Tag: legion

Direct Beam Comms #122

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Legion

While they might not start out that way, after a while a lot of the villains in superhero movies and TV series become boring and overused. In the Superman movies time and time again it’s Lex Luthor who’s the main baddie and in the X-Men universe it’s Magneto. Not to knock those characters, or the actors who portray them, but in the Superman and X-Men universes there’s literally hundreds of amazing villains that could be used, yet those standby bad guys get used time and time again.

Rachel Keller
Rachel Keller

Except the FX TV series Legion, which is part of the X-Men universe, doesn’t use Magneto, or even an antagonist many people would know. Instead, the creator of that series chose to use a relatively obscure villain, the Shadow King.

A little backstory — in the comic book universe David Haller is the son of Professor X and suffers from a condition of multiple personalities where each personality controls a different power. Haller was such a powerful mutant that he, abet accidentally, destroyed the entire X-Men comic book universe a few decades back. The TV series approaches things a bit differently, though still very interestingly.

In the first season of Legion, Haller (Dan Stevens) is a person who’s suffered his entire life with mental illness and ends up in an institution. But it’s an odd place where it seems as if some people there possess strange abilities. And as David begins exploring past memories he comes to realize that he too possesses said “strange abilities” when inexplicable past events suddenly becomes very explicable if the explanation was that David has superpowers. And the reason that David is in an institution rather than running around and using his powers for good is that there’s a mutant parasite called the Shadow King (mostly Aubrey Plaza) who’s attached itself to David’s psyche and is feeding off of him and his powers and keeps him in a delusional state.

Aubrey Plaza
Aubrey Plaza

I’m a comic book collector and while I’m intimately familiar with the likes of Luthor and Magneto, I was only dimly aware of the Shadow King. Which I really liked in Legion. If I don’t really know a character, then I really don’t know what they’re going to do next, unlike villains who get used all the time. The first season of Legion kept me guessing as to where it was going to end up right until the end which made for what I thought to be one of the best series of 2017.

Now comes a second season of Legion which began last week. Always a series that’s just as much style as substance, but is able to be BOTH rather than just style, the show picks up about one year after the events of last season with the Shadow King on the run and Haller kidnapped by a robotic orb. Now returned to the fold, Haller finds that the group of mutants he was working with in the first season to battle the Shadow King have joined forces with the mysterious “Division 3,” a sort’a government organization, since both came to the realization that the Shadow King’s more dangerous to the future planet than their small group of mutants

But David’s returned a bit different, he seems to be hiding things. And the one place you should never try and hid things is alongside other mutants who can read minds.

I was a bit concerned when watching this latest season of Legion as the show takes some time to ramp up. I was worried that this season was going to be more style than substance, but when the second season story kicked in and made my jaw drop all my fears about where Legion was headed dissipated and I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next.

Fahrenheit 451 TV spot

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #118

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Star Wars Rebels

Over the years I’ve had to remind myself that for the most part, Star Wars Rebels is a kid’s show. Time and time again I’d get sucked into the story of the series only to get pulled out when there’d be an episode that was all-action, or one where the characters break into some location they realistically shouldn’t be able to or do some otherwise fantastical thing that didn’t fit with the “sci-fi realism” other episodes. Then I’d have to remember, Star Wars Rebels is a kid’s show on a kid’s network, Disney XD, and all the episodes with the complex stories and character relationships that I’ve dug so much over the last four seasons but came to an end last week; those were the anomalies that didn’t fit with the standard kid’s show episodes.

But beautiful anomalies they were.

Star Wars Rebels was one of the first Star Wars “things” to debut after Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas a few years ago. Taking place sometime before the events of Episode IV, in Star Wars Rebels it’s dark days for the nascent rebellion who, at that point, literally have no hope of defeating the Empire. Enter the crew of the ship the Ghost lead by one of the only Jedi left alive after Episode III Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and ace-pilot Hera Syndulla (Vanessa Marshall) who, along with their crew, try and stop the Empire’s expanse anyway they can while also teaching young Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) the ways of the Jedi. Along the way the likes of Darth Maul and even Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones himself!!!) shows up to try and put an end to the rebellion.

