Category: Direct Beam Comms

Direct Beam Comms #73

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Powerless – First, and apparently only, season Grade B-

The NBC comedy series Powerless unexpectedly ended its run a few weeks back. “Unexpectedly” since the series was pulled from the schedule before the last two episodes could air which effectively marks the end of Powerless.

Taking place in the DC universe, Powerless was about workers at Wayne Enterprises headed by Bruce’s Cousin Van (Alan Tudyk). Wayne Enterprises invents things to keep people safe from the superhero battles that are constantly going on all around them. In a clever twist, it turns out that some of their inventions turn up as gadgets used by Batman to fight the bad-guys, but most of Powerless was centered on the employees including Emily (Vanessa Hudgens) as a new girl in town enamored with all the goings-on of superheroes, Teddy (Danny Pudi) and Ron (Ron Funches) two engineers and Jackie (Christina Kirk) Van’s assistant.

Powerless was an enjoyable show and an interesting, comedic look at life of people living alongside superheroes and villains who see them mostly as an annoyance like traffic or bad weather than something to aspire to. I’m not sure why Powerless didn’t click with the general public? My guess would be that since it was half-comedy and half-superhero show, it didn’t really appeal to the people who might have tuned in for just a comedy OR a superhero show.

Regardless, I enjoyed Powerless and felt that the show was finding it’s legs as it were and was interested to see how the first season was going to wrap up.

Movies

The Lost Boys

When I first caught The Lost Boys on cable probably sometime in 1988 I was immediately hooked. This story about a family that moves to Santa Carla, California and finds that it’s infested with vampires was always one of my favorite movies as a teen. But I have to say watching the movie today 30 years after its release was a bit of a letdown.

I remember when The Lost Boys came out the big draw to it at my middle school was that it starred “The Corey’s” of Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. If either of those two actors are remembered at all today it’s because of their substance abuse problems in the 1990s which would lead to the untimely death of Haim in 2010. But in 1987 those two were the biggest teen heart-throbs on the planet with Feldman having just come off of movies like The Goonies and Stand By Me and Haim Lucas.

I remember Haim being the guy most girls at my school wanted to be their boyfriend and Feldman being the guy most dudes at my school wished was their best friend. In The Lost Boys, Haim plays Sam, younger brother to Michael and I so wanted to be Sam with his cool quips, driving cars without licenses and killer of vampires. A year later and both Haim and Feldman would star in the movie License to Drive which was a big hit in its day but now is mostly an unknown movie to anyone under the age of 35.

The Lost Boys also starred a few actors who would go onto have big careers including Jason Patric as Michael in an early role who would go onto films like Rush and Narc and Kiefer Sutherland who then was just entering the big movie-stardom phase of his career which would lead to roles like Young Guns and Flatliners and is a TV star these days. The Lost Boys also co-stars Jami Gertz as the one lost girl of the bunch who’s had a long career on film and TV and Alex Winter too who would go onto co-star in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in 1989.

If anything, The Lost Boys has loads of style. It’s a movie that college professors today could use as an example of how films from the late 1980s looked with costumes, set designs and colors. And that’s one of the reasons I think that the The Lost Boys hasn’t aged that well the last 30 years. It’s a fantastic movie to look at and is very fun to watch but is lacking in the story department. It’s one of those movies that works the first time through when the viewer doesn’t know the trick/twist of the film coming, but after that future viewings are mostly style over substance.

So much style that the design of the vampires from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series owe a great deal to the heavy forehead and freaky eyes vampires of The Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys is a pretty spectacular film in the gore and gross-out department, though. When the vampires kill, they bite into the heads of the unlucky ones which causes a gush of blood almost like they’re popping the top of a frosty beer. And when the vampires start meeting their ends, it’s pretty gruesome as well with them bursting into flames, receiving horrific burn wounds via holy water and even dissolving into green blobs of skeletal puss when immersed in the stuff.

