the main characters and the strong dialogue between. 

Solar is broken into conversations, over a radio, between the two remaining astronauts onboard a spacestation that suffered a disaster, having lost contact with Earth. The remaining cast is from recordings and dramatized flashback sequences. The gimmick is that the AI in control of all these recordings has a damaged awareness of time, so everything is being delivered to us out of sequence.... for the most part. We get a disjointed story of tension, loss, tragedy and recovery that was always compelling.

Another interesting aspect of these podcasts is the need (desire?) to have at least one Name. The former had Chalotra and Chance Perdoma (The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and a brief cameo from George Takei. This one has a few, with Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn 99), Alan Cumming (The Good Wife) and Helen Hunt (Blindspotting) leading the cast. 

One thing I wish these dramas would do, to separate themselves from TV Land, and be happy with the "one season and done". Tell a complete story, answer all the questions, end it and move onto your next thing. Instead, they often leave with vague open ended scenarios that kind of end the story, but also leave it open to another season, should they get... funding?

Solar was about the deep space mission to the sun, about the disaster that happened there, and the two survivors unravelling the mysteries, dealing with conspiracies behind the mission and trying to survive. The core question was, what was the true purpose of this mission? But I never felt that anything was really answered, and while a second season explaining more would be appreciated, by its very nature, it would end being more about another crew, another mission and ... just add more questions. Meh.

Last Known Position, QCODE

For example, this entire story is told from the point of view of the last survivor of a seabound expedition to find.... well, it becomes pretty obvious even if you don't pay attention to the "cover art" -- a kaiju in the middle of the ocean. Or, at the very least, a sea monster. BUT, as expected, it ends with them finding it and then... well, it could go many ways.

But I get ahead of me, as I am wont to do.

Mikaela Soto (Gina Rodriguez, Jane the Virgin) is a deep sea vehicle (mini sub) pilot hired by a billionaire to help him, and his very limited team (see the comment on limited casts above), find ... something. Well, technically they are hired to find the remains of a plane that went down, a plane upon which the billionaire's (James Purefoy, Hap and Leonard) wife & daughter were onboard. They are all on a mostly automated mega-yacht, a boat filled with tense assholes of one specialty or another. They are all dealing with the vague nature of their expedition, but the money offered is too good to deny.

So, from a plot structure point of view, we know the season has to end with them finding it. Sure, we can be happy without many answers as long as the characters meet the tentacle-y sea monster and confront it to some degree. But what if it is popular? Do they defeat the sea monster or are they all killed, but one to tell the story, and if the latter, what then? Of the handful I have listened to, this one did do the best at leaving room for an entirely different, but connected, new season, something I would be open to listening to, should it come about, a new season based on world-building the possibility of a sea filled with kaiju. Buuuut I almost wished they had gone the short story route and just ended once the monster did its monstrous business.

Quiet Part Loud, Monkeypaw

Meanwhile, this podcast kind of ended properly on an end note. The goal of the series was to defeat a monster, and they did that. But you know how monster (horror) stories go -- the last few seconds hint at it's return, a head rising out of the water, or the body of the fallen villain has disappeared? So, yeah that. Hints. 

Quiet Part Loud comes from the production company led by Jordan Peele. It is one of the few that really used its soundscape (literally) to its advantage, as it was all about a monster that hid in transmitted audio. Rick Egan (Tracy Letts, Lady Bird) is a right wing radio-show host who fell from grace after something tragic happened as he tried to generate anti-islamic hysteria against a trio of teenage boys, all to benefit his fame. He now makes a buck doing the con circuit (RWNJs [Right Wing Nut Jobs] never go away) while trying to maintain a relationship with his daughter Becca (Milly Shapiro, Hereditary). He hooks up with a random woman (Christina Hendricks, Firefly) at a bar, who drags him into a conspiracy involving an ancient entity that lives and thrives in hateful communication. It wants Rick to rise up again, through his broadcast voice of hatred & xenophobia, which leaves Rick torn between getting back on top or fighting real evil. You see, Rick is not a true evil xenophobe, just a standard model asshole who knew the RWNJs could win him some fame.

Through recordings that Rick is making to himself, which he believes will be edited into a podcast, as well as phone calls and other recordings, we get the story via the media which is the food and means of survival to the creature. It is ancient, initially living on the voices of those who spewed hate, eventually finding its way to radio (and hinted that it was primarily responsible for the first two world wars) it was briefly defeated and now hopes to find its way back to power over podcasts, amidst the current, very loud wave of hatred. Rick, along with the kids he originally denigrated, have to find a way to contain and destroy the creature.

The sound production is, as expected, top notch. The mostly unknown (to me) voice actors are spectacular and the tension is the kind that would have me stop mid-walk to get past a story point. If they do find a way to a Season 2, I will be there.

