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

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

This Month:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Dark Winds Season 2
(created by Graham Roland)

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

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

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

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

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

KsMIRT: all groaned up

 KsMIRT=Kent's month in reviewing television. I haven't reviewed television in a while. Truth be told, I find reviewing television frustrating, as I don't have the capacity to review episode by episode, nor do I have the capacity to really, really dive into a full season. So why bother with these half-assed reviews? I mean, how can I not? Can I not? 

This Month:
The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins Season 1 (2026, NBC - 10/10 episodes)
Deadloch Season 2 (2026, AmazonPrime - 6/6 episodes)
Last One Laughing UK Season 2 (2026, AmazonPrime - 6/6 episodes)
Star Wars: Maul: Shadow Lord (2026, Disney+ - 10/10 episodes)

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One of the things I hate the most about my brain is how deplorably poor it is at remembering clever one-liners or turns of phrases from the media I watch. I'm so direly envious of those who can, like, the next day after watching a new show or movie, perfectly use a quote or reference in correct situational context. I mean, I would rather be funny on my own, but part of being funny is remembering one's own bits and I have a real hard time remembering to commit to a bit. (Toasty has a running gag on this blog of citing an obscure or absurd reference point when bringing up an actor in his entries, and when I try to do it, I can commit about 12% to the bit, often forgetting mid-post about the bit.... We could really do with an editor ... if we were striving for any sense of professionalism... which I gave up on long ago).

I say this because shows from the Tina Fey and Robert Carlock school of situational comedianity (30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Girls 5Eva) are so, so amazing at one liners and ridiculous turns of phrase that I want desperately to remember so, so many of them, but it's a futile want...my brain just ain't wired that way.  The Rise and Fall of Reggie Dinkins is another Carlock production, co-created with Sam Means (who wrote on all three of the aforementioned Fey/Carlock specials) and serves as a spotlight piece for Tracey Morgan (Cop Out).

Morgan plays the titular Reggie Dinkins, an ex-NFL pro who was the hottest draft pick one year and an instant icon, until a gambling scandal drove him out of the sport and into a reclusive lifestyle for two decades. Daniel Radcliffe (Swiss Army Man) plays Arthur Tobin, a certain-award-winning documentary filmmaker who has convinced Reggie to let him film him as he prepares to mount a comeback into the public spotlight. Tobin himself is trying to mount a comeback after an epic (and viral) meltdown on the set of a Marvel movie he was hired for, and then fired from. 

Reggie's ex-wife Monica (Erica Alexander, Wu-Tang: An American Saga) is still his manager and they have a very friendly and familiar relationship, but whatever was between them romantically is long since dead. Monica is likewise venturing out into new terrain as she explores taking on other clients, but is constantly interfered with by a rival organization run by Barry Hu (Ronnie Chang, The Devil Wears Prada 2).

Reggie and Monica's son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall, Space Jam: A New Legacy) is kid of privilege but seems to really love and admire his dad, but harbours secrets that he fears would shame his father...really, geeky secrets. Reggie's much younger fiancee, Brina (Precious Way), is much more than a gold digger, for her social media influencer empire is on the rise and she's making her own serious money. She actually loves Reggie, and somehow the show makes it work.  And then there's Reggie's best friend and former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynahan,Hoppers), who lives in the basement but is utterly committed and loyal to Reggie.

The gags are, as should be expected, a rapid fire, just an incredible barrage of ridiculous things often said ridiculous ways. There's some fantastic physical comedy (the peak, for me, was Rusty chasing a hard boiled egg he left in a pocket of his laundry and dives into the top-loader washing machine only to get stuck in the machine, vertically upright...and then it starts agitating) and a strong roster of recurring characters such as Reggie's sports rival (Craig Robinson) and Arthur Tobin's hook-up with a postal worker played by Megan Thee Stallion (just seeing the two of them in the same frame is wild...and kinda hot, the size difference and sexual tension is palpable).

Of course the show lives only at the whims of Tracey Morgan who is quite in the pocket on this one. While it may be hard to imagine Morgan as a genuine physical threat on the football field, his physicality is one of the greatest gifts to comedy especially when they "age down" Morgan for flashback sequences that barely try at all. But Morgan also delivers his one-liners with his trademark inflection and gusto, and the writers sharply swivel back and forth between making Reggie surprisingly astute, educated and pop-culture savvy and ridiculously lacking self-awareness and being a goof. The treat is how these two sides of the character don't really contradict one another.

Even among all the riches of gags there's still a heart to this show, a desire to see these down-but-not-out characters actually succeed (although there's a definite Lucy Van Pelt to the whole thing where just as success seems to come, the football is pulled away). Excited to hear Season 2 is coming.

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I quite loved Deadloch's first season, so I was super bummed when Season 2 came out and I no longer had a subscription to AmazonPrime to watch it, and there were no viewing alternatives.  Eventually I would have to feed the Bezos machine my daily quarters to get access, but I wasn't going to like it. Would it sour my experience of watching things on the Amazon platform? Turns out, no, not so much.

Season 1 ended with a nice pat ending for the mystery/ies at hand but did as so many series do and attaches a coda to the end that teases where a second season might be heading. In this case it was having detectives Eddie Radcliffe (Madeline Sami) and her/their partner Dulcie Collins (Kate Box) investigate the death of Eddie's former partner, Bushy, with Dulcie's exhuberant wife Cath in tow.

It's kind of amusing then that within minutes of the first episode of season 2 we find Eddie's quest for justice being pretty decisively slammed down by the copious evidence that all but confirms Bushy's death was a suicide...a dated suicide note in his handwriting perhaps the most damning piece in a trove of them.

So if Bushy's death isn't going to be the thrust of this season, what is? Well, Eddie's gone completely mental about the verdict on Bushy's case that she's/they're reluctant to go along with Dulcie on the new case in which a dead crocodile near Barra Creek on the north shore of the continent was found with a severed arm in its mouth. Whose arm is it? Does it connect with the mystery of two missing Swedish backpackers? And what's with all the dead and missing crocs? 

It turns out Barra Creek is Eddie's hometown, and most of the people there know her/them, and with few positive associations. Eddie's father was recently released from prison and it turns out Eddie was the one that put him there, convicted of killing crocs, which are a protected species.

But there's so many other mysteries afoot that it's hard to connect them all, or to see if they're even all connected. Eddie is too close to the situation to see anything clearly and is even more unhinged than she/they were last season, while Dulcie is getting lost in process and procedure, being swallowed by the job, which starts interfering in her relationships with Eddie and Cath.