In fact, The Lost Boys is rated “R” which I couldn’t ever see happening today. If it were released in 2017 instead of 1987 The Lost Boys would be rated “PG–13,” would feature a lot less gore and would be more focused on the action. I guess even if The Lost Boys isn’t a great movie it’s still great that it was released in 1987 instead of 2017 since I can only imagine it would be more Twilight than Evil Dead.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1937: George Takei, Sulu of Star Trek is born
  • 1940: Lance Henriksen of Terminator, Aliens and Near Dark
  • 1984: The TV mini-series V: The Final Battle premiers
  • 2008: Iron Man opens in theaters
  • 2013: Iron Man 3 premieres in theaters

Direct Beam Comms #72

CategoriesComic Books, Direct Beam Comms, FeaturePosted on

TV

Fargo – Installment 3, episode 1 Grade: A-

Fargo doesn’t seem like it’s a TV series that originates from the US. Though the third season of Fargo stared last week on FX, it’s really not a third season in the traditional sense of a regular show that would be continuing with stories and characters from the first two seasons. In Fargo, each season has a completely different story from what’s come before with a brand new cast.

And since the characters change season to season it means that in Fargo there can be unexpected twists with major characters being unexpectedly knocked off in any episode. If anything, Fargo feels like a series out of the UK that isn’t beholden to the “rules” of US TV but which makes for some interesting TV.

But there in lies the rub in reviewing Fargo; interesting or not each season is like a brand new show without the continuation of the story from previous years. And since a season of Fargo plays out like one continuous story from first episode to last, early episodes can drag a bit as story is being setup and characters introduced.

That being said, the first two seasons of Fargo were wonderful, so I’ll take that into consideration with this new third installment.

The first season of Fargo was set in 2006 and was kind’a sort’a a TV version of the 1996 Fargo film. The TV series followed many of the same plot-points of the movie and had many of the same character types, but in the end played out differently. The second season took place in the late 1970s and had a few characters from the first season carryover as younger versions, but that was really the only link with the first season. And now this third installment takes place after both the previous seasons in 2010 and doesn’t seem to have any ties with what’s come before.

Each season of Fargo seems to focus on a character, or set of characters, who make the worst decision(s) of their lives and spend the rest of the season trying to cover their tracks and shift the blame to someone else. Or, worst of all, the characters around the doer of the deed end up paying the ramifications for someone else’s bad decision.

And the third installment of Fargo is no different. This time, parking-lot magnate Emmit Stussy (Ewan McGregor) makes a deal with some shady figures for a short-term loan that has some seriously long-term strings attached and down on his luck twin brother Ray (also McGregor) thinks that a stamp Emmit has belongs to him and sends someone to Emmit’s house to steal it back. Except he goes to the wrong house where very bad things happen throwing police officer Gloria Burgle (Carrie Coon) into the mix.

Slow to start or not, one episode in and Fargo has me hooked and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

The Expanse – Season 2 Grade: A

We might live in a time of a lot of great sci-fi on TV, but ironically not much of this TV is traditional sci-fi in nature. What’s “traditional sci-fi?” Well, that would be people living and working in space in some far-off future. Think Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. Most TV sci-fi nowadays is super-hero in nature, or stories that take place in the near-future like Legion or Westworld. One series that I think fits in squarely in the realm of “traditional sci-fi” is the series The Expanse and just so happens to be one of the great series of 2017.

Frankie Adams as
Roberta ‘Bobbie’ W. Draper

I think the main theme of the second season of The Expanse is of mankind trying to control the uncontrollable — which we have a tendency to do. Much of the story this year dealt with the three main factions of people living in the several hundreds of years in the future in The Expanse; those from the Earth, those from Mars and those living in the “belt” on asteroids, who are all simultaneously trying to stop what’s known as the Protomolecule discovered in the first season from destroying all life in the solar system while at the same time trying to get a piece of it for themselves so they’ll be prepared if any of the other factions get it and try and use it on someone else.

It’s the classic, “we can control it even if we don’t think you can” scenario that’s played out time after time over the course of history.

And this Protomolecule is dangerous. In the first season a shadowy organization released it inside an asteroid station and this “thing” killed every living person there. Well, mostly killed in that it used all the living biomass to create a great glowing something that practically filled the station. A “something” that wanted to fly off and infect all of the Earth and create an even bigger biomass for unknown ends.

So it goes without saying that when even a piece of the Protomolecule is the most dangerous thing in the solar system everyone wants their piece of it.

Worst of all, with all these factions racing around the solar system trying to get their own sample the, until then, mostly stable political structure of the solar system is thrown into disarray. The Earth and Mars who have spent generations waging a cold war with one and other are now on the verge of a real one and the people living in the belt who’ve spend decades as third-class citizens have started to actively fight against Mars and Earth which causes more and more tension with every move they make.

