TV – Page 9 – Dangerous Universe

TV

Daredevil ⭐⭐

It’s been almost exactly 19 months since the last season of Daredevil dropped on Netflix. In that time four separate superhero series have premiered there; Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher and The Defenders. And while Daredevil/Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) was a large part of The Defenders, I have to say that I’ve missed seeing the man without fear in his own series all those months.

Luckily, the devil of hell’s kitchen has returned for a third season after having spent the first battling Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) and the ninja clan the Hand in the second.

After the events of The Defenders, Murdock has been left a broken man having a building literally fall on him. His senses dulled and his hearing nearly ruined, Murdock spends most of the first episode of the third season recovering in a church run by a sympathetic priest and nun. He’s not quite sure where his future lies. On the one hand his friends Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) and Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) think he’s dead after that building came down on him so he could easily walk away from his life and start something new. On the other hand giving up helping the innocent and punching the bad guys in the face is a really hard life to leave.

The one weak point here is that while Murdock spends most of the episode not quite sure if he still wants to be Daredevil or not, the series is called Daredevil and not Matt Murdock so we as the audience knows he’s going to be the Daredevil again, even if he does not. So in a lot of ways this episode feels a little bit superfluous in that regard.

Also returned in this season of the show is Fisk aka Kingpin. He’s gone from the criminal ruler of much of New York to a man behind bars since the close of the first season. And, in a hilarious moment in a loud and raucous jail, screams for everyone else to “shut up” and they obey.

I’m sure the third season of Daredevil will turn out pretty interesting even if the first episode wasn’t much so, and I’m a fan of the show/character so I’m into this one until the end. I just wish that a little more had happened in the first one than it did. Let me put it this way, I think that by the end of the season I’ll look back on this first episode as one the could’ve easily been skipped with nothing lost to the story.

The Conners ⭐⭐

Perhaps the most controversial series of the 2017–2018 season was, surprisingly enough, the revival of Roseanne. Even before an episode aired there was controversy over subject matter and during the run of the show and there was more controversy as well because of some lines in a particular episode about other sitcoms.

But because Roseanne got such strong ratings, more than 25 million viewers tuned into the first episode the week it aired, the series was quickly ordered to a second season by ABC. However, during the hiatus between seasons Roseanne Barr made comments on Twitter that were considered racist, which she famously blamed on the drug Ambien, and just like that Roseanne was cancelled. But because all good stories need a twist along the way, after Barr agreed to leave the show and have nothing further to do with it, Roseanne was un-cancelled, retitled and debuted last week as the Roseanne-less The Conners.

The first episode opens with Roseanne having died off-screen from a drug overdose, some of the first season dealt with her being addicted to opioids and hiding this from the family, and the Conners coming to terms with the loss. I can’t think of any other sitcoms today that portray the working class like Roseanne did and now The Conners do. The series can go from funny to uncomfortable in a single scene and is a better show than most sitcoms because of it.

I genuinely dug the first season of Roseanne and was glad to see it return, and The Conners didn’t disappoint in a strangely moving first episode. It’s pretty much Roseanne minus Roseanne, and because the main character’s gone it means there’s more room for everybody else to have more story time than before.

I don’t think Roseanne’s going to be missed.

Camping ⭐

I don’t quite get the new HBO series Camping that debuted last Sunday. In it, a tightly wound woman Kathryn (Jennifer Garner) goes on a family camping trip to celebrate her husband’s (David Tennant) birthday. She’s got everything scheduled out to the minute and can’t deal when things don’t go exactly as planned. Honesty, Camping is more like a bad episode of Modern Family but with swearing and nudity rather than something I would’ve expected to see on HBO.

Comics

Aliens: The Essential Comics Volume 1

Although these have been collected many, many times before, Dark Horse is set to release a new version of the original three Aliens stories published together in a new volume this week in a volume that retails for $25.

Complete in this first volume is the initial Aliens trilogy–Outbreak, Nightmare Asylum, and Earth War, in which Hicks and Newt–and eventually Ripley–join forces to battle an infestation of Aliens both on Earth and in the wider galaxy.

What To Watch This Week

Sunday

TCM will be airing a load of movie featuring mummies this Sunday including The Mummy, The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and Pharaoh’s Curse.

Monday

After “Mummy Sunday” TCM will have “Frankenstein Monday” which will include an airing of their new documentary The Strange Life of Dr. Frankenstein and classic films like Son of Frankenstein, The Curse of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed!

The fourth season of the series Legends of Tomorrow begins tonight on The CW.

Tuesday

One of the big hits of the summer Incredibles 2 is available on digital download today.

Thursday

Insomniac Theater: At midnight tonight (Eastern) the sequel spy series to Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86 debuts on Sundance.

What was originally set to be the backbone of the Paramount Network back in March, Heathers is now being burned off in a five night “binge” after controversy overtook the series before a single episode aired.

Friday

The second season of the animated series based on the hit video game Castlevania is available today on Netflix.

Books

Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana

Looking to collect much of the wonderful art that’s gone into the Dungeons and Dragons game over the decades, and maybe cash in on a little of the nostalgia DND has been getting ever since it was a feature of the Stranger Things TV show, comes the book Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana.