Chrysalis, DUST

Finally, we have a podcast that had a very interesting origin. It started life as a Reddit post, a spontaneous bit of writing by someone, to get a story idea out of their head and "onto paper". It generated enough positive feedback, he continued with the story which was not quite enough for a novel but was picked up & expanded into a radio drama. Given its origins of written word, it often glides between the realms of audiobook being read out loud, over to proper dramatic radio drama, and back again.

The story is of an AI that awakens from slumber in the glass-ed rubble of a destroyed Earth. An alien attack happened which ended the planet some unknown number of years prior. When this AI awakens, it believes itself to be the "last human alive" given its nature of having once been the memories of a man. That aspect is not explored, unfortunately, as the story moves towards the mostly contained AI (a server farm buried deep beneath... London?) and its drone based ... senses, towards it expanding itself into a massive, SUPER massive entity hell bent on revenge against the alien lifeforms that ended Earth.

The story is not often story, more postulation of how an AI would expand itself, while still struggling with its state, and what it is. But the writing does an admirable job of making all the exposition dramatic and compelling. Then again, this is the kind of stuff I do in my own writing, which is pretty much me telling me about the cool stuff going on inside my head, and not really ever  telling a story. I have ideas and conversations, but rarely plots. But, obviously enough people thought this was interesting, to have produced a radio drama from it.

The story has the AI discovering the alien race that destroyed Earth, learning of its origins as part of a galactic empire, and of its methods of interspace travel, using everything it learns to become a vengeful force that no one can stop. And then it shifts to the other side, where we learn the attack on Earth was just a minor blip in a failed imperial expansion, in a vast society where one lonely planet not connected to the stars would not be, and was not, missed. Sure, the deaths of billions of people is horrific but the society thinks of people on the galactic scale. Until "the last human" arrives and forces them to consider the actions of the ancestors and deal with it.

It ends properly. There is confrontation and resolution. Oh you could shoe-horn in another story, but, finally, we have something that ended.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching: A Long Long Look Back, Pt. E - I Suppose They're All Radomalia

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(!) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Freedumb Convoy bad.

What I Have Been (or Am) Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else was the last few years about? Sure, we got a few breaks from being confined at home, and might have actually gone outside (gasp!) and socialized with (double-gasp!) human beings (faint-dead-away) but we always ended up back on the sofa, flicker in hand, trying to find something to watch amidst the 35 shows we downloaded, and the 5 or so streaming services we are subscribed to.

Part A is here. Part B is here. Part C is here. Part D is over there. 

And yet, I still regularly go looking for something new to watch. I just need something to enthrall me, something to entertain me long enough to not pick up my phone 10,000 times, something that doesn't have me nodding off after one 9pm stout. 

Only Murders in the Building, 2021, Hulu/download

Kent wrote about it closer to when it actually came out, but I wasn't writing about TV then.

I actually loved this show, and it fit much closer to what I wish to watch, when using my time... well. You see, we have our "shows of the season", those shows we actively look to download or catch week to week on a streaming service. Most keep my attention, or we wouldn't make the effort, but few enthrall me. This did. Maybe not in the obsessive way the main characters obsessed over true crime podcasts, but at least I put my phone down.

Brazzos Charles-Haden Savage (Steve Martin, The Jerk; and not Thomas Haden Church), Oliver Putnam and Mabel Mora (Selena Gomez, The Dead Don't Die; ohhhh those NAMES !) live in the Arconia, a high-end, Upper West Side Manhattan (it always seems necessary to identify the section of NYC, to impart... socioeconomic placement) apartment building. Savage had a run on a popular copy show (Brazzos), Putnam had some mild success on Broadway and Mora is basically squatting in her rich aunt's apartment claiming to be renovating it. They don't know each other and very likely would not like each other, but for the murder of a fellow tenant and their shared fondness for true crime podcasts. None of them are really doing much, but Oliver needs a new success, or he will lose everything, so he drags the other two into doing their own podcast in order to sleuth out who killed Tim Kono.

The production values! The sets! The costuming! That coat! The jacket! Yes, the outfits Mabel wears, the ensembles of vintage choices, make her as iconic as LoFi Girl, but really all three dress definitively and live in incredibly distinctive locations. It may be shallow, but to me it tells of commitment to the production when they spend more than a bit on the set dressing.

The first episode was great, but the second felt a bit off kilter, prompting me to wonder if this was going to be the kind of series where different writers/directors would append their own views to the characters as well as the plots, something I always find jarring. I cannot remember the exact point, but something felt off about Martin's Savage character in the second episode. But I was happy it pulled back for the rest, and despite some rather creative choices made to subsequent episodes, it still all felt cohesive as a single series. And a great one!

Wolf Like Me, 2022, Amazon

** Spoiler Warning -- There is no point in talking about this show without spoiling it; but even the mention that there are spoilers might spoil something about it.