The show that I think most closely matches The Expanse is the Battlestar Galactica reboot of a few years ago. Both shows are good at being mirrors to the real times that we live in. If Battlestar Galactica was about the fear of suicide bombings and of being attacked from the outside, then The Expanse is about what it’s like to live in a time when things we’d assumed were stable and unchanging suddenly shifting revealing a different, bleaker reality than the one we thought we were living in.

I feel like with The Expanse that with ever episode I think I’m seeing the big picture as to what’s all going on, until a few episodes later when something else happens I realize that I’ve only been seeing a tiny piece of a larger canvas.

Cloak & Dagger TV spot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFc3FzK344

Comics

Aliens: The Original Comics Series Volume 2 HC

Out this week is a hardcover collected edition of the second and third Dark Horse Aliens comic series from the late 1980s and early 1990s. The first of the collected series, which has become known as “Nightmare Asylum,” chronicles the loss of the Earth to the Alien baddies from the first series where Newt and Hicks must fight to escape a mad General and return to fight for the Earth. The third series known as “Female War” shows this battle on the Earth with Ripley having returned to the fold.

“Nightmare Asylum” was illustrated via airbrush by Den Beauvais and to me is the best looking comic series ever and “Female War” by a young Sam Keith who was just coming off his influential run on the then new Sandman and would later go on to create the The Maxx character is pretty spectacular too.

From Dark Horse:

Long before Alien3 was even a glint in director David Fincher’s eye, Dark Horse Comics was already crafting a terrifying post-Aliens continuity for Ripley, Hicks, and Newt. These are the original stories that took the comics market by storm in a prestige collection of the unabridged and unadulterated series. Collects Aliens: Nightmare Asylum #1–#4 and Aliens: Female War #1–#4.

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1947: Jeffrey DeMunn of The Mist, The X-Files and Dale of The Walking Dead is born
  • 1951: The Thing from Another World premiers in theaters
  • 1955: Kate Mulgrew, Captain Jainway of Star Trek:Voyager is born
  • 1956: Godzilla opens in the US
  • 1975: Death Race 2000 premiers
  • 1999: Existenz permiers

Direct Beam Comms #71

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Better Call Saul Season 3 episode 1 Grade: A

Some people think that Better Call Saul is a pale imitation of Breaking Bad, of which the latter is a prequel. When these people watch Better Call Saul they don’t want Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), they want the guy Jimmy becomes in Breaking Bad; Saul Goodman. Except what I think these people are really getting at is that they’re not as much interested in a Better Call Saul TV series and aren’t willing to take that show on face value, what they really want more Breaking Bad.

Which I get, Breaking Bad is one of the most critically acclaimed and loved series of all-time except I’d like to point out one difference between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul — Better Call Saul is the better series of the two.

Much like from the first to second and now second to third, this latest season of Better Call Saul kicks off right where the last season ended. With Jimmy having betrayed his brother Chuck (Michael McKeen) which ended up with Chuck in the ER and then Chuck turning the tables on Jimmy. And Mike Ehrmantraut* (Jonathan Banks) finding out that while he might be following and keeping tabs on the criminal element of Albuquerque, the criminal element is also keeping tabs on him.

I think this is all why Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad. I’ll admit that while Breaking Bad was a great series in its last few seasons, I honestly don’t think it was very good in its first few. I know I’m in the minority here, but I’ve tried watching that series from the start but could never get into it. That was until I started watching it from later on when the character of Saul Goodman was an integral part of the show. Then I liked Breaking Bad, a lot. But there’s the pesky fact that its first few seasons are just not that good, while Better Call Saul has been great right from the start.

I think a lot of that has to do that the creators of Breaking Bad having learned a lot of lessons from that series, especially what not to do, and applied them to Better Call Saul.

I find it ironic that Better Call Saul is a show with a lot of heart, from Jimmy trying and constantly failing to do right to his partner/girlfriend Kim (Rhea Seehorn) always trying to see the good in Jimmy and make him a better person. Even if in the end with the character of Saul and what he does/has done in Breaking Bad we know that’s a doomed task.

  • What’s not to love about his last name!?