From one of the most iconic game brands in the world, this official DUNGEONS & DRAGONS illustrated history provides an unprecedented look at the visual evolution of the brand, showing its continued influence on the worlds of pop culture and fantasy. Inside the book, you’ll find more than seven hundred pieces of artwork—from each edition of the core role-playing books, supplements, and adventures; as well as Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novels; decades of Dragon and Dungeon magazines; and classic advertisements and merchandise; plus never-before-seen sketches, large-format canvases, rare photographs, one-of-a-kind drafts, and more from the now-famous designers and artists associated with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Daredevil
Arrow

Direct Beam Comms #150

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVOctober 14, 2018December 2, 2018

TV

The Haunting of Hill House ⭐⭐

I’m a little conflicted over the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House. Part of it is really good but part of it is just okay. But I could easily see the “okay” part turning good if given enough time.

Based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name that was turned into two films, one in 1963 and one in 1999, this new ten episode version takes place over two time periods. The first looks to be about 25 years ago when a family moves into renovate and flip a large manor house named “Hill House.” Father (Henry Thomas), mother (Carla Gugino) and five kids are living at the house during the renovation when weird things start happening. Doors are locked and refuse to open, youngest son Luke draws a woman he sees everyone assumes is an invisible friend while youngest daughter Nell is haunted by an apparition at night.

Cut to present day where the family, now grown adults, have adult problems and don’t quite get along. Especially Nell (Victoria Pedretti) who seems unstable and Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who’s in rehab. Nell’s never quite gotten over her experiences at the house, which present day and past with the family at the house are flashed back and forth quite a bit, and begins losing her grip on reality when the apparition that haunted her as a little girl returns to her as an adult.

The part of The Haunting of Hill House I really liked was all the stuff set in the past. Everything there from the acting to the color choices to the design was really top notch, and scary too. I think where things falter a bit in the first episode comes when the story is set in modern times. To me that had the vibe of Six Feet Under: Paranormal Activity where a few of the characters were a bit too over the top for the reality of the show that was set in the past. Of course Luke is addicted to drugs and sister Theo (Kate Siegel) wears gloves all the time because she’s a germaphobe — even if she doesn’t have problems bringing a date home for a one-night-stand when we first meet her.

Present day in The Haunting of Hill House

It doesn’t help matters that all the time shifting in the episode got to be a little confusing. At one point the family goes running out of the house in the past when it seems as if things have gone all Amityville Horror on them one night and it’s either get out or die. But in the next scene the family are back at the house and everything’s normal again since that scene takes place sometime before the previous one. Even worse is when part of the episode set present day flashes back a few years in time, which left me scratching my head a minute until I was able to figure out what was going on and play catch up with the scene.

I’m assuming this is done since this is how the characters in the present are remembering what all happened in the past, which makes sense. I just wish it had come off a little less confusing. My biggest concern for the The Haunting of Hill House is that I’m not sure how they’re going to sustain the story over ten episodes and not slow things down too much?

Still, I can’t get over how effective and scary some scenes in the first episode were or how good the stuff set in the past was. I also liked how effetely darkness was handled in the episode. Here, the dark is like a fog where things are clear close but lose detail and shape in the distance which I really liked.

At the end of the episode something happens that I don’t want to spoil that seems to indicate that the story set in the present might be more than people just sitting around complaining about their lives.

Doctor Who ⭐⭐

The eleventh modern, 38th overall, season of Doctor Who debuted last week on BBC America here in the US. For the first time in 55 years the Doctor is being played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker and because this current season of the show has a new executive producer with Chris Chibnall, Stephen Moffat left the series last season after having produced it since 2010, in many ways this new season of Doctor Who feels like a fresh, new start.

My question is, is this new Doctor Who too fresh and new?

If memory serves me correctly always before whenever the Doctor would “regenerate*” his companions, essentially side-characters who travel the universe with the Doctor, would remain between the seasons. So whereas the face of the lead character would change, the side ones would stay the same giving the audience at least some continuity between lead actor switches in the show. But this time everything’s new, from the Doctor to the companions to the series’ look and feel and the producer as well.

In this first episode the Doctor comes literally crashing down to Earth and into a train after having been dumped out of her Tardis at the end of the last episode that aired way back at Christmas. She’s confused from having regenerated and finds herself in the middle of an intergalactic hunt where a random unsuspecting person is picked to be stalked by a clad-in-black armored wearing alien. Helping the Doctor are four people she meets on the train. Much like with just about every other companion the Doctor’s ever had, these individuals go from skeptical to helping someone they’ve just met on an adventure in no time flat.

If there’s anything that hurts the first episode it’s this lack of anything connecting it to the past seasons. It’s almost like when Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston in the title role. That show was an almost total reinvention of the series, updated for a 21st century audience and the 2018 Doctor Who feels very much the same way. It’s not as a severe a change as the 2005 one was with the classic series, but there’s certainly a change present in the 2018 one from what’s come before.

