Category: Television

Good Watch: Josie & the Pussycats @russburlingame @HarryElfont @RealDebKaplan @RachaelLCook @rosariodawson @tarareid @missipyle @ComicBook @HBO #GoodWatch #QuarantineWatchParty #JosieAndThePussycats

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This week’s ComicBook.com quarantine watch party (“QWP”) was Josie and the Pussycats. It was the first hosted by Russ Burlingame, who apparently has fond feelings for it. I had never seen it. Also contributing were Deb  Kaplan and Harry Elfont, as in

There was a QWP earlier in the week that I joined despite not being fond of the film, and because I didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, I don’t think I tweeted a single thing during the movie. Josie and the Pussycats wasn’t a movie I expected to like, so I expected to say nothing for this one as well.

I counted 68 tweets.

This was a fun movie. The gist is a trio of high-school kids from Riverdale (see the Archie Comics) that have formed a rock band. They get famous because of their talent, but the stereotypical greedy executives try and split the band’s leader, Josie, from the group and jettison Melodie and Valerie. Friendship, and music, prevails. Trite? Sure, but it’s all in the execution.

The movie is geared towards people far younger than I was even in 2001 when it was released, but it still made me laugh and had some nice moments between the on-screen friends. Also, going back to my days attending Arena Stage and seeing soon-to-be-famous actors getting their starts, I love seeing actors at the beginning of their career. This movie had a ton of them.

Josie and the Pussycats is currently streaming on HBO.

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The Funny Reason Why I Hate Dr. Who #DrWho #family

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I hate Dr. Who, but I have no intention of telling people not to like Dr. Who. If you like something I don’t, there’s no need for me to convince you otherwise even if I could (which I can’t). Instead, I’m just telling a funny story.

My father’s family was from Pike County in northeastern Pennsylvania. When I was a kid, we’d drive up there from the Washington, DC area for Thanksgiving. One of the many memories that stands out is being forced to watch Dr. Who. My Uncle Reid loved it, and to me it was a cheap Star Trek rip-off with even worse production values. Sure, Dr. Who came first, but I didn’t know that.

Let me explain a couple things about my Uncle Reid. First, he was once engaged and broke it off because his fiancé refused to have her wedding dress made out of a parachute. Why a parachute? No one knows. Uncle Reid wasn’t a pilot, and he never served in the military, so he wasn’t a paratrooper. Moreover, I imagine a wedding dress made from that material would be more expensive than a regular one. It made no sense. Still doesn’t.

Second, the High Point monument is a much smaller version of the Washington Monument in Washington, DC, but it sits atop Kittatinny Mountain. Before I was born, my Uncle Reid was a member of a group that would take turns ascending the tower to stand guard for an invasion from communists. That’s right. When the communists came to invade America, they’d almost certainly land in Matamoras, Pennsylvania, and this ragtag collection of idiots would be there to stop them.

This is the crazy guy that made us watch British science fiction. I just can’t get past that. Though like all people who’ve seen it, I do like the scene with Van Gogh.

You can’t pick your blood relatives; you just hope you don’t inherit the same characteristics.

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Good Watch: Brain Games on Disney+ @JasonSilva @KeeganMKey @ActuallyNPH @disneyplus #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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Whether you’re an MCU nut like me, or a Pixar nut, there’s actually a lot more on Disney+ than what you subscribed for. For me, one of them is Brain Games care of National Geographic.

Hosted by Neil Patrick Harris in season one, Jason Silva in seasons 2 through 7, and Keegan-Michael Key since, this show dives into how our brains work. Many of you are certainly aware of a lot of the oddities of how the brain works, but even in episodes where I knew the tricks, I was still sometimes fooled, and in any event there was still a lot to learn. Brain Games goes into detail as to how and why the brain does what it does. Each episode so far has been just over 20 minutes, and none of them depend on the other, so it’s easy to fit into your schedule.

If you’re into science, or just like getting fooled, give Brain Games a shot.

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The Power Curve in the #MCU @MarvelStudios

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There’s one thing that the MCU does consistently that I don’t like: They screw up the power curve.

