KWIF: Mickey 17 (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week(ish) in Film.

This Week:
Mickey 17 (2025, d. Bong Joon Ho - in theatre)
Bravestarr: The Legend (1988, d. Tom Tataranowicz - YouTube)
Red Rooms (2023, d. Pascal Plante - Crave)
Problemista (2023, d. Julio Torres - Crave)
Wicked Little Letters (2023, d. Thea Sharrock - Crave)

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Mickey 17 is a satirical sci-fi romp from the fantastic Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. His vision for the film is one that is delightfully odd, replete with director Bong's usual nuanced touches and social commentary, but this is the first of his films that I've seen where he seems like he's wrestling with the construction of the narrative.   

The plot finds Robert Pattinson's Mickey on the run from particularly sadistic loan sharks after his macron business failed, and his only hope of outrunning his fate is to get on board one of the long-distant colonizing space ships (as is noted, the environment of Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable and so competition for spots on these ships is fierce). Mickey's got no particular special skills, knowledge, or influence so his only option is to take on the designation of "Expendable". As such, Mickey's physiology, personality and memories are downloaded and should Mickey die in the process of doing his jobs (all jobs which are all but guaranteed to kill him, such as being the guinea pig for catching the virii on their new planet, and for testing vaccines to inoculate against them).

There is a tremendous exposition dump in the first act of the film that would feel interminably long if it weren't so entertaining.  A lesson we've learned from, like, time loop movies, is dying over and over again can make good comedy fodder.  It also squares us up for the politics of the era (not too dissimilar from our own) and that the spaceship Mickey is aboard is led by failed presidential candidate, and definite center of a cult-of-personality, Kenneth Marshall.  As played by Mark Ruffalo, Marshall is like a mix of Trump, Musk and televangelist Jim Bakker (with Toni Collette being his sauce-obsessed, intellectually superior co-conspirator, ala Tammy Faye). Marshall is an absolute clown of a human being, an absurd egocentric who has failed upward with the support a gullible populace. He's uncomfortably comedic, and just as reprehensible. Ruffalo puts on a good show.  

When we first meet Mickey, he's the 17th version. He has fallen in an ice cave and left for dead. But the native potato bugs rescue him.  Being a man made of soup, he just thinks his meat is bad, and the potato bugs rejected him. Returning to the ship, he comes to find that his replacement, Eighteen, has already been made, and the woman who's always by his side, Nasha (Naomi Ackie) is already cozied up with him. Eighteen is a much brasher, no-nonsense version of Mickey, while Seventeen is much more timid and reserved. The two of them, through a series of increasingly odd events, spark a revolution aboard their ship, but first spark outrage being Multiples, an affront against God and all that's good apparently (as a soul can't be shared between two bodies, or so they say).

Following the massive international and award-winning success of Parasite in 2019, Bong Joon Ho got a budgetary upgrade for his follow-up, Mickey 17. The film's price tag at nearly $120 million is well over double his next most expensive film (Okja, for the record) and triple that of Snowpiercer which played like a blockbuster, but was made pretty modestly.  In Mickey 17, it's all up there on the screen, though. The sets are plentiful, and feel all of a whole, creating a world aboard a spaceship that is tangible and lived-in. The alien planet that is the destination is a desolate and frigid place populated by a race of gigantic potato bugs, and, yeah, it's all well-realized too.  Could Director Bong have made this on a slimmer budget? Absolutely, but it wouldn't look nearly as good.

Pattinson and Ackie are great together, and I loved how Pattinson seemingly channelled Joe Pesci from Home Alone for Seventeen but Joe Pesci from Casino for Eighteen.  I enjoyed watching the movie, quite a bit, it is so fun and weird, but I didn't come out loving it as I had hoped. Nothing sticks out as particularly bad, or egregious, but it doesn't quite all gel together smoothly. There's not really a clear message to the picture, as it seems to be working through a multitude of societal critiques.  I think were this a film from the 1980s and I'd just seen it for the first time, I would be just agog, absolutely blown away by it, so maybe I just need to give it a little time. In the end, even if it is more of a lark than another Oscars-worthy movie from Director Bong, it's still an entertaining picture that should be worth a revisit.

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The 1980's were the golden age of action figures. G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers were the top tier "boys toys" lines of the era, bolstered by syndicated cartoon series or big franchise movies.  These major properties still live today not just out of nostalgia, but a rich sense of world building that keeps sparking the imagination of young and old alike.

The pervasiveness of these toy lines was in part due to the loosening of restrictions around advertising to children, and so the accompanying weekly (or daily, in some cases) cartoon became a necessity when launching any new toy line.  It was no guarantee to success, however, and each also-ran toyline has its own unique story to tell (see the excellent pop-culture histories on the Secret Galaxy youtube channel).

Filmation, makers of the fine He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoons wanted to find success with their own ideas, not just producing cartoons based another company's intellectual property. Long story short (again, watch Secret Galaxy's recent retrospective), Filmation brought Bravestarr, a mash up of nearly everything popular in the 80's -- sci-fi, westerns, magic, and superheroes (it only needed dinosaurs) -- to Mattel, and the toy company ran with it... but too fast for Filmation. The plan was for Bravestarr's origin story to debut in theatres in the summer of 1987 along with the toys, followed by the ongoing series in the fall to bolster continued sales of the toys, but Mattel jumped the gun, excited to get the toys on shelves for Christmas 1986...where they died on the vine.

The cartoon series debuted on time, in the fall of '87, but the movie was delayed, and released in 1988 with little to no fanfare, the toy line already languishing on shelves and Mattel having moved on. Filmation as a studio was sunk and Bravestarr: The Legend was all but forgotten (in fact it was only upon watching Secret Galaxy's recent video that I even learned there was a Bravestarr movie).

Did it deserve its fate? The toys have become a bit of a cult classic, certain toys reaching pretty astronomical prices in the nostalgia-laden aftermarket, but unlike the big names of the 80's, there's been no revival for Bravestarr (maybe in part because licensing is a bit of a clusterfudge). But having caught the feature (it's on youtube), I have to say...I would have freaking loved this as a kid, and I quite like it now.