This season of Deadloch builds an insane community around Barra Creek that is only a pile of mysteries heavier than an Australian riff on Letterkenny. There's the animosity towards city folk, and all the cultural conflict between the indigenous population and the redneck hicks in town, as well as the competing croc tourism business which finds the small-potatoes Darrell family (whose patriarch may or may not be the owner of the dismembered arm) competing with the aggressively bro-polished attractions of Jason Wade's (Luke Hemsworth) croc park. It's a rich, and very specific world that's a bit of a romp to visit but, woof, would be so much rougher to experience for reals.

This season is densely packed with both mysteries to unravel (concurrently) and hilarious line readings, many of which I would never have caught without the subtitles on. So often characters are talking/yelling over each other or muttering under their breath that it's pretty astounding how absolutely razor sharp the dialogue and the portrayals are here.

Dulce and Eddie get a new assistant in Leo (Jean Tong), a low-level journalist who is so low-key people barely register that they're even in the room with them. Of course when perky, ultra-polite forensics expert Abby (Nina Oyama) happens on the scene - ecstatic to be reunited with her work moms - she's uncontrollably jealous of Leo, and acts out in hilariously rude (for her, yet still quite tame) ways.

As with last season, I found it amusing how much the showrunners/creators (Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan...no Kate McHarrison or Kate McStarr?) love to reveal that so many of the female characters in this show are lesbians (or queer-coded) and the jokes about lesbians (by lesbians for lesbians) as well as feminism (by feminists for feminists) are a salve for an entertainment reality that's starved for this kind of representation.

That Deadloch had two less episodes this season was a sure sign that the first season was strong enough for Amazon to give the series a second shot but that they didn't have much confidence in it growing its numbers the second time around. McCartney and McClennan close out the series in its final episode, and we find both Dulce and Eddie in quite different places by the end of this season from where they started, and the ending is a happy one, though sad if this is the last we'll ever see of these genuinely fantastic characters.

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If I write about a reality TV show or a competition show or a panel show, I will usually do one season but not usually any more than that. I feel they're the type of show that if I'm not talking about the format then I really only have what happens to discuss, and usually there's too much to remember and write through (or too much of nothing, so nothing much to write about). Plus, quality can warble dramatically, and it can all be too much.

 That said, I feel particularly inspired to write about the second series of Last One Laughing UK, the show that got me to subscribe to AmazonPrime again (dammit).  

I discussed LOL Canada and LOL Australia back when LOL first cropped up and Amazon proliferated the format across the globe. It's interesting that the only (English language) one to have a second season is LOL UK, and I think that has to do with the fact that the UK is sooooo panel show/game/reality show intensive in a way I don't think any other country is. There's something fundamentally British about comedians faffing about in a loosely structured format that hasn't really transferred to other countries in quite the same way. The UK is a densely populated island, but it's also pretty small, which results in the comedy scene being relatively close knit in a way we don't see in Canada (due to its vastness) or in the US (due to its size and capitalistic competitiveness).  

The format of the show hasn't really changed... 10 comedians get in a room and they can't laugh or even smile broadly... if they do they get a yellow card, and if they do it again they get a red card. Monitoring them are Jimmy Carr and Roisin Conaty, which Jimmy acting as the sort of ringleader/emcee/Jigsaw of the piece. Though the pretense is that Carr and Conaty are eagle-eyed watching and then triggering the alarm if there's a laugh or a smile, the facade is less strict this season and there's an awareness the producers are feeding them the possibilities.  I wish there was even more transparency actually.  We are only seeing about 3 hours of what is probably an 8-10 hour shoot (the clock is set at 6 hours for them to be in the room, but I suspect with stopping and starting and various set-ups that it last a lot longer) and even then it's only what we're seeing of the edit (and it's clear there's at least one camera for every couple of performers tracking their movements and face). At times we the audience are seeing things that it seems Jimmy and Roisin are not... but it's always hard to know in what order things actually happened as opposed to the edit.

This second series of contestants is a great bunch and the reason I wanted to write up this series is because I had thoughts on their performance and the way the show may or may not have favoured them:

[SPOILERS WITHIN]

The majority of the contestants this season I know from watching Taskmaster, with a few exceptions. It just goes to show how great a show Taskmaster is at exposing the world to the UK comedy talents. Each contestant had to prepare a "joker", or a one-person performance of approximately 5 minutes in length.

• Romesh Ranganathan - an exceptionally prominent competitor, like, probably the most involved in everything throughout the show. His standup persona is very snarly, so he seemed like he would be a tough act, but he was always on the verge of breaking. Ramesh's joker was hammering on his lazy eye and then having prepared bits for the crowd to read which, honestly, needed to be more discomforting in most cases...but he did get one person to break.
• Diane Morgan - I haven't spent much time with Morgan's Philomina Cunk character, but Morgan seemed like an early frontronner because she should be used to being funny with a straight face as she often does this with the public as Cunk. Her joker was reading Dylan Thomas with fart breaks. Incredible. While not the most vicious player, she was definitely in the mix in the room.
• Gbemisola Ikumelo - a 2 time BAFTA award winning comedy actor/writer/showrunner, but never been on Taskmaster, so I have no idea who she is. She will go down in infamy on this show for her attempt to not react to Morgan's farts. Ikumelo was holding in the laughs to the point of pain and tears, until finally letting out a gutteral wail of a sob laugh at the end of Morgan's performance. Once eliminated she didn't hang around the green room long, having fallen ill. If I had to guess, a migraine, because surely that would happen to me too.  She was a great presence but didn't go on the offensive much. We didn't get to see her joker.
• Maisie Adam - a delight on Taskmaster season 20 doesn't seem to get much room to stretch here, at least until she goes face to face with Ramesh and the two of them start to basically roast one another. We don't get to see Maisie's joker, which is a shame. She's pretty involved in the room, but not heavy on offense.
• Amy Gledhill - a contestant on the current season of Taskmaster, where she's a very lively, vibrant presence. She was pretty recessed in the room. I have to suspect being a younger comic in the mix and the other contestants not being as familiar with her, that she wasn't as comfortable inserting herself into the more seasoned group engagements and perhaps wasn't as included or targeted in them. I think she was taken out on a cheap call though (maybe as likely because she wasn't as active a participant)
• Bob Mortimer - a legend, apparently, in the UK comedy scene, and the winner of season 1 of LOL (meh, I think Richard Ayoade gave him the win out of some sort of reverential deference), as well as a former Taskmaster contestant. I don't find his schtick very funny, I don't vibe with it, but clearly a whole generation of comedians find his shit uncontrollably hysterical. I was ready to riot if he were to be crowned winner again. His songs are dumb and his jokes seem to amuse himself more than anyone (though for some reason they are very amused). He was very involved in the whole thing and seemed comfortable in the environment being the reigning champ. His joker was abysmal, but again, the crowd seemed to love it. I dunno.
• Alan Carr - another comedy legend whom I've maybe heard of... but don't remember. He was all over the place in this one, and generally pretty funny throughout, although his joker was a bit... vintage... being a somewhat hastily constructed game show. He was giggling throughout the introduction so I thought he was an easy goner, but he stuck through well into the second half of the show.
• Mel Giedroyc - the host of the Great British Bake Off and a former Taskmaster contestant. She seemed to be an easy get, a real laugher before the show started, but she figured out her "game face" early on (sticking her lower jaw out any time she was about to laugh) and she went deeeep in this one. She was probably the most aggressive player and the one who was looking for opportunity. Her joker was a really bold physical performance which... was... very... interesting (according to David Mitchell).
• David Mitchell - a big time sketch and comedy series performer and actor who I'm quite familiar with. He was as in the mix as Mel, Ramesh, Alan, and Bob, and was seemingly perplexed the whole time.  Did he want to be there, or was that the persona he was playing, of someone who didn't want to be there, to distract him from laughing? He seemed to be acting the whole time. His joker was a terrific really bad first-time stand-up comic routine which was very droll. The only problem is the show clearly shows him smiling a number of times (at least two) and doesn't call him on it.
• Sam Campbell - the odds on favourite for the win because Sam is unflappable. Whenever someone seems to have a comedic edge on him he can completely undercut their bit in surprising and hilarious ways that seem like absolutely no big deal to him ("that's a serious issue" he says to Mitchell during a particularly funny "edgy" run in his bad-stand-up bit). Sam's joker was patentedly absurd, but he let the comedic glory be not himself, but the Tim and Eric-quality community theatre performers he had tag along in his ridiculous set piece. Sam didn't attack enough, though whenever he did chime in it was usually quite sharp. I vibe with Sam Campbell in a way I don't Bob Mortimer.