I had no interest in this series. The trailer did a great job of showing us a series that was probably about a metaphor, a woman with something dark and weird in her life, one that makes her spontaneously run away from the potential love interest. I expected it would be quirky but ultimately just another *yawn* metaphor for how hard life is. But Marmy started watching, so I stayed in the room.

Bing! It wasn't a metaphor. Of course she has to run away, and usually once a month, because she's a werewolf. I love werewolfs! Werewolves? Meh, werewolfs. So, yeah I love me some wolfie story, and despite my usual aversion to Josh Gad, I rather enjoyed this series. In fact, we pretty much binged it over three nights.

Gary (Josh Gad, Frozen) is an American living in Australia, the home of his late wife. He's not dealing well with her death, despite it being seven years prior, and is struggling to raise his daughter.  They bump into Mary (Isla Fisher, Arrested Development), and keep bumping into her. Mary is weird, and despite her connecting with Gary's daughter quite easily, she pulls away, or more accurately... runs away.

You see, as a werewolf, she has to run home once a month, close up her house bunker style, lock herself in the basement and ... change. She doesn't want to kill anyone (else) so lives off chickens, goats, etc. whatever she can get from suppliers, usually animals that didn't have long to live to begin with. When Mary was initially infected/cursed, she ate her husband and another nice couple on holidays. So she is rather hesitant to connect with Gary and his daughter, despite feeling some sort of destiny inspired connection to the two.

Gad is tolerable doing more drama than comedy, conveying a man who has never recovered from his loss, but is open to something new. Fisher's role is typical for her, kind of quirky, introspective and cute. It was a short "mini series" but just perfect considering what it wanted to present, and ends on a reveal that could lead somewhere, but doesn't have to.

The Book of Boba Fett, 2022, Disney+

A coworker, after I confessed I had an irrational dislike for Timothée Chalamet, asked what I thought of the mods in The Book of Boba Fett. I was luke-warm on them initially, not seeing how they fit into the Star Wars universe, but once I caught onto the joke (Mods vs Rockers) and saw that their speeder bikes were decked-out Vespas, I began to love them. It was such a terrible in-joke, that there has to be something sly going on there. But, in general, I could see how most straight-forward Star Wars Fans would loathe them, and with good reason. After the turmoil that was the final three movies in the franchise, Star Wars Fans are not up for different.

Boba is definitely different, despite the loads of fan service from other sources, as it takes the fan fav character, digs him out of the gut of the Sarlacc, and has him decide to become the new crime boss on Tattooine. Sure, weird flex, as the kids say, but as a trailer born plot point, it was kind of exciting. But for the point that he does such a terrible terrible job of going about it.

I loved watching each episode of this show, even as I watched him make terrible choices. It should have been a bad joke that he kept ending up back in the bakta tank. I think their intent was to say that is how legendary characters keep on coming back -- take tons of damage, one Cure Serious Wounds spell, and back to the action! But the fact he kept on getting battered & knocked around by just about every foe must have infuriated the fan who saw Boba as an epic warrior.

The two episodes of The Mandalorian were intentionally meant to be a catch up, but felt very very weird, even if you ignored Deep Fake Luke. I just felt that being so jarringly pulled out of the main plotline unnecessary, when they could have hinted at the changes, and left the full reveal to his next season.

But the fan service was incredible, even if you didn't know the characters from other sources, as they were just fun choices, especially Black Krrsantan.

Ken't take, and my original comment, as I wasn't expect to write about it at that time. We pretty much agree.

Podcasts: Fact and Fiction - Only Murders in the Building b/w Dr. Death

Only Murders in the Building - 2021. Disney+/Hulu
Dr. Death - 2021. Showcase/Peacock

Podcasts are mainstream at this point.  Even the proverbial grandma who isn't hip to what's happening today knows that podcasts exist, even if they don't quite know how to access them.  There's a podcast for everything, and it seems like a podcast from everyone.  Do I have a podcast? (Our dear friend Jeremy tried to provoke Toast and I into turning this blog into a podcast, like, 10 years ago).

Comedy podcasts, for a long time, were the chart leaders, with political podcasts coming up closely behind. That all changed with Serial in 2014.  Suddenly True Crime podcasts supplanted them both and started drawing in a whole new audience to the medium, one that wanted not to be entertained, but titillated with sensationalized stories.  Over a half decade later and True Crime is still topping the charts.

Only Murders in the Building is not a podcast, but a TV show created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, and starring Martin, with best friend Martin Short and Selena Gomez as an unlikely trio of True Crime podcast buffs who come together in their New York upscale condo building to investigate a death that happened there... and then create a podcast to document it all.