There aren't a lot of toy lines or multimedia properties, even to this day, with a person of colour as the lead, and most lines feature no Indigenous characters at all. Bravestarr is a series built around a futuristic society where a Native American is the titular hero.  "The Legend" is Bravestarr's origin story, and it starts with the history of Bravestarr's people, a civilization of Native Americans with very advanced technology and magics, being assaulted by Stampede, a power-mad invading force that wants to take the civilization's power for its own. I don't know if the allegory of colonial genocide was the intention, or if they just kind of stumbled into it, but it's there. 

Bravestarr's people escape to the stars as the planet is literally destroyed by Stampede's greedy thirst for power (again with the allegory), and only settle again when a new colony on the planet "New Texas" is formed as a result of the "gold rush" like atmosphere for the precious fuel jewel Kerium. But the planet is already besieged by Stampede and his proxy, Tex Hex. So the mayor of New Texas sends for help, which comes in the form of Bravestarr, the newly recruited galactic marshall, joined by J.B. the tough woman judge (and love interest) appointed to the planetary county.  He's there to clean things up, but he fails...at first.

It takes Bravestarr reconnecting with his roots, granting him great powers (strength of the bear, speed of the puma, eyes of the hawk, and ears of the wolf, all very nicely visualized in the show), and joining forces with the indigenous Prairie People of the planet that he is properly able to take on the evil forces New Texas faces.

In total, "The Legend" is an unevenly told story, waffling in and out of exposition, at one point running through a montage of, I presume, all the action figures available to buy. It makes use of the same well-trod 80's mold of good-vs-evil toy cartoons, and of the equally well-trod origin story formulae (that would get a workout for a good long while to come). But at the same time, the combination of influences and genres does make for a unique scenario that is quite enticing, and the animation is, often, quite stellar. Filmation's cartoons of the 80s were always a cut above. They were know to reuse animation to cut costs, but their beautiful background paintings and live-model character references always made their work stand out. Here, it's animation meant for cinematic release, so it's at another level to what we're used to seeing out of the studio's TV output. Anime influences can be felt in the work, and the visualization of Stampede is an homage to the classic Disney moment in Fantasia, "The Night on Bald Mountain".  It's all really a cut above.

The story ebbs and flows, showing signs that the Filmation team isn't fully comfortable working in feature length storytelling, but for the most part it's a satisfying watch (in spite of a frequently grating synthesized orchestra score). What gives me pause is the general conceit of using non-descript Native American culture as backdrop for a sci-fi-superhero-western meant to sell toys, a literal commodification of the culture. It would feel less...icky... if there were more Native Americans directly involved with the whole production. Bravestarr is voiced by a white man (Pat Fraley) for cripes sake! Representation matters, not just for what we seen on screen, but who is telling the stories behind the scenes. From my limited caucasian perspective, it seems like none of Bravestarr is meant as offensive, but it's also not doing the good work either. I would love for a First Nations or Native American creative team to revive this property with authenticity. I can imagine a Sterlin Harjo production would be pretty phenomenal. Maybe it's possible if the Masters of the Universe movie does well next year, creating a surge of toy property movies. 

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Red Rooms (or Les chambres rouge in its native Quebecois tongue) opens on the face of a attractive woman sleeping. Her surroundings are grey, and she is somewhat bundled up. The colour saturation is almost non-existent, intoning the chill of her surroundings. After waking she bundles up her blanket and makeshift pillow, and determinedly walks down the street. Her full-length wool coat is tailored perfectly, she looks far too beautiful and put together to be unhoused...but we don't know. We next see her entering a building, being scanned, having her possessions checked at security, and once through she finds her destination...a smallish courtroom where she sits in the back of three aisles. 

We learn that a case is just beginning in this courtroom, with the prosecution and defence delivering their opening arguements. The case involves the kidnapping, assault, mutilation of three teenage girls, and the prosecution alerts the jury to the fact that there is video footage of two of the three murders that were filmed and sold on the dark web. It's a grisly story, and as the lawyers deliver their speeches, the camera floats around the courtroom, sometimes fixating on the attorney speaking, or the one who is not, or the accused sitting in a plexiglass box looking bored, or on the woman we met in the opening frame of the film.

This is Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariepy), she is ostensibly the film's protagonist, but for much of the film she is basically unknowable. Kelly-Anne is, we learn, not homeless, she just camps out each evening nearby the courthouse in order to keep her seat in the small viewers galley.  She is a model, she is also an avid (and successful) online poker player, and she is very web/computer savvy (she hacked her off-the-shelf AI assistant and operates it off a private server). 

Kelly-Anne, we see, fixates on the mother of one of the victims in court, more than she even leers at the accused, and she seems slightly paranoid when the crown's cybersecurity expert looks at her too long. We just never understand why. She is caught by press coming out of the courtroom, but she doesn't seem interested in speaking to them, unlike the other young woman, Clementine (Laurie Babin) who ventured in from Northern Quebec to watch the trial with an unhealthy fixation on the man on trial.

Clementine thinks she's found a kindred spirit in Kelly-Anne, but the model/hacker gives nothing away. She never confirms which side she's on, just that it seems very important to her to be in attendance at the trial.

The score to Red Rooms is exceptionally minimal, to the point that the soundtrack of the film, anytime we're in Kelly-Anne's high-rise apartment, is simply the whistling of the wind as it scrapes the side of the building. The possibilities of what Kelly-Anne's interest in the film are plenty... like, was she an early survivor of the accused, or is she like Clem just obsessed with him, or is she a true crime junkie, or was she an accomplice or somehow involved, or even the murderer. Whenever Gariepy supremely reserved performance threatens to tell on her, she does something else -- sometimes overt, sometimes nuanced -- that completely undermines prior assumptions. Her behaviour gets pretty whackadoo late in the film, and it's not entirely certain if it's performance, and if so, for whom.

Red Rooms quietly made some 2024 top ten lists of critics I follow, and from the capsule reviews I was expecting something more... conventionally thrilling, and was so happy to find that it got my heart racing because this curiosity that is Kelly-Anne is such an unknown quantity.

This is, as I like to say, a deliberately paced film, and definitely not for the impatient. It makes you squirm because of subject matter, and the time it spends contemplating it, and the time spent with these people who are perhaps too interested in it.  It is an unsettling film despite having no overtly grotesque visuals, just the insinuation of them, of knowing they exist, and sometimes hearing vague audio and seeing peoples' reactions to them. If it is a film commenting on anything, it is our society's fascination with murders and murderers, and how often, in the process of examining this fascination, victims and their stories are forgotten.

