TV
Mayans MC
We seem to be living in the age of the spin-off series. If it’s not the NCIS… variety on CBS then it’s the Chicago… series on NBC. That’s not to say there’s not a few spin-offs on cable and streaming too. There, you’ve got things like Better Call Saul and Fear the Walking Dead on AMC which are spin-offs from Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead respectively and Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access which is a spin-off from the Star Trek TV franchise.
There are really two ways that TV creators can handle the spin-off. The first way is to essentially remake the original show, but put it in a different local with different characters. The stories essentially remain the same, it’s just the small details that change. Most spin-offs are like this from NCIS… to Fear the Walking Dead and even most of the Star Trek series too.
The second way is to take characters and situations from the original series and place them into a new story which Better Call Saul is a great example of.
The new series Mayans MC on FX is a spin-off of Sons of Anarchy, which is kind’a, but not quite, a spin-off of The Shield. The Mayans are a California based motorcycle gang, like the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle gang, except the Mayans are latino.
To me, Mayans MC feels like a continuation of Sons of Anarchy in that the same people are working on the show behind the scenes, namely Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, and both deal with essentially the same things — bad guys riding motorcycles doing bad things. Now, maybe Mayans MC will diverge from Sons of Anarchy in some way at some point in the future — though I doubt it.
I could never get into Sons of Anarchy since everything on the show was so heightened. On the one hand, the show seemed to be set in a California very much like our own but on the other there were machine gun shootouts every day, murders and drug and gun running that would’ve been national news headlines with the FBI busting up the gang in a matter of weeks. And after one episode I think Mayans MC will probably just like Sons of Anarchy in that regard.
I think that fans of Sons of Anarchy are probably going to love Mayans MC but I’d be surprised if the show brings in any new fans.
The Purge
I am a The Purge virgin.
So far, there’s been four The Purge movies that have collectively made over $400 million at the box office. Yet I, the self-described “movie nerd” who digs horror flicks, hasn’t seen a single one of them. I think the reason is simply because I generally don’t see horror movies in the theater, and The Purge movies never turned up on any of the cable channels I subscribed to. So I come at the new ten episode The Purge mini-series on USA with fresh eyes.
Honestly, I think seeing some of the movies would’ve helped understanding what was all going on in the TV series. I’m assuming all explanation about what the purge is was described in them, but for the TV show all we get is a little on-screen announcement of what’s about to happen. Why the purge exists in the first place or why people let this happen… we don’t get any explanation about that whatsoever.
There are essentially three stories in The Purge TV series. The first of which is of a brother searching for his sister who’s joined a cult who’s goal is to get purged. There’s also a couple spending the evening at a swanky party riding out the purge. And there’s a business woman doing sneaky things of which we’re not quite sure of during the purge.
The first episode was very much the first chapter in a longer story, and as such it was a bit hard to make heads or tails of how the season would play out. I suspect that The Purge TV series is going to be a ten hours long story about a purge, which the movies seem to be able to do in an hour an a half.
Watching the first episode I kept thinking that I was missing something. That people who had seen all the movies were going, “Oh, this is just like that part from the second movie!” Or, “This guy’s doing that thing because of what happened in the first one.” Or, “This character’s just like that other character from the fourth one.” I, on the other hand, was a bit confused. I’m sure that if I watched the whole series I’d be less confused at the end, I’m just not sure if I’m willing to invest ten hours in it.
The whole idea of a The Purge TV series at this point is a bit odd. The movies are still making money, In fact, the last The Purge movie was released just a few weeks ago in theaters and was the highest grossing movie of the bunch. Maybe it’s because The Purge movies are more of an anthology series of films rather than a continuous series means that splitting off to a TV series makes sense? But I don’t get it.
Comics
Absolute Batman: The Killing Joke
A 30th anniversary edition of the seminal work by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland gets the “absolute” treatment in a new edition from DC this week. At just 64 pages the nearly $50 retail seems a bit high to me, then again there are the standard editions out there of The Killing Joke that can be bought new for $15.
This edition collects BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE with Bolland’s reimagined colors and the original edition’s colors, a story from BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE and Joker artwork from Bolland’s long career with DC, including never-before-published artwork.
Movies
Halloween trailer
What To Watch This Week
Sunday
The Deuce
The second season of the critically acclaimed HBO series The Deuce begins airing this week. The first season took place in an early 1970s era NYC where prostitution and vice was rampant, while the second is set in 1978 where, I’m assuming, prostitution and vice were just as rampant.
Rel
The first new network show of the 2018–2019 is Rel also debuts this week. I was excited about this one when I first heard about it, I really liked the actor Lil Rel on The Carmichael Show, but all the commercials I’ve seen about Rel makes it look like a stinker to me.
Monday-Friday
The X-Files
Starting Monday at 6AM BBC America will be airing five solid days of The X-Files in what looks like episode order starting with the first one and including airings of both feature films too.
Wednesday
American Horror Story: Apocalypse
The eighth (!!!) season of American Horror story looks to deal with the, well, apocalypse on FX. I really dug the first season of this show but, because I think it’s so stylized, haven’t been able to get into later seasons of the show since.
Clear and Present Danger
HDNET MOVIES will be airing Harrison Ford’s final appearance as Jack Ryan in this thriller from 1994 today.
Friday
The Predator
What looks to be one heck of a ride, the fourth film in the sci-fi horror genera The Predator opens in theaters this Friday.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Solo: A Star Wars Story was the one of the movies I had the most fun at this summer and is available for digital download Friday. This one is a must-buy for me, if to see the deleted scenes alone.
Cool Sites
- Stellarium Web Online Planetarium: Stellarium Web is a free open source planetarium running in your web browser. It shows a realistic sky, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
The Reading & Watch List
- PlayStation 2 repair services close in Japan
- The King Chroniclers and the Reimagining of an Icon of American Letters
- Treasures from the Color Archive
- Is there a mysterious Planet Nine lurking in our solar system beyond Neptune?
- This Is What USAF Bomber Pilots Would Wear During a Nuclear Apocalypse
Cool Movie Posters of the Week
Solo: A Star Wars Story Poster 
The Predator poster