The creators of Star Wars Rebels did a great job of not upsetting hard-core fans of Star Wars like me while at the same time telling new and interesting stories from a period that, up until then, wasn’t mined very well for its potential in previous media. Anyone who knows Star Wars knows that the Empire is at its height in Episode IV and because Star Wars Rebels takes place immediately before the start of that movie, we as the audience knows the characters on the show aren’t going to be the ones to defeat the Empire. But playing on this, in Star Wars Rebels many of the victories are minor ones, and because the focus of the show is of the crew of the Ghost, even these small victories can feel like big ones.

Over the course of four seasons there’s been a few ups and downs with Star Wars Rebels, which is to be expected. Some episodes worked better than others and some seasons worked better than others too. But it’s the fact that any of the episodes worked at all on a level other than simple kid’s action series that I think Star Wars Rebels was one of those hidden animation gems that fans of the genera flock to but most others ignore because, “I don’t watch cartoons.”

I suppose even if Star Wars Rebels is done I should be happy that the creators of the series got to tell their whole story without the show being cancelled before the end of the story as so many animated series are.

Legion TV spot

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

Lost in Space TV spot

Comics

New Mutants Epic Collection: Curse of the Valkyries Paperback

New Mutants Epic Collection: Curse of the Valkyries PaperbackI have a feeling that this collected edition of New Mutants was originally meant to coincide with the release of the New Mutants movie that was originally due out this spring. Except that movie was pushed back til next year while this collected edition is still being published on its original release date. This edition is kind’a interesting in that it marks the end of the original New Mutants story run right before Rob Liefeld took over the book up until issue #100 when New Mutants would come to an end and be transitioned over to X-Force.

From Marvel:

From the horror of Limbo to the glory of Asgard! As the fires of Inferno burn, the New Mutants must escape Magik’s dark domain – but that leaves the way open for S’ym and his demons to invade Earth! Luckily, X-Factor’s former wards, the X-Terminators, are on the scene! Can Rusty, Skids, Boom-Boom, Rictor, Artie, Leech and Wiz Kid help the New Mutants repel an army of demons and save Magik’s soul? Then, when Hela’s evil spell corrupts Mirage’s Valkyrie side, Doctor Strange lends a magical hand! But to cure Mirage completely, the New Mutants must travel to Asgard, home of the mighty Norse gods! The trouble is, Hela is scheming to murder Odin and conquer Asgard! Will a handful of mortal mutants be enough to defeat the Goddess of Death?

Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics, Vol. 2

Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics, Vol. 2The second collected edition of the Star Wars newspaper strips is out this week. If the first edition was somewhat unique in that all they had to go on was the first movie, then this edition had the first and second movie, the Marvel comic book stories and a few novels for the creators of the newspaper strips to draw from.

From IDW:

The epic seven-days-a-week sagas begin with “Han Solo at Stars’ End,” based on the novel by Brian Daley, adapted by Archie Goodwin and Alfredo Alcala, followed by seven complete adventures by the storied team of Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson. The pair had previously worked together on Creepy, Eerie, and Blazing Combat comics magazines, the Flash Gordon comic book, and 13 years on the Secret Agent Corrigan newspaper strip. They seamlessly shifted gears to take over, at George Lucas’s request, the Star Wars newspaper strip. Included are all strips from October 6, 1980 to February 8, 1981.

Movies

The Movie Chain: #10: The Martian (2015)

Last week: Sunshine

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

The Martian posterI thought the film The Martian was okay when I first saw it. This movie about an astronaut (Matt Damon) marooned on Mars when he’s left behind after a natural disaster and has to survive without any realistic hope of rescue, then having to wait years for rescue to arrive wasn’t my favorite movie of the year. But over the last few years I’ve found myself watching it again, and again. In fact, I’ve probably watched parts of The Martian at least ten times.

I think part of the appeal of the movie for me is the theme of never giving in to desperation. I’m pretty much just the opposite — I’m the guy who would have stayed in the CDC building at the end of the first season of The Walking Dead along with Dr. Jenner. But to see a movie where the message is fight ‘em til you can’t and then fight some more really resonated with me like with the movie Dunkirk did a few weeks back.

I liked The Martian so much that I recently had to put a moratorium on watching it whenever it comes on TV. Sometimes I’ll get so infatuated with certain movies I’ll watch them so many times that I’ll start to dislike them because of over exposure and I don’t want that happening with The Martian.

