Toast & Kent's Xmas (2025) Advent Calendar - Day 17: The Preacher's Wife

1996, d. Penny Marshall - Disney+

The Preacher's Wife is, at least on paper, the perfect remake. It takes a classic and perhaps even beloved film starring one of the brightest and most charismatic stars of its era, and brings it to a modern setting, adapted wholly to its environment and its characters, and stars one of the brightest and most charismatic stars of its era. If you're ever going to think "who's a good substitute for Cary Grant?", "Denzel Washington" is absolutely the right answer.

The thing about The Preacher's Wife is that the role Washington plays -- the angel Dudley -- may share the same name and vocation as the role played by Grant almost fifty years earlier in The Bishop's Wife, but they are not the same character. Just for starters, Washington's Dudley used to be human, and apparently not that all that long ago (possibly within the 20th century). He's been in the queue for an assignment on Earth for decades apparently and has finally been given a shot, to which he is absolutely elated. Grant's Dudley has been on assignment for millennia, apparently, he's seen it all and has an omnipotence that Washington's character doesn't. 

These (and other) differences aren't trivial, they shape the roles they play quite differently, and there's really no mistaking them for the same character. The same can be said for the rest of the players in the film. The titular Bishop and his wife are Henry and Julia, as are the titular Preacher and his wife, but that's where the similarities end.

The Preacher's Wife doesn't just redo what was done before beat by beat, note by note, it rebuilds the story and characters from the ground up. 

Where Bishop Henry had already moved on from his troubled parish and was having difficulties negotiating the building of a new place of worship, here the Reverend Henry (Courtney B. Vance, Final Destination 5) is still very much in his parish, and a core part of his community. But his troubles are that he cannot do enough to stop the troubles his community is having. The local youth shelter has closed down, the church is in financial straights while still well attended, the local orphanage has closed and Henry's son's best friend is being moved to be housed elsewhere, and a local youth he's helped before has been falsely accused of armed robbery. All these things, as well as just supporting the sick and elderly and destitute in his community, weigh on the Reverend, and these troubles wind up isolating him from Julia (Whitney Houston, The Bodyguard) and his 6-year-old son Jeremiah (Justin Pierre Edmund, in an absolutely adorable but so not saccharine or precocious performance).

Unlike Julia in The Bishop's Wife, here, naturally, the role has been bolstered to put Houston in the spotlight, and, of course, get her to use her greatest talent. There is a lot of Houston singing here, largely gospel, but a sequence of Dudley, as Henry's behest, taking Julia out dancing leads to Julia meeting an old friend (played by Lionel Richie) and goading her into performing a soulful, romantic ballad, which she of course nails, and sends Dudley swooning.  It's their return from this event that both sparks their attraction, but also fuels Henry's jealousy, both in a way that was never quite as present or potent in the original.

Henry here is being tempted away from his parish, his community by real estate mogul Joe Hamilton ("Than man is so oily you can fry chicken on his smile") as played by Gregory Hines (Wolfen). Hamilton wants to gentrify the neighborhood and upscale the church, with Reverend Henry becoming a broadcast-worthy preacher. As other members of the community start to fall under Hamilton's sway, so too does Henry, much to Julia's dismay.

Here, Julia doesn't want to just be Henry's wife, but his partner. Most of her input is subtle, punching up the choir and helping with distributing alms. But she has ideas, ideas that Henry doesn't even have time to hear in order to dismiss them. He's put her on the back burner, and it's the crux of the whole film... sort of.

And this is what I mean by The Preacher's Wife being the perfect remake on paper. It rebuilds the story, the characters, the world and it feels so rich and alive, and yet it also repeats so many of the problems of the original when it most certainly could have improved upon them. The biggest issue is about focus and perspective. Whose story is this? Dudley's? Julia's? Henry's? Jeremiah is our narrator, so is it his? This lack of focus once again makes it tough for the story to ever really click. Where Henry in the original was very much the third lead of the film, he's pretty much the primary here, but this means Dudley winds up disappearing for stretches, and used inefficiently.

Both films lack a strong central lesson that Dudley is trying to teach Henry... or maybe it's just that Dudley is a terrible teacher. Dudley is just there to help, but he should be helping Henry help himself, and in both films, too much is left to Dudley to directly intervene. Just as in The Bishop's Wife, here the reconciliation between Henry and Julia is kind of just one moment and doesn't feel big enough to hand-wave away the problems they were having. There's not enough grown-ups having conversations saying how they really feel and understanding each other to feel truly satisfying.

Also in both films, the romance, if you can call it that, between Dudley and Julia, is barely a thing. It's more of a thing in The Preacher's Wife (Julia tells her mom she's just window shopping, to which her mom says "Well, don't go shopping with money in your pocket! And you better not be putting anything in the layaway plan, either!" The incomparable Jennifer Lewis, everyone! Amazing in this film. She's also only 6 year older than Whitney, playing her mother...tsk tsk). 

The Preacher's Wife, I think, is a more engaging film than The Bishops Wife, but only by a narrow margin. They're complimentary in their own way, like they're in a shared universe where angels are sent to Earth to help, and these two angels just happen to have similar missions but in two very different communities and with very different people. Where I don't quite click with The Preacher's Wife is its increased focus of faith and devotion and worship. Gospel isn't really my thing, and, quite frankly Whiney's singing never was either. Since both are given such prominence, it's really the detractor for me when comparing the two. One's mileage may vary greatly on that front.

KWIF: Juror #2 (+3)

 KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. 

This Week:
Juror #2 (2024, d. Clint Eastwood - Crave)
The Wild Robot (2024, d. Chris Sanders - AmazonPrime)
Conclave (2024, d. Edward Berger - AmazonPrime)
The Gorge (2025, d. Scott Derrickson - AppleTV+)

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Juror #2 is Clint Eastwood's 40th film as director in just over 50 years, which is a remarkable achievement given what it takes to get a film made. Averaging it out, he has completed a new film every 16 months since he started directing, which is an astonishing pace compared to most other Hollywood directors. The actor/director turns 95 this year, and shows seemingly no signs of calling it quits, and will probably keel over on set. 

I have only seen a half-dozen of Eastwood's many directorial efforts, all being unfussy tales told in a pretty direct manner, with something to say through characters and story. This matter-of-factness about Eastwood's movies has never much appealed to me. I find his works mildly compelling in the viewing but with little stickiness afterwards, and very little to linger on.

Juror #2 continues that streak. It's Eastwood and first-time writer Jonathan A. Abrams' examination of the American justice system, which can be summed up as "it's a flawed system, but it's all we've got."  

Eastwood's focus here seems to be dead set on not generating any suspense or thrills. He wants to be clearn, this is not a John Grisham story, nor is it a courtroom drama, it is an exploration of subjectivity in the legal system and it never deigns to offer any answers.  It will neither condemn nor praise the justice system, as I think Eastwood's more conservative tendencies makes it hard for him to fully criticize any American institutions.   

The plot finds Justin (Nicholas Hoult, Dark Phoenix) -- a journalist, recovering alcoholic and expectant father -- reticently being selected for jury duty. The trial is of a second-degree murder case about an ex-gang banger who is charged with the death of his girlfriend. After an argument in a bar, she was found dead on the rocks down the side of a bridge.  Thing is, as the details are examined in court Justin realizes that he was there that night, at the bar, he saw the fight though he was lost in his own misery, and on his ride home in the rain, he hit what he thought was a deer, seeing nothing when he went out to check.

Justin wants to do the right thing, he wants to come forward, but his AA sponsor and lawyer (Kiefer Sutherland) tells him that coming forward, even though it was an accident, given his drunk driving history, it will result in a very hefty prison sentence and that he has a family to think about.

The thrust of the movie is not in the courtroom, but in the sequestered jury room, where, at first, Justin is the only hold-out on finding the defendant guilty. Without tipping his hat to his own complicitness, he tries to convince the others that there's reasonable doubt.  But the point of the movie is that despite being told to be unbiased and objective in their decision making, within a room of 12 individuals some are still going to have bias and base decisions on feelings.

Hoult does carry the film, with Toni Collette being the prosecuting attorney who is up for election as the District Attorney, and this case will make or break her. Her counterpart in the courtroom, the public defender played by Chris Messina is an altruistic true believer in justice and an old friend of Collette's who rides her hard about justice vs. politics, appealing to her sense of morals. It's a film lacking a villain and Collette could have easily been it, but she instead takes on the idea that she could be wrong and starts reexamining her own case.

There were avenues for this film to go down, ways of generating some incredible tension and emotional weight, but Eastwood really sidesteps these avenues for an almost clinical examination of this, I want to say, ridiculous scenario that's been concocted solely to examine these threads of the American justice system. It's not a full movie, but it's not an exciting one either. It's the type of film where you say "yeah, I get it" halfway through and then have to stick it out for the rest of the movie as it plays out hammering the same chord.

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There are levels to digital animation, and it's pretty obvious and immediate with a film when you're watching a top-tier-level animated movie and when you're watching something other. The Wild Robot is a second-level production in this hierarchy. At second-tier, it means you've got the studio backing and the celebrity voice talent, but the budget isn't nearly as high, thus the animation isn't as refined, and the story isn't as worked-over as it could be.

Within the opening few minutes of The Wild Robot I was immediately taken aback by some of the creature designs (and by creatures I mean actual woodland animals), and not in a good way... there's a blockiness to them that I think was intended to juxtapose against the roundedness of the robot protagonist. The fur and feathers and other textures of the creatures stood out to me, glaringly, a distraction that I never did fully get used to.