The winner of the Series was David Mitchell, and almost well earned, except for the fact of the show letting him off the hook for his various smiles. Neither he nor Sam got a yellow card, and so the final tiebreaker came down to who made the most other people laugh, and David won 2-to-one.  I think one of those smiles/yellow cards would have been the tiebreaker otherwise.  

It was a fun series, but the one thing I noticed was how weak the attacking was. On other series we would see competitors smell blood, seeing a comedian on the verge and they would just hammer on them until they broke, and nobody did that here. Mel was the closest, as was Diane Morgan at times. I also noticed that, unlike other LOL series the prize here was just a trophy, and no big charitable donation or prize money.  Also, this series didn't have much in the way of guest interjections. A notable British TV interviewer stepped in with a pretty funny series of interviews with the contestants, and Natasha Demetriou (of What We Do In The Shadows) and Ellie White came out of a cubby as "intimacy coordinators" and made everyone hilariously uncomfortable. Put them both in the next series.

Fun show. 

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In the wake of The Mandalorian and Grogu's middling box office and middling critical reception, there's a lot of angsty blogging, youtubing, tiktokking and podcasting around the state of Star Wars today (present company not excluded), and what the future might bring under Dave Filoni's guiding hand as co-president of Lucasfilm. 

Filoni was brought aboard the Star Wars train by George Lucas himself, to assist Lucas in overseeing The Clone Wars, animation being Filoni's forte. The Clone Wars got off to a rocky start, with a middling theatrical release of the first four episodes as a film (that The Mandalorian and Grogu feels like four episodes of The Mandalorian is not lost on me), but by the second season of the series the kinks had sort of been ironed out, and the series wound up being the glue that holds the Prequel Trilogy together, rather than vice versa.

Filoni went on to create the animated series Star Wars: Rebels, definitely in my top 5 Star Wars projects ever, but that too was a series that took time to build, being enjoyable enough the first season but making itself epic and its characters involving in its second season, increasing in scope for its subsequent two seasons. 

Filoni's works since then have been more in the live action space but not ignoring animation. A revival seventh season of The Clone Wars was an epic capper to the series as well as dovetailing into Revenge of the Sith, while The Bad Batch explored the fallout of the Clone Wars through a new cast of characters and featured the trademark Filoni touch of being a bit rough around the edges the first season, but gelling quite firmly and endearingly the second. What Filoni brought to these projects were incredible character-building, expansive galaxy-building, and a commitment to not forgetting what came before.

While The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and particularly Asoka had Filoni-esque highlights, there's a large contingent of the Star Wars fan base that want live action to be treated differently than the animation, as more accessible, less addled by Star Wars lore.  They're probably right. And the worry is that under his hand the future of Star Wars is going to be an ouroboros.

So when you get a nothingburger like The Mandalorian and Grogu, that worry is justified, but then you also get Maul: Shadow Lord, which expels the issues with previous Filoni-created series and manages to get up and running in a matter of a couple short episodes, rather than an entire season. 

Sure, Maul is a legacy character who has been seemingly killed on screen at least twice already, and it may be a little confusing for any casual fan to understand in what time the series takes place, but it's a show that doesn't get bogged down with the past, and it's also not overly concerned (at least with this first season) with extensively tying itself to everything else Star Wars.

Maul, here (played once again impeccably by Sam Witwer), is our anti-hero, a man who has been wronged by his former master, Darth Sidious, now the Emperor Palpatine, and also full of loathing towards the Jedi, who have gotten in his way more than once. He had, previously, attempted to create a criminal empire to take on his former dark lord, and was not just squashed like a bug, but his brother was killed in the process. He is a traumatized figure whose powers and abilities are both fueled and crippled by that trauma.

His goal, then, is to re-establish a criminal empire, as well as find himself an apprentice to help him take on his former master. The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive goals, but also focusing on both detracts from focus on the other.

On a remote planet, Janix, Maul operates in the shadows, but not deeply enough. His criminal doings have raised the attention of Brander Lawson, an inspector of the local police force played brilliantly by Wagner Maura. Lawson begins investigating Maul's operation and eventually confronts the villain, but is given a proposition, one which a good cop like him cannot accept.

Also entering the picture are Jedi master Eeko-Dio Daki (voiced by Dennis Haysbert) and his padewan Devon Izara (Gideon Adlon). They too are living in the shadows of Janix, scrounging for whatever they can get on the streets, when they confront the former Sith. 

But soon, enemies must be allies on all fronts, as the Empire becomes alerted to Maul's presence and a pair of Inquisitors begin hunting the Jedi and Sith down. As well there's a Star Destroyer full of Imperial troops and bureaucrats locking the planet down, and while it's not quite as invested in highlighting the grip of totalitarianism as Andor was, it's still unsettling and effective in showing how these types of agencies operate in tearing down existing structures of order and imposing their own.