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Julio Torres as a comedian, performer, writer, and artist is a very distinct voice. It's not just that he was born and raised in El Salvador, nor that he is a queer performer, although both are very much a part of his presence, whether on stage or screen. No, what makes Torres so distinct is he is an unapologetic weirdo whose sense of humour can best be described as obliquely surreal. His comedy special, My Favourite Shapes, in which he sits in the center of a conveyor belt that enters and exits off stage behind him, and dispenses oddball toys and abstractly shaped objects which he then discusses as he presents them to the audience by way of a projector...well, it's one of the most unique comedy routines I've seen in a long time. It was bizarre, strangely frivolous and yet seemed deeply personal and spoke much to Torres' voice and how he sees the world.  He's also the creator of Los Espookys, the hilarious Spanish language HBO show about Mexican hipsters who put their homegrown special effects makeup to work via a haunting-for-hire enterprise, and as a writer on SNL he wrote one of my all-time favourite sketches, "Wells for boys".

Problemista is Torres' first directorial effort which at once seems both personal and yet distant from connecting to real emotions. It can be a challenge for creators who excel in the surreal to ground their work with the relatable. They are capable in inviting you into their unique point of view, but have a much harder time with helping you understand them.

In Problemista, Torres plays Alejandro, a sensitive young man who finds himself in New York with the desire to work as a toy designer for Hasbro, but instead winds up, through happenstance, being the personal assistant to an artist's widow, Elizabeth, played by Tilda Swinton. What a get for a debut feature.

Alejandro, facing deportation, is left dangling on the end of a thread as Elizabeth yo-yos him around. He's desperate enough to work for this woman who is, at best, unhinged, at worse severely mentally unwell. She is loud and irrational and seems to get her way primarily because people will do what she wants just to get away from her (or get her away from them). She seems to live in another reality and definitely not interested in being part of the polite society we'll talk about in our next film.

Swinton delivers a tour-de-force performance, sweeping into every scene as Elizabeth, sucking all the air out of the room, and then telling everyone around her it's not enough and that they need to give her more. I've worked for a woman like this some time ago.  She was a person who lived in a world that only rotated around them, and considered other people infrequently, if at all, unless they could serve her agenda in some way. Elizabeth is a tad more extreme than this ex-boss of mine, but not by much. People like Elizabeth exist, and I've seen them. They're awful.

Torres' demure performance as Alejandro, complete with an affected shuffle-step walk, and a shrinking inside himself physicality, is one meant to be dominated by Swinton, and pretty much anyone else he encounters.  But unlike The Devil Wears Prada, where an assistant discovers their absolutely horrible boss is human human afterall, there's no such discovery for Alejandro. In fact, he seems to see Elizabeth in a light nobody else does, he seems to understand her and her motivations and her objectives, somehow...and he actually learns from her how to be more confident and assertive. 

It's not a hard film to like, but it's a difficult film to love, because Alejandro's demureness is so easily overshadowed. It's a fine line between playing a shrinking violet character and disappearing as a screen presence. Torres keeps the film, and Alejandro's life just weird enough to remain interesting. I was expecting this to be a much weirder film. The opening moments, taking us through young Alejandro's toy obsessed childhood with his artist/designer mother, is visually very vibrant and odd, but it's fleeting. Torres' New York (probably for budgetary reasons) isn't nearly as surreal. There are only glimmers of Torres' inventiveness, like his toy pitches to Hasbro, his visualization of the rigged system of American immigration, and a decidedly uncomfortable personification of Craigslist. 

I was hoping Torres would explode out of the gate as our next Michel Gondry, but it looks like we're just going to have to be patient.

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My grandmother - my mom's mom - was a woman of propriety. Things had to be a certain way, like the way a table was set, or a bed was made, or a home was kept. We had to behave and speak a certain way in being part of a polite society. Many subjects were not to be discussed, and most definitely certain words were not to be said. I recall having my filthy mouth washed out with soap once or twice (the lesson being "don't swear around Grandma").

I considered this propriety to be a generational thing, but upon contemplating the message of Wicked Little Letters, it is much more the product of sexism and abuse. It's not generational, it's cultural. The expectation of women as subservient, of taking care of cooking and cleaning and otherwise staying out of the way. In this type of culture, women are barely permitted freedom of thought or expression, they certainly aren't permitted education or agency. There are seemingly more of these cultures around the world today than aren't.

Set in the southern coastal English town of Littlehampton post-World War I, Wicked Little Letters, is the true-ish story of decorum being scandalously broken by way of a series of wicked, nasty, filthy letters delivered to one Miss Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman, Secret Invasion), at this point a spinster still living at home in her mid-50's, still under the thumb of her controlling father (Timothy Spall, Chicken Run).

The most likely culprit is their next door neighbour Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley, Men), a widow and single mom, and also an Irish immigrant and a real liberated woman, whose no-holds-barred, profane way of speaking bemuse and shock in equal measure. As Rose states, though, she has no reservations about expressing herself, so why would she resort to writing anonymous letters to say what she would already say out loud?

The scandal hits national level, and Rose is an easy scapegoat. The film is very clear about the hypocrisy of this mass propriety, as the men expect women to behave a certain way, to be unsullied by any awareness of lewd or profane words or acts, and yet in closed quarters the men talk this way about such things with jovial frivolity, as "Woman Police Constable" Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan, We Are Lady Parts) witnesses. She is torn between "knowing her place" as the town's first woman officer, and actually serving justice, when her male counterpart is an idiot and her superior is lazy. ACAB, man.

It's difficult to talk about the film without revealing the writer of the letters, so we'll discuss more some of the subject matter after the Spoilers cut, but just to say that it's not actually a mystery that the film holds close to its chest and it reveals the answer to the audience (but not the characters in story) about the midway point.

Coleman and Buckley are both phenomenal actresses, and they're both excellent here.  I don't think I've ever seen Coleman deliver a bad performance, and she is has a lot to do here, as Edith is torn between the expectations of her from her father, her lapsed friendship with Rose, and the notoriety that she's received as a result of being a victim of the letters. Demeanour shifts are frequent, and Coleman has mastered her control of nuanced facial expressions. I don't know if I've seen Buckley in a role like this before, where she's sort of comic relief, but also an emotional lynchpin. She has a zeal, a liveliness, and an untamed natuer that flies in the face of the stiff-upper-lip/well-I-never crowd that is so delightfully appealing. She is the antidote to the buckled-down, boring existence of Littehampton.