The titular Wild Robot awakens in the waters off the shore of an forested island. It is a task-oriented helper robot looking to every woodland creature to give it something to do. The creatures fear this automaton (except the raccoons who start pillaging it, the dirty thieves they are) and the robot prepares to send a distress beacon to be recalled home (except the raccoons steal the beacon). So the robot goes into learning mode, observing the creatures and watching the food chain play out, and along the way picks up the language so that it can speak with the animals. An accident causes the robot to knock over a tree, killing some geese and the robot finding an egg. After a chase sequence with a fox (Pedro Pascal, bringing a real Ben Schwartz energy), the robot is given the task of being a mother to a newly hatched, stunted-wing gosling. She must feed it, teach it swim and fly so that it can migrate for the winter.

In a bold choice, the film spends only about 10 minutes with the robot, her new fox friend, and the baby gosling as she develops her maternal instincts. It then smash cuts to months later, the gosling is grown and it needs to become part of the flock, failing miserably on first attempt. Migration is coming soon and to fulfill her task, the robot must get her baby in the air, ready for its long journey.

The film's first act leads to robot (named Roz, played by Lupita Nyong'o) picking up her assignment, and then jumping to putting a lot of the focus on Brightbill and his need to migrate. It's clear that in the process Roz has developed past her task-oriented programming and enabled maternal instincts and developed an approximation of emotions, and the film makes it frustratingly obvious to everyone but Roz and Brightbill (who suddenly becomes a rebellious teenager).

It feels like cheating, the time jump, and it frustrated me that this story that's partly about technology's increasing invasion upon nature doesn't do more with that thread. The third act finds Roz's, having succeeded at her task, recalling her corporate overlords, and nearly destroying the island in the process, which is the expected answer. It feels like the obvious stakes for the film, and as such wasn't fully satisfying.

Throughout the film the story toys with cohabitation within nature. It very clearly starts the film showing how the creatures of the island forest survive upon eating each other, but it starts trying to present this peaceful existence, of the creatures rallying as a community for their own self-preservation (or even to save Roz). While it makes for cozy kiddie-fare (which more and more the movie reveals itself to be) I found it hard to buy into.

It's an intentionally heartwarming film with a gentle disposition that 's hard to not be soothed by, but at the same time, it's not an honest production, and I had to keep shutting down my b.s. detector and relax into its vibe. Even still, the vibe isn't steady. The Wild Robot doesn't tell its story cleanly. I wanted to like it more.

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I'm not religious, like, at all. I'm proudly agnostic, and believe that faith can be a wonderful thing, but blind faith can be easily manipulated, and religious institutions are expert manipulators, and both the blindly faithful and those they follow are some of the key sources of evil in our global society.  

Conclave is a pseudo-political thriller that takes place inside the sterile marble walls of Vatican City in the wake of the reigning(?) Pope's death and the assemblage of cardinals from around the globe to vie for and select the new Pope, under the guise of enacting the will of God. 

But God rarely enters into it, and the election of Pope in Conclave is a fraught contest, severed down the line between regressionist conservatives and liberal progressives. Of course, among it all is a hefty level of in-fighting, bargaining, and secrets to be kept or exposed. At the center of it is Ralph Feinnes playing the dean of the College of Cardinals. He not only has no interest himself in assuming the papacy, but was preparing to resign from position as dean prior to the Pope's death. He is a good man, and thorough, and when he finds out dirt on any of the Cardinals in the running, he never directly outs them or exposes their dirt, but instead leaves it to them to do what is just and right as a member of The Church. Of course, the pettiness of others means the dirt gets tossed into the open anyway.

Most of my knowledge of the Catholic church comes from watching Father Ted, which at once lampoons and reveres the religion. Conclave is much, much more stern than Father Ted but I couldn't help but get the same sensibility out of it, that it was simultaneously reverential and also taking the piss. As a political thriller, it's sublimely pulpy with it's "shocks" and "twists", none of which are very surprising (at least until the finale) but still are quite delightful in their execution. 

It's all accentuated by incredible cinematography from Stéphane Fontaine, along with the direction and art department, practically every shot is an incredible composition in its own right. I found myself smiling at the framing of figures, or how the cardinal reds and whites contrasted against their surroundings. The laughably eccentric styling of robes and hats, especially when assembled en masse, look ludicrous, but in these compositions look like art. Seeing cardinals huddling in the courtyard in groups of three-to-five, smoking, gossiping, it's just incredible the overhead shot.  I liked the story of the film, but I loved looking at it. There may not really be any true action in the movie, but visually it's so engaging and a tense, plinking, screeching score from Volker Bertelmann makes one's pulse spike up.

It's a film that's not really saying anything pointedly (except that perhaps the Catholic church is as prone to political in-fighting as any other nation), it's just deliciously consumable entertainment.

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When I saw the trailer for The Gorge, I thought "That's such a Toasty movie". It was not a great trailer. It looked like so many other mid-budget, European-financed sci-fi-adjacent action thrillers... you know, the ones with small casts to keep the costs down, and kill a lot of runtime with just the two leads in static sets so as to leave the sci-fi element for the big climactic sequence. What was most baffling about the trailer was that it was for a film starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller, two fairly big names of the younger actors set... and not, the desperately-seeking-paycheque of, say, Nic Cage and Milla Jojovich.  It seemed too early in both their on-the-rise careers to be dumped into mid-budget Eurotrash sci-fi.  I thought for sure "This may not be a film Toasty likes, but it's most definitely the kind of film he likes to watch and write about."

For days I thought about that stupid-looking trailer because I couldn't get over that Teller and Taylor-Joy were in it. Then I learned that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were handling soundtrack duties, and that legit horror/Doctor Strange filmmaker Scott Derrickson was director. There had to be something more than what I was seeing.

Toasty recaps the film nicely in his review so I won't get into it the details much except to say that I found Teller's portrayal of being a shell-shocked veteran sniper to be fairly effective early on, but Taylor-Joy's Lithuanian sniper to be another in the relatively recent trope of quippy eastern bloc women killers (see also: Helena in Orphan Black, Yelena in the MCU and Max/Nichka in The Recruit) who seems completely unaffected by the work she does.

As Toasty points out, the premise of what's in the titular gorge is not inherently bad, but there are so many questions raised about the whys and hows of containing what's in the gorge that it threatens to undermine the logic of the whole movie (okay, maybe not threaten so much as cut the film off at its knees). And yet, if The Gorge succeeds at all, it's because it doesn't start as a movie about the gorge at all, but instead about these two characters falling in love (yes, really) and a critique of private military contractors who will stop at nothing to profit even more from war.

I really and truly bought into the accross-the-gorge romance between Teller and Taylor-Joy, and frankly, I would have loved a movie starring these two that was solely a wartime drama about them being on opposing sides of a conflict staring at each other through sniper lenses across some barrier between them, and connecting anyway.  There's some meat to that idea. 

The second act of this film gets lost in the mysteries of the Gorge and, at first I was surprised by how...bigger budgeted the world inside the gorge was. There's lots of bio-organic creepy-crawlies and vine-and-moss-ensconced skeletons to fend off and frankly, it all looks so much better than anything I was expecting. There are terrains and building within the gorge to discover, again, not at all what I was expecting, only to unveil the true nature of what our protagonists were up on those towers trying to stop from getting out.

As much as the unveiled world within the gorge impressed me, it was still far less interesting to me than the romance between our leads and I couldn't help but feel that the story loses sight of the characters once it starts playing into "unraveling the conspiracy".  Having just dashed through all 6 seasons of Lost in the two months, I'm all for secret buildings and old videos and mysteries, but it's not really what you were selling me on throughout your first act.

As Toasty notes, the more the film reveals about the gorge, the more ridiculous the setup becomes. I wasn't really thinking there was a mystery to explore going into the film. I was anticipating instead that within the gorge was some ruptured gateway to the afterlife and the undead soldier of past gorge-watchers were spilling out. I don't know if the film would have been better had the gorge been left more of a mystery, but the third act winds up feeling pretty perfunctory. It's a film that really needed a John Carpenter-esque approach, explaining less, and more of an unresolved ending.

T&K's XMas (2024) Advent Calendar: Day 19 - A Christmas Less Travelled

2024, Heather Hawthorne Doyle (Confessions of a Christmas Letter) -- download

I once commented on doing nothing but Off-Brand Hallmarkies. I know, I already started a post with that line, but once again I come along with an off-brand that solidifies I should probably stick to the few well-known producers. Migawd, I should have realized as soon as I saw the title card "a Great American Family production", I should have turned the movie off. I mean, all that title card needs is a MAGA cap, and I did confirm this company was a "soft-faith" company, which translates from American as you could probably have a drinking game for the number of times they bring up God, Faith or Forgiveness as themes, and get quite sloshed. I will be avoiding them from now on. 

The Draw: It has a red truck !! It was the red truck that suckered me in.

HERstory: Desi (totally not an Indian name, for that would mean she's foreign; Candace Cameron Bure, Full House) owns and runs a cafe in a PST. But obviously runs it badly, cuz the bills are stacking up and a family appears to pick up a take-away order and then hints with eyebrows that they don't have any money. Why the fuck are you ordering take-away if you cannot afford take-away??!? I mean, if Desi had some pre-arranged situation where certain families could order free food, then she would know that before they showed for pickup. But anyway, if Desi wants to save the cafe, she she better get some cash, like right away, and maybe considering selling her dad's vintage red Ford truck, cuz lots of people would like it. Buuut its the last tie to the memory of her Dead Dad so it hurts to even consider selling it, even though she hasn't touched the thing since he died.