Maul: Shadow Lord surprises at building a cast of characters worth caring about, investing us as equally in Lawson, his son, and his robot partner Two-Boots (Richard Ayoade) as we are with Master Daki and Devon as we are with Maul and his coterie.  We just know that at some point Maul has to turn on Daki and get Devon on his side. That could be a horribly clunky moment if done wrong, and at a certain point we wonder if it's going to happen at all, the show lulling us into a false sense of allyship between the parties. It's honestly surprisingly brilliant in how its story unfolds.

And then there's an epic clash that we thought would be reserved for a second season, but this show is wasting no time. It's not Filoni-pfaffing-about in its first season. It's kinetic and propulsive and easily consumable...too consumable. It is the Pringles of Star Wars, just salt, starch and grease making you crave more, and once it's over, the craving doesn't go away, only becoming stronger in its absence.

If the future isn't so bright for Star Wars live action, at least we know animation is going to be more than okay.

T&K's XMas (2024) Advent Calendar - Day 16: Holidazed, episode 1.

 2024, created by Claudia Grazioso - Hallmark/W Network

A little something outside the Hallmark seasonal norm, and showing the channel's commitment to not sitting still and resting on formulae alone, Holidazed is an 8-episode TV series that is, effectively, 6 intersecting Hallmark Holiday Movie stories, but not movies.

This is perhaps the evolution of the ensemble movie Hallmark has been trying more and more each year (think Haul out the Holly  or The Christmas House).  It's also maybe in direct competition with the Cherry Lane series of movies to see which format performs better: a series of movies or a weekly limited series?

Holidazed is set on a cul-de-sac and follows the six families that live in the neighborhood. Their lives naturally cross paths but each has their own specific story.  The first episode introduces all the families, their dynamics with each other, and their neighbours, and the complications that will need to be overcome.  Each family will have a dedicated episode, and I presume the finale will tie it all together somehow.

I recently wrote about the Netflix series Midnight Mass and what a masterclass it is in establishing its large cast, their relationships to one another, its setting, the series' ominous tone and hinting at what's to come. Holidazed isn't quite as deftly handled, but it does a decent job of weaving through the myriad of characters and how they relate to one another while setting up the complications that will drive their individual narratives.  What holds it back is it's almost too ambitious, with too many characters intermingling to keep every connection perfectly straightforward. As well, almost every premise is pretty cliche, so from the set-up it's like we know where it's going to go, based on Hallmarks of the past.

They are:
The Hill Family. Son Josh (Ian Harding) has returned home for the holidays, where his big city pretentiousness presents itself quite frequently. He's not an asshole about it, he's just a bit of an ass.  He apparently kept buying his parents new household gadgets for fitness or healthy eating and they were just too technical and non-traditional for them, but he kind of doesn't get it. He only sees his way. While heading out to pick up some healthy bowls for dinner in his parents car, he gets pulled over for talking on the phone not hands-free (he was talking to his fiancee who, to put it bluntly, is pretty emotionally cold and didn't care at all about joining him for Christmas). The cop is an old high-school acquaintance, Nora, who he says was always very "by the book" and she says he always though the rules didn't apply to him. He thinks he's charming and Nora is not charmed. Later Josh forgets to put the car in park and it crashes into a fire hydrant. He convinces Nora to get his penance immediately reduced to community service because he's supposed to be moving to Australia with the ice queen after Christmas. He also learns from his parents that Nora is a single mom after her husband died. So, big city big shot returns home to meet single parent he knew from his younger years and they clash at first. We know how this story will go, like every beat of it (especially since we see Josh connect with Nora's son over Legos briefly).

The Lin Family. Ted (Osric Chou) has brought his fiancee Marcus (Shawn Ahmed) home for the holidays. His mom (Sharon Crandall) is ecstatic to spend the time together and plan their wedding. Sister Ella (Jasmine Chen) brings up the topic of Nai Nai comes up and Dad (Stanley Jung) says he booked her on a trip to Palm Springs. Ted is relieved because he hasn't come out to Grandma yet, which Marcus is not thrilled with. Of course, the trip has issues and Nai Nai (Lucille Soong) is home for the holidays and eager to spend time with Marcus whom she believes is Ella's fiancee. Uh oh. Hijinks are bound to ensue before the truth has to come out (literally). Lucille Soong is a legendary character actor, and she's going to kill it in this hopefully not-too-contrived story.

The Woods Family. Lucy (Lindy Booth) runs an restaurant and has the total hots for contractor/handyman Cole (Steven Allerick). It seems mutual. But Lucy's estranged hard-travelling sister Sylvie (Rachelle Lefevre) is home for Hanukkah and she's already starting to dig her charming, worldly claws into Cole.  Lucy's daughter Annie has been best friends with neighbour Max Lewin forever, but now that they're teens things are changing. When popular girls Stephanie drops in, Max is all over her, which makes gives Annie new feelings. Two juvenile relationships, one which makes sense because teens are involved, the other is of the eye rolling middle-agers-shouldn't-act-like-teenagers variety. Hopefully it's more about the sibling drama than misunderstood romance cues.

The Lewin Family. It's going to be a tense Christmas at the Lewin household. Jennifer (Robinne Fanfair) has both her mother and father coming for dinner, but they divorced earlier in the year. Jennifer has just made partner at work and is tired of being put in the middle... and yet, mom Linda (Loretta Devine) manages to skirt having to tell Jennifer's dad, Robert (Dennis Haysbert) that she's bringing her new boyfriend.  Before the episode is over, the truth comes out (and that's before Linda arrives) and Robert seems more than happy that Linda has some other man to torture in his old age...except... when Linda arrives, her boyfriend is a strapping, handsome younger man (and not the Uber driver). This one is far fetched but seems like a great comedic set-up with both Devine and Haysbert... that's high wattage acting talent that should raise even mediocre material.

The Camarena Family. Manny (Tim Perez) has been in a long term feud with neighbour  Chuck Manetti-Hanahan (John C. McGinley) over the volume of Chuck's Christmas decorating. But the two are attempting (not really) to bury the hatchet as Manny's son Kevin has been dating Chuck's daughter Katie (Holland Roden). Chef Gaby (Noemi Gonzalez) returns home for the holidays with big news about her career, which is undercut by Kevin's love life which Gaby didn't know about. Turns out Katie was her high school bully, a fact that not even Katie seems aware of (as she is constantly hugging Gaby and trying to recall "old times" they shared). And then Gaby finds an engagement ring.... The trauma is deep here and I hope the episode featuring this family gets into it, and doesn't just cop out with Katie expressing what she was going through and playing on Gaby's sympathy. Own the damage you caused, Katie! This has so much potential, but I don't believe enough in Hallmark to deliver it. 

