Recently, there’s been a spate of TV series to feature the super-rich. Be it ones that take place in modern day like Dynasty or in the recent past like Trust or even in the new HBO show Succession, apparently Hollywood thinks that the rest of the 99% of the people out there are dying to see just how the 1% live. Which I’m happy to report that my favorite series to focus on a 1% family, or at least they used to be a 1% family, Arrested Development has returned for a fifth season on Netflix.
David Cross and Jason Bateman
So far, Arrested Development has survived two administrations, one economic crash and two networks and is still going strong.
The path of Arrested Development is an interesting one. Always on the verge of being cancelled by FOX where it originally ran for three seasons from 2003–2006, the series was eventually axed but was brought back by Netflix in 2013 for a fourth season, with the fifth having premiered last week.
The Bluth family, the focus of Arrested Development, are the stereotypical rich family who think only of themselves. There’s not a good one in the bunch. Even elder son Michael (Jason Batemen) who seemed like the normal one in the early seasons of the show turned out to be just as selfish as the rest of the family in later ones. He wants to be the guy who does the hard work and comes in and saves things when past accounting practices and some “light treason” by father George (Jeffrey Tambor) threaten the family business. But he’s always looking out for himself. Michael wants to be the “good guy” but also wants everyone to know just how great he is.
Portia de Rossi
Ironically, what started out as an over-the-top take on a rich family back in 2003 quickly became not so over-the-top as the unbelievable things that happened in Arrested Development became reality. The most famous of which was of George and wife Lucille (Jessica Walter) sinking a fortune into land in order to build a wall between the US and Mexico. Which became a part of the 2016 election and is still something in the news today.
The selfishness continues in the fifth season of the series with Michael trying to dodge his neighbor for the $700,000 he owes her, son George Michael (Michael Cera) visiting Mexico for a cultural experience but finding it basically exactly like California, cousin Maeby (Alia Shwkat) taking after her grandmother when it comes to alcohol consumption and Maeby’s mom Lundsay (Portia de Rossi) running for office since she, “…wants to be part of the problem.”
I love Arrested Development and really like this latest Netflix season. I just wish we would have heeded the warnings present from the first episode of the show. 😉
The first season of the AMC series The Terror wrapped up Monday night, and it too like Barry was another series I greatly enjoyed. Though The Terror did start off slowly and takes a while to “get going,” none-the-less it’s the best limited-series in recent memory.
Jared Harris as Captain Francis Crozier
Based on a true story, here the ships HMS Erebus and Terror are trying to find the fabled Northwest Passage but become stuck in the ice and have to spend a winter in the Arctic waiting for the thaw in the mid–19th century. But one winter becomes two and as a third looms ahead Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris) must decide whether to spend another year on the ice as their supplies dwindle or set off on foot heading south hoping they can find open water and a friendly ship to take them home. But that’s not Crozier’s only problem as it quickly becomes apparent that the food they’re eating was made in a way that it’s slowly poisoning the crew and, even worse, there’s a weird thing that kind’a sort’a looks like a polar bear but is seemingly indestructible who has a taste for human flesh and is working it’s way through the crew a few men at a time.
No one’s quite sure what really happened to the men of the real Terror and Erebus, other than they never made it back home and were presumed either killed by the harsh Arctic elements or when they ran out of supplies, so the addition of this pseudo-supernatural element, it might be a supernatural bear or just a weird mutant one, is inspired. It’s also entirely possible that in The Terror what they men were witnessing wasn’t a super-bear, but a regular one, or even a few bears, but since they were being unknowingly poisoned by their food, maybe they didn’t have their best faculties about them to be aware either way?
Can we trust what the men of the Erebus and Terror are seeing since they can’t totally rely on their senses, or is there really something supernatural going on here?
Ciarán Hinds
The sense of approaching doom in The Terror is palpable as the last third of the season is of Crozier and the remaining men walking south away from their ships and the only safety they’ve ever known in hopes of stumbling across rescue. And even when they do reach an island on their journey it’s not a paradise. Instead, it’s a dead place, covered in rocks and completely devoid of anything the men can eat. Which quickly becomes an issue as the group splinters with one thinking the unthinkable towards the weaker crew members in order to stay alive even a few more days.
There’s really no escape from the Arctic for the men. They can either head further south into the unknown but are in no condition to get very far, or they can stay on their island and stave off death a few weeks until winter comes and does them in. Sometimes in these expeditions into the unknown no one in them comes home, and this expedition to find the Northwest Passage is one of them.
The last episode of The Terror ends up in a place I wasn’t expecting. Not to spoil things, but just because in the history books the fate of the crew of the Erebus and Terror may have played out one way doesn’t mean it plays out the same way in The Terror. Now this doesn’t quite pull an Inglourious Basterds here, but it does go to a place I hadn’t thought of.
I was greatly impressed with how The Terror ended up but have one question — if this is the “first season” of the show as AMC puts it where will a second go from here? Maybe The Terror will become an anthology series for AMC like American Horror Story has become for FX since the story of Captain Crozier and his crew at the end of the first season of The Terror is certainly complete.
The Expanse
A little more than a week after it was cancelled, the TV series The Expanse was “uncancelled” by Amazon and the fourth season of the series will officially premier there sometime in, I’m assuming, 2019.
In the late 1980s one of the most critically acclaimed comic books was Marvel’s The ‘Nam which realistically told the life of soldier Ed Marks during his tour of duty in Vietnam. The comic was very successful long while but as the years went on it became less so, so Marvel decided to try and boost sales by including a story that featured one of their most popular characters of that time who had just so happened to have served in Vietnam as a Marine, Frank Castle aka Punisher. Which was a bit odd since up until then The ‘Nam took place outside the Marvel comics universe where superheroes didn’t exist. So with the introduction of Punisher meant that in reality Ed Marks was living in the same universe as Spider-Man and Captain America.
Regardless, this new Punisher Invades the ’Nam edition collects all of Punishers appearances in The ‘Nam, some ‘Nam stories from other Punisher titles and, I believe, an issue of The ‘Nam that was set to be published but never was because of the title’s cancellation.
Years before he brought his personal war to the mean streets of the Marvel Universe, Marine Sgt. Frank Castle fought in Vietnam — and the man he would become took shape in those killing fields. Revisit the horrors of the ’Nam along with Frank as he battles side-by-side with comrade-in-arms Mike “Ice” Phillips and faces down a deadly jungle sniper, and fights alone in his final tour of duty to rescue a crew of downed airmen from a sadistic vivisectionist. Plus: Years later, “Ice” comes to the aid of his fellow veteran — but can the two of them take down the paramilitary group the Sons of Liberty and a Central American drug kingpin?