Meanwhile a Guy (Eric Johnson, Flash Gordon: a Modern Space Opera) from the Big City is stalking her, while talking on his phone about how he has to choose just the right moment. Sneaking onto her property with its motion activated singing snowmen was probably not they best way. But it gets her into the garage where she pulls a tarp revealing her dad's truck, complete with a cassette in the tape player marked "Desi #1". Also, before she was drawn outside by Stalker Guy, she was posting the sale to a .. I don't know, Facebook Marketplace (?) for $15K.

So, the tape tells her a sob story (OK, be fair, its moving) of how in his last days her Dead Dad wish they had pulled together more after his wife died, but they spent so many years just avoiding each other, not dealing well with grief (never realized exactly how prevalent badly processed grief was a part of Hallmarkies) and that was why she was away at "culinary school" when he was diagnosed with a deadly unspecified condition, and he died only a week after she returned home. But the tape gives her a Quest, a drive to a place they used to go when she was a kid called Treasure Cove Bluff (wrong movie) where her mom used to release "Red Balloons for God" or something... basically the idea of burning prayers or wishes or regrets but sending them via helium to Heaven. And along the way, on the Quest, she has a few pit stops.

Meanwhile Stalker Guy is arguing with his phone over approaching her before its too late. Too late for what? He does not make friends at her diner, nor does he make friends with her as he spills coffee on one of her customer's scratchers. And he parked on the wrong side of the motel parking lot, so his car has barely iced over and is undriveable. Apparently everyone in Snow Covered PSTs knows where not to park overnight, but people from Miami (his Big City) do not. OK then, but he says he is going to the same place she's going "for business", which is weird, because the movie reveals its not a town or place, just a stop on the road, and she would know this, so what kind of "business" could he have there (?) and offers her lots of money if she can let him tag along. She doesn't like this Big City Slicker (Stalker) but needs the money so, "Go buy your own snacks." He buys a green goo drink and avoids candy canes, cuz sugar.

The first pit stop is an sweet country Inn run by a sweet country couple. They instantly recognize her, which is kind of weird, because she has no idea who they are and only knows the place as where her parents went on their honeymoon. There is a snow storm blowing in, and Stalker Guy is annoyed they have to say. Given he has no idea where this Treasure Bluff is, I guess he has no idea its a multi-day trip. Also, he has lost his luggage because he didn't close the tail gate properly AND he spilled green goo drink all over himself. Technically she did driving erratically but its all his fault for being startled. Anywayz, the nice couple invite them in (its a business so they probably invite everyone in) and they stay the night in a single room (that sofa ain't made for sleeping if you are over 4') wearing borrowed onesies. Admittedly the onesies are cute, and he is not as annoyed as a Miami Big City Slicker should be considering he is stuck in the backwoods in the cold without a change of clothes or a toothbrush. But apparently he has a gooey centre as he players the guitar and helps the Old Guy cut down an Xmas Tree, which they all decorate together. He also shares some personal details about being raised by a single mom who became a lawyer, and then rich.

Back on the road, the next pit stop is a Country Bazaar, which I guess is a roadside Xmas Fair, but the place they pit stopping for is a pet adoption VW van, which offers free pet grooming. But apparently knowledge or skill at said offering is not required because owner Big Mike immediately sticks Desi and ... OK, let's give Stalker Guy a name, Greyson, on the duty. Cue cute dog montage but really the dogs don't look any different after the grooming. And, of course, Big Mike has another tape for Desi. Big Mike's assistant confesses to Greyson that this is the last year they will run this pet adoption agency as they are out of funds. Their pit stop ends at a local drive in, where they watched a faith-based Xmas movie, and apparently sleep in the truck overnight without the cops hassling them. 

Next pit stop is at a church, because of course it is. They meet the lady rehearsing the kids for the Nativity Play, and while Greyson entertains the kids, she has a heart 2 heart, learning that her father and Random Church Lady had a relationship, but never committed to it (i.e. never got married) because of guilt and grief and other stuff. And another tape.

Back on the road, he is about to confess whatever he's been up to, when Polly From the Diner calls with the real story, so we can have a proper complication before he makes all nice nice. Apparently Greyson's mother and Desi's father got to know each other (Dead Dad really got around) and apparently his devotion and faith and ... sigh... other propaganda... convinced Greyson's mom to "find her faither" which also apparently led to becoming a very wealthy lawyer, so after she died, she left half her estate to Desi. And that's why Stalker Guy (he gets re-dubbed this now) was stalking her, because he and his brother want to contest the will. Buuuut because of the Getting to Know Her, he has had a change of heart, but that doesn't matter, so she kicks him out of the truck and heads on her last leg of the journey to the Treasure Bluff.

Insert a product placement for The Salvation Army.

Desi does make it to the Bluff, and finds the red balloons Greyson hid there for her, so she could continue her old family tradition. Also, as he finds his way back to the diner, where I assume his car has thawed out, he makes a couple of "money makes everything right" pit stops. Back in the diner, after she has released the balloons and speed run home (it doesn't take three days this time) she hears that Greyson has called into the dripping-with-sentimentality radio show and poured out his heart, and Desi forgives him because he will no longer contest the will, and he has paid off all her friends, and he has bought the truck, cuz money makes everything right in the world. And they kiss.

To be honest, I really do believe money gives opportunity to Do Good when you can let go of all the other burdens of life.

The Formulae: A wee bit, in that someone comes from a Big City (Miami) to a PST (we don't actually see much of it, but it has a Beloved Diner...) which is In Financial Trouble. Desi has a Dead Dad, and Greyson has a Dead Mom. There was an Xmas Fair, with puppies. They also have not found long lasting love in life, but can you call that a trope, cuz you wouldn't have much of a romance if they weren't single. Maybe "faith based" Hallmarkies cannot have someone fall for someone else while still in a relationship with someone else, even if that Someone Else is a stinker? Of course, there is a complication. And then there is the RED TRUCK, which was really nice, if not a 40s truck like most are.

Unformulae: No real Xmas Event, no red dresses which is always a loss to me. No ex-partner complication, but see previous paragraph for that. 

True Calling? I guess? I guess cuz she hasn't done that particular road trip in a long time, and also not thought about all those memories in a long time, it is less travelled?

The Rewind: Nothing really worth remembering.

The Regulars: Candace Cameron Bure started doing these way back in 2008, but eventually she must have thought Hallmark was being too "open minded" and moved over to off-brand, more Xian based productions. Eric Johnson has done quite a few.

How does it Hallmark? It doesn't. I mean, yeah sure, it has the most basic of the elements but wow, was I soured by the Xian-based drinking game portions of the movie. I have no problem with characters having Faith (capital F) but this movie comes as part of an agenda based production company. And reading a bit about how Cameron Bure helped start the company, and had been quoted how Hallmark is a, "completely different network than when I started" shows she wasn't happy with the idea they were becoming more progressiver. So, fuck her and fuck her company. 

How does it movie? Nope.

How Does It Snow?  Not bad actually. There is real snow in a LOT of scenes and that was real ice covering Greyson's car.

Dune, Part Two

2024, d. Denis Villeneuve - In Theatre

[toasty's review]

I felt like a loose beige scarf, flapping in a desert sandstorm while watching Dune, Part 2. I was not lost, as I was securely draped around someone's neck who was still forging ahead through the swirling grit with purpose, but I was ready to go where the wind was trying to takes me yet feeling the tug of resistance to stay in place.

I have a love for David Lynch's Dune, a brilliantly messy, often impenetrable film that looks like the product of a brainstorming lunch between H.R. Geiger and David Cronenberg. There's nothing like it. But I've never read Frank Herbert's novel, so the only think I have to compare Villeneuve's Dune(s) to is the Lynch movie. 

Most of Lynch's Dune is covered by Part 1 and the remaining final act of Lynch's version, I learned after watching Part 2 and having a detailed discussion with Toasty about his recollection of the novels, was largely constructs of Lynch, and not Herbert.

So I sat through Part 2 waiting for some iconic moments (to me at least) of the Lynch film that would never arrive because they were not from the source. Thus, pretty much of all Part 2 was surprising.

I'm so used to the idea of sequels picking up with time passing in universe (especially when years of real time has passed in between releases) that it's always a shock to me when the sequel picks up immediately where we left off, no recap or nothin. We don't have time to backtrack.

Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) is creating a stir among the Fremen. There are those who believe he is the Kwisatz Haderach, a prophecy that the Bene Gesserit witches have been seeding for centuries as part of their religion, and have been trying to make literal in this current age in a push for more power. But there are also Fremen who think him just an outsider and should be left to waste in the desert. Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), meanwhile, takes over for the ailing Reverend Mother of the Fremen, and has a powerful spice-augment witch gestating in her belly whom she already communes with.

The Bene Gesserit who have the ear of the Emperor (Christopher Walken) are uneasy with the Atreides' possible rise to power, have contingency plans for the Kwisatz Haderach with Fayd-Rautha of the house Harkonnen (Austin Butler), as cunning as he is sadistic. The Emperor already put the Atreides down because they were rising too high, and now things only seem to be getting worse.

But what Paul wants is not "destiny" or "power", he wants Chani (Zendaya), the girl he's been dreaming (/having future visions) about for years. She's reluctant at first, but does start to develop feelings for Paul, but is also very uncomfortable with all the prophetic worship he receives. With good reason.