I understand that writing something so grand in scale as the 22 MCU films was tough, but I think they could do a lot better of a job in this regard. First, we can start by saying that the characters don’t have to be precisely matched up. Captain America has super serum coursing through his veins, so there’s no way Black Widow should be a match for the enemies that are a match for Captain America. Sorry, Rex, but karate, kung fu, etc. just don’t work that way. Nevertheless, if the two of them are facing off against the same enemies, I can accept that. Along the power curve, they’re certainly within a reasonable range of each other, and sometimes someone’s specific weaknesses can fall prey to their adversary’s specific strengths.

But no matter how cool it looked, having Captain America, Black Widow, and Falcon save Scarlet Witch and Vision makes no sense at all.

It did look cool though. Really cool.

At one point, Kevin Feige said that Captain Marvel was the most powerful MCU hero. Then he changed his tune, saying Scarlet Witch was. Either of these two choices makes sense (though Thor should be), as their powers come from Infinity Stones. Similarly, Vision’s power comes from an Infinity Stone, so Scarlet Witch and Vision are cosmic level beings like Thor, the dark elves, and Thanos and his adoptive children. That last group took out an entire ship of “gods” (Asgardians) including Thor, Heimdall, Loki, and Hulk. Thanos won a fist fight against the Hulk, who’s probably the only terrestrial hero that we should expect to deal with cosmic threats. Should Hawkeye have been used to save the Asgardians?

I refuse to believe that this is hard to write; I suspect they just don’t want to write it any other way. It’s fan service, but that’s why I don’t care much for it. There’s literally only one hero for which I have a bias: Thor. That’s not based on comics, which I’ve rarely read, but rather my love of mythology. I don’t need Captain America to win a fist fight against Proxima Midnight, because my love for the character doesn’t go back any further than the start of the MCU. I’d much rather see him take on threats that make sense for him, and there were certainly several present during the battle of Wakanda. If Captain is a match for Proxima, then Proxima shouldn’t be in the same ballpark as Thor. If she’s presented as such, then Thor is no tougher than the toughest human (yet can somehow take on the brunt of a neutron star). Again, this makes no sense at all.

Obviously, I’m insanely fond of the MCU, and this doesn’t bother me too much, but I’m no apologist. If the MCU is screwing up, I’ll call it out. This is, in my opinion, their one consistent screw up. They have the chance to readjust their thinking with the introduction of new characters for future phases, but I’m not optimistic they will. However, as I’ll discuss tomorrow, I’ll gladly tolerate an incoherent power curve if it gives us the two critical characters that most often screwed with it.

I suspect the majority of you just want to see your favorite guy punch the bad guy. Fair enough.

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Dramatic Series Finales: An Impossible Task? #tv

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I finished Penny Dreadful on Netflix last week. I wasn’t thrilled with seasons 2 and 3 in general, but that said, I didn’t like how it ended. I wonder if writers don’t know how to finish TV shows, or if we, as humans, are just impossible to please in that regard.

In the rare instance where I enjoy how a show ends, it’s almost always comedy. Hell, Parks and Recreation ended perfectly . . . twice! My sense is that comedies are more satisfying because the writers always go for a 100% feel-good ending where everything gets wrapped up happily. On the other hand, for a serious drama to work, it must often push some buttons throughout the series. When the wrong button is pushed in a finale, there’s no undoing it or making up for it. We’re all just left to feel unsatisfied. Even the Shield, which I felt ended well, still left me feeling at bit off only because there were a couple of things I didn’t like. They still stick in my craw a bit. For shows that don’t end so well, that effect is magnified.

For the record, Halt and Catch Fire is a drama that ended perfectly. The series produced its ups and downs by having the characters engage in destructive behavior that drove each other apart, yet somehow always brought them back together again. It ended with several of the characters having drifted apart, but because of that groundwork they laid over the course of the show, you come away feeling like they’re going to find their way back to one another again. This allowed them to “move on” and have a resolution very different than that of their friends while still facilitating a “feel good” ending.

So no, it’s not impossible, but it seems to be very difficult. I should probably take a screenwriting class so I can understand this process better, but this is how I interpret what I’ve heard from others and what I feel myself.

What dramatic series do you think ended well?

