Moar TV series opinions

[garote]

Writing that last set of mini-reviews was kinda fun, so I'm doing some more!

(A note on perspective: I'm a "gen-X"-aged person from the Bay Area, raised on a diet of Monty Python, Stephen King, and Ducktales. I assume your own tastes will vary.)

Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet Of Curiosities (2022)

A horror anthology with a lot of range. All of these stories kept me watching, all of them had excellent visual effects, and some of them were emotionally cathartic as well. Watch them in any order, though I suggest you save “The Murmuring” for last, as it makes a nice emotional coda.

The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (2021)

To make money with your streaming service you need to load it up with enough exclusive junk that subscribers will be unable to consume it all in less than a few months. After that crucial window, your victims - er, customers - will tend to relax into the idea of being automatically billed for something they may or may not use.

Disney’s easiest path was to take characters in the Marvel and Star Wars universes, and create a bloated miniseries for whichever ones could be played by actors that didn’t charge too much for their time. Hence, this series, and many like it.

I watched it all the way through, and then it fell entirely out of my head. I remember some weightless superhero fight scenes, some easy moralizing about how the armed forces exploits disenfranchised people, a stab at blind patriotism and the glorification of war, and a few minor twists. The central conflict is over whether Sam Wilson - a Black man - is willing to assume the role of Captain America, which was offered to him by the previous Captain America. Does the whole idea of America suck so much that he’s got to turn it down? Or should he assume the role to try and remake that idea?

The most I can promise is that you’ll have a nice time watching it. These days that’s enough to raise a show above the streaming quality baseline.

Midnight Mass (2021)

Another scary series helmed by Mike Flanagan? Yes please! I had high hopes going into this, and came away with my hopes just a little bit dashed. As the viewer, you quickly get way ahead of all the characters in understanding what's going on, so you spend a lot of time waiting for each of them to have their big "a ha!" moment and do something dramatic, while various characters get grand monologues to fill out the runtime of the series. I want to say that was deliberate on Mike's part, since the main twist is generally not one you can conceal from a modern horror audience so you might as well just ignore it and talk about other things ... but the waiting here is sometimes exhausting. I won't give away the twist just in case you've never seen a horror movie, but it's no spoiler to say that Midnight Mass eviscerates old-time religion, and the way it preys on the disenfranchised and desperate, in a way that's been done countless times before. Nothing new there. Still, the tragic atmosphere, some of the conversations, and the smart camera work make the trip worthwhile overall.

Wandavision (2021)

All you need to know going in is that the title character Wanda ... Actually, wait, you don't even need to know that, and it may in fact be better if you don't. So feel free to wander into (see what I did there) this miniseries cold, even though it's part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and that generally means you need to know an encyclopedia's worth of characters and backstory to make sense of what you're seeing. You don't here. The main gimmick of the show is pretty daring, and it will keep you hooked until the larger arc of the plot transcends it. There are holes but you won't mind them. Plenty of zippy special effects and amusing parody moments. Worth seeing.

Mrs America (2020)

A fictionalized biography of a handful of big names from the Women's Rights movement, structured like a relay race where the plot hands off to a new character each episode. Phyllis Schlafly, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, and more are represented here and it's thrilling to watch them maneuver and debate, and challenge the sexual politics that were absolutely dominant at the time and that still hold power in most of the country today. My favorite part of this show is the way the characters do not present a fully united front, making space between them to explore the different and even conflicting ideals of the movement. Very much worth seeing.

Good Omens (2019)

A series based on a collaboration between two beloved novelists, with a great comedic cast. You won’t find any new ideas to chew on - "angels and demons as bureaucrats" is a pretty old one, really - but you won’t mind since it’s the relationships and the absurd details that will keep you watching. I enjoyed season 1 and I hear there’s a season 2 on the way, but I’m a bit skeptical because the book was fully covered in the first season so the writers will be flying blind.

Lost In Space (2018)

This show has generated three seasons and wrapped itself up, so I’m pretty late reviewing it. If you’re run out of The Expanse and are perhaps looking for something a little more kid-friendly and lighter, this is a good choice. Parker Posey is a highlight in it, though she has a pretty thankless role as the only truly conflicted villain. The writers leaned on her character a bit too much to create tension, stealing time and energy away from the sci-if elements, and after a while it feels like they’re playing for time because they don’t know how to answer the questions they set up earlier in the show. So it’s a little bit like that show “Lost” ... but, you know ... ”In Space.”

That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime (2018)

If you googled this title, you're now asking: What the heck is an anime show pitched at little kids doing on your list of "worth seeing" television? Two reasons: It's likely you haven't heard of it, and it covers a lot of territory, so you can watch it and then skip almost everything else in its category.

That category is "portal story" -- so named because there are countless anime shows, going back at least 40 years, whose central premise is "ordinary person stumbles into a portal to another world, and must survive and learn life lessons there." Classic examples include "Escaflowne","El Hazard", and of course "Spirited Away." (Not an idea original to anime of course, with much older examples in Japanese literature.) Soon we will be blessed with the wackiest "portal story" yet: An anime adaptation of the novel series "Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon". That one is not on my list.

If all this is old news to you, then skip this show, because you're too familiar with the tropes to find them weird or entertaining enough. On the other hand, if your familiarity with anime stops at the films of Hayao Miyazaki, go ahead and start up season 1, though you may chafe at some of the more repressed and regressive parts of Japanese popular culture on display in later episodes. I'm willing to bet you'll like it for the same reason I did: It's a show where the protagonist resolves conflict through compromise, mercy, alliances, and generally being friendly. Things work out, people turn away from violence, and life gets better. And perhaps it's because I viewed it in the depths of the pandemic, but, I found that refreshing.

Fun fact: In May 2021 this series was added to the list of anime titles given a limited ban by the Russian government because it depicts reincarnation, apparently a taboo subject given the influence of the church. The Russian media landscape is about 2/3 digital piracy, though, so the ban has no real effect.

The Knick (2014)

The core of this show is an exploration of the early days of surgery as a legitimate medical practice. If you think that sounds weird and dull and a bit gross, you're right except that it's not dull. In addition to doctors inventing new instruments and arguing about technique you get a lot of contextualizing drama that explores the sexual and racial tensions of the time, as well as excellent period detail and scarily good special effects during the many surgical scenes.

And like any good show about the development of a science, things often go wrong and the characters have to scramble against unfolding disasters large and small, making for plenty of blood, and grimacing, and doctor's arms shoved up inside the guts of some unfortunate patient while they mutter things like "don't you dare die!". I should pick this up again. I've almost finished season 1, and I like what it's doing.

-;-;-

And now, some stuff I saw and didn't like, explained a bit:

Archive 81 (2022)

Many years ago there was a movie called the Blair Witch Project, which spawned a sequel that almost no one saw. The original film presented a long video recording and claimed it was an accurate record of real events, and the sequel tried to top the original by exploring the idea of video recordings that directly contradicted the memories of the people featured in them. Which do you believe? Your own memory, or the apparent objective truth in the recording, showing you doing something else? Perhaps some supernatural force is corrupting one or both?

The idea was cool, but the sequel had other problems that made it kind of suck. It's the same deal with Archive 81: It's a "found footage" situation with a supernatural element, it takes a few stabs at the unreliable narrator thing, ... and it has problems that make it kind of suck. It moves way too slow, and it never digs into the ideas it presents. After three or four episodes this feels deliberate: Whenever the two protagonists ask serious questions or try to pry under the lid of what's going on, the script derails them with inane dramatic conflict or a contrived emergency. The writers must have been confident that they could dribble out answers for half a dozen seasons, but instead the show was canceled after one, and it's obvious why. I watched the whole thing and I regret it.

The Haunting Of Bly Manor (2020)

It would have been great if Mike Flanagan came back for the follow-up to The Haunting Of Hill House, investing in the idea of an anthology telling long-form stories about haunted places every couple of years. But the deal went sideways, and he handed the project almost entirely over to other directors. The result is seriously underwhelming. Stretched out over too many episodes, not as thematically focused, and eventually over-explained. Do this instead: Watch episode 8 by itself, which tells the story of the central ghost with a massive out-of-context flashback. Then ditch all the other episodes. You could follow that up with the 1961 film "The Innocents" for a double dose of creepy, and cover all the plot points of Bly Manor at the same time. And you'd have six hours to spare!

Another Life (2019) and The 'Mars' National Geographic Series (2016)

Some science fiction shows create dramatic stakes by having highly professional people do outrageously stupid things. Like, here's three people, specially selected for a mission to save the entire damn planet, and they all know how important it is to communicate clearly and be on the same page and cooperate. But then, the first one has sex with the other two, and the other two get jealous, so one of them decides to withhold vital information that causes the third to be horribly injured and the whole mission is suddenly in jeopardy and everyone has to scramble.

That's not a direct example from Another Life or this Mars series, but it's the kind of thing that happens over and over in both, and it's exasperating. I can't be all 'Wow, we're on Mars, look at this cool landscape and nifty survival gear' because the main characters are too busy double-crossing each other, keeping secrets, ignoring really obvious safety protocols, and so-on. At least the Mars drama is intercut with real scientists talking earnestly about contemporary issues. The Another Life show throws modern science in the ditch. I can't recommend either.

Comments

[ira_k]

Disagree on The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. It is not about a Black man deciding whether to to assume the role of Captain America. It is a bout being a superhero in your own right vs. trying to meet expectations of those who do not see you in a role associated with someone else.

This journey was very nicely developed both the story and the emotional arc.

The main plot line (refugees and super vigilantes) I did not care for that much.