Next week: No memories? No worries, solve your problems by kicking people in their heads and punching them in their faces.

Cool TV Posters of the Week

Posters of the weeb

Direct Beam Comms #117

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

McMafia ***/****

The last few years AMC has been mostly known as the network that airs The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, marathons of The Walking Dead, marathons of Fear the Walking Dead, repeats of The Walking Dead, repeats of Fear the Walking Dead, Talking Dead, marathons of Breaking Bad and, on occasion, wonderful shows like Better Call Saul. But, for the most part, what once was a network that used to air edgy shows like Mad Men and the above mentioned Breaking Bad now mostly devotes itself to airing back-episodes of shows about flesh-eating zombies. So when a show like McMafia comes along and there’s no characters literally eating other characters I’m not sure what to make of it?

I jest, but whereas McMafia feels like a show that would have fit perfectly on AMC ten years ago, today it feels a bit of an anachronism on there today. But I mean that in a good way.

In McMafia, James Norton plays 1%er fund manager Alex Godman who’s family emigrated to the UK from Russia decades ago. Alex’s life is wonderful. He’s got a beautiful girlfriend, a healthy family and a booming business. But when an item in the news wrongly claims ties from his fund to illegal money coming out of Russia it puts his business into a tailspin. And when Alex’s uncle is murdered, assassinated really, in front of him, he realizes that even though he was never directly tied to his father or uncle’s shady business practices, it doesn’t matter to the people against him and Alex needs to take the family crime mantle as it were or end up in an early grave.

In many ways McMafia reminds me of the TV series Damages, a seemingly legitimate business is involved in illegal activities, mixed with a series like Traffik where crime and corruption are worldwide and the only reason people don’t see it is because they don’t want to. I enjoyed McMafia a lot if I have a few reservations. I keep getting the feeling that this is going to turn into some bigger, British version of the series Breaking Bad. Where a seemingly nice and normal dude in the first episode becomes a not-so-nice and murderous man by the last one. Which is fine, I just hope that the creators of McMafia blaze their own trail rather than following the well-worn path established by Breaking Bad.

Heathers */****

The newest Paramount Network TV series Heathers is set to debut this Wednesday. Or at least it was until the debut of the series was pushed back until sometime later this year after real-life events at Parkland High overtook the fictional story in Heathers. However, the network released the series based on the 1989 movie of the same name a little early to streaming services so lots of people had the chance to see it before it was pulled last week.

The first episode of Heathers follows most of the major beats of the movie where at Westerberg High there are three people named “Heather,” all girls in the original but two girls and a guy here, who are the cool kids at the school. Alongside these Heathers is Veronica (Grace Victoria Cox) who’s semi-cool by association and new kid/dreamboat J.D. (James Scully) who quickly draws Veronica’s eye. One night out the two decide to go over to lead Heather’s (Melanie Field) house and take some embarrassing photos and videos and post them to her social networks. But things don’t go as planned and the two end up accidentally killing Heather.

Which is the first problem I had with the series. In the movie J.D. and Veronica (Christian Slater and Winona Ryder) actually kill Heather and spend the rest of the movie trying to cover it up by murdering others in that black comedy. Yet in the TV series, Veronica and J.D. think they’ve killed Heather when in fact she’s not dead. But a suicide video that J.D. And Veronica put together for her goes viral, so when Heather awakens she finds out that she’s famous. Which is really lame. The whole idea of the movie is of this weird, murderous spree J.D. tricks and the cajoles Veronica to go on. I’m assuming the TV version avoids the high school murder-spree thing since, unfortunately, kids being murdered at high schools is a fact of life in 2018 America. But if the creators of the TV Heathers aren’t going to address this in some way and instead are going to change the essence of this story then I don’t know why they’d choose to make a TV version of Heathers in the first place other than on name recognition alone?

Honestly, this all might be a case of the TV version of Heathers not being meant for me. I didn’t like the TV series Riverdale either and that one’s a big hit for The CW and Heathers might be a similar case for The Paramount Network. Regardless, I left watching the first episode TV version of Heathers with a bad taste in my mouth that I think only rewatching the movie version is going to get rid of.