The Manetti-Hanahan Family. Chuck, as we've seen, thinks he owns the world, and is oblivious to how he impacts others. Connie (Virginia Madsen) is trying to organize the holidays and keep the peace at home and with the neighbours, and finds it exhausting. Clark (Giles Panton) returns home with his family in tow and from the second they exit the car they are mocked and berated for their trendy lifestyle choices (they're vegan now, but Rebecca [Lucie Guest] has brought all the food so she's no burden but it doesn't matter).  The Manetti-Hanahan household is an utter shit show and Katie is branded a traitor by her father and, like all the kids, finds being at home very difficult. She storms out and winds up staying at the Camarena's for the night (kicking Gaby out of her bed, because Kevin's parents are not letting them sleep in the same bed under their roof).  They're a lot. This is the only story that I don't know exactly where it's going. If we get Chuck having some sort of change of heart and self awareness I'm going to call bullshit, because he's not that kind of guy, I can tell already. Madsen is killing it in what I've seen so far from her, and McGinley is always fun to watch.

Will report back when all is said and done on how each story fared.

KsMIRT: ...into November (Part 1)

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (eh..?) Kent steps through the TV series he completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format.  

This Month:
The Penguin (2024, HBOMax, 8/8 episodes) 
Shrinking Season 2 (2024, AppleTV+, 5/10 episodes) 
What We Do In The Shadows Season 6 (2024, FX/Disney+, 8/11 episodes) Creator: Jemaine Clemen

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The Penguin
Created by Lauren LeFranc

The What 100: Oz Cobb has been a background figure in Gotham City's crime scene for decades, but with his boss Carmine Falcone dead, Oz sees an opportunity. He kills Carmine's son, pins it on rival boss Sal Maroni, and gets ready to start operating, when Carmine's daughter Sofia returns from Arkham Asylum to take her place at the head of the family. Oz used to be her driver, but he ostensibly had her committed 10 years earlier (without cause) as a play to move up in the ranks. Meanwhile, Oz is still trying to make his Ma proud, though she suffers from dementia, and also takes a timid, stuttering kid, Vic Aguilar, under his wing, as he sees himself in him. 

(1 Great): I was surprised to find that Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs) stole the show from under Colin Farrell (Daredevil).  I had thought Farrell, who was utterly unrecognizable as The Penguin in limited screen time in Matt Reeves' The Batman, might emerge more here, but nope, never once did I see Farrell under all that prosthetic and behind the accent. It's a transformative role that he absolutely kills, and is compelling every moment on screen, eyes darting ever so subtly side to side as he processes the many, many, many predicaments he finds himself in and, somehow, climbs his way on top. 

But for as goddamn great as Farrell was, Milioti as Sofia is maybe even better. Like Oz is called pejoratively "The Penguin" because of his waddle due to a club foot, Sofia is called "The Hangman" because she was a disturbed serial killer who murdered a dozen women. Okay, maybe not quite the same. Over the first half of the series we learn that Sofia was framed, given a false psych evaluation, and locked up. A particularly harrowing but incredible episode is dedicated to Sofia unfortunate journey 10 years earlier. Sofia is not the murderer everyone (including the audience) is led to think she is. Except Oz's role in her life continues to test her, and she very much might become exactly who everyone believes her to be. Milioti weaves between shrinking violet and embattled empowerment. She has to walk a thousand miles in Sofia's shoes over the course of the series and we see so many facets of the character. While Oz isn't one-note (he's entirely too two-faced for that to be true) Sofia is so rich and fascinating and heartbreaking and scary. Milioti handles every facet with care and nuance. She gets an exceptionally striking wardrobe in this series, very sexy plunging necklines on perfectly tailored gowns, but both the camera and the performer know Sofia is wear these outfits not for others, but for herself. There's no ogling, just increasing confidence.

(1 Good): When Oz meets Vic (Rhenzy Feliz) and takes him under his wing, it feels like the show is immediately showing us Oz's good side. Oz has a club foot, which we see in full prosthetic only once early in the show, but it's enough to know that he has a complex about it. So the stuttering kid, the softness in Oz's eyes as he looks at him, it's endearing. We similarly see a softer side to Oz with his sort-of girlfriend, Eve (Carmen Ejogo, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them). She is a sex worker, but also her own boss, and looks out for her girls in an ugly world, and Oz it seems has no issue with her profession, nor has any desire to influence her profession by taking control or forcing her out of it. And then there's his Ma, to whom he is utterly devoted. He keeps her hidden in the suburbs, and none of his criminal colleagues are aware she's alive. She's suffering from a form of dementia, and he has such sympathy and tenderness for her, but she also, in her more lucid moments, surprisingly, seems to be the driving factor of his criminal aspirations. All these relationships Oz has, as I said, seem to show a softer side of him, but eventually we see the screw turn, and there's always something darker underneath, but it's in how that screw turns that is so engrossing.

(1 Bad): I'm not going to be that fanboy and say "No Batman" because, by the end of it, I don't see anywhere for the Batman to fit. I don't even think there's a mention of The Bat at all in the series, which, in a past life, I would have found completely unacceptable. But as a mature viewer with some sense of understanding of world building and storytelling, even mentioning Batman would take focus away from what is happening in this very gnarly street-level crime drama. 

Instead, my initial gripe was about Gotham not looking much at all like the Gotham of The Batman. A large part of that is location. They shot The Penguin in New York, while the film was shot in London, Liverpool and Glasgow. Very different settings. And I wanted to see a bit more of the aftermath of the devastation as a result of Riddler's destruction of the levees in The Batman, and we do, but still not enough for my liking.

Also, Mark Strong replaced John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, which I thought would be a bigger deal, but Carmine only has a few scenes in Sofia's flashback episode so it wasn't as crucial as I thought.

META: I don't like mobsters and crime dramas, generally. They're not my thing. I don't like watching bad people do bad things, and for absence of anyone "good" we're forced to sympathize with one of the bad guys. I don't like sympathizing with the bad guys. I wasn't sure I was going to like The Penguin for that very reason. I worried they were going to just go Sopranos or Godfather pastiche (not that I would really know if they did, having never watch either).  And while the crime element didn't really excite me much, the character side of things did. What Lauren LeFranc and her writing team did with the relationship dynamics in this show was so great. How they get us to alternately root for Oz or Sofia and then pull the rug out from under us only to get us to root for them again, only to tug another rug once more. It creates a lot of conflict in the viewer as it forces us to examine these rather full characters as a whole and search in ourselves what it is we actually like about them, and how far sympathy should go in excusing or even support some pretty nasty behaviour. Of course Vic is our heart and soul in the series, with Feliz delivering a really charming performance as a kid in over his head but finding his way above it.  It's a painful journey though, as he seems so genuinely nice that you just want him to leave it all behind but you also have to respect his loyalty and devotion.  