Still, while I noticed this I don’t seriously think this is going to affect the quality of the show in a real, meaningful way. The latest season of Doctor Who is different, but Whittaker is a lot of fun in the title role and I love it when every so often TV series change things around, tries something new and shake things up a bit. Shows that rely on the same formula over and over again can get a bit boring and sometimes changes like those made on Doctor Who can keep them feeling fresh and new.

*Regeneration is a brilliant ploy by the producers of the Doctor Who to keep the series going whenever the lead wanted to leave the show. He’d regenerate and a new face would take his place.

Better Call Saul ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Most TV dramas these days have stories that wash over the characters like the sea does over the shore. The story is the thing that moves around and acts upon the characters who mostly remain unchanged. And the characters are just that, characters. They are archetypes — the doctor who’s biggest flaw is that she cares too much about her job, the cop who’s out of control, the scientist who’s brilliant but lacking social skills — and don’t feel like people whatsoever.

I think that’s why I love the AMC series Better Call Saul so much. In that show it’s not the story that interacts on the characters, it’s the character interacting between each other that generates the story. And the characters in Better Call Saul don’t feel like TV characters, they feel like real people.

This fourth season of Better Call Saul has been a series in flux. We all know that eventually the character of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) will one day morph into the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman who was a part of the series Breaking Bad. And I think everyone, myself included, thought this transformation would’ve taken place by the end of the first season, only it didn’t. What we got instead was a slow burn of Jimmy, who’s spent his life trying not to disappoint big brother Chuck (Michael McKean) but failing miserably while also trying to keep his relationship with girlfriend Kim (Rhea Seehorn) from crumbling. And with each and every failure and misstep throughout the seasons Jimmy draws closer and closer to down the path to Saulhood.

Looking back over the season(s) I think I know what went wrong with Jimmy, why he became a “bad guy” in Breaking Bad. He always took the wrong lessons from his failures. Last season he ended up losing his law license and rather than buckling down and doing the right thing to wait out the mandatory period before he can get it back by getting a normal job, he got a job at a cell phone store where he realized the best way to make a little money was to sell “burners,” disposable phones, to criminals for a markup.

If he’d only done the right thing I don’t think Jimmy would’ve ever become Saul. Again and again Jimmy does the wrong thing, even if it’s little wrong things, and because of this he edges closers and closer to becoming the person from Breaking Bad.

And that’s not to mention the wonderful Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut (I love that name) who’s going down a slippery-slope of his own. He started out as a retired cop working as a parking lot attendant and then graduated to becoming a member of a criminal organization led by Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). He’s a guy who’s great on details and the small stuff and genuinely loves figuring things out for Fring. But in the final episode of the season he’s asked to do something to someone he genuinely likes which will cement his place in the organization and get his nickname from Breaking Bad as the “Cleaner.”

Star Wars Resistance ⭐

The new Star Wars Resistance show on Disney Channel is a fun series that’s set right before the events of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Fighter pilot Kazuda Xiono (Christopher Sean) joins the Resistance and becomes an undercover racing pilot in order to spy on the First Order.

Unfortunately, whereas the last Star Wars series, Star Wars Rebels, had a lot of depth in terms of story and characters, even if it also had elements that would appeal to the younger generation, Star Wars Resistance is a show meant to appeal to kids and not really adults. Which is fine, not everything Star Wars has to appeal to middle-aged men. But at the same time I really can’t see myself investing much time in something as lite as Star Wars Resistance in the long-run.

Mr Inbetween ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The wonderful “blink and you’ll miss it because we’re gonna air two episodes back to back at 11:30PM and blow through this one in less than a month” series Mr Inbetween wrapped up its first season last week after having debuted just a few weeks ago on FX. This Australian show, written by and starring Scott Ryan, is about Ray Shoesmith who does unsavory things for unsavory people and is quite good at his job.

While this sounds like a lot of other shows out there, especially ones on FX that’s a network know for over-the-top dramas, Mr Inbetween doesn’t feel like the typical FX show. To me the series it matches the most is Breakind Bad but through the lens of an Australian. Ray feels like a real person, with problems, an ex-wife, daughter and girlfriend. And for the most part he’s a guy who, other than some anger issues, is pretty normal. It’s just that every so often he’s called on to hurt someone who owes someone money, or even sometimes kill.

He’s a complex character and Mr Inbetween is a complex show I don’t think FX has ever seen the likes of.

The first season, just six episodes long, was mostly about Ray dealing with his screwed up life. Be it explaining to a girlfriend why he bashed two guys during a road-rage incident or stringing along two hitmen out to kill him. It’s not really about any season-long story like is in vogue with so many shows these days. Instead, Mr Inbetween is about characters first and story second.

Because this show was so different and so off-brand for FX, and since they seemed to be trying their hardest to burn this one off as quickly as possible, I figured Mr Inbetween was going to be one of those “one and done” series that are here today and forgotten tomorrow. But surprisingly it did okay for FX considering they didn’t air new episodes until after 11PM and they decided to renew the show for a second season.

Horray! Sometimes the good-guys do win, even if they’re bad-guys.

Deutschland 86 TV commercial

Movies

Pet Sematary trailer

Glass trailer