The Expanse TV spot

Fahrenheit 451 TV spot

Legion season 2 TV spot

Comics

In the last few years comic book companies have been releasing big, hardcover collected editions of multi-issue comic stories that are very expensive. I find it ironic that for a medium that started where a kid could spend part of their weekly allowance to pickup the latest issue of whatever, for those same comics to be collected in these edition that cost around $100 each is kind’a crazy. Still, comic companies keep doing this with two sets due out this week so they must be popular.

Kamandi by Jack Kirby Omnibus

I’m a big fan of the Kamandi character and over the years have bought many issues of the comic as well as collected editions of all the issues. Of which a brand new edition is due out this week.

From DC:

One of Jack Kirby’s greatest epics of the 1970s is collected at last in a single hard-cover volume. These are the stories that introduced the postapocalyptic world of the Great Disaster and Kamandi, the last boy on Earth, along with his friends Prince Tuftan, Doctor Canus, Flower, Ben Boxer and more! Collects KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH #1–40!

Absolute WildC.A.T.S.

While I could see dropping $100+ on a good collected Kamandi edition, I really can’t see dropping that much on a collected WildC.A.T.S. edition. If you’re not familiar, WildC.A.T.S. was one of the original Image Comics titles, and while I loved these when they first came out I don’t think they’ve aged too well in the last 25 years. If anything, these comics are a sort of time-capsule to the 1990s style of comic books where action came first and story was a secondary afterthought at best.

From DC:

Twenty-five years ago, Jim Lee premiered the legendary team known as WildC.A.T.s and help launch Image Comics. Now, Jim’s entire WildC.A.T.s run is collected for the first time in one oversized Absolute volume, including WILDC.A.T.S #1–13 and #50, CYBERFORCE #1–3, WILDCATS #1 and WILDC.A.T.S/X-MEN: THE SILVER AGE #1. This edition also features remastered color for WILDC.A.T.S #1–4, the unpublished script for WILDCATS #2 and a new cover by Jim Lee!

Movies

The Movie Chain: #9: Sunshine (2004)

Last week: 28 Days Later…

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

The movie genera of a doomed space mission is a popular one. There’s movies like Alien: Covenant, Life and Cloverfield: Paradoxto name recent few. I think it’s because this kind of movie captures a few different genres at once from sci-fi to mystery and a lot of times romance too is why it keeps getting made over and over again. Whereas most other movies that feature astronauts blasting off into the void end up finding some slobbering monster in their story, the more esoteric Sunshine plays things a little different.

Directed by Danny Boyle who also directed last week’s 28 Days Later…, in Sunshine the crew of the “Icarus II” are flying to our Sun in attempt to kickstart it back to life after something went wrong causing it to dim sending the Earth into a new ice age. Along the way the crew featuring a pre-Captain America Chris Evans, Rose Byrne and Cillian Murphy of the last three movies, find the remains of the “Icarus” and learn that spending too much time that close to a star as the crew of the “Icarus” did can have some very bad side-effects.

Practically a forgotten movie now, Sunshine is the rare sci-fi movie that takes place in the very near future, feels real along with having believable characters and one heck of a great story too.

Next week: Trapped on a far-off planet, surrounded by nothing, low on gas.

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #112

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

The Alienist **/****

TNT has been pushing their new The Alienist TV series for months now. Since last summer with nearly every commercial break TNT would run an The Alienist promo which would lead to the odd pairing of A Christmas Story last month, about a boy’s dream of getting a bb gun for Christmas, with The Alienist commercials that had the line (sic) “We’re hunting a killer of boys…” But I digress, lately TNT’s been trying to get into the (semi) serious drama game with shows like Animal Kingdom and Claws with The Alienist being the latest entry.

Here, it’s New York in the 19th century and someone is murdering kids. Enter Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruhl) the “alienst” or proto-psychologist, John Moore (Luke Evans) a newspaper illustrator and Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) the first female employee of the police department. Kreizler thinks he’s dealt with this murderer in the past with another unsolved case, but will he Moore and Howard be able to stop the killer before he strikes again? Or will the wheels of the 19th century bureaucracy stop them before they’re even able to begin since those in power are already convinced only an insane person could have committed the crimes?