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Good Watch: #Ragnarok on @Netflix #GoodWatch

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I recently watched the 6-speisode season of Ragnarok on Netflix. In contrast to most of my geek brethren, I’m not fond of shows where the protagonists are kids. I’m not into Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, the Hunger Games, Stranger Things, and all the rest of them, but if you are, the fact that high school kids are saving us all won’t bother you. I also don’t like subtitles, and these were quite annoying. They were greatly overdone. For example, many times that a song was played, it unnecessarily identified the song by name and artist. However, I’m quite fond of is mythology, so that drew me in regardless of the inherent strikes against it.

Ragnarok was a way to pull my favorite mythological characters, the Norse gods and giants, into the real world, so I’m inclined to like it even if it isn’t the best show on television. It wasn’t like Troy (a movie I love) that tried to explain how the legends could have arisen from real-world, realistic events. No, this was about the supernatural; these characters used magic and had superhuman abilities. The show also used anthropogenic climate change as the battle ground between humans and the Jotnar (i.e., giants). Of course, the best part is when the reincarnated Thor is wearing a Washington Redskins shirt. #HttR 🙂 The fact that it’s only six, 40-minute (or so) episodes makes it an easy watch.

The series has been officially renewed for season 2.

For what it’s worth, I’ll be watching. I kind of have to. Season one didn’t really end.

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Good Watch: #Waco @MelissaBenoist @official_culkin

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Waco is another quarantine-inspired watch for me. For the young-uns, it’s the true and tragic story of the 1993 siege on the Branch Dravidians complex near Waco, Texas, a joint operation of the ATF and FBI. The end result was a fire that burnt the complex to the ground and killed most within. Who started the fire remains the subject of debate, with this dramatization placing the blame on the government. Whether or not that’s true, it’s clear that their documented actions during the siege certainly exaggerated the tragedy. There were huge mistakes made.

That said, the one thing I didn’t like about this series was that it made their leader, David Koresh, look very sympathetic. That’s an easy mistake to make. He was highly charismatic, and portraying that charisma accurately will inevitably have that effect on the audience. Make no mistake about it, though: David Koresh was a bad guy. He was a child molester, and many of the other adults were complicit in Koresh’s acts. I think the show could have played up these facts to keep the audience grounded in reality, but it was obviously more important to the creators to highlight the government’s mistakes than Koresh’s.

Still, this is an important and cautionary tale that I felt was well worth watching, with a cast that included some well-liked actors. With only 6, 1-hour (or so) episodes, it’s also a relatively easy watch.

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Good Watch: Penny Dreadful. Well, maybe a mediocre watch. @WesleyStudi #showtime #pennydreadful #goodwatch

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My latest binge target is Penny Dreadful. It’s a three-season Showtime/Sky Atlantic series that’s currently on Netflix. The seasons are 8, 10, and 9 episodes, each just under 60 minutes long. The series accomplishes what Universal Studios has been unsuccessfully trying to do on the big screen for some time: A shared monster universe. It’s brought together the legends of vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monster, Dorian Gray, and others.

Some of the actors are new to me, but the show is anchored by veteran actors Timothy Dalton, Josh Hartnett (playing an ultimately sympathetic Ethan), David Warner, and Eva Green. Joining them is an actor that’s new to me, Harry Treadway. I was happy with him as the redeemed villain, Narek, in Star Trek: Picard. Another actor with which I’m familiar that will join the cast in season 3 is Wes Studi, who’s strangely the only actor I’ve mentioned that’s on Twitter. I was happy with most of the other actors, who are all new to me (as far as I can remember).

I find the show weird, but considering the subject matter, how could it not be? It’s also not for children, and not just because of the horror content. One interesting thing about this show is that it brings all the different supernatural creatures into the story very quickly. That is, you don’t need to wait very long to see your first vampire if that’s why you’re tuning in. Paradoxically, however, there are times in the middle of season one where everything slows to a crawl. Season 1, episode 7 (“Possession”) felt like it was two hours long. I had to look at the time stamp to verify it was a regular-length episode. It doesn’t speed up from there. With almost two seasons (of three) complete, I still don’t know who “the master” is. Satan or something? I don’t know. I’m having trouble focusing at this point. In any case, get on with it!

While this is not what I’d consider top tier television, it’s reasonably enjoyable. However, the only reason I’ll finish it is because I’m a compulsive completionist. There are better things to watch. As always, YMMV.

If you’re into the horror genre, unrealistic redemption among estranged family members, and over-the-top British courtesy, you may enjoy it more than I.