Martin plays Charles Hayden-Savage, a long out of work actor who starred in a semi-popular detective procedural ("Brazzos") for a few years in the 1990's (I'm disappointed in the show's restraint at not producing more "cut-to Brazzos" jokes).  He's become a bit of a hermit and isolationist, without any real friends or family to speak of.  He's a sad figure who seems to miss both being out in the world and connected to people, but also afraid to do so again.  Short as Oliver Putnam, meanwhile, is his polar opposite: vociferously upbeat and outgoing, a producer/director of multiple failed broadway productions, and destitute despite his austere apartment (he subsides off of, specifically, dips).  Gomez is Mabel Mora, a young woman who is fixing up her aunt's condo while she's living in Europe.  Mabel is secretive and sardonic, deflecting most attempts at getting to know her, but endearing in her dark sense of humour.  They are an unlikely trio to investigate what they think is a murder, and an even more unlikely trio to create content about it.

Rather than just being a whodunnit, Only Murders... is more interested in the when, whys, hows, and whats.  They investigate fellow tenants (famous person Sting is among them), other incidents that may or may not be connected, plus personal connections get teased out.  The podcast could have proven to be a wrong move on the creators choice, but the show handles the absurd production, distribution, commercialization and audience reaction quite well and basically Only Murders in the Building itself is structured largely as both parody and homage to True Crime journalism.

It's been a while since I watched anything with Steve Martin in it.  His general tastes in stories that he wants to participate in (or get paid for participating in) aren't really my wheelhouse or demographic.  Martin Short, on the other hand, is held up as a comedy legend, but one I've always found a little grating.  The pair of them are longtime friends and collaborators and they clearly love working together.  Here they start as virtual strangers, as noted quite opposite personalities, but they do form a bond, their shared background in show business, but also their loneliness bringing them together with similarly lonely Mabel.  As much as the murder mystery pulls you through the show, it really works because of the connection these three characters form.  Martin is both sympathetic and funny, every now and again edging into the goofier side of himself that made him famous so long ago, but also which he compartmentalized sometime around the turn of the millennium.  Short is as aggressively extra as he always is, yet there's a potent undercurrent of pathos that really undercuts his more annoying predilections, as if to say he acts the way he does to hide the darkness within.  Gomez I have limited experience with but her performance here is very understated and used well as a counterbalance for both Short and Martin.  There are times I'm not sure about Gomez's performance only to discover that her behavour was intentional because of the hidden depths to Mabel that slowly get revealed.

There's some great guest stars in this - the aforementioned Sting, Nathan Lane as Oliver's benefactor/neighbour, Tina Fey as a celebrity True Crime podcaster of the Sarah Koenig mold,  and a surprise late-stage appearance by Charles' stunt double that is best left as a surprise (but it's so great, and not just as a sight gag, but as a character, just fantastic).  It's also not just celebrity guest stars, but smaller roles, like Mabel's mother or the group of "Only Murders in the Building" podcast fans, and of course the cadre of other tenants with their own quirky personalities that really make the show feel lived-in rather immediately.

The show also toys with format a little, and even gets daring with a brilliantly executed "silent" episode that focuses on Nathan Lane's son who is deaf, a contemporary of Mabel's.  The episode is told from the perspective of Theo (played by actor James Caverly) and therefore largely silent with some audible percussive sounds.  All the dialogue is inaudible and only if you're able to lip read do you know what is being said, you have to pick everything up from context.  When Theo is signing with his dad, or others, that is subtitled, since it's from his perspective.  It *could* be gimmick-y, but it definitely leans more towards empathetic than sensational or exploitative.

The show ends with resolution but also with a big, BIG set-up for season 2, but also a set up that is not just sprung on the audience but teased innocuously throughout the season.  It's exciting to know there's more on the way.  Streaming services almost made "appointment television" disappear, but Disney Plus (mainly with Marvel and Star Wars shows, but with surprises like this...I should note that Only Murders aired weekly in Canada, but I can't say how it was run in the US on Hulu) has really brought them back, to the point that I checked way too early every week for the new episode of Only Murders....

Dr. Death doesn't actually feature any podcasting within the show, instead it is based on a True Crime podcast of the same name.  It was a podcast I heard a random trailer for and became rapidly intrigued because of how different it was.  It wasn't so much a *murder* podcast, but one of medical malpractice, and of a system that allowed surgical butchering to happen to far too many people in far too many places.

The podcast ran in 2018 and presented over 6 episode a profile of Dr. Christopher Dunsch, giving voice to his victims, detailing the horrifying ineptitude of the procedures he performed, celebrated the two doctors who found the courage to speak out when no one else would, and scrutinize the industry norms that make it far too easy for someone like Dunsch to persist.  He would bounce around from hospital to hospital, becoming someone else's problem, because any hospital reporting him would face liability lawsuits from the patients that were supposed to be under his care.

The TV miniseries (streamed on Peacock in the US this summer, airing weekly on Showcase in Canada this fall) places Joshua Jackson in the role of Dallas-area neurosurgeon Chris Dunsch, while Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin play Dr Randall Kirby and Dr Robert Henderson, two experienced neurosurgeons who encounter Dunsch's fallout and decide to do something about it, risking reputation, primarily, and possibly lawsuits in the process.