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Shrinking Season 2
Created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein

The What 100: Jimmy (Segel) and Gaby (Jessica Williams) sleep together, but it's not a good fit. And Jimmy naturally fucks it up. Jimmy must let Sean (Luke Tennie) go as a patient, as he's too involved in his life outside of therapy. Jimmy coaxes Paul (Harrison Ford)  to let down his guard with patients, with his girlfriend (Wendie Malick) and his daughter. Jimmy must mend bridges with best friend Brian (Michael Urie) while working on helping free his patient Grace (Heidi Gardner) from prison after she pushed her abusive boyfriend off a cliff. The drunk driver who killed Jimmy's wife, Alice's mom, reaches out to each of them to make amends, and Alice (Lukita Maxwell) takes it real bad. 

(1 Great): It's almost unfair to this exceptionally talented cast that Harrison Ford is in the show, because he's going to steal all the attention, every time. In 50 years of Hollywood stardom, we never did get much Harrison Ford in comedies (Working Girl, Sabrina) but his rather limited history of talk show appearances always highlighted how sardonic and funny he was. His role as Paul here seems like talk show Harrison Ford, but in a scripted sitcom.

(1 Good): For a sitcom, it's really, really bold to bring in the drunk driver who killed Tia (Lilan Bowden) into the story, as there's so little comedy to be mined from that. It's really just pain. But having that guy be Brett Goldstein, who has the sorrowful face, he immediately gives the audience a pang of sympathy for his  remorse, and conveys very well the burden of living with having done something so awful that cannot be fixed.  In a show about healing mental and emotional wounds, that's a pretty big one.

(1 Bad): It's a pretty big cast of characters on this show and they don't all seem to have a place within it. I think Michael Urie's Brian is a particular outsider in all of this and I'm still not sure that the friendship between him and Jimmy really works. They're supposed to be best friends but I never get that vibe from them. Whereas his dynamic with Jessica Williams' Gaby is so effortless, that they should have been best friends. Rather than Gaby being Jimmy's wife's best friend, Brian should have. 

META: We only got halfway through the season before my sister cancelled her AppleTV+ subscription. We'll pick up the rest of the season when we subscribe for Severance Season 2 starting in January (I think).

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What We Do In The Shadows Season 6
Created by Jemaine Clement

The What 100: It's on last hurrah with the gang of goofy vampires. Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) gets an office job, so Nandor (Kayvan Novak) and Nadia (Natasia Demetriou) decide to help him climb the corporate ladder by joining him at the office. Laszlo (Matt Berry) makes himself a "Cravensworth's Monster", frankensteining some body parts together and resurrecting the dead tissue, and also deals with the ghost of his father (Steve Coogan). Old roommate Jerry (Mike O'Brian) returns from a too-long slumber, only to find the vampire's lack of takeover of America very disappointing. 

(1 Great): I don't know that I will ever get tired of how Matt Berry pronounces words funny. I saw a clip on Insta recently where Berry explained he gets bored doing retakes of the same lines so he plays with the words for his own a-mee-use-ment... but it's ours too. And this season Laszlo is in prime form, creating his monster, dealing with his dad, and showing off his pseudo-Ghostbusters gear.

(1 Good): I always enjoy seeing neighbour Sean (Anthony Atamanuik), and delight in Laszlo's deep affection and admiration for this totally underwhelming and unremarkable person. The neighbours next door really put Sean through the wringer over the past 6 seasons, and why stop now. When Sean is laid off, he calls Laszlo's bluff and asks for a opportunity at the railroad Laszlo and Nandor claim to work at. So Laszlo and Nandor set up a whole fake railroad office, staffed with paid actors, to keep the ruse going. Another episode, Sean is in the throes of March Madness, but Laszlo thinks he's possessed, and the only way to get rid of one demon is to use an even scarier demon, so he summons one (Jon Glaser) who turns out to be just as big a March Madness buff.

(1 Bad): This is the final season of the show, at time of writing we're 8 episodes deep in a 10 (nope, sorry, 11) episode order, and there's no sense of finality to this at all. There's no winding down, no sense that we're going to visit or revisit past glories for the fans, and little sense of paying off the long-running (but never prominent) story threads. Which is to say this feels like any other season, and gives the impression it's not the end, which should make me happy, but I have to really wonder if the finale will give any sense of closure. And will we see The Baron and Jerry together? Will Jerry's plan for the vampire dominance of America kick off, or will he fall sway to all the many recreational distractions America has to offer too.  Also, what's the point of having Kristen Schaal on the main cast if you're never going to use her?

META: Now that it's coming to an end, I think I'm appreciating it much more.

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KsMIRT: August wind-up [part 2]

K'sMIRT is Kent's Month in Reviewing Television, where each month (or mebbe twice each month?!?) I step through the TV series I completed watching each month in the 1 Great-1 Good-1 Bad format. 

This (half) Month:
Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4 (2024, 5/5 episodes, Netflix)
Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 (2024, 10/10 episodes, AmazonPrime)
G.I. Joe: Renegades Season 1 (2010, 16/26 episodes, Tubi) 
Time Bandits Season 1 (2024, 2/10 episodes, Apple TV+)
Derry Girls Series 3 (2022, 7/7 episodes, Netflix)

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Unsolved Mysteries Volume 4

The What 100:  The big pappy of true crime series returns with five new yet-to-be-solved events of a suspicious nature. These include new looks at Jack the Ripper and the mothman (having now migrated from its usual West Virginia stomping grounds to Illinois' Chicago area), as well as a "who did it?" in Calgary, a "whose head is that" in Florida, and a cold case of a murdered college student on campus in the late 1970s.

(1 Great) Having watched many a season of the vintage Robert Stack-led Unsolved Mysteries giving myself many a night terror as a result, I have to say the new, host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format is pretty great. For the most part, I like how this format frequently teases out the mystery for a good while. The storytelling, the editing is exceptionally good, and as a result a lot of these stories have a stickiness to them that make them hard to easily forget or let go of. I puzzled over "The Body in the Basement", a captivating highlight (and gut wrenching tragedy) for days before my brain settled in on there being no answers to the questions it was asking. Did she fall or was she pushed? If those are her own footprints in her blood, why did she stop short of going upstairs? What happened to her phone? Was the door locked or not? Why were there no paw prints in the blood? So many questions that make no sense.