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Season 12 episode 1 Grade: A-

It’s crazy to think about, but until last week the last new episode of MST3K aired nearly 18 years ago. What first started on a local TV station in Minneapolis in 1988, then moved over to the cable on The Comedy Channel which became Comedy Central before switching to The Sci-Fi Channel originally ended its initial run in 1999. I think most fans of the series, myself included, assumed that would mark the end of MST3K but a nearly $6 million dollar Kickstarter campaign in 2015 meant that there was now money to produce 14 brand new episodes of the classic series, which are now streaming on Netflix.

Jonah Ray and the bots

The classic MST3K is one of my seminal cultural touchstones, even if I only ever saw a handful of episodes when they originally aired. To me, MST3K is one of those shows that I keep coming back to year after year. And even though the sets and special effects of the show are cheesy, the spirit behind MST3K has been unmatched the last few decades. I think in the current era we live in when it’s very easy for filmmakers to make things look very slick, to have something like MST3K that at its core is about having things very raw and not slick at all is a bit of an anachronism. But it’s a good anachronism and is something that I adore.

This new MST3K is slightly updated with new faces like Jonah Ray in the lead as Jonah Heston as well as Felecia Day and Patton Oswalt now as the bad guys. But the bots are back and there are lots of familiar names working on the series behind the scenes so this new MST3K looks, feels and has the same tone as the classic series. There are the same cheesy hand-built sets, funny models and goofy inventions. But there are some updates too from Tom Servo sometimes flying around when they’re watching the movie and modern pop-culture references too. There’s a Walter White joke at one point.

The first Netflix MST3K episode takes on the dreadful Danish movie Reptilicus that I’d say was unwatchable in its original non-MST3K form. In fact the only thing that made the movie bearable was having it spoofed on MST3K.

Since all episodes are available and we can see what movies will be featured in upcoming episodes, my only wonder is that most of the movies that will be joked on are all at least 30 years old at this point? It’s not a complaint, just a wonder. Classic episodes of MST3K spoofed movies that were only a few years old at that point, it wasn’t all jokes being made about movies several decades old. I just wonder if getting the rights to even newer bad movies is more difficult that getting the rights to older, bad movies?

I’m Dying Up Here TV spot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kye0QwGX9E

Comics

Vigilante by Marv Wolfman Vol. 1

This edition collects the first 11 issues of the classic 1980s Vigilante series written by Mary Wolfman and illustrated by Keith Pollard. The 1980s Vigilante is DC’s kind’a sort’a answer to Marvel’s the Punisher, except whereas the Punisher doesn’t wear a disguise and goes after any criminals, Vigilante is masked and is a district attorney by day Adrian Chase who goes after the criminals he sees escape justice at the courthouse at night. From Amazon:

As a district attorney for New York City, Adrian Chase used the legal system to keep the streets safe. But when it came to protecting his own family, that system failed him. After losing his wife and children in a failed assassination attempt, Chase makes the fateful decision to take justice into his own hands!

Concealed beneath a featureless mask and supported by an arsenal of custom weaponry, Adrian Chase becomes the Vigilante—and declares all-out war on criminals, using their own brutal methods against them. But Chase’s new vocation comes with a price. Can inflicting violence on others truly heal the pain of his family’s death? Or is the Vigilante doomed to become the final casualty of his all-consuming need for revenge?

Movies

Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer

Thor: Ragnarok trailer

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1946: Tim Curry of the mini-series IT and movie Legend is born
  • 1954: James Morrison, TC McQueen of Space: Above and Beyond is born
  • 1964: Andy Serkis of The Lord of the Rings and Rise of the Planet of the Apes is born
  • 1966: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the Comedian of Watchmen is born
  • 1969: Joel de la Fuente, Paul Wang of Space: Above and Beyond is born
  • 1973: Soylent Green is released
  • 1979: James McAvoy, Charles Xavier of X-Men: First Class is born
  • 1979: The TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century premiers
  • 1996: The movie Mystery Science Theater 3000 opens
  • 2011: The first episode of Game of Thrones airs
  • 2013: Oblivion debuts in theaters

Direct Beam Comms #70

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Brockmire Series premiere episode 1 Grade: B-

The new series Brockmire debuted on IFC last week. The series stars Hank Azaria as the title character, a baseball announcer for the Kansas City Royals who had a drunken on-air meltdown a decade ago that effectively ended his broadcasting career. Fast forward to today and Bockmire has returned to the US after having been around the world finding work where he can like announcing cockfights as well as having some serious addiction issues of which booze is the least of his worries.