I recall the podcast being much harsher on Dunsch, whereas the TV show seems to take a lot of pains to try an understand him, at times even paint him as someone who struggles with his own intelligence.  And that's the think, Chris is incredibly intelligent, but also incredibly egotistical as a result.  He has a brilliant mind for medical thinking, but there's a blocker in his brain when it comes to spacial orientation and hand-eye coordination, among other things.  It's a limitation he's blind to, and he has a stubborn tenacity to persevere through adversity, without ever seeing the true problem before him.  

His brilliance also make him a borderline sociopath.  He's completely incapable of registering any fault in his work, or accepting any blame for anything in his life.  He explains away his botched surgeries with hand waving, deflection, or reassigning blame to staff or even patient.  It's upsetting how nonchalantly he does this and Jackson is very good at showing the darting eyes as he spins his lies.  For all his nefariousness, Chris can also be very, very charming, and it's another large part of the problem.  His charm and smarts allow him to talk circles around his patients in such a casual demeanor as to push them past any doubts about him they may have.  He manages to tap into that part of our nature that defers to authority, and he knows that if he talks a big enough game people will believe him... until they don't.

The cast of the show is wonderful.  Slater, as the sarcastic and witty Kirby hasn't been this alive in a role in a long time.  Balwin, for all his gameshow mugging and Trump impersonating, and 30 Rock-era Republican lampooning, returns with his former steely smolder and shows he still has the acting chops to hold focus and attention on screen, while still having a light touch when needed.  The remainder of the sprawling cast are likewise great, imbuing a humanity into some small roles that represent real people.  These are just archetypes or cliches, and the show adopts a lot of the text direct from the podcast for the scripts, putting the real emotions into place.

If there's a weakness to the proceedings it's the time-jumpy nature, where it bandies back and forth in time, and inconsistently so.  The podcast did this too, but host Laura Bell managed to compartmentalize the episodes thematically and talk the audience through the different cases and the background information with relative simplicity.  The show has a harder time keeping the audience's clear on where it is in its timeline (despite on-screen dates, which become a jumble of letters and numbers very quickly), especially as it relates to the medical cases and Dr.s Kirby and Henderson investigate and or try to get Dunsch shut down.  Did Dunsch perform more surgeries even after Kirby and Henderson started intervening?  I honestly couldn't tell you because of the show's structure (but I believe he did, which is terrifying).

The show seems built for the "drop-at-once" streaming methodology, it is an inherently bingeable watch.  It's been painful watching it week to week because the hour, to hour and a quarter really fly by.  It's captivating and upsetting, and while Dunsch is ultimately punished for his crimes (which isn't really a spoiler) there's a whole lot more people complicit in the situation that will continue within their prosperous careers, within a system that leeches upon the people who need them.

(Didn't know where to fit it in, but the composer on the series, Nick Chuba, also does a bang-up job).

10 for 10: "Netflix and chili" edition

[10 for 10... that's 10 movies TV shows which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]


In this edition, 10 teevee programmes watched on Netflix.

1.Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23 - season 1 & 2 (Netflix)
2.The Crown - season 1 (Netflix)
3.The White Rabbit Project - season 1, 3 episodes (Netflix)
4.The OA - pilot (Netflix)
5.Chewing Gum - season 1 (Netflix)
6.Dear White People - season 1 (Netflix)

7.Maron season 1 & 2 (Netflix)
8.Friends from College - season 1, 4 episodes (Netflix) 
9. Wet Hot American Summer: 10 Years Later (Netflix) 
10. Big Mouth -season 1 (Netflix)

aaaaand...go!

I remember seeing promos in 2012 for Don't Trust the B... and thinking "what the hell"?  From the mouthful of a title to the "James Van Der Beek as himself" it seemed like a show that was trying waaaay too hard to be part of the new wave of TV sitcoms that Arrested Development bore.  I gave it a hard pass.  Through the year and a half-ish that it was on television I saw people I knew who had good taste giving it a go and liking it, review sites giving it favourably passing grades, and I thought "how".  I mean, I have friends who watch Big Bang Theory and I know that's garbage, surely this goofy-titled poseur was just another hot pile in disguise, right?  I mean, I'm not a John Ritter fan at all, and I didn't think I'd be a fan of his kids either, nepotism and all.  But after coming to love Krysten Ritter in Jessica Jones and learning she's not, in fact, even related to John Ritter, I needed to get more of a Krysten fix.  I hesitantly pressed play on Don't Trust The B... on Netflix and had a quick laugh very early on, plus saw  Nahnatchka Khan's name as creator (also created Fresh Off the Boat) and I was hooked.  Ritter's morally spurious Chloe is both just as nasty as her reputation suggests and nowhere near as nasty, really.  She could have been fairly one note, but I love how Ritter takes her on journies without ever getting "soft" (her on again/off again Aussie boyfriend/soulmate/nemesis is a show highlight).  Van Der Beek adds some "Sad Hollywood" humour and the extended cast of Dreama Walker, Eric Andre, Ray Ford as Luther (JVDB's assistant), Liza Lapria (Chloe's ex roommate and stalker), and Michael Blaiklock as the perv in the window across from them are all ridiculously fun.  This show hits it instantly with only a couple duds early on, and leaves a lasting impression.  I want a rewatch.