The film utilizes colour-blind casting which is in equal measure admirable and distracting since nothing is ever mentioned about anyone's race or background. I know I was expecting the elder Swan, when ranting about his neighbour Rose, to bring up her Black boyfriend in a derogatory way, but he never does. The film holds squarely in its lane in examining sexism. Even its critique of the police, and their structures winds up rather toothless in the end.  It's a film that says much, and rewardingly, but had the potential to say even more.

[Toastypost]

**SPOILERS**

It's really to no one's surprise when we find out that the writer of the letters to Edith Swan is none other than Edith herself.  The letters seemed to be spurred by befriending Rose, and revealing in her liberation, but then having that friendship quashed by her father. So she, in secrets, begins to liberate herself by way of writing the most foulest things she can think of. That those thoughts are directed at herself is a product of a caged woman loathing her inability to escape the cage, and it's telling that when the letters extend beyond her, that they are directed at the other women of the town, she's admonishing them all for their upholding of the systems that keep them down. It's equally telling that she never writes a letter to the person she fears the most, her father.  Edith's greatest sin is not writing the letters, but letting Rose take the fall. In her admiration (and emulation) of Rose, she also cant escape her patriarchal thinking, that Rose's liberties as a woman are somehow criminal and deserve to be punished and reigned in. Afterall, why should Rose be allowed to curse and cavort so freely when Edith cannot?

It is a bittersweet ending when Edith is found out and sentenced and carted off to jail. She is a victim herself, afterall, and yet, being sent to prison allows her freedom from her father for the first time in her life. The downside is it is still jail, though, and whose to say she won't encounter a whole institution of men (and women) looking to subjugate her just like her Father?

I think back to my Grandmother, and it's distinctly possible she had a father who was somewhat like Edith's father, who demanded a certain discipline and propriety, and that her mother would have upheld such structures in the household [edit. not exactly a true assumption on my part, but generational trauma resonates in expectations and behavioural norms].  I know my Grandmother had husbands who were maybe less forcefully demanding, but expectant of such norms. My Grandmother also worked, she had a number of jobs throughout her life which began out of necessity, having fled an abusive relationship with two small children. Despite marrying again (and again) she retained a definite drive and work ethic, perhaps a desire to stand on her own two feet, to not need to rely upon a man financially. In her own ways, she broke free of the patriarchy despite being unable to let go of its legacy of teachings. She was a remarkable woman who led an impressively active life well into her late 80's before dementia robbed her of her resources, and I miss her. 

KsMIRT: step timber

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

This Month:
Bad Monkey Season 1 (2024, 10/10 episodes, Apple TV+)
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 (2024, 8/8 episodes, AmazonPrime)
Nobody Wants This Season 1 (2024, 10/10 episodes, Netflix)
Slow Horses Series 4 (2024, 6/6 episodes, Apple TV+)
Squid Game Season 1 (2022, 9/9 episodes, Netflix)
Unsolved Mysteries Volume 5 (2024, 4/4 episodes, Netflix)

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Bad Monkey Season 1 

The What 100: Andrew Yancy is a police detective with a problem... he can't let go. It's got him in trouble before, and it will get him in trouble again. Having been booted from the Miami PD to a small cape on the southern tip of Florida, Yancy's motormouth and unwavering conviction that the worst should be punished have now got him suspended and working as a health inspector. When a severed arm is reeled in by a fishing tour boat, Yancy can't just follow his chief's directions to just get rid of it. Instead it takes Yancy on a winding whirlwind of romance, action, deceit, and even a little magic.

(1 Great) Vince Vaughan. I was reticent to watch the show, mainly because I haven't watched anything with Vince Vaughan in it in a long, long time. Sometime after Made I just realized I didn't like his energy, his arrogance. But either I have softened or Vaughan has, because the energy he gives off as Yancy is astounding. Yancy is a very upbeat guy, very positive even in the face of bad things happening. Even if he genuinely dislikes someone he still tries to go at them with positive vibes, kill them with ...well, not kindness...affability. He's a lot. He's always talking, but the way in which Yancy twists moments, changes the timber of a situation...it's not that he de-escalates (though I think in his mind, that's what he's doing) but instead of making people want to shoot him, they just want to smack him.  It's a skill. He's charming in a way I haven't seen from Vaughan.  He carries a high energy vibe that still seems, somehow, chill.  And I like the way he wins people over with compliments, just as much as I like it when he pisses people off with the very same tactics.

(1 Good) It's so hard to limit myself to just 1 Great and 1 Good thing with this show. I enjoyed it so, so thoroughly. I haven't mentioned that the show hops between South Florida and The Bahamas, where an unscrupulous land developer has impacted the small coastal town there. Jodie Turner-Smith was a real surprise for me in After Yang, a stunning woman but also a strong performer who, seemingly out of no where is acting alongside Colin Farrell. She turned up again in a smaller part earlier this year in Star Wars: The Acolyte and had real presence. Here she's The Dragon Queen, the mystical protector of the island who doesn't quite believe in her practice. Her role in the whole proceedings seems very outside the centre, but she gets her own story arc that weaves in and out of the main thread and it is both beautiful, intense, and tragic. 

(1 Bad) If I had one complaint, which is not even really a complaint because I enjoyed this show pretty thoroughly, it's that it felt maybe an episode too long. The eighth episode felt like it was barrelling towards its conclusion and the ninth episode felt like it was resetting for the finale.  In actuality the ninth episode was more about setting up character resolution where the finale was about closing out the plot, so it has its place...I think in this modern age of shortened seasons, any sort of breathing room feels like wasted space, even when it's certainly not wasted. It speaks more to changes in modern storytelling on television and how we consume it, than it does about quality of storytelling or even purpose of storytelling.

META: What got me into Bad Monkey, past my Vince Vaughan reticence, was Bill Lawrence's name in the trailers. I liked Scrubs, I loved (still love) Cougar Town, I really liked both Ted Lasso and Shrinking, so he has a very winning track record with me.  I knew that there would be something here that I would enjoy, as I always do in his productions...I just didn't think I would enjoy pretty much everything.  This may be, I'm boldly stating, Lawrence's best show.