At it's heart, these two pieces of one text are about whether destiny means that you have no control about where you wind up. It's about power, how to accept it, and how to use it wisely...and it's a warning about the corrupting influence of it. Where the first film was highlighting political intrigue, Part 2 plays with religious intrigue, and to be clear, it doesn't denote a whole heck of a lot of difference between them.

The acting in this is all pretty great, with one exception. Many people complain that Walken is "too Walken" and they can't separate Walken the pop-culture icon from the role. I had no such trouble. Cast the glance aside, though, and one of my favourite actor among the Millennials, Florence Pugh, has moments in her performance that made me wince. She's only in a couple scenes and I suspect the casting is largely in preparation for the next movie. If she spent more than a week on set I'd be surprised, so maybe she's not so heavily invested. I have to wonder if she was a late addition. Butler is the scene stealer, here, simultaneously repulsive and alluring. You hate him, but you can't look away from him.

Toasty said that he wasn't sure how Chalamet would pull off getting into the leadership role, as he seems so low key as a person, but time and again in these films he proves himself. Just as Paul has to prove himself to the Fremen, Timothee has to prove himself to the audience, and both are very big wins.  Unlike Toasty, I though Zendaya was remarkable. I think her whole deal is that even as she's falling in love with Paul, she's still wary of him, and though I haven't read the book, from what I hear it's in how this relationship plays out that is the biggest change. Just as Paul had visions of Chani coming into his life, and he was in love with her before he even met her, it's almost like she had visions of outsider bringing absolute ruin to everything she loves and holds dear. Her heart and brain are in conflict and Zendaya sells that throughout.  She never goes "soft" emotionally, she's always guarded, she's a warrior, so she not going to let her emotions get the better of her.

I'm talking a lot about themes, plot, and acting, which is testament to how involving a story its, and how well performed it is that I'm really not talking about the visuals, which are, as with the last film, epic. The visual tone of this film is daringly monochromatic. The only real colour seems to be the blue of the Fremen eyes, where everything else is browns and greys, blacks and tans. But it's richly realized and gorgeous. Everything fits, from wardrobe to makeup, sets and effects, creature design and sound design.

If there's a weak point, and even that is subjective, it's Hanz Zimmer's score. The chanting seemed...overused, and began to irritate me (if only because it was reminding me of the Snyder Cut of Justice League, bleh).

I rewatched Part 1 the morning before our afternoon screening, and as I mentioned in our review (yes, Toasty and I did a joint review which for a few glorious weeks in 2011 was going to be the whole deal blog) I didn't outright love it upon first watch. I did suspect, however, that "when it's completed with its second half, it will be even better.... probably amazing." and I have to say, that prediction bore true. I loved it pretty fully on rewatch and it had me so psyched for Part 2.

But with Part 2, I once again felt like I did when I came out of Part 1, that I didn't love it, but once it is more of a complete story with Dune: Messiah, as promised by Villeneuve, I will feel much more strongly about it.

What I Have Been Watching: donesies

"What I Have Been Watching" is usually the domain of Toast admittedly spending too much time in front of the TV. Kent's equally spending too much time in front of the teevee and is now stepping on Toast's toes (Toastoes? Toestys?) here as a whole bunch of series/seasons have ended and they need to be covered, quickly.

Schmigadoon Season 2: Schmicago - AppleTV+ (6/6 episodes)

Even though I wasn't much, if at all, familiar with the 1950's and 60's musicals of which Schmigadoon's first season was aping, it really didn't seem to matter. I could get the joke of the magical but supremely out-of-touch place of Schmigadoon, and the radical incongruity of two real-world interlopers who are understandably perplexed by the whole thing, and how their modern sensibilities could change the fantasy realm for the better. Plus, at the base of it, there was a core of a relationship in trouble and what escaping into fantasy could reveal to them about their bond.

I was really excited for the return of Schmigadoon if only because the sequel's subtitle, Schmicago, really makes me giggle.  In a sort of unfortunate irony, the subtitle is pretty much the biggest laugh of the season though. Late-60's and 70's era musicals (obviously Chicago, but also hippie musicals like Hair and even a dash of Sweeney Todd) are smushed together (technical term) into a melange of different aesthetics and tones, with the 30's throwback aesthetic blending inharmoniously with the 60's peace and love vibe backed up by a grody pre-20th-century street urchin twist.  Our protagonists, Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan Michael-Key) are feeling the drudgery of daily life, especially after unsuccessful attempts at conceiving. They long for an escape from reality and go seeking Schmigadoon, only to find the magical realm has become something else. The players all look familiar, but they're different people, and the world they enter is far dingier, danker and dangerous than where they thought they were going.

With the first season, there was a pretty easy through-line to follow, and even as our protagonists went on side quests by started inserting themselves into the affairs of the residents it all felt organic somehow. Here in Schmicago, every side plot seems to exist to cue up a number. The songs are really good, but they're played pretty straight, not a lot of comedy in most of them. They're showcase pieces for the performers, less about comedy (see the outstanding Ariana DeBose number at the top of episode 6 that's completely disconnected from the show, since DeBose couldn't return to the series beyond this one number).

The lesson Melissa and Josh need to learn is that in order to make others happy, they need to be happy themselves. Or something. It's not entirely clear, even though the Martin Short leprichauns spell it out pretty bluntly.  It's all lip service and not really shown. I don't feel like this season was a cohesive journey, and it certainly wasn't as funny as the first season (the best comedic bits belonged to Titus Burgess' narrator as he played with the metatext of the show).

That all said, it's still an incredibly well produced show (though not nearly as visually assured as when Barry Sonnenfeld directed every episode last season), and not something any other show is doing now. I dig the cast (Strong and Key are a great team, but Kristin Chenowith, Alan Cummings, Dove Cameron and the recurring gang are all wonderful stage pros), so if another season is to come -- say a Schmantom of the Schmopera, or Schmats (it's certainly going to be diving deep into Andrew Lloyd Weber territory, or maybe Les Schmiberables), I'll be there each week to welcome it.

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Mrs. Davis - Peacock/CityTV (8/8 episodes)

Good lord! What a bloody trip this was. 

Jesus, was this the best TV show of the year? Even if not (and I could see a lot of people challenging that statement) it's certainly the frontrunner for my favourite viewing experience this year. 

Holy shit, I could not believe what a bugnuts freaking show this was. It's a grand, globetrotting adventure, full of spirituality and sexuality, and parental issues and relationship issues around trust and respect. It's also an analogy for how we engage with technology in our reality, whether the screens we're absorbed with (and absorbing) are telling us the truth or just what we want to hear, if they're making us happy or just feeding us dopamine hits, if they're truly connecting us or just driving us further apart.  

Mary, mother of Christ, did I love it. Maybe every episode wasn't perfect (episode 3's "Excalibattle" seemed to impede the frenetic momentum the series had established, and episode 5's history lesson was necessary exposition but the framing sequence around it was pretty wobbly) but I was always on board. At the helm is Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen, The Leftovers), with co-creator Tara Hernandez (formerly of The Big Bang Theory, for reals), and they've crafted a supremely goofy quest series about a reluctant nun who is sent on a quest to find the Holy Grail in order to destroy the near-omnipotent machine that effectively rules the world. But amidst the plot is an immensely human story that touches upon so many different little, grounded, real topics that resonate so much stronger as a result of being juxtaposed against, say, exploding heads, a British Knights shoe revival, and going for a dive inside a whale. Enough good things cannot be said about series lead, GLOW's Betty Gilpin, and how incredibly confident she is in holding the tonal balance in her hands.

Goddammit, if it wasn't a constant surprise at every turn as well. Lindelof, Hernandez and crew really, really defied every storytelling norm out there. They played with conventions so fully, that as a viewer, you seemed always so certain of where it could be headed, and it never went there. There was no way to predict it, that's how far outside the box they are. It's a series that lets its imagination run wild, but guided completely by emotion. You can't predict these turns because they're so illogical, and yet they become the only thing that makes sense in the context of the story, because there can be no other explanation.  One can't help but always bring up Lindelof's puzzle boxing in Lost and wonder if there's a plan when stepping into any of his later series. But he's learned to have a plan, and three incredible series later, you can pretty much trust that he does.

Praise be, this is not going to be a series for everyone. The severely atheistic may bristle at the levels of affirmative faith the show embraces.  Likewise the religious might find it too salacious or blasphemous to cater to their puritanical interests. But if you like to be challenged whilst being highly entertained, this will dazzle and confound and maybe even soothe just a little. I found it deeply satisfying.

Amen.

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Yellowjackets Season 2 - Showtime/Crave (9/9 episodes)

Speaking of Lost, countless shows have attempted to be "the next Lost" since even before it went off the air in 2010. We've had over 15 years of imitators, from La Brea to Manifest to Wayward Pines, among many others. The most successful was Westworld, at least for one glorious season, but it found the mystery box set-up unsustainable and forged its own awkward path. Yellowjackets burned very brightly in its first season, dealing with dual timelines, one in the 90's with a high-school girls' soccer team crashing in the Ontario wilderness, and in the present day where the survivors try to live their lives with the secrets that they carry from that past time. In the past, the traumas have only just begun. In the present, they rear their ugly heads again.

It was a delicious premise, and a uniquely female-driven one that played within genres of horror, fantastic realism, suspense, and psychodrama while dealing heavily with both psychological trauma and mental health issues and how they impact one long term. Season 1, at its heart, wanted you to be both sympathetic to why they do what they do and scared of what these girls and women are capable of.