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Good Watch: Halt and Catch Fire @leepace @tmackenziedavis @scootmcnairy @tobyhuss @smugorange @Netflix #HaltAndCatchFire #GoodWatch

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“I can’t take so much sunshine up my ass. It makes me itch.”
— John Bosworth

During the 80s, I was a physics student fascinated with the progress of the home computer. In the 90s, I was a software engineer working with computers professionally. Halt and Catch Fire is a dramatization of that culture and era starting in 1983. Perhaps this makes me prone towards liking this show more than others, but my guess is that most people likely to read my blog fall in that same category.

In season one, the story introduces Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), a salesman who left IBM on less-than-ideal terms. He latches onto the fictional company, Cardiff Electric, based in Silicon Prairie, which in this case refers to Texas. He convinces (forces?) Cardiff Electric to include within their business plan the development of portable computers. Familiar (to me) terms such as “XT,” “286,” “386,” and “GUI” are thrown around as several companies vie to get their idea to the market first. By the end of the series, they progressed to the early 90s and the birth of the internet, and during more than a decade, the characters develop, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Their mistakes have them pushing each other apart, yet they always find themselves coming back together, which in turn leaves you hopeful at the end of the series even though there’s distance between some of them.

While I was never involved on the sales end of the industry, I was certainly the salesmen’s target, and I feel like the writing and acting capture the feel for that era quite well. Is it an exaggeration of the truth? At times, of course, but in this case that’s not done merely for the sake of drama. Many of us that are or were in the industry hold a romanticized memory of those times, and we’re just as guilty of exaggerating the events of them as the show’s writers did.

If, like me, you need an excuse to choose one show over another, here it is: If anything I said above sounds appealing to you, consider watching this one. It’s only four seasons, with only ten 50-minute episodes each. At the very least, if you’re as old as I, you’ll love the 80s and 90s music. It’s not as important to the show as it is to, for example, Guardians of the Galaxy, but it’ll remind you to give some songs another listen.

P.S. I hate Cameron and Gordon. I knew too many of them.

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Good Watch: Binging of #Community Finished! @CommunityTV @Russo_Brothers @theofficenbc @parksandrecnbc

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I recently binged the entire series, Community, via Hulu. I started on Netflix and then was informed that the Netflix version was based on a syndication license, meaning it had a little bit cut out of each episode. If you’ve never seen the show, go with Hulu over Netflix.

Going into it, all I knew was that it took place at a community college, it starred Joel McHale and Chevy Chase, and there was a Dungeons & Dragons episode (the first one with “Fat Neil”). I didn’t realize that the Russo brothers were involved in it, and having finished the series, I now appreciate the relevant cameos in the MCU. The best part about the show was how it often parodied other shows. For example, there was an episode based on Law and Order, another animated as a GI Joe cartoon, and another mimicking a civil war documentary (brilliantly casting Keith David as the narrator).

The series followed along the same life-cycle as most good TV comedies. It started a little slow in order to establish the characters, was largely funny throughout, but by season five, the scripts got stale, some key actors moved on to other projects, and the replacement/rearranged characters felt forced and/or substandard to me.

Nellie and Francesca: Same Thing
Nellie and Francesca: Occupying the Same Space

The series finale showed that the writers were self-aware in this regard, but another paintball episode in season 6? That could work if you weren’t binging, but binging is the new normal. I wonder if the shift to binge-watching series will discourage creators from allowing their shows to recycle tropes and, in general, overstay their welcome. Time will tell.

Fonzie Jumps The Shark GIF | Gfycat
Has this reference jumped the shark yet? c/o Gfycat

Verdict: If you’re not a completionist like me, then I wouldn’t bother with season six unless someone with your tastes strongly suggests a specific episode. (Episode 12: Wedding Videography had me laughing out loud, and the series finale was also very good.) Enough of the core group was there to keep it funny, but the magic was clearly gone by then. It was then just a decent show. However, while never as good as the Office or Parks and Recreation, Community seasons one through five were certainly worth my time.

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Disclaimer: Dungeons and Dragons is a registered trademark of Wizards of the Coast, LLC, whose attorneys are overzealous in their enforcement efforts and did not contribute, endorse, or request any of the content in this post or references to their work appearing herein.

🙂