(1 Good) I like that even though it's using this new, host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format, it's not just going with murder/death mysteries, but still exploring the paranormal phenomena the original series did with the same documentary-style lens as the other stories. The Jack the Ripper bit was probably the least intriguing because we're no closer to answers than we were two decades ago, but this was all about dispelling myths. "The Mothman Revisted" episode, though, was neat for how it cited the classic Stack episode on the Mothman, but had something definitely new to talk about. The middle episode, as well, neither a murder/death mystery, nor a paranormal mystery, but instead, a found embalmed head and the people trying to identify it. Curious.

(1 Bad) What's missing from this series that the Stack series had was updates. It directs you online for submitting any tips or info on the subjects at hand and for updates, but the old series used to do updates on repeats or in a subsequent episode, if there were updates to be had. There was something very satisfying about them. In this host-less, hour-long, true crime documentary-style format on Netflix, there's not the same space for updates that there was in a 20+ episode season of a weekly TV series. That said, they could drop Unsolved Mysteries updates on Netflix at any time, as part of a season or just stand alone.  I don't know why they haven't unless nothing material has come of any of the cases yet.

META: I don't really do a lot of true crime... I've dipped into a podcast or two, I watch the occasional documentary film or series, but it's not a regular part of my diet. Still, I actively look forward to each "Volume" of Unsolved Mysteries. Something about having a dose of the unresolved in my diet is very stimulating mentally, even if the subject matter is disturbing.  I can't explain it.

... Wait.... there's a podcast?!? And Volume 5 is coming... October 2nd!

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Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1

The What 100: It's a new Batman animated series from the co-creator of Batman: The Animated Series...Bruce Timm. He's backed by The Batman writer-director Matt Reeves as well as J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production company. It's a more mature animated series set in a vaguely 1930's/40's noirish reality, and early in Batman's career as a vigilante. The over-arching stories are about district attorney Harvey Dent's fraught campaign for mayor, and corruption in both politics and the legal system.

(1 Great) As jarring as they may be, I absolutely love the swings this series is taking. Actually being set in the 1930's (ish) rather than the "neo-'30's deco-styled modern Gotham" of The Animated Series allows it to establish a very specific tone, that of the hardboiled, noir stories of the era. On top of that it plays fast and loose with established Batman lore. The Penguin who pops up in the first episode is not at all like any Penguin we've seen before, but I think she's incredible. Same with the divergences for Harley Quinn or Gentleman Ghost or Firebug, among others. 

(1 Good) It's a show aimed less at satisfying the comic book geek and instead scratching the pulp origins itch that clearly Timm always had and never shook.  It's aged up in terms of tone, for a cartoon it's happier with the darker corners of its world and emotions. It's not unapproachable for children, but it's not softened for them either. Batman's kind of a dickhead (every time he coldly calls Alfred "Pennyworth" I die inside just a little...but there's that moment of redemption in the finale that shows there's room for character growth in this series). They're also not afraid of finite ends to their stories or characters, so tread lightly with your expectations.

(1 Bad) As much as I understand the series is not much interested in a world of spandex, and that it's creating its villains as if they were out of 30's and 40's cinema, I still desperately want the mythology to flesh itself out. I want hints that Barbara is going to be Batgirl and Renee will become The Question. They're both agents of upholding the law, but they're both becoming more and more aware of how the system fails, and I wonder how long they can keep at it before they become disillusioned and join Batman in his style of justice?

META: If one is doing a new Batman for TV, it either needs to be a bold reset, or a near-continuation of what has come before. Rarely is it ever a near-continuation of what has come before, and bold resets can lead to disgruntled fanboys (is there any other type?). The word on the street for The Caped Crusader (despite the creatives saying otherwise) was that it was a continuation, or maybe a prequel to The Animated Series. It is not. If anything, though, because TAS was so art deco inspired and had that feel of the 1930s, it's almost like this didn't veer far enough away from that aesthetic to fully distinguish itself. I think that's what many fans who may wind up disliking this are feeling. But I dig it.

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G.I. Joe: Renegades

The What 100:  Scarlett recruits Duke, Roadblock, Tunnel Rat and Ripcord on a secret mission to infiltrate Cobra Industries and expose it for what it is, not a multinational manufacturer of diverse goods and services, but a secret military with designs on taking over the world with experimental, illegal technology. Not only do they have their hands in seemingly everyone's pockets, but they have their own 24 hour news network to spread whatever lies and disinformation they want. And so, our heroes, in trying to uncover this new world-class evil, are instead brandished as terrorists and outlaws and are on the run from their very own military employers.

(1 Great) I clued in during the initial two-parter that it seemed kind of A-Team-ish in its construction, and then the third episode rolled out its new opening credits:
"Accused of a crime they didn't commit, a ragtag band of fugitives fights a covert battle to clear their names and expose the insidious enemy that is... Cobra. Some call them outlaws. Some call them heroes. But these determined men and women think of themselves only as 'Ordinary Joes'. And this is their story."

Yah, it's the A-Team all right. Each episode is mostly just the Renegades roll into town, find the townspeople embroiled in something Cobra Industries related and they try to help out or expose it. It's formulae, and it's nothing groundbreaking, but it's pretty great.  

(1 Good) I was genuinely surprised by the episode "Homecoming Part 1" which jumps into flashbacks of the origin of Duke's rivalry with Flint which is some pretty deep character building for ostensibly a kids' cartoon. There's a lot of nuance introduced into their dynamic which then pays off in "Homecoming Part 2" where the Joes are captured by the military, with straight-laced, by-the-book Flint maybe seeing a crack in his worldview.

(1 Bad) I do get why this didn't resonate with Joe fans. Despite being exceptionally well animated, it's too divergent from the core G.I. Joe idea, that of a highly trained special mission force who are in an open battle against terrorist organization Cobra. The silent war of Renegades is so 2010, of anti-capitalism, and illicit behind-the-scenes dealings, of there being forces in the world so large that nothing will change in the way the world works unless they decide it should change... it's heavy shit, and G.I. Joe isn't really that known for its heavy shit.  Plus, like Batman: The Caped Crusader all of the characters are some type of reinvention of their previous incarnations. Snow Job, Shipwreck, Dr. Mindbender, all of them, with the exception of Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow (again with this ninja shit) seem pretty vastly different from how they've been portrayed elsewhere. It's hard to just sit back and enjoy it, and not want it to just get over its "on-the-run" business and become outright Joes vs. Cobra.