[12:46 -- oops]

---

Oh the Royal Family.  We shouldn't care, and yet, we do.  I don't know why.  There's something about Rulers and Monarchs that is so ... other.  Especially in modern times of democracies and governments, the idea of a monarchy and royalty seems solely symbolic.  Thankfully The Crown elucidates on that symbolism by taking us into Queen Elizabeth's early days as ruler, taking over after her father passes away and her uncle abdicates to be with an unlikable American socialite.  The show zeroes in on how the titular crown affects Elizabeth's relationships, with her husband Philip who expects to be king (and is sorely disappointed/emasculated), with Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Churchill's story takes on its own fascinating sub-plot of calculation and back-biting within his party to oust him), and with various members of her staff, not to mention the colonies she visits and her receptions, both the ones she's aware of and the ones her aides attempt to shield her from.  It's a phenomenal show, Claire Foy amazingly inhabits the role and expresses the weight of it tangibly.  Ex- Doctor Who Matt Smith puts in a great turn as Philip, his jealousy and pettiness combined equally with sympathy and love.  Surprisingly outstanding is John Lithgow in his Emmy winning turn as Churchill... it shouldn't be surprising that he's so go but he's above and beyond.  I was utterly engrossed at both the historical and fictional recounting of this time as well as with the care to show it in a reflective lens of modern concerns.  Just a beautiful production.

[23:01]
---

I miss Mythbusters.  I've been an on-again-off-again viewer of it since its inception, but it was in its final season when my daughter and I started watching it together.  It's science and entertainment, rolled into one, and highly educational while also being ridiculously silly.  It'll be back in some form soon enough, unfortunately The White Rabbit Project, which stars the Mythbusters b-listers Grant Imahara, Kari Byron, and Tori Belleci, doesn't quite hit the mark.  The basic premise of the show is to focus on one topic, find 5 or 6 prominent examples of the topic, look at the science of those examples, conduct some experiments and then judge which of them is the best based on whatever criteria they establish on the show.  The main problem with this is they go through their experiments much too rapidly on the show.  With 5 or 6 examples to get through every story and experiment feels rushed and the exploration factor, the trial-and-error part that Mythbusters did so well, is lost in the process.  Grant, Kari and Tori are capable, amiable hosts, but the premise of the show puts them in talking mode more than action/experimentation mode.  I really wish it were better.  As it is, I didn't get past the third episode, even with an enthusiastic 7 year old ready to watch.

[29:52]
---

The OA opens with a feature-length pilot about a woman (played by Another Earth's Brit Marling, also the show's co-creator) who famously disappeared as a teen and then returns inexplicably seven years later.  She has some oddities that surround her, mysterious scars, and she starts calling herself "the OA".  Meanwhile her adoptive family tries to reconnect with her with difficulty, and she begins establishing perhaps inappropriate connections with some of her neighbours (mostly all younger than her).  Eventually she starts to open up, both about who she is and what she went through, but her tale of lost time is a difficult one to believe.  The believers though, gather with her, and experience a touch of the supernatural.  It's all a little too self-serious, hitting the same tenor as Another Earth but leaning hard into its more bizarre elements (specifically leaning into Marling's more bizarre and frustrating behavior).  The pilot, around the 50 minute mark, takes a dramatic left turn, as the OA recounts her tale as a young girl in Russia.  It's a lavish production, a harrowing half hour story that seems at once a tangent and absolutely the reason why one should watch this show.  And yet, I haven't gone back to it.  I'm definitely intrigued, but the tangent being more engrossing than the main tale to me was problematic.  That said I'm not sure I was particularly invested, and I've not quite decided whether Marling is a good actress or painfully one-note.  The show's tenor doesn't exactly allow for a broad range from its lead.  The facebook reaction at the time it came out seemed to be "it's mostly good but what the fuck"...which leads me to believe it has a frustrating ending that may not make the journey worthwhile.... I need someone to sell me on continuing with it...