The second season introduces us to two more modern day survivors, Lottie (Simone Kessell) and Van (Lauren Ambrose), one who runs a not-a-cult commune, and the other still making a go at a video rental store. Everything converges upon the commune by mid-way through the season, which means the increasingly shaky murder/cover-up story from last season, and Taissa's dissociative identity disorder,  Misty's missed love connection with a rich citizen detective (Elija Wood), and Nat's survivor's guilt all need to coexist in this one space. What happens as a result is the drive of the show becomes completely plot focussed and the characters take a back seat. It's to the point that it raises so many unintended questions (not fun puzzle box questions, but just logical questions about the characters and the world they live in) that they threaten to sink the entire show.

The first season wound up the puzzle box, and creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson said they had a 5 year plan for answering it all, but if season 2 is any indication they're not really sure how to execute said plan. Even as they set out providing answers in the past, it's lumpy storytelling that's seemingly forgotten what it wanted it wanted to say about its characters, what it wanted to accomplish outside of just telling a story, and one that's seemingly forgotten its stylistic tendencies.  

By the end of the season, in the 90's story we've been given more insight into where we already know it winds up. There doesn't seem to be any twisting of the perspective of what we've seen before. The show doesn't effectively convey the psychological impact of starvation on the team, even though that's really the undercurrent of it all, that they're slowly going crazy from undernourishment. In the present day, the show tries to wrap a few of its bigger dangling plot threads up into a neat and tidy bow, which feels completely underbaked. If it turns out to just make for bigger problems next season, great, because how could it not. But if it is supposed to be an actual resolution, it's pretty awful.

This season was increasingly disappointing as it went on, and the finale at episode 9, instead of 10, smacks of network interference.  Something's certainly happening behind the scenes that the season was scaled back. I hope they have a more character-focused plan for next season, or I don't think I'll be able to continue through its 5 year journey.

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Barry Season 4 - HBO (8/8 episodes)

[Season 1&2, Season 3]

Every episode of Season 4 of Barry is directed by creator/star Bill Hader, and it's a wonderful-looking show. Hader has a very specific style that combines classic American cinema production with 70's New Hollywood sensibilities. Hader likes a static camera placement, providing a very wide-scale view of the scene with minimal cuts, but he also likes dynamic dramatic acting, complex characters, and big moments.  Hader also eschews soundtrack in Barry, which heightens both tension and comedic relief.  The orchestration and execution of the scripts feel extremely precise, with Hader wanting there to be an immense amount of naturalness, and discomfort in that naturalness.  When done perfectly, it leads to wow-inducing, memorable scenes that feel innovative, yet familiar...or it leads to a big laugh. Hader is perfectly capable of executing on both fronts.

I think Season 4 is about as invested as I've been in the series this whole time. I've expressed in the prior reviews how uncomfortable the show makes me, but also, prior seasons were just too invested in the "L.A. actors" world that, honestly, I find boring. Of course, that was all spiced up with Barry's killer-for-hire other life, and all the complications that brought, so it led to a very uneven experience for me. This season of Barry starts with Barry in prison, and the fallout of that is far more interesting.  Barry's got his time to think about what he's done and who is to blame, while we see Fuchs, Cousineau, Sally and NoHo Hank trying to move on with their lives, which seem just a little emptier without Barry in them. What should be liberating for them seems quite the opposite.

It's quite a ride for the first four episodes, but the fifth takes us through a time jump that raises a lot of questions, and heads up a two episode arc that it maybe didn't need or earn.  I wonder if the season had started with the time jump and worked its way backward if it would have been better, or just more distracting. The final two episodes of the series work really, really hard to bring every major character into view, and the finale works, but isn't completely satisfying. I don't really know what it's trying to say in its final moments (presented as excerpts of the movie of Barry's life and misdeeds, starring Jim Cummings as Barry). I won't contemplate them here, for spoilery reasons, but I wonder the sentiment its actually trying to convey as a series.

Complex.

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Taskmaster Seasons 1-5 - BBC/Youtube (32/32 episodes)

The Brits are experts at the "comedy panel show". There's a rather insurmountable volume of them, and each of them probably has their champions imploring you to catch up on a dozen (or two) seasons of talking heads and shits and giggles. There's a reason UK panel shows work so well, which mainly has to do with a heavily populated, but not very expansive group of countries, mostly composed of islands. Comedians there all tend to know each other, and being in such a limited exposure terrain, their fame is pretty contained, so unless they've migrated to America, their egos tend to stay in check. As such these panels tend to be populated by personalities who are not at war with one another, nobody's climbing up someone else's back to get ahead or more exposure. They're more hang sessions of funny people, not battles for superiority.

I've had more than a few panel shows lobbed my way, and of those I've tried, I have enjoyed, but not enough to plough through the entire back catalog. Taskmaster isn't different from many of those panel shows in that it doubles as a competition/game show of sorts, because there are a great many others that also award points and winners and whatnot. What sets Taskmaster apart from the rest is humility, the humbling nature of bringing a panel of guests on and showing them failing over and over again, sometimes in ways that should be direly embarassing ("that one will haunt me the rest of my life" has been uttered by more than one guest). But in that failure comes both sympathy and admiration for the efforts made, and, occasionally, a flat-out triumph.  It's a warm-hearted show that isn't there to (fully) poke fun at the guests, but to have fun with them.

Hosted by comedic giant Greg Davies, with co-host/creator "Little" Alex Horne, each season has a panel of five guests, who were, months prior to the live-studio-audience panel, subjected to a battery of inane tasks that they must attempt to achieve. Each of the guests does the same tasks as the others, and Greg, as the "Taskmaster", judges them on their accomplishments. Tasks can range from who can put as much stuff in a balloon in one minute as possible, or who can take a giant styrofoam boulder the farthest away in an hour, or who can make a Swedish man blush.  

The tasks can range from very basic, to patently absurd, to utterly difficult brain teaser, to a flex of creative muscles. We watch, along with the crowd and the panel, as the expertly edited clips are presented in astonishingly well-produced order. The dramatic (and comedic) tension that is raised from how the clips are put together and show is as much of the show's fun as what the comedians do themselves.  And after it's all done Davies gives ranks them 1-5 (or disqualifies them) and gives them the equivalent points. The winner each episode takes home an absurd collection of prizes (that the guests themselves brought in as a task at the start of the episode and were judged on, like "hairiest object" or "greatest liquid" or "oddest clock").

The first three seasons are only 5 or 6 episodes, seasons 4 and 5 jump to 8 episodes (while looking ahead, every subsequent season is 10 episodes). Each episode is deliciously entertaining, with heavy belly laughs throughout, while at the same time tweaking your creative brain as you yourself think of how you would approach the task. There is not a dud episode in all 5 seasons, though it does become funnier and funnier the more you settle in with Davies' personality and the dynamic between him and Horne (the kayfabe of their master/apprentice relationship grows over the seasons).

Season 5 is a real standout so far, with an almost perfect panel. Irish absurdist Aisling Bea has the most creative impulses, Scottish oddball Bob Mortimer dips in between utter bizarreness and scatalogical humour (he tells a story about his anus that will haunt me the rest of my life), Mark Watson may be one of the most enjoyably neurotic people on Earth, Nish Kumar seems to be missing the filter between his brain and his mouth, and Sally Phillips is completely horned up yet somehow retains both a sense of modesty and elegance.  Four of the top 5 standout moments from the show for me so far come from this fifth season, with Nish and Mark's "I'm always seeing you (do cool stuff)" song, Sally's "birth of Alex" video, Nish's "oh you bubbly fuck" moment, Nish's most spectacular fail (just one of many) in the coconut challenge,  with the "foot in the crease" moment in season 2 rounding out the top 5.

I genuinely love this show, and can't recommend it highly enough. It's deliriously entertaining and addictive, and there's 15 seasons ALL legally available on youtube.  There's also at least a half dozen international versions of the show which I may tackle once I get through all of these.

Horror, Not Horror: A Knock at the Cabin

 2023, d. M. Night Shyamalan - in theatre

Toasty and I saw a movie together! His review. We agree, methinks.

The most recent Shyamalan I watched was the latter half of The Village airing on one TV channel or another, at least a decade and a half after it stunned and/or frustrated audiences. The Village was a breaking point for some, I had basically tapped out after Signs, and little has enticed me back in. Not The Visit, not Split, nor Glass or Old. I really just thought I was out completely on Night.

But he got me. The trailer for A Knock at the Cabin got me. The premise seemed predictable in terms of the drama it would create, the tension of "truth or delusion" seems quite obvious, and yet there's a hint of spectacle in the trailer, and a surprising cast (do I want to see Jonathan Groff and Dave Bautista scene spar? Yes, yes I do...and I did! I did see it!)

The film is, pretty much, what the trailer sold it as, for good and bad. There aren't many surprises, but everyone involved is committed to the bit. I had questions, though, which the film didn't answer (why the sacrifices?), and I thought it had the opportunity to develop the story into a real head spinner but it chickened out in favour of being as straightforward a narrative as it could. The "news" reports were both the lifeblood of the movie, and also its weakest part. At the very least I was never bored. 

I've heard about the book (The Cabin at the End of the World) and how Night's film deviates from it. Toasty pointed out as we left the theatre how bleak it was, and I mentioned that Night certainly wanted it to feel optimistic in its finale. Toasty pointed out rightly that its a film that leaves so much trauma in its wake, it really can't be optimistic. I don't have a religious background so I'm not really well trained into seeing  undertones (hell, sometimes the overtones escape me) of that sort, but the book leans heavily into the "What kind of God would do any of this?" question, and the end result of the book seems much more truthful and differently bleaker than what happens here.  I honestly can't say what Night's approach to whatever religious angle he's playing with here. Given the events of the story, no matter the outcome, God doesn't come out looking very good.