META: It's G.I. Joe, but the A-Team! It seems incredible to me - the me of 2024 - that any regular series would so blatantly rip off the formulae of an old TV series (uh, like Poker Face did Columbo?) but a cursory look at 2010 and yeah, the Liam Neeson-led A-Team movie had just hit, and I think this was made in parallel production. I bet that they had banked on the A-Team movie being a massive success (where the first G.I. Joe live action movie truly wasn't) and they would look like geniuses for reformulating G.I. Joe in that manner. But the A-Team failed (not dismally, but not inspiring a whole new generation of A-Team obsessed kids) and so did Renegades. Even the long-running G.I. Joe action figure line produced a wave or two of figures styled after this cartoon (pretty great looking figures) but failed to ignite much fervour (much of it went on clearance, though they've since become pretty collectible). I'm just picking off episodes here and there, but I will definitely complete it (and probably be sad there isn't more when I'm done).

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Time Bandits Season 1

The What 100: A reimagining of the 1981 Terry Gilliam film by Taika Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Iain Morris. Young, talkative, nerdy Kevin is 10 years old and not very well liked by anyone. He's bullied at school and by his sister, and his parents, obsessed with their phones, don't understand why their unusual, curious, intelligent child isn't into "normal" stuff. When a  troupe of time traveling thieves with a stolen time map use his bedroom as a passageway, he finds himself swept up in their journey, much to the chagrin of the Bandits.

(1 Great) The show, by and large, looks pretty good. There are some interesting sequences, displays of effects (both practical and digital) that are quite eye catching or stimulating.

(1 Good) Jemaine Clement plays a ruler of demons, a sort of devil, one might say, that is very interested in the bandits and their time map. The scenes of Clement in his ample prosthetic make-up and the absurd hellscape sets he's in are pretty imaginative.

(1 Bad) We only made it two episodes in.  Both episodes were written by Clement, Morris and Waititi with Waititi directing. We have ample love for Waititi and Clement, both individually and together Lady Kent and I do, and yet this did not work at all for either of us. There were a few chuckles but no real laughs, there was a twinge of interest, a glimmer of adventure, but most of it fell flat. Kevin is supposed to be annoying and young Kal-El Tuck really gets it, but there's too much of this riding on his nascent shoulders. The leaderless bandits are led by Lisa Kudrow's put-upon Penelope, but it's Kudrow's sense of smart-idiot quirk that doesn't jibe well with the sensibilities of Waititi and Clement as I know them.  Unlike Our Flag Means Death or What We Do In The Shadows, the writers and performers do not give their individual bandits enough unique character or charisma to stand out. They are a unit that all seem to behave much the same way, they're not very fun.  

META: I have only seen Gilliam's Time Bandits once as an adult, and it didn't resonate with me. At this point it's a vague memory. I more recently read the Marvel comics adaptation (like maybe last year even) and I can't remember that at all. Perhaps it's the property that doesn't work for me.  But specifically here, I look at the repartee of Our Flag... or The Completely Made-up Adventures of Dick Turpin and there's a template there for these types of characters and how to make them funny and subversive and for some reason these very talented creators just couldn't figure it out.  But is it the writing, or the casting? I'm not sure any of the bandits besides Kudrow stands out, and she stands out for the wrong reason. It just doesn't work and I'm feeling completely uninspired to return to it.

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Derry Girls Series 3

The What 100: One final go for the girls from Derry, their families, and Sister George Michael. As The Troubles reach their revolutionary turning point in the mid-1990s, the girls come of age, ready to graduate and it seems all of Ireland is ready to move on to the next moments of their lives.

(1 Great) The best episode of the series is "The Reunion" which finds the moms and aunties and their friends reuniting for their high school reunion. This leads to all the old anxieties, hurt feelings, and pubescent emotions rushing back, with long buried secrets trying to crawl out of their grave and embarrass everyone. It's an episode replete with flashbacks of the women in their younger years of the late-70's with the obvious parallels to the main young cast of Derry Girls providing the most rewarding threads (especially considering that Mary used to behave exactly like Erin does and yet she comes down on her so hard for it). The whole long-buried (literally) secret is a great through line and provides a little mystery to unfold to really suck in the audience. It's a wonderfully crafted, hilarious episode.

(1 Good) After two highly, highly successful seasons, Series 3 seems to break out of its small-scale shell and go much, much bigger with every episode. It's almost like a different show, the scale of production seems that much larger, and the writing that much better at balancing the adventures of the young cast and their parents, grandparents and teachers such that it doesn't just feel like a teen comedy anymore.  In some ways it could be seen as a betrayal of what was established before, but in other ways it feels like it's finally coming into itself, somewhat unfettered by its previous limitations. Most of the episodes this season take place on location, whether it's another town, or on a train, or at a police precinct with Liam Neeson in charge.  My initial impulse is to bristle a things like appearances by Neeson or Fatboy Slim, but they're really just damn good fun.

(1 Bad)  Episode six finds the teens trying to get tickets to a Fatboy Slim concert being held in town. When they come up in the line to buy tickets, Clare has a meet-cute with the ticket girl, except they are the last tickets available. The street toughs behind them aren't pleased and accuse them of jumping the queue and then want to fight James for the tickets. Things take a turn, and later Michelle goes on a sob-story-leads-to-wish-giving TV program and lies about James getting beaten up and their tickets being stolen. This leads to the Girls being VIPs for the concert but Clare the whole time is just fixated on meeting up with the ticket girl. The Girls have another encounter with the street toughs, while Clare makes out with ticket girl, and they get thrown out, yet it's still pretty triumphant overall. A rollicking episode. Except Clare's dad dies and it ends with her big gay triumph undercut by weepy memorial for her Da.  Why? What does this serve, like, at all? Did we ever even meet Clare's dad in the series? Why decimate this triumphant moment for her like this? Even if it's something true from the creator or staff writer's lives, there's no time in this show for this rapid mood swing in the storytelling. It's the most bizarre creative moment of the series and leaves a real bad taste for the penultimate episode.

META: As I mentioned when I last wrote about this show, each series is too short. Even at 7 episodes it's not nearly enough. There's only a total of 19 episode in the entire run. There's something to be said about not milking a premise or quitting whilst one is ahead, but when you have this great of a setup there's so many possibilities for storytelling. I feel like they barely scratched the surface and we barely got to know these characters. Their growth from series to series seemed so spontaneous.  And it's not like you can just do a revival, since these performer are only getting older (Saoirse-Monica Jackson in The Decameron now looks like a grownup, no longer a viable teen), so they needed to do more when they could have. It's a shame.  Like, why not just a Sister George Michael spin-off show then?