But what Brockmire doesn’t know, but Jules (Amanda Peet), owner of the minor league baseball team the Pennsylvania, Morristown Frackers, does, is that he is an internet celebrity because of his on-air meltdown and subsequent post-meltdown press conference that became one of the first internet viral videos. Jules wants Brockmire to announce the Frackers games that feature stunts like having obese players who get hit at bat because their gut sticks out of the plate and always get a walk to hiring a “celebrity” like Brockmire to announce their games and drive attendance.

The first episode of Brockmire was interesting, if we’ve seen the character type a few times before. He’s a person addicted to some substances who tells it like it is but who’s personal life is a mess/in shambles which seems to be a theme of many dramas over the last few years. And honestly the first half of Brockmire as the broken man who returns home to find that while others see him as a celebrity but he sees himself as a joke, is all right. Things do pickup in the second half of the episode where Brockmire goes from an unwilling participant in the Frackers organization to someone who’s excited about baseball again.

That and Jules promises him free booze at her bar if he agrees to stay.

Angie Tribeca Season 3 episode 1 Grade: B

The third season of the TBS series Angie Tribeca is set to debut April 10 but the premiere episode debuted a bit early a few weeks back. I’ve enjoyed Angie Tribeca the last few years and this third season seems to be shaking things up a bit. In previous seasons, the show was structured around self-contained episodes with a sort’a season-long story arch taking up some of the second season. But this new third season looks like it’s going to instead focus on a single story about a serial killer who’s kidnapping trophy hunters and is taking the hunter’s skins in order to cloth the animals.

Think The Silence of the Lambs with Chris Pine as a hilarious stand-in for Doctor Lector meets Naked Gun and that’s the basic vibe for this season of Angie Tribeca.

Movies

Spaceballs

When Spaceballs was released on June 24, 1987 I can happily say that I was sitting in the theater that day with a great view of the screen with my brother and cousin. Unfortunately, that day we chose to see the movie Dragnet instead of Spaceballs. The reason we probably saw Dragnet was that the little two screen theater within bike riding distance of home usually showed one film that was for the kids, Dragnet, with the other film being for adults. My guess is that other screen was showing something like Roxanne or The Witches of Eastwick which we would have had no interest in seeing and chose the sensible Dragnet instead.

Which is a shame since the 1987 Dragnet has been all but forgotten to time but Spaceballs remains a cult classic film to this day.

A Mel Brooks spoof of sci-fi movies, more specifically Star Wars, even today Spaceballs is still pretty funny. And I think the reason I say, “pretty funny” and not “hilarious” is because I’ve seen Spaceballs so many times on VHS and HBO and TV that I know most of the jokes by heart. And it’s hard to laugh at joke you know is coming. Still, when there were jokes I didn’t remember, especially the whole sendup of the Spaceballs movie within a movie, that did get me laughing.

Looking at the movie now I’m surprised that it was rated PG. There’s quite a bit of cursing in Spaceballs, so much so that I’d assume today it would be rated R for language alone. It’s interesting to see what people 30 years ago thought was acceptable for a movie the whole family could see, some cursing, whereas today we’re so averse to that we think cursing happens in movies only adults should see. Then again, I feel that the levels of violence in our PG–13 movies would surly make them rated R 30 years ago.

After watching Spaceballs, or really anything he was in, I come away really missing John Candy. I’m not sure there’s been a comedian like him to come along since he died who has his level of physical comedy and sweetness mixed with his unique timing. At this point Candy’s been gone longer than he was around in pop-culture, but he’s a guy I still really miss.

The Mummy trailer

Alien: Covenant TV commercial

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1976: Jonathan Brandis of the mini-series IT and TV series SeaQuest DSV is born
  • 1979: Mad Max debuts
  • 1983: The Evil Dead premiers in theaters
  • 1986: Critters opens

Direct Beam Comms #69

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Legion season 1 Grade: A

We live in a golden age of TV where there are literally hours and hours and hours of good TV series to watch each week. So much so that even “good” TV shows nowadays seem to be average. Still, every once in a while there’s a really great TV show, something so good it stands out from the rest of the pack. The first great new TV series of 2017 is Legion that just wrapped up its first spectacular season on FX.

Legion might also be the best comic book TV series ever as well. It’s certainly the first comic book TV series that doesn’t seem to be constantly embarrassed that its source material is a comic book.