There's a minor character, the owner of the charter fishing boat that opens up the series played by Tom Nowicki, who winds up being the narrator for the series. He's somehow in the head of every character (including Neville's pet monkey Driggs) telling you there innermost thoughts, sometimes at inopportune times. He also provides the best "previously on" recaps maybe ever, or close to it. The bit is he hates doing the recaps, and he lets you know this. They're spiteful recaps.

I could see some people finding the show a little unfocussed, the way it darts between Yancy's story, the Dragon Queen, Neville, Yancy's sometimes-girlfriend Bonnie, and others in ways that don't directly connect to the central crime story that Yancy is working on... but I love the fact that this show is more interested in the characters as characters than it is in them as agents servicing the main story. It a show where the world doesn't exactly gravitate around its main character and the main character's interest, and that's damn refreshing.  

The cast is uniformly phenomenal, with Vaughan, Turner-Smith, joined by Michelle Monaghan, L. Scott Caldwell, Rob Delaney, Meredith Hagner, Natalie Martinez and so many more. Even minor players in the story make multiple appearances, and it's always a delight to see them pop up again.

I imagine a second season will only see some of these players return, for obvious reasons, but the experience to see how it jumps around a whole new ecosystem of characters Yancy endears himself to (or pisses off)  absolutely puts a smile on my face just thinking about.  

An utter treat of a series.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2

The What 100: Lord Sauron has disguised himself as an elfin deity and wormed his way into Celebrimbor's forge, encouraging him to make more rings of power, rings that he himself will taint with his darkness, thus eliciting control over their wearers. The dark elf Adar and his army of Orcs, aware of Sauron's return, are on the warpath to find and vanquish him once and for all, and they don't care what they have to destroy along the way. King Durin, wearing one of the tainted rings of power starts making some terrible decisions for the Dwarven realm, leaving his son Durin conflicted over his devotion to his father and doing what's right. The Stranger and his Harfoot companions get separated but each find new allies who are somewhat familiar. Back in Númenor, following the awful defeat against Adar's army, the queen finds herself challenged, and her throne wrested from her by the most evil-looking guy in history. And other stuff.  A lot going on in Middle Earth.  

(1 Great) I could have just watched just a whole series about Prince Durin IV and his turmoil over, first, his spat with his father following his actions last season, and then the dire situation as Khazad-dûm enters a dark age following a tremor. And when King Durin III puts on that ring, and starts getting money hungry and going mad with an unquenchable thirst for riches, it's just really wonderful melodrama. I love all the dwarf actors - Owain Arthur is probably my favourite performer on the show. Just real soulful, deep-thinking performance in such a heavyweight layer of makeup and prosthetics and wigs and wardrobe.  

(1 Good) I've been strangely invested in the journey of The Stranger and the Harfoots Nori and Poppy in both seasons, even though their trials have kind of been the most gentle and most disconnected from the central plot. As disconnected as they are, they also provide a very whole-view look at Middle Earth, a "what else is happening" outside of the main conflicts, and their Hobbitsy adventures are so much more gentle than what's going one elsewhere, it's a nice respite.  But that gentile nature of their story means that any threat seems that much more severe.

(1 Bad) There are entire character plots that just get shoved aside, like Isuldur seems to be an afterthought every time he pops up. It's like "oh right, him!" His story gets tied up with Arondir, the ronin Elf, who I loved in the first season, but has no storyline at all here. His human love interest died last season, and his attempts to connect with her son don't work out, so he takes off and just roams realm looking for action. He's a badass fighter with the coolest chest plate ever, but he gets nothing. Ok, that's actually 2 Bad...well, here's a third... I freaking hated everything going on in Númenor.  Just the most blatantly evilest group of fucks with the most obvious tactics of riling up crowds into supporting them in overthrowing the queen.  They're goddamn Republicans and it was just too real.

META: At about the midway point of this season of The Rings of Power I was starting to stretch a leg out, ready to step away altogether. I didn't but so much of the show was about the corruption of power, of the people in charge, and how it was all so inevitable that it was all going sour everywhere. Given that this show takes place, what, 1000 years before The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it just means that it all goes very dark, very quick and doesn't come out of that darkness for a very long time.  I don't know if showing people the descent into darkness works as a cautionary tale or just reinforces the hopelessness of opposing it when people are acting so irrationally. There really isn't any light this season to guide the way and it's feeling quite oppressive...and feels like it's only going to get worse from here.

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Nobody Wants This Season 1

The What 100: Joanne hosts a successful dating and sex-themed podcast with her sister, Morgan. She's been very unlucky in love and her frankness about talking about it has garnered her a sizeable audience and a pretty relaxed lifestyle.  Noah is a rabbi -- some might even go so far as to call him "Hot Rabbi" -- who has just exited a long term relationship with his very devoted (and attractive) girlfriend after she dug out an engagement ring out of a locked drawer. Everything was perfect on paper, but the sparks were not there. At a mutual friend's get-together Joanne and Noah meet, and sparks fly, but can a rabbi really be with a gentile and keep the respect of his family and congregation, and will being in a stable relationship impact Joann's podcast success?

(1 Great) One of my favourite aspects of the delightful friends-sans-benefits sitcom Platonic was how low stakes it was. It didn't spend much time at all revelling in drama or tension. It presented its characters as conscious, conscientious, thinking human beings who don't immediately always jump to the tropey sitcom conclusion to create tired hijinks for our amusement. It's a comedy of rapport, and I'm on board for any show that wants to be such. Here, not only are the characters presented as thoughtful, but they're also observant, and they're open to conversing about difficult topics. Sitcom comedy was borne out of withholding and misunderstandings. Cringe comedy exploded out of the rise of Seinfeld which was not just withholding, and misunderstanding, but genuine selfishness and bad behaviour. It's really time for our entertainment to show us a new way of coexisting, a new way of engaging with one another, a way that shows us that bringing up a mistake or a shameful emotion with a loved one is far better than hiding it, only for it to explode like a time bomb.