Bautista, though, comes out looking fantastic, the real highlight of the picture. He's obviously physically imposing, but he can play soft-spoken, kind and tortured very well, and the juxtaposition of the two is phenomenal.  All Night's close-up shots of Bautista's massive head, the way his glasses just kind of pinch his face rather than rest on his ears and nose...there's an undeniable power to it, a great marriage of performance and production. It's said Bautista wants to be known for his versatility as an actor, and he is definitely showing it. It would have been very easy for him to just become the next direct-to-video muscle-bound action star, but he's got so much more ambition than that. I think he's achieving it.

I'm not fully back on board with Shyamalan, but I'm willing to dabble a little more again.

BUT IS IT HORROR?
For some, I'm sure it is, but it strangely shies away from the character deaths (mass deaths aplenty are shown on the news programmes).

I Saw This!! Bid Adieu to '22 (TV Edition)

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent (me) 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.  Or, maybe not so bad.  What's the worst that could happen?

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Parallels - Disney+

I watched Parallels so long ago that it feels like I watched it in 2021.  Is that possible?  (No, it debuted in March).  So far on Disney+ I've not encountered many foreign language D+ "originals", and yet Parallels is a French production, but promoted as a D+ original.  Curious.  

Anyway, the show is a 6-episode sci-fi drama that clearly was inspired by Netflix's smash German time travel mind-fuck, Dark. I was expecting, given this being a Disney production starring teenagers, that this would be a stripped-down drama, one with more teen angst in the Young Adult mode, but to my surprise it doesn't hold back from some heavier emotional implications.  A group of four friends head to an old bunker they've turned into a hang out space, only to get caught in the side-effects of a supercollider experiment.  After the experiment, two of the teens are missing, Bilal and Sam.  Sam's troubled younger brother, Victor, and his crush, Romane, are left behind, unable to explain to their families what happened to the others.  Meanwhile Sam finds himself in an alternate reality where everyone else is gone and a cloud of suspicion surrounds him and Bilal shows up, but a 37-year-old man.  What happens after I've basically forgotten at this point, but I recall being impressed with the mystery while at the same time being completely unable to shake the feeling that this was all familiar territory.  It really did have so many shades of Dark that I couldn't help but compare the two.  Dark was an ambitious multi-season epic that required deep investment into the plot, characters and timelines.  Parallels is a much slimmer affair, to the point that its finale, while providing closure, doesn't seem wholly satisfying to what it built up to.  Then again, with only six episodes, most clocking in between 30 and 40 minutes, there's not a lot of runway to really build up to something big.  

If you haven't seen Dark, this is like an entry level version of it, if you want to test the waters to see if you can both handle the timey-wimeyness of it, as well as subtitles.

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The Old Man Season 1 - FX

Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow together again, for the first time?  Without doing a minimum amount of research, it seems like Bridges and Lithgow should have been in a whole string of movies together and that this series was a marked "reunion" of the two.  Kind of like how Heat brought DeNiro and Pachino together for the first time, but it seemed like the two had been acting in films together for years.  Anyway, the Old Man should have been EVENT television, but we're in a serious golden age of TV, an abundance of riches, and as such, this union of two massive acting talents kind of fell under the radar.

The Old Man finds Bridges as an old time operative who has been operating off the radar for a very, very long time.  But, just because he's been carefully working in the shadows doesn't mean that people aren't still looking for him.  When his current guise is compromised, he runs, and winds up sheltering as a border with Amy Brenneman.  The two have a bit of a thing, but when she's threatened by her association with him, he essentially kidnaps her to keep her safe.  This dynamic is the most potent, as well as the most difficult aspect of the series.  Bridges genuinely likes her and is affectionately trying to keep her out of harm's way, but at the same time Brenneman is completely at his mercy in a very much damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't way.  But, she also proves herself adaptable with her own level of cunning and shrewdness and I do quite love how her story plays out.  Meanwhile, we learn about Bridges' daughter (Alia Shawkat) who is his inside man at the CIA, working directly under Lithgow as his protege, and close family friend.  There's definitely conflicted emotions in all of that that do get explored rather nicely.

And then, this whole time, we're thinking "The Old Man" is Bridges, or possibly both Bridges and Lithgow, but no...they were both working together for a time under The Old Man (Joel Gray) who is both above and beyond the normal pecking order of operations in the world of espionage they exist in.  Add to the mix a hitman and his handler (Gbenga Akinnagbe, Ecko Kellum) who have their orders and their own objectives, and it all swirls into a grand mess of who's-really-in-charge and what's-the-real-threat.  It's a twisty, exciting, gripping series that would maybe have been tighter as a film, but it's never a bad time with either of its two leads on the screen (it keeps them apart for the bulk of the first season, save for a scintillating phone call or two, so that when they do eventually come together it feels like a suitably massive moment).  

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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 1 - Amazon Prime 

I tried reading The Lord of the Rings once.  I got bored very, very quickly.  I've watched Peter Jackson's films a couple times.  I do get bored, frequently, watching those (most of The Two Towers holds my attention, though).  I skipped The Hobbit films, because I knew if I found the LOTR trilogy boring with all the intricate details from Tolkien's books filling out the world, that a trilogy based off one much slimmer book would be dicey viewing.  I was not at all excited for The Rings of Power, if based on Tolkien's works at all, it'd be loosely off the materials collected and expanded upon posthumously.

But, the wife, she likes her fantasy.  And there's the curiosity factor of seeing Bezos put his money where his nerdy heart lives, putting a billion dollars into a season of television like a man for whom money has lost all meaning.  So I watched The Rings of Power and found myself...surprisingly...invested.  Where others, for valid reasons and for toxic ones, have found LOTR:ROP unwatchable, I actually looked forward to that hour every Friday where I would be transported to Middle Earth, watching hobbits and orcs and dwarves and elves explore their religious beliefs, call into question their societal tenets, confront their prejudices, all in the name of quests, quests, quests.  Like the slow sci-fi of Andor, this is slow fantasy, taking its time, exploring its world, the people that live in it, and how they live in it.  How they choose to accept or defy the order of things.  I thought, based on the trailers, that LOTR:ROP would be populated by a cast of not-ready-for-primetime-players, the type of fantasy cast you'd see on the syndicated productions like Xena or Hercules but I was surprised there too.  They may not be big names or recognizable faces, but they are talented, attractive people who buy into the world, and make it all come to life.  And jesus, do they ever look great doing it.  The sets, the costumes, makeup, hair, armor, weapons, decor, all of it is to.the.nines.  It's gorgeous, and the razzle dazzle of an opulent production does go a long long way.  Do I remember a single character's name?  No.  But I can picture the whole season pretty vividly in my mind.  As much as I can get bored by fantasy, I really did like every story in this (but the stuff with the dwarves was my favourite).  Your mileage may vary.

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She-Hulk: Attorney At Law Season 1- Disney+

I really dig She-Hulk as a character. Since John Byrne's meta-adventurous run in the late 1980's with the character, Jen Walters has been mainly positioned as a fun character in the Marvel Universe.  Before Deadpool was addressing his audience in the comics, She-Hulk was breaking the fourth-wall, but not in an imp-ish way that other comedic characters would in comics.  She-Hulk's adventures still mattered, still had stakes, but there was a narrative device, and an injection of Looney Tunes into the proceedings that really made her title stand out.  The 20 years later, the Charles Soule run of She-Hulk, on which the TV show is loosely riffing on, focussed on Jen as a lawer, and on making a workplace sitcom set in a law office and courtrooms, basically a superheroic Ally McBeal, with only a minimal amount of fourth wall breaking.

I was really into the idea of a She-Hulk TV show, especially with Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany in the lead (she was outstanding in that show, and having heard her on comedy podcast, knew that she could more than handle a sitcom leading role).  But then the trailer came out, the one with the unfinished Shulkie, and the trailer wasn't selling the comedy very well either.  I was nervous.  And that nervousness bled through to watching every episode, week-by-week, and it never let up.  I was not relaxed watching the show the first time around, and I was nitpicking it to death, to the point that I had convinced myself that it was a show that tried too hard and failed.

But, I gave it a second shot, binged it in one sitting, and found myself absolutely delighted almost every moment.  Knowing what was going to happen, knowing who the players were, not anticipating any surprises, taking myself out of MCU-SPECULATION-MODE (which is a horrible place to be sometimes) and just sitting back with the show, it's super-duper fun. It's really not trying too hard.  It successfully negotiates adapting the character, adapting the Soule run, integrating different aspects of the MCU, introducing new aspects to the MCU, playing with the fourth wall, and getting more than a few laughs every episode, while also investing you in the character and her journey in a big-budgeted sitcom kind of way.  It's impressive.  Sure, not every scene with She-Hulk looks perfect.  It's a tough effect to pull off even on a heightened Marvel TV budget, but, once you're used to it, it's mostly good enough for now.  I mean, do I have the hots for the big green lady?  What I think is the biggest contributing factor She-Hulk brings to the MCU is sexuality.  With the exception of Tony Stark's more lecherous tendencies in the early Iron Man movies and a tepid love scene in the Eternals, sex is almost never acknowledged in the MCU, but here Jen is sexually active, and sexually proactive. In perhaps my favourite turn of events, she wheels Matt Murdock (so great to see Charlie Cox again, and playing the character in a lighter capacity) who then is the next morning seen doing the walk of shame barefoot in his Daredevil costume, boots in hand.  My favourite single moment of the series (it makes no logical sense, but it's still brilliantly executed).  It's great fun, with a great cast (love Ginger Gozaga and Josh Segarra, and Patty Guggenheim's Madisynn is the ultimate scene stealer), and lots of epic moments all pointedly fun.  I went from thinking this was maybe not good to now thinking it's maybe the best Disney+ Marvel show.  Can't wait for more, but also can't wait to watch it again.