I think a series like The Alienist is going to stand or fall based on the strength of its characters since the subject matter, a serial killer, has been done to death (haha) over the years on TV. Unfortunately, the characters of The Alienist just aren’t that strong. Or, whatever character traits they do possess seem more like those of TV characters rather than real, relatable people. Like Kreizler is mostly a guy who cares too much about solving the crime and is overtly concerned with his patients. Moore visits prostitutes on a nightly basis nut otherwise doesn’t seem to possess much of a personality at all. Howard is probably the most well-drawn of the characters, but even here her main trait is of a woman living in a man’s world.

A series like The Knick that took place around the same time as The Alienist had characters who felt like they were flawed people with real personalities. The characters of The Alienist mostly feel like stock, blank slates meant to keep the plot moving forward.

Counterpart ***/****

What Counterpart on Starz reminded me of the most, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, was one of the many sci-fi related TV series that seemed to thrive in syndication/cable in the late 1990s early 2000s. The log-line from Counterpart reads just like one of these shows, “A UN employee discovers the agency he works for is hiding a gateway to a parallel dimension.” I could easily see this show airing at midnight every Thursday night before Seven Days and after Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with one killer, trippy opening credits sequence.

Even the theme of Counterpart, that a seemingly ordinary person is thrown into a world of intrigue and espionage with a more experienced partner is a well-worn TV trope too — the “buddy cop” show.

Of course while Counterpart might share some of the same themes/DNA of these earlier shows it’s of a pedigree well above them. The series was written and created by Justin Marks who wrote the Academy Award wining The Jungle Book and stars prolific actor J.K. Simmons who’s an Oscar winner himself.

And while those 1990s/2000s series might have also starred Academy Award winners too, it was usually actors who’s time in the spotlight had past and were only forced to do TV as a way to pay the bills. Today it’s a completely different world where popular actors are lining up to do series like Big Little Lies, Fargo and, yes, Counterpart.

The first episode of the series mostly deals with lowly cog Howard Silk (Simmons) who has a weird job for a UN agency in Germany where he goes into a room and recites certain preselected phrases to another person in a similar room separated by glass. What Silk learns when he meets a copy of himself at the agency is that during the Cold War an experiment accidentally created a duplicate Earth 30 years ago and ever since then the two Earths have been diverging and have entered a dimensional Cold War of sorts. Enter alternate Howard Silk (also Simmons) from this other dimension. If our Howard Silk is meek-mannered then this Silk is a man of action who’s a secret agent who shoots first and ask questions later. He’s on our Earth chasing an assassin who’s slipped over and is out to murder meek Howard Silk’s wife.

But can we trust this alternate Howard Silk when there’s really no way to check his story other than his history with our Silk? Does he have other motives from crossing back and forth between the two Earths?

I enjoyed Counterpart a lot but unfortunately don’t get Starz — I got to watch the first episode over a free preview weekend. So while I might get to see the rest of the series later I didn’t think the show was strong enough to turn me into a subscriber.

Comics

X-Men: Legion – Shadow King Rising

With Legion being a much talked about show on FX, Marvel has started releasing collected edition of comic books that featured David Haller the main character of that series. One is an edition entitled X-Men: Legion – Shadow King Rising.

From Marvel:

David Haller is no ordinary mutant. Son of Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men, David’s incredible mental powers fractured his mind — and now, each of his personalities controls a different ability! And they’re not all friendly, as Xavier and the New Mutants find out the hard way! But as Legion struggles to control the chaos in his head, he attracts the attention of one of Xavier’s oldest and most malevolent foes: Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King, who’s secretly been stalking and manipulating the X-Men and their allies. When the Shadow King sinks his hooks deep into David’s mind, will two teams of X-Men be enough to defeat him — or will David be the key to the villain’s ultimate victory?

Movies

Threads

One of the scariest movies ever made, and is now more relevant than ever, is set to get a Blu-ray release.

From Severin Films:

In September 1984, it was aired on the BBC and shocked tens of millions of UK viewers. Four months later, it was broadcast in America and became the most watched basic cable program in history. After more than three decades, it remains one of the most acclaimed and shattering made-for-television movies of all time. Reece Dinsdale (Coronation Street), David Brierly (Doctor Who) and Karen Meagher (in a stunning debut performance) star in this “graphic and haunting” (People Magazine) docudrama about the effects of a nuclear attack on the working-class city of Sheffield, England as the fabric of society unravels. Directed by Mick Jackson (THE BODYGUