Category: Television

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I Am Enjoying This Way More Than I Ever Thought I Would

I really enjoyed The Mandalorian and I'm eagerly awaiting Season 2. In the meantime, Disney has given us The Book of Boba Fett.

When I initially heard they were going to be doing spin-off stories of several of the characters in the STAR WARS universe (remembering Solo: A Star Wars Story and rolling my eyes so hard I thought they were going to get stuck), I was to say the least, skeptical. Boba Fett was never one of my favorite characters, and certainly one whose backstory couldn't have been of less interest.

Yet here I am, singing its praises.

Just like The Mandalorian, the same production crew and show runners are responsible for The Book of Boba Fett. Their love for the original trilogy is obvious in the way everything is being approached in these two stories. I call it "old school" STAR WARS: practical effects, measured use of CGI when necessary, and actual character development that makes you care about the people on that screen. Add in the deference they have to the original mythologies, and what's not to love?

Highly recommended and worth the price of Disney's subscription.

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This Episode…

The Outer Limits (1963), "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork"

…scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. (And don't think for a moment that it doesn't flash across my mind whenever I use the crevice tool on a vacuum cleaner to suck up a bit of schmutz.)

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Apparently the Fans Hated It

I've been an on-and-off fan of American Horror Story since it first debuted back in 2011. In my opinion, some seasons have been great, some meh, and some so resoundingly awful I couldn't get past the first couple episodes (I'm looking at you, 1984.)

Before I get into opining on Double Feature, let me just get my ratings for the previous seasons out of the way:

Good
Season 2: Asylum
Season 5: Hotel

Outstanding
Season 1: Murder House (simply because it was so new and different)
Season 3: Coven (Jessica Lange—and in fact the entire cast—chewed the scenery.)
Season 8: Apocalypse (Ditto from above.)

Meh
Season 4: Freak Show
Season 6: Roanoke (To be honest, I gave up on this one but eventually returned.)

Awful
Season 7: Cult
Season 9: 1984
(In the interest of transparency, I only made it 4 episodes into Season 7, and half that with Season 9; I just couldn't, and in fact 9 almost turned me off of the entire series.)

And that brings us to Season 11: Double Feature.

This year was a different format, cramming separate two stories into a single season. I suffered through the first story, Red Tide, just to get to Death Valley, the long-awaited alien/UFO story that fans have been clamoring for since Asylum.

Red Tide wasn't bad. It became engaging, although I found myself several times wishing they'd just wrap up the story and get to some sort of resolution.

I wouldn't put Area 51—the second half of Double Feature—in the outstanding category, but it was definitely entertaining. Murphy and Falchuck drew upon every bit of UFO legend that's out there, and somehow managed to weave it into a fun little thriller containing Easter eggs at almost every turn. Filming scenes in black and white that happened in the 50s thru the 70s was genius, giving the whole thing a sort of camp It Came From Outer Space vibe. Even the scenes filmed in the present were camp, drawing on even more UFO lore. My biggest complaint, however, was that it came to an abrupt end without any real resolution. Area 51 could've—and should've—been a full-length season in and of itself.

But that's just my opinion, so it probably is worth squat. Apparently everyone else hated the entire season.

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Isaac Asimov's Foundation

Unlike DUNE, which I've read a dozen times or more, I've never been able to make it past the first fifty pages or so of Isaac Asimov's Foundation. It's not from lack of trying. At the risk of being branded a heretic, the story just didn't engage me the way other science fiction has.

Nonetheless, I was excited to hear of Apple TV+'s series based on Asimov's books, and basically coming into this cold, after seeing the first two episodes, I came away pretty damn impressed. Reviews are saying it deviates from the source material, but having never read the source material, I am nonetheless entertained and have been drawn into the story. The cast is outstanding and the visuals are among the best I've seen on the small screen. (I especially like the design of the FTL starships, generating their own black holes!)

I'm eagerly awaiting more. Unfortunately Apple doesn't let you binge until the season has run its course, so like with regular broadcast TV, I have to wait another week for the next installment.

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For Fans of Lucifer

The final season starts next week. This is a fun show. Highly recommended.

I made a chart like this back in the late 80s encompassing my tribe.

It was horrifying and fascinating at the same time.

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Some Supernatural Musings I Ran Across Today

If you haven't watched or aren't a fan of Supernatural, you can probably just skip this one because it won't mean much…

Paraphrased (because grammar and punctuation are apparently not a thing anymore) from something I ran across in a Supernatural posting on Tumblr. I'm on board with this.

Ya know I've read fics where Mary mistakenly thinks Dean and Cas have a secret relationship, but I have a much more specific vision that I wanna see. Mary and Cas bond.  They are becoming real friends and she (in the most repressed way possible) alludes to being a lesbian and tells Cas that she's not a product of her generation; she knows things are different now and he doesn't have to hide anything. She's trying to tell him that she's okay with he and Dean being a couple. But Cas misunderstands it as her clocking him for being gay. He's kind of confused but mostly touched when he tells her "Thank you, Mary, i appreciate that," which she just takes as confirmation that Dean and Cas are together in secret. Later she says something similar to Dean which just short circuits his brain and he tells her "Uh. Cas? Cas and I aren't like that, Mom." to which she responds, "But he said you were." Dean replies with, "He…what exactly did Cas say?" and that's when Cas appears and eventually clears things up by saying "Oh I see. Mary.  There's been a misunderstanding. I thought you were just referring to me being gay," and Dean turns to him and says, "You're what?!?"

I think Dean would be totally overwhelmed at finding out both his best friend and his mom were gay at the same time and this would freak him out in completely different ways;  Cas being the most obvious. How did he not know his best friend was gay? Does this threaten already shaky heterosexual basis of their boy-best-friendship? Does Cas want to like, touch men?

Mary would be a whole other can of worms. Dean's understanding and view of his mother has already been rocked, but dear lord what does this mean for John? Did he know? Had she known? Had she always known? Was it a choice she made or was it God's plan? Dean inherited Mary's role. He's her mirror; he's a marycoded marygirl! Facing her sexuality, swirling in the back of his mind would be a just barely formed thought of "I got this from her too."

His first response would undoubtedly be angry disbelief and let's face it—Dean really doesn't have the capacity to conceive that it could be misconstrued as homophobia and not just the feeling of betrayal and confusion. I think it would be messy and would be one of those cases of Dean's emotions being so much and so impossible for him to examine that anger is the default response. I think he would grab his keys and take a drive to clear his head, leaving Mary and Cas alone to just look at each other wearing the same expressions of concern.

In the car, Sam calls and he picks up, "What? You calling to tell me you're gay too? Is everyone in this friggin family gay now?" and Sam just goes "… uh, no? I called because i have a…sorry…wait…who's gay?" and Dean simply hangs up on him and still has no idea why he's so angry.

 

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Not a Bad Binge

Invisible City (Portuguese: Cidade Invisível) is a Brazilian fantasy Netflix television series created by Carlos Saldanha. It is based on a story co-developed by the screenwriters and best-selling authors Raphael Draccon and Carolina Munhóz. It stars Marco Pigossi as Eric, an environmental police officer who uncovers a hidden world of mythological entities from Brazilian folklore as he searches for a connection between his wife's death and the mysterious appearance of a dead pink river dolphin on a beach in Rio de Janeiro.

The English overdubbing isn't bad, but you really should watch it in the original Portuguese with English subtitles if you can—if for no other reason, IMHO, Portuguese is an incredibly sexy language and a lot of the ambient sounds are lost with the overdubbing.