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Lego Masters Season 3 - Fox

Lego Masters Australia Season 1&2 - Discovery

Lego Masters UK Season 1 - AmazonPrime

I've written about Lego Masters a few times now on the blog, and I'm unabashedly a fan of the show.  The third season of the North American version, hosted by Will Arnett, I was so excited to watch week to week, and I was bursting with Canadian Pride as we had a few very strong teams in competition this year.  What I genuinely like about the show is how, despite being a competition, the competitors clearly begin to bond with each other over time and there's a real sense of comraderie between them, as well as the judges (Lego certified builders Amy and Jamie) who clearly respect the talent as well as the people.   Some of the challenges this year included building life-sized dogs for a dog show, playable mini-golf holes, recreating a Marvel scene, and building a workable water fountain.  After the first four or so teams are eliminated it becomes pretty clear who the top teams are, yet there are still surprises that happen, technical failures that were unpredictable that can sink even the most talented team.  As always, the editing format of the show can be grating.  I HATE that the show opens with a preview of the show, teasing the challenge and which teams might be having trouble with them, rather than just letting the show play out, and I also, direly, detest the cut to commercial when something dramatic is about to happen and the 30 second replay when it comes back from commercial.  It's maddening.  As well, the editing of the timing so that we hear Arnett call out how much time is left, but it's clear when it cuts to different teams and their builds, it's not aligned with the actual time.  I don't appreciate the deception for "dramatic storytelling purposes".

Which is just one of the reasons why Lego Masters Australia has proven to be the superior entry of the Lego Masters franchise.  Lets get this out of the way, the first season of Lego Masters Australia was a bit of a gong show, with some of the participants being way, way down the talent ladder compared to what we'd seen on Lego Masters in North America for 3 seasons. But Season 1 of LMAus also pre-dates Lego Masters in North America by 2 years so it really set the template for how the show should run and I bet at that time the Lego Community was maybe a little dubious about a talent show of Lego building.  The second season of LMAus, though, wound up with three teams in the final that produced a build that could have bested the winners of any of the three seasons of LM in North America, so it was a huge step up for season 2.  

What makes LMAus stand out, though, is its host, comedian Hamish Blake.  Where Will Arnette's on-screen personality is full of fake ego and braggadocio that kind of keeps him at a bit of a distance from the competitors, Hamish is utterly boyish and playful, frequently doing bits with, and around, the competitors.  Blake also does a talking head confessional to the camera (something Arnett doesn't really do) and really brings a hugely comedic aura to the show (it's no wonder he's won awards for his hosting of the show) that is infectious.  The show's format also is different, and took a bit of getting used to, but I like it more.  Rather than 10-12 teams starting off, the show only starts with 8 teams.  They do an initial, non-elimination build to compete for the "golden brick" (which the team can use at a later date for immunity from an elimination challenge), then they do a build for which the winner gets to skip the next elimination build, and then it's only on the third build that a team gets eliminated.  This way we get to see each team produce at least 3 builds before one is eliminated.  It's more focussed on the talent than the competition this way, and I do love it.  Also with the smaller starting roster it lets the teams develop their sense of camaraderie with each other faster, and we as an audience get to know them more easily.  The first season had one team with a super-talented but utterly maddening, ego-centric twerp that pushed around his partner who went maddeningly deep into the show, which fuelled the show when maybe the builds weren't as strong as we're used to.  Season 2 had a lot of surprises, including an underwater build, and designing a brand new Star Wars ship, among others, which really pushed the challengers to pretty amazing heights.  The finale of Season 2 was easily the best of the 3 North American and 2 Australian series.  I'm eagerly awaiting the domestic release of seasons 3 and 4.

Less exciting was Lego Masters UK.  The format of the show is decidedly different, at 4 episodes the first season.  Though I should stipulate that Season 1 predates even the first season of LMAus it's still wild how drastically different the show is.  Starting with a roster of 48 teams, quickly winnowed down to 8, and then eliminating two more in the first episode, it's a dodgier talent pool than the first episode of LMAus.  Like, two teams of kids under 12 made it through to the top 8.  It seemed clear to me that this was an early prototype for the Lego Masters format, and there wasn't much figured out, in terms of how they wanted to present the show, who they wanted to have on the show, and what the target audience was.  It's structured like a tepid British all-ages documentary, with the host narrating what's going on and providing lame puns as transition points.  It borders on painful.  The "brick pit" were kind of majestic places in the North American and Australian versions, here, it's all just Rubbermaid towers...so many drawers really making it hard to find things and build fast.  And the challenges were cute, but super short, with 3 hours, or sometimes no prescribed time limit, leading to mostly pedestrian builds across three episodes.  The final episode provided the two finalists something like ten days to create their builds, which did lead to some pretty massive displays, and they were pretty nice, but I couldn't help but wonder what any of the top three teams from any of the other LM  series would have done with 10 days of building time.  There's a two more seasons of LMUK floating out there (I'm hoping they improve the format but if they didn't it's probably why there's only 3 seasons) and apparently 3 seasons of a Dutch LM series (which looks to be more in the NA/Aus format)

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For All Mankind Season 1 - AppleTV+

As far as streaming services go, AppleTV+ has the hardest time selling me on their wares. I've been hesitant to explore what they're offering, if anything because they don't promote what they offer very prominently.  I think of all their shows the only one I recall seeing a trailer for was The Morning Show which only seemed to be selling the idea of Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell, no other indication as to what it was about.  I found Severance (my favourite show of '22) via Adam Scott promoting it on a podcast, and Mythic Quest was trumpeted highly by tv critics during its first season, but not promoted well by Apple.  For All Mankind is something that should have been an easy sell to me and other nerdy based on it being the product of Ronald D. Moore of Battlestar Galactica fame (with Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi)...plus, it's sci-fi, in that it presents an alternate history of the space race.  It really starts with the conceit of "what if Russia landed on the moon first?" and takes its cue from there.

The first season rockets through the late-1960s and 1970's, taking a big jump through time and progress every few episodes.  It mixes fictionalized version of real life individuals with wholly new characters fleshing out that the Cold War became a lot more about the Space Race.  Joel Kinneman (Suicide Squad) is the de-facto lead character of the series, playing Ed Stafford, as a fictional Apollo 10 astronaut who orbited the moon, and felt the pull to land, but followed orders instead, costing them the "first man on the moon" status.  Ed and his old guard of astronauts find themselves in a heightened environment, flush with funding and keen to compete to achieve the next great milestone.  From the onset, the idea is that the moon was just the beginning, that Mars is next.  The series has a pretty large cast - astronauts, ground support, administrative, housewives and children.  Shantel VanSanten (The Flash) plays Ed's wife Karen, and at first I judged the role as being a real thankless one, just another stay on the ground, anxiously watching TV cut to as the men do the derring-do, but the role becomes much more that of who's left behind, particularly late in the season when Ed is effectively trapped on the moon base (yep, this season ends with a moon base having been established) and she's having to deal with increasingly difficult situation at home, alone, and make the decision on whether it's good or not for Ed's mental health to know what's happening.  There's also some spotlight roles for female astronauts, with the episode "Nixon's Women" probably my favourite of the series so far, with one wife of an astronaut joining the program (logically, and being pushed through because of her attractiveness, plus the marketability of a husband and wife astronaut crew) and the pleasure of unflappable Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger - Lost) joining the cast full time.  

The first season works so well because of its rapid pace, burning through time and letting the audience keep catching up to them and all the benchmarked changes to the timeline compared to our own.  That tracking of the changes in the realities is probably my favourite part about watching the show, but I also enjoy how grounded and methodical it is, not afraid to just wallow in jargon if it means maintaining the air of authenticity.  It's a good looking show, probably a pretty expensive first season of television.  We've started season 2 which starts with a 10 year time jump, but I found it gets bogged down in petty drama, rather than the exacerbated pace of rocketing through time and teasing out the alternate reality.  We stalled out on it at the half way point but have been encouraged to stick with it for an apparently dynamite season 3.  Will report back.

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The Resort - Showcase 

I was drawn in with Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs) and William Jackson Harper (The Good Place), as they're two very likeable personalities who I was thinking I should be paying more attention to.  Together in one place is a good a starting point as any.  Very quickly, as Emma and Noah, we're introduced to the idea that their 10-ish year marriage is on unstable foundation.  Emma seems particularly detached and Noah can't seem to get through.  The resort they're headed to is on a tropical island, and Noah hopes it's enough of a break from real life that things can be shaken up.  But I don't think what happens was the kind of shake up he had in mind.  During a quad-runner tour of the island Emma has an accident, spraining her wrist and getting banged up...but she also finds and old Motorola Razr flip phone.  She starts to obsess on its origins and, after locating a power supply and replacement battery in town, finds out that it belongs to a college-aged American kid who disappeared from another resort that was destroyed in a storm 15 years earlier.  Emma convinces Noah to let her investigate things before turning the phone over to the police, and it draws them into something much bigger and more confounding then they could have imagined.