[40:37]
---

Haha, this show is great.  Just thinking about it makes me smile.  This British show is just goddamn fun.  Written and starring the formidable comedic talents of Michaela Coel as Tracey, it's a show about a repressed 20-something finally coming into her own sexuality it the the low-rent flats of suburban London, while still living with her mother and sister, both direly religious.  The show's explicitly frank sexual talk is utterly refreshing, and coupled with Tracey's ignorance, it's utterly hilarous.  It's a show that could easily fall into a cringe comedy trap, but because the characters are largely so open and honest with each other, the cringe factor rarely (I won't say never) manifests.  Tracey's just a supremely joyful and awkward person, naive but willing.  The supporting cast from her mother and sister, to her almost-kinda boyfriend and his invasive, liberated mother, to her in the closet ex, to her promiscuous friend and her suffering boyfriend, the show is full of amazing supporting characters, most delivering comedy gold.  (Tracey's sister having her own sexual awakening is just one of many, many highlights).  If you're not put off by sex or sex talk, give the pilot a shot.  If it doesn't hook you in then the show won't be for you, but it's practically genious.  So gloriously vibrant, fun, and riotously funny.  I don't think I've ever seen Coel before, but with this series, she's already a comedy legend to me... just a phenomenal spotlight for her.

[48:32]
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Oh, the heavy stuff.  Well, heavy, but not, but still heavy.  Dear White People is an series extension of the film of the same name which I've never heard of before.  The series itself is brilliant, exploring issues of race in America, largely African American but not solely.  The series uses its microcosm of a black dorm on an Ivy League campus to explore the macro issue, without ever forgetting that some of its characters who seem to have all the answers are still, in effect, kids without a lot of real world experience.  I loved the exploration of different black thought, and it's not that the show manages to come from every possible perspective but it does effectively reiterate that there's not just one voice when it comes to the black experience, but it equally effectively reiterates that there are common experiences across the board that are largely a result of systemic and even unintentional racism.

The genius of the show is in how it plays out.  It starts with an event, a campus party, an un-PC party put on by the campus humour/satire publication (a Harvard Lampoon of sorts), and it approaches it from our main character, Samantha.  Or at least we think it's our main character.  She hosts a campus radio program with the same title as the show that seeks to incite and inform in equal measure.  But the next episode our lead switches to Lionel, the demure side character from the first episode, as he becomes fully aware of his homosexuality, and we see the party and events leading to it from his perspective, but advancing slightly.  Each subsequent episode retraces steps with another character, but moves things forward, by midway the rather lighthearted take on race relations becomes in your face and dire, as an encounter with campus security turns almost deadly and the show does an incredible job at hitting to the core of what the police violence against black people means, the lack of safety in the world, the crawling unease.  Eventually the show swings back to it's lighter perspective, but after that it never lets go of the fact that America (and many other places, let's not kid ourselves) still treat black people as "other".  The show explores the roots and continued fight for equality in a systemically corrupt reality.

It's not a straight comedy, it's not a drama, but it manages both incredibly well.  The cast is incredible, and many of the characters become instant favourites, such that we're eager to see the spotlight circle back on them but also disappointed that it's to the detriment of other favourites.  Just an incredibly well put together show.

[1:02:16]
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I've reviewed Maron once before, back when IFC threw fans a bone and place a couple episodes on youtube.  In the years since Maron had four seasons and is now finis, but has been available on Netflix for some time.  I've slowly worked my way through the first half of the show in fits and starts, pretty much the same way I consume Marc Maron's podcast now.  The podcast has hundreds of episodes, each with a famous or semi-famous person, always with a cold open of Maron discussing his life.  The TV show flips that.  The show is mostly about his life with a bit of the podcast where he's interviewing a celebrity creeping in.  It's Maron's angst that leads the show.  Nearing 50 at the show's inception Maron's past the mid-life crisis, has done a ton of self-help, and is a much better person than he used to be.  He's not a slave to his demons anymore, but they occasionally return to remind him of who he was, which only surges him on to try and do better.  But old habits die hard.  Maron is a compelling central figure, a solitary man not looking desperately for love, a man only marginally burdened by his parents, a man whose friends are as messed up as he is, only generally more secretive about it.  Maron's life, especially towards the end of season 1 and the start of season 2 spiral out of control when a particularly destructive and invasive relationship begins and then decays.  It's a relationship I knew from Marc's real life told through the podcast but it's fascinating to see it play out in fiction.  Part of my fun was recounting to my wife the reality of the situation which was actually just as crazy if not crazier than the show.  There's a hint of cringe comedy to Maron, but most of it is Maron fighting with his own worse tendencies in a given situation, sometimes side stepping the cringe, and sometimes stepping right into it, it's not knowing which way it will go that makes it so satisfying, and funny.  With a tinge of DIY and a hint of melancholy, few other comedies have felt like Maron, and few others trying to find this balance are as successful at being funny.