(1 Good) The cast here is uniformly awesome. Kristin Bell is a bankable and reliable comedic presence at this point, and though it's sometimes hard to shave the Eleanor-from-The Good Place feels from my brain, she's really fun. Adam Brody is charming, funny, and thoughtful, very aware and receptive and open. He is the ideal dreamy nice-guy boyfriend, who happens to be a rabbi. As a duo they're exceptionally cute together and they play off each other well. They're both over 40 now, but playing like they're in their late 30s, which works, but just barely.  The real flavour of the show though comes from their respective siblings. Morgan (Justine Lupe, Mr. Mercedes) is both fearless and shameless and will shake up any room she's in, usually for the better, but not always. Sasha, Noah's brother, (Timothy Simons) is less fearless and shameless than he is kind of oblivious. He's desperate to be included and so he includes himself in everything whether he's invited or not, wanted or not. Morgan and Sasha become platonic buddies is one of the most far fetched but delightful spins of the show (a lesser show would create some weird secret romance, but here Sasha clearly loves his domineering wife [probably because she's domineering] and family, he's just happy to have a new friend who actually wants to talk to him).

(1 Bad)  Nobody Wants This does a great job at showing the stakes for Noah: he's up for head Rabbi at his synagogue, and the faith has a very strong edict to congregate and procreate, so his relationship with Joanne, while providing him the sparks he's always thought a relationship should have, threatens his professional life, as well as creates friction with his family (his sister-in-law is best friends with his ex, his mom is really against the pairing). For Joann, there's less intense focus on what she's risking.  According to Morgan, at least, her being in a happy relationship is having an effect on the podcast (she's telling boring stories), which is being eyed for purchase by Spotify. Most of the gamble here is the romcom threat of "losing the guy". It's a fairly savvy show, but (from my very male perspective) it doesn't adequately emphasize what she's giving up or sacrificing, it rather seems to only imply that she should.

META: A very quick blast of research finds that show creator Erin Foster a) looks a lot like Kristin Bell, b) worked a lot with her sister (including as Insta influencers and as creative heads for the dating app Bumble among other things), and c) converted to Judaism before getting married.  So this show, while not autobiographical, comes from a place of authenticity and truth. It's a really charming romcom that isn't about the act of getting together, but about what it takes to stay together.  It's not even that interested in the drama of tearing Joanne and Noah apart but instead the joys and rewards of unifying and being together.  I feel like this is such an antidote to Hallmarkies, and we're still a week away from those things ramping up.  EEP

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Slow Horses Series 4 (aka "Spook Street")

The What 100: There's a terrorist attack in central London. Meanwhile River Cartwright's grandad, suffering from dementia, shoots a man he thinks is River in his house. River fakes his own death and takes the place of this man, heading into France on a passport that's actually a "cold body", one of many MI-5 fake identities created for their field agents. But how is this one "in the wild" so to speak, and now in River's hands? It all billows out into something very personal and very dangerous.

(1 Great) This is the first season where it feels like Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb is a supporting character and not the lead, and that's actually a good thing. Lamb has been so front-and-center that it's left him a little exposed as a character, as someone who is very much who he is, and not likely to change. River's always been the secondary lead of the show, and giving him the full spotlight here reveals the wild depths of his history and, in learning his origins, has potentially disastrous ramifications for The Park.  It's the most character-centric of the series yet, and it really, really works.

(1 Good) Nothing is stagnant in this show, things are always moving. When we ended last series, Taverner was looking to finally be accepting her place as First Desk, but this season we learn she's right where she was last season, with instead new First Desk Claude Whelan, a died-in-the-wool bureaucrat appointed to the position. He's an idiot, and an idiot is dangerous in his position. Taverner's used to playing games with other very intelligent intelligence officers, so manipulating an idiot is surprisingly difficult.  Whelan is played by James Callis who played the conniving Baltar in Battlestar Galactica... his character here is not that different than Baltar in ambition, but Callis plays him much, much differently. Kristin Scott Thomas as Taverner really revels in that steely, all-business, woman-with-secrets-that-you-will-never-know energy. I really hope one of these series deep dives into her life and history.  The games at the Park were some of my favourite bits this season.

(1 Bad) Oh God, I get angry watching this series week-to-week. I just want to eat it all up in one bite. It's so consumable, and it just pulls you through its story.  You can tell these were crafted out of novels because they're so perfectly structured to deliver the right amount of story and character moments for every ongoing character. We lose some, we gain new ones, and it's a roller-coaster where you're not sure what's happening to start with and it unfolds alluringly and brilliantly.  So yeah, it's great, but I don't like being confined by AppleTV's pacing (I could always wait...but I can't, I look forward to it too much).

META: Mick Herron's Slough House series currently consists of eight full length books and five novellas. I really, really wish that they would produce the novellas as like a standalone episode or extra-length episode between the series'.  So far we've only missed one, between series two and three, and there's two more series before there's another one, so we'll see... or maybe once they tap out of the eight books, they'll just do the novellas as specials to keep it going... I dunno, I just want it all...without having to actually read. Yuck!

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Squid Game Season 1

The What 100: You know what Squid Game is already. I'm just that fool who waited two years to watch it. Ok, quickly... 456 desperate individuals sign up to play games in hopes of winning a massive cash prize. Once they learn it's games of death, well, it ultimately doesn't change much, and the people enlisted will see it through to the bitter end. A detective, looking for his missing brother, infiltrates the compound and starts to uncover what, or who, is behind it all.

(1 Great) Despite this series being absolutely something right up my alley, it got real popular, real quick and you know me with popular things...I bristle. Well, if that many people like it, then it can't be any good, because people who make things popular generally have terrible taste. It was watching Lee Jung-jae in The Acolyte (second Acolyte references this post) that drove me to finally watch it. He was such a charismatic and soulful performer in The Acolyte that he really made an impact and I wanted to see more from him. And yeah, he's absolutely great in this. Here he's Gi-hun, a man in debt, divorced, and just mooching off his diabetic mother. He's not a good guy. It's not even that he wants to be a good guy, but he knows he should be. If he wants his daughter to respect him, if he wants his ex (whom he obviously still loves, but knows she's better off without him) to respect him, if he wants his mother to live and have a good life... then he needs to be a better man. But he doesn't have the tools for it.  And then he's offered an opportunity. It's within the confines of this horrifying environment that Gi-hun learns to be a better man, supporting other players, trying to understand people and help them survive, and giving most people the benefit of the doubt when it's obvious he shouldn't.  He's obviously going to be the victor, because the show is centred around him from the beginning, but can he actually live with himself if he does survive? 