The series jumps back and forth in time, between Emma and Noah's often fruitless and certainly amateur investigation, and Sam (Skyler Gisondo) and Violet (Nina Bloomgarden) meet-cute romance that has the spectre of tragedy looming over it.  Emma and Noah's investigation seems to only do enough to provoke people who thought this story long since forgotten, and the show keeps asking the question does it actually spell danger or does it only feel dangerous?  Then, in the mix of it all, is a third storyline about the mysterious, unhinged Alexsander Vasilakis (Ben Sinclair), owner of the doomed resort, who claims to be a man displaced from time, and his memories are leaking out of his ear.  His friend Baltasar (Luis Gerardo Méndez) is the lynchpin of both timelines.

What's quite wonderful about The Resort is how it upends its status quo every episode.  You're never quite where you think you are with the series, and each episode ends in a way that provides you with no clue as to where its going.  It's not a puzzlebox mystery, so there's no frustration with these pivots, just surprise. The tone of the show shifts as well, from dramatic, to comedic, to suspenseful, to serene and back as it weaves its story, that, slight spoiler, does take a metaphysical turn, but also earns what it asks of its audience.  It knows what its showing is hard to comprehend and its characters reflect that.  And along the way, we get a pretty intense dissection of Emma and Noah's life together, and it's quite affecting.  As well, I was very, very pleased that the show concludes, decisively, at the end of its 8 episodes.  It's a mini-series, not a franchise or left with any dangling loose ends.  It's kind of rare that we get such a concrete and satisfying conclusion to a story.

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1899 Season 1 - Netflix

Speaking of Dark and puzzle boxes, the creators of Dark return to netfilx with another compelling puzzle box mystery, this time set on a turn-of-the-century ocean liner, with a multicultural, multi-lingual cast, and the ominous disappearance 4-months earlier of a predecessor ship.   Truth told, I had a lot to say about this series when I watched it and started writing about it over a month ago, but a blogging mishap to my words, and enthusiasm to rewrite those word, away

So, in brief, 1899 is a bit of a marvel resulting in part from Netflix's global outreach. There are no less than 6 languages at play on the ship, and there's nearly no storytelling gymnastics at play to try and get all the characters to speak English.  This is a show from German creative team, so if anything, it seems to jump into German a little more often than I expected.  The opening moments of the film are a dream sequence which triggers the puzzle box into motion, but it's only once our Captain makes the unpopular decision to turn off course to see if an emergency broadcast is coming from the missing sister vessel that the mysteries start to unfurl.

What Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar are so adept at is not just negotiating their puzzle box elements (it's apparent that they learned from Lost's mistakes, and they have the answers to all their mysteries, but also that the mysteries are only important as long as the characters care about them) but in having them service the story and characters, not just fill space with intrigue.  Across 8 episode they blitz through so many of the confounding things they introduce, and at the midway point, they have a massive event that shakes up the cast quite dramatically.  

I was all in on the series right up until the end when we get a reveal that...spoiler...isn't too dissimilar to the ending of the American version of Life on Mars (and that one left a bad taste in my mouth, so it was an unwelcome reminder).  My hope is that, like with Dark, Friese and bo Odar's big reveal in this finale is just another upending of the status quo and our expectations, and that there's an entirely other drama and purpose to come.

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Atlanta Season 4 - FX

Season 3 of Atlanta, produced during the crest of the pandemic and in Europe took an almost detached form from what Atlanta had been before.  It was almost more of an anthology of detached stories than any sort of serialized production.  I mean, Atlanta has been operating in this mode almost from the beginning, but it sort of forgot about its connections between its characters, and certainly it felt set apart from its titular home city.  Season 4, then, returns home for 10 episodes that, at least in the first half, reach for a more comedic tone, while still doubling down on the surrealism and still steeping itself into the topics that seem to be weighing heavily on Donald Glover's exceptionally talented mind.

There's Earn's going to therapy and making decisions about his future in both career and family, Alfred facing both his own mortality and that of his career's (literally buying a farm), Darius' adventures in trying to return a bad gift or take a spa day in a sensory deprivation tank, Van confronting her parenting skills after taking her daughter to a casting call only to have Lottie get trapped in a crazy-time version of Tyler Perry's Atlanta-based studios.  The only one-off episode is a wild modern-style documentary about "the Blackest movie of all time: A Goofy Movie" which is as compelling as it is fake, which is to say completely.

With the exception of the very serene, laid back and nonthreatening "Snipe Hunt", Glover and company reach for greater comedic highs, and even greater absurdity than ever before (and they reached pretty high before), and mostly accomplish it.  I enter every episode of Atlanta with a pit of dread in my stomach, and I need a good 10 minutes with every episode before I know what I'm sort of in for, tone wise.  But at the same time, I've been watching long enough that I know Glover loves a good rug pull.  In the second episode, "The Homeliest Little Horse", the rug pull is one of Atlanta's biggest laughs, but, in typical fashion, one that really makes you think about the implications of it all and make a decision on how much you agree with it.  It's an absolutely fabulous, hilarious, utterly compelling, thought-provoking, frequently challenging show, one that I wish could continue forever, but at the same time one that I know we were lucky to even get 4 seasons of.  Each episode is a mini-movie, often playing with genres, and most are worth coming back to on their own merits, as well as part of the whole.

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Letterkenny Season 11 - Crave

For the past two years, new seasons of Letterkenny have been released on Christmas day, and for the past two years, the wife and I would blitz Letterkenny in its entirety prior to the new season dropping.  I love the show -- I'm a huge fan -- and I do like how connected I am to it as an international success, dripping in Canadiana as it is.  But I have to say, 11 seasons of Letterkenny may be too much in one concentrated dose.  I'm so familiar with the first 7-8 seasons that I know most of the beats (but by no means all the jokes) by heart.  The more recent seasons, 9 and 10, are a little more mysterious, as I've only seen them once or twice prior, and then the new season, bingeing all 6 episodes at once, becomes a bit of an overload.  As my wife and I slip into Letterkenny-isms throughout the month of December -- telling each other to "figger it out" or "pull your finger outta your ass" or "skoden" -- it becomes to much to take in the new things, to properly absorb the new content in any meaningful way, to the point that I start to wonder if the new content isn't maybe not as up-to-snuff (up-to-schneef?) as prior seasons.

Did I laugh at Season 11? Heartily. But, because the latest season is so overpowered by my entrenched familiarity of what came prior, it doesn't feel as good, it doesn't yet feel a part of the whole.  Is it just that? Or is there something, maybe, lacking about an episode that spends its time debating which Old Dutch potato chip flavour is its best (especially when All-Dressed, the most Canadian chip of all, is excluded from the running).  It's kind of an one-note joke that has peaks and valleys within, but it's only elevated by the "what the actual fuck is going on here" questioning of an outside party stepping into the proceedings.  

Prior seasons in the middle would end with a bit of a little emotional cliffhanger, whether it's Wayne getting suckerpunched by another local bruiser, Tanis beckoning Wayne to the barn, or that Marie-Fred moment (or that other Marie-Fred moment). The past two seasons have been missing that little end-note cue to wonder about when the show returns, that little character moment to contemplate the implications of.  This season has a runner of Wayne helping out a local degen who wants to turn over a new leaf, but ends with a very melancholy failure to do so, and it's a kind of heaviness the show's never had before that maybe almost breaks its reality.  It points out a sort of in-world, small-town justice system that calls into question the whole order of things (Stuart telling Wayne about the rumours Jivin' Pete was spreading when he was buying drugs off him makes Stuart complicit in Jivin' Pete's drug addiction, and it's odd that Wayne doesn't do anything about that, more over is seen hanging out with the skids on a regular basis).

I'm probably overthinking it. Someone needs to tell me to pull my finger outta my ass.

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His Dark Materials Season 3 - HBO

My final viewing for '22: the finale of this adaptation of the Philip Pullman His Dark Material trilogy.  It ends a long way away from where it started, and it feels like it's grown up so much, in part because of the bigger break between seasons as a result of the pandemic which means young Lyra (Dafne Keen) and Will (Amir Wilson) have visibly grown out of childhood and into young adults.  It also is much heavier, more head-on in its critique of blindly following religious leaders and treating stories literally. The series has been leading to a literal war between heaven and Earth, but it posits Heaven and Hell as just other dimensions, angels and demons as just other forms of beings unlike our own, but still struggling with the same quandaries we all do.  

As it builds and builds towards an epic confrontation, its a story that's constantly taking a step back to look at its characters and the context of the situation, and how it's shaping them, it's a series that wants us to think of the past as we consider the future, to look at how we've changed as people before we decide that others cannot change.  It's a series that sends the message of live life, be curious, explore, but do good when you can and be mindful of what harm you are capable of.  There's not explicitly an anti-war stance, but it clearly is a story that embraces love and peace as answers far more than fighting and death.

My favourite aspect of the story is the idea of us each having our own death, a spirit so to speak that follows us from our birth, and knows us like no other.  When our time comes, we meet our death, and reflect on life as they move us to the next stage of existence.  That next stage, in Pullman's worlds, can be a number of things, but ultimately it's a return to everything, becomeing one with it all.  Dust.  It's much the same conceit as in the finale of The Good Place and this connection between the two series made me feel all sorts of warm tinglies.

I worried about the third-season yips with HDM, that the series would be hamstrung by declining viewership and tightening budgets, but there was clearly an investment that was made by HBO and they delivered where it mattered most.  The world of Mulefa, and it's elephantine inhabitants really came to life on an impressive scale, and the angelic battle in the sky was stunning in its presentation.  Though I haven't read the books, but I understand the reputation they have now.