The first season story of Legion was of psychiatric patient David Haller (Dan Stevens) who slowly discovers that the voices in his head might be something more than mental illness, they’re something much worse than mental illness. So David and another patient Syd Barrett (Rachel Keller) go on the run, find others like them who want to help while also running from a quasi-government agency who sees David as a threat to global security, at one point his powers are referred to as being a “world-breaker,” as they all get to the bottom of what’s going on inside David’s head. And what’s going on isn’t nice — in fact it’s a lot evil.

Too many comic book TV series (and movies too) seem to take great shame in the fact that they’re based on comic books. How many of them are too embarrassed to say, “Based on a comic book” but instead go with the term “graphic novel” instead, of which none of the modern TV series or movies are. Worst of all these tend to either focus only on the dour, depressing parts of the comic books or trying to put them in a world so realistic that the superhero elements don’t quite fit. The creators of the TV series seem embarrassed that the source material might contain bright colors or goofy storylines and instead focus on gritty realism and gigantic city-spanning fight scenes. All of which are a part of the comics, but are not exclusively what makes up all comic stories.

I think the creators of Legion have actually done a great job of capturing a true comic book spirit with their TV show, ironically in a show that looks nothing like a comic book source material. The main characters of the show don’t wear standard uniforms, except sometimes they kind’a do in that they wear the uniforms of the psychiatric institution they were in. There are bright colors, devious villains with creepy names like “The Eye” and even allusions to the comic book source material with lots of instances of the letter “X” turning up in things like windows since Legion takes place in the X-Men universe. There’s also talk of backstory that readers of the comics would pick up on but aren’t so inside that it spoils the overall story for everyone else watching the show.

Let’s not forget the crazy dance numbers of Legion, no joke, episode arcs that take place entirely within the mind and unique characters I don’t think I’ve seen in any other show before.

At times Legion does move at a leisurely pace. Which, at the time I was watching them, seemed like a drag but looking back I realize was building up to something more.

Just like how comic book story arcs work.

Imaginary Mary Series premiere episode 1 Grade: B+

Starring Jenna Elfman as Alice, the new ABC series Imaginary Mary is a sort of cross between the classic 1980s TV series ALF and the 1991 movie Drop Dead Fred. Alice is a super-successful business woman who as a young child in a time of stress created an imaginary friend she called “Imaginary Mary” (a computer animated character but voiced by Rachel Dratch) who vanished as Alice became older. But when Alice falls for single dad Ben (Stephen Schneider) and gets stressed out when she’s going to meet his three kids, Imaginary Mary unexpectedly returns to try and get Alice out of this relationship and back to the life of partying and having fun.

It doesn’t help matter’s that Ben’s kids are the standard sitcom “kids from hell” who seem to have it out for Alice. But by the end of the first episode Alice has come to terms with her and Ben’s family, even if it seems that Imaginary Mary is here to stay.

Imaginary Mary is and undeniably cute show, the problem with it is that I’m not sure where the series goes from here? I enjoyed the first episode a great deal and thought that the idea of an adult still having their childhood imaginary friend, though not totally unique, was handled interestingly here. Alice is scared to grow up and latches onto something from her past to help get through a stressful time in her life. And while Imaginary Mary just wants her and Alice to have fun it’s not like she’s evil. In fact she sometimes has good ideas on how Alice can better get along with Ben’s kids.

My concern about Imaginary Mary is that while the first episode was interesting, I can see the series devolving into a standard sitcom — SINGLE MOM DATES A DAD WITH THREE KIDS AND WACKINESS ENSUES! — with the addition of the Imaginary Mary character. I could be wrong but to me it seems like Imaginary Mary would work best as a limited-run series or something on a cable channel that could push some boundaries. I’m not sold that Imaginary Mary will work as an ABC show, but I’d be happy to be surprised otherwise.

Fargo installment 3 TV commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkUAOahG9iY

Movies

Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer

IT trailer

War for the Planet of the Apes trailer

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets trailer

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1933: King Kong opens in theaters
  • 1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey premiers
  • 1970: Colossus: The Forbin Project is released
  • 1977: Michael Fassbender, David of Prometheus and Magneto of X-Men: First Class is born
  • 1978: The TV series The Amazing Spider-Man debuts
  • 1990: The TV series Twin Peaks debuts
  • 1998: The movie Lost in Space premiers in theaters