(1 Good) So much of the show, being such a phenomenon, was spoiled for me before I even watched it, but  even if it hadn't been so popular, I probably could have guessed the rhythms of it. It's a formulae for a group of people in a confined space. They tribe up, there are betrayers, there are people who appear one way but are revealed to be something else...there are archetypes to these things and this plays right into them. But, the Squid Game offers the contestants an out...if they collectively, by majority vote, decide to end the games, they all get to leave. And after the first game, in which over a hundred of them are murdered, they decide to leave. So the second episode finds them back in their lives, back in their abysmal lives which have no hope, no promise of reward, just more misery. It's its most bold critique of capitalism in this second episode showing how without a social safety net people fall into despair and ruin with no opportunity to get out. As such, the Squid Game, with its death-or-prizes alternatives, seems like the more appealing option. It's unfortunate that it's the high-point of the season only two episodes in, but it's a great episode.

(1 Bad) Like I said, Squid Game relies upon tropes for character drama and conflict so it can feel pretty routine. It's only the games themselves that electrify the series, but even then I found the games to be oddly primitive, and designed with a lack of competitive spirit in mind.  They're games of death designed to kill, not to be won. The way the games masters manipulate their players especially outside of the games is all part of their fun, which is less fun to watch knowing that it's all stacked against them.  it feels like the games masters are just the writing staff who want to see as much death and misery and heap it upon the audience It should be a poignant commentary, about our fascination with observing human misery from a distance, but it never really does ask the audience to consider their role as spectator in all of this. So it loses its juice, its motivating factor if it's just entertainment and not asking anything of its audience in return.

META: I've said before how much I like the "man-hunting-man" subgenre of thrillers, your "Most Dangerous Games" and "Hard Targets" but this sort of "game show" version is another sister subgenre in the "Running Man" or "Hunger Games" style where it's a spectator sport. I thought it was going to be more of a spectator sport, much more public in a dystopian future, but no, instead it's a secret spectator sport for only the richest of rich to observe.  The detective who finds his way into the back-end of the Squid Game, and starts digging into its secrets unfortunately demystifies it too much, in a way that breaks the logic of it.  If they're stealing 400+ people off the streets of Korea each year for decades, leaving behind a lot of trace evidence like their weird cards, surely people will take notice.  I dunno, I found the more I learned about the behind-the-scenes, the less I bought into it.

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Unsolved Mysteries Volume 5

The What 100: An upsetting double homicide in broad daylight in a public park in Cleaveland. Roswell revisited. A paranormal investigator and his ghostly companion. Cattle mutilations are back (and really haven't ever left).

(1 Great) "Great" sounds too enthusiastic to talk about the very upsetting story of the two friends murdered in Cleveland. It's not great, it's fucked up and horrible, and the interviews with the loved ones of the victims is heartbreaking.  But it's also compelling the circumstances around it, and just how bizarre the situation is. Each season of Unsolved Mysteries on Netflix has had one of these... a murder case so unusual that it kind of breaks one's brain about how it could happen in the first place... and they linger with you, unanswered questions that, were I closer to the case, would drive me mad.  In this case, two friends of about 40-years-old meet up on a park bench. Within clear eyeshot is a parking lot where sits a truck. The two friends are executed, shot in the back of the head, and the guy in the truck sees and hears nothing. Less than 15 minutes pass between the time the woman last used her phone and their bodies are discovered. There's a busy road that goes right by there. Any suspects that knew the victims have been ruled out. Gang related? Hate crime (the man was black, the woman white)? But how brazen an act, and how is there nothing to go on? It's viscerally upsetting.

(1 Good) The investigation into the rash of cattle mutilations in Oregon in between 2019 and 2022 is just freaking bizarre on its own, but when put into the context of thousands of reported cattle mutilations across the US and Canada since the 1960s it's the silent epidemic that nobody talks about. The surgical precision of the removal of skin and the tongue and, often, genitals, why? To what end?  And the weird states that the cows are found in, sometimes upside down on fences, or sitting upright in full rigor, with very little blood on the scene... just completely eerie.  A true unsolved mystery that wants to lean into the "alien abduction" of it all but holds itself back at least somewhat by talking all angles.  Just wild.

(1 Bad) As much as UM gives us some upsetting cases of murder, and mysterious mysteries, sometimes its exploration of the paranormal just seem like weirdos or mentally unstable people putting on a show, being excited about things they're making up. The case about the paranormal investigator and his ghostly companion just made me giggle. The revisiting of the Roswell crash made it seem more and more like "this is a thing because people want it to be".  Here's where I've settled on Roswell... if there were actual aliens, and the President of the United States is advised about it, do you think Trump could shut up about it. He's worried about Mexicans, you don't think he'd be stirring up shit about grey aliens if they were real? He would not be able to contain himself. 

META: The past couple UM volumes have been more paranormal-heavy than I'd like. It's always been an aspect of the show, but I like the weird crime (doesn't even have to be murder) aspect far more, and it seems far more helpful to talk about unsolved crimes than it does about sasquatches and aliens.  But I love how the show upsets me with the horrors of humanity, and I've always had a bit of a soft spot for entertaining these flights of metaphysical fancy. I wish this were a weekly show again.

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?

1-1-1:Black Mirror Season 6

2023, 5 Episodes - Netflix
Created and written by Charlie Brooker

The new season of Black Mirror is finally here. It's a departure from prior seasons for sure, with Charlie Brooker bringing us five very different stories, three of which are some of the strongest in the series (but also the most radically distant). Three of the five episodes are period pieces (and one more is obsessed with a story from the past), which indicates that maybe Brooker is exhausted with forward thinking, and instead wants to look back and see how the past could have influenced today, or if the past were different what that might look like. 

Between "Beyond the Sea" and "Demon 79", I get the sense that Brooker is itching to do a bigger budget genre movie, whether it be a mid-budget horror, or a bigger-sized sci-fi, but I also get the sense that he's quite comfortable in this TV zone where he has much more control and is hesitant to do something bigger that might be scrutinized more.

But hey, if he wants to keep making Black Mirror, especially in this more diversified form, I'm still all in.

"Joan Is Awful" (d. Ally Pankiw)

The What 100: Joan pops on the in-world Netflix to find a TV show starring Salma Hayak who is styled like her and is reenacting moments of her immediate life. Joan's world is thrown into chaos. It gets pretty meta from there.