[1:10:51]
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Oh I was so looking forward to Friends From College as an exploration of how friends you made from one of the peak times of your life have grown or not grown with you, how friendships have evolved or stagnated, how those old habits and tendencies you have with those friends crop up every time you see them, and how those same things impact your significant other when they're invited to join in yet are perpetually the outsider.  Ostensibly these things happen in Friends From College, but the show is less a broad exploration than it is a very specific one, for this very specific group of friends.  I dunno, I just couldn't relate.  Nick Stoller has done some fun, funny, accessible films, but this, this was off putting, despite it's fantastic cast which includes Keegan Michael Key, Cobie Smulders, Nat Faxon, Annie Parisse and Fred Savage.  The show opens with Key and Parisse engaging in a post-coital discussion in a hotel room, their long-standing relationship obvious by the familiarity they have with one another.  As the conversation progresses, these are obviously people who are in love with each other and still good friends after all these years, a real solid relationship to start the show on...except when it becomes clear that these two are not married to each other, and in fact have been cheating on their own spouces with each other since before either were ever married.  It makes the show wildly uncomfortable from the get go, and despite the likability of both actors, it's hard to like or sympathize with the characters at all, and it's hard to find something to root for... do we want them to break up their otherwise happy marriages/families (Parisse has a child, Key and Smulders are going through IVF to try to have a child) and friendships?  It's a no win situation for the show, even if Key and Parisse choose to never sleep with each other again.  After four episodes of this horseshit sneaking around and cringe-inducing situation comedy around covering tracks and friends finding out, I couldn't really take watching anymore.

[1:20:00]
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The first Wet Hot American Summer Netflix series, First Day of Camp was great for how it played with the timeline of the original movie in relation to the actual timeline in real life...that is to say, it was old comedians attempting to play teenagers, the results were never not funny.  This sequel series Ten Years Later takes its cue from the end of the film where the characters promise to regroup in 10 years time, and we get to see where they all wound up.  The First Day of Camp succeeded in spite of its logistical challenges, bringing together its repetoire of now very successful actors and comedians, and having a script that juggled their availability in any one scene adeptly.  Ten Years Later feels less well planned, the logistics not working out as well, and rushed in spots.  The excuses they make for replacing Bradley Cooper with Adam Scott, for instance lends its own spot of comedy, as does the retroactive inclusion of two new players Mark Feuerstein and Sarah Burns and the continual flashbacks that insert them into sequences of the film or preceding series where they never were.  This would be more amusing if the show didn't spend so much time with them.  The cast of characters was large enough that spending (a lot of) time on two new characters only makes them stand out more as outsiders (and for them to be quite unlikable as well doesn't help anything).  There's an absurd plot involving George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan that also doesn't quite take off, primarily for how much cheap comedy circulates around them, and yet the show's under-arching plot pretty much hangs off it.  There's a lot of fun stuff in Ten Years Later but not nearly as much as First Day of Camp.  Like most comedy sequels, it's diminishing returns on similar jokes.

[1:28:38]
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I can't say that Chewing Gum inspired Big Mouth, but these are two peas of the same pod, despite one being very British, the other very America, one a live action cartoon being about people in their 20's discovering their sexuality, and the other a highly animated cartoon about teenagers discovering sexuality as they go through puberty.  Both are incredibly frank and hilarious, although I might have to give Big Mouth  an edge largely for what it dares to do with it metaphors come to life.  Created by Nick Kroll and his childhood friend Andrew Goldberg (with Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin) its a mostly fictional recounting of their pubescence, with Kroll playing Nick and frequent collaborator John Mulaney playing Andrew.  Andrew's puberty is hitting him hard, and he's shadowed constantly by the Hormone Monster (also played by Kroll), who's like the little devil on his shoulder telling him to get into trouble, only there's little sinister about it, it's just a personification of urges.  Nick and Andrew hang out with Jessi (Jessie Klein) who has her own Hormone Mistress played brilliantly by Maya Rudolph and, for some reason, Jay (Jason Mantzoukas) who is that kid who's just the filthiest kid, extremely annoying, you never want to be around them, and yet you're friends with them for some reason.  The show's exploration of pre-teen sexuality is very daring, but necessarily frank, and absurdly true to life, despite its grandiose metaphors.  At one point Jessi has a conversation with her vagina (as played by Kristen Wiig) and there's a sequence where Nick, still having not hit puberty, catches a glimpse of Andrew's post-pubescent crotch and can't think of anything but...it's penises everywhere.  The casting is brilliant, the show is largely spot on (one episode's spotlight on Jay's relationship with his pillow is, perhaps, too weird, stretching the metaphor way past its breaking point), and it's full of quotable quotes (as often based on inflection as cleverness).  I'm a huge fan of Kroll, from his stand-up to Kroll Show to Oh, Hello on Broadway and now this... it's not just about how talented Kroll is, but the people he surrounds himself with.  Outrageous, and again, like Chewing Gum, not for prudes.  Watch the first episode, if it puts you off you won't want to continue.

[1:42:22]

-fin-