1 Great: Brooker's career largely originated in comedy and satire. Until this episode he's more been focused on satire and horror than comedy. But this one's a straight-up comedy. 

1 Good: I don't want to spoil anything, but I loved how meta this episode went. It really doesn't hold up to too much scrutiny, but it doesn't matter, it's a blast. It's the most "star-studded" episode of the season, but it is so with purpose.

1 Bad: The conceit of this episode is that a clickwrap agreement tied to downloading an app that grants an app unfettered access to your life, your story and your likeness (by listening and observing through your phone) is somehow legally sound is complete garbage plotting. A class action lawsuit would utterly bankrupt the company. 

Meta: Diving back into Black Mirror after an absence (it's been 4 years since we last saw a new Black Mirror episode) is always met with trepidation. I mean, the series started with the Prime Minister of England being blackmailed into fucking a pig on live TV... we're always expecting the worst. But this brought us in gently, and it was really, really fun. Perhaps not the best episode of BM but maybe its most fun.

"Loch Henry" (d. Sam Miller)

The What 100: A young documentary filmmaking student turn his attention on his depressed Scottish hometown, and the murders that rocked it a decade earlier.

1 Great: For me, this was a very middle-of-the-road episode that looks at the industry of true crime documentaries without a whole lot to say, but it ends so strongly with its character-focused epilogue 

1 Good: I had no idea that Bergerac was a real TV series. I thought it was an in-world creation... I don't know if it's more awesome or less awesome that it actually exists.

1 Bad: "Loch Henry" never really escapes its ominous tone...it's so even tempered that when it should be raising its stakes into anxious horror territory, it just simmers. I think it's more to do with direction than scripting, and there seemed to be a choice made not to turn it into something scary, but instead something at the terror level of a, well, true crime documentary/ 

Meta: I like how Black Mirror has established connecting threads between the various episodes but it's not all one reality. Here the filmmakers pitch their documentary to Streamberry, the Netflix-like service (right down to the "Dun Dun" and interface) central to "Joan Is Awful". Although, confusingly, one character references Netflix, which makes me think that Streamberry was a late addition and they just kind of goofed on leaving the Netflix mention in. 

"Beyond the Sea" (d. John Crowley)

The What 100: in a different reality of 1969, two astronauts are on a long-term space mission, but are able to send their consciousness between their real selves aboard the ship and the androids on earth that allow them to continue their lives. Things go unexpectedly bad and then get predictably awful.

1 Great: It's not Black Mirror's first movie-length episode, but it felt the most filmic of any BM so far. It's got a really far-fetched sci-fi conceit that forces you to accept it immediately, and just invest in the story that is being presented.  It builds a stripped-down-to-basics alternate reality, focusing on two astronauts and their families, and not caring so much about the details of the androids or the technology or the space mission the men are on.

1 Good: I didn't watch much of Breaking Bad so I'm not an Aaron Paul devotee (he was good on Westworld but he always felt a little out of place, being the latecomer to the cast in the third season), but he delivers a really, really good performance here, having to portray one very reserved, very insular character, then also having to play Josh Hartnett's much more outgoing spaceman. It's pretty seamless.

1 Bad: There's a pivot in the story in the first act (which seems to be the only impetus to set it in 1969) that I didn't see coming, but from there it plays out quite predictably, until a finale that seems to be a twist for twist's sake and not in keeping with the spirit of the episode.

Meta:  I really wish that Brooker had greater ambitions for this episode than just doing a sci-fi nod to Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood . The characters and situations are so baked into the conflict of stoic puritanism and burgeoning sexual liberation of the late 60's that it kind of fails to say anything interesting about them. I can't help but think how engaging it would have been if the scenario had turned into more of a throuple situation, hitting more on the sexual and relationship dynamics explored in last season's "Striking Vipers". It's ultimately a well made but disappointing watch.

"Mazey Day" (d. Uta Briesewitz) [SPOILER WARNING - this episode is best watched with no knowledge of what it's about. Even me giving a spoiler warning may be revealing too much]

The What 100: In mid 2000s, a reluctant paparazzo (Zazie Beetz) chases after a famous starlet who has seemingly disappeared after being fired from a shoot for unknown reasons. What she doesn't know is the starlet was involved in a deadly hit and run and is having a very hard time.

1 Great: I didn't see that coming.

1 Good: I really didn't see that coming.

1 Bad: I wished it had lasted longer. This could have been a wonderful horror movie

Meta: Brooker seemed to be setting up a potent message about celebrity and right to privacy and predatory industries, but then there's a pivot and it's such a delight. I think it's even more fun than "Joan Is Awful" but I wonder how it will hold up on rewatch. The surprise is 90% of everything.

"Demon 79" (co-writer. Bisha K. Ali [Ms. Marvel], d. Toby Haynes) 

The What 100: In 1979 England a young shoe sales woman of Indian descent experiences constant racism - overt, veiled, systemic, etc - but when she's accidentally tethered to a demon, she's given the opportunity to let out some of her pent-up frustrations...because she has to kill 3 people or the world will end.

1 Great: A cracker of an episode, another movie-length one that really doesn't make any false moves in the story its telling and the character journeys it presents.

1 Good: The two leads, Anjana Vasan and Paapa Essiedu are outstanding. They are my top contenders for best duo in all of Black Mirror. Vasan plays the complex emotions of someone questioning whether their having a psychotic break perfectly. Essiedu is just pure charm poured into a white disco suit and furs. Both performers are on shows I've heard are tremendous (We Are Lady Parts and I May Destroy You) and which I really need to give a go.

1 Bad: The opening moments of "Demon 79" -- the establishing shot and title card and late-70's sets and street scenes and the grainy film look that overlays it all -- imply that this episode is going full-blown grindhouse. Alas it doesn't commit to the bit. Brooker can't seem to get away from his own writerly tendencies and just go pure exploitation. 

Meta: I'm torn between really loving this episode as is, and wishing it was the pure grindhouse it teased. The characters would have been much different, where Vasan's rage would have been much less complex in full-blown revenge-a-matic mode, and Esseidu's demon would have been far scarier. The chemistry between them would have been very different, and that's kind of the magic of the episode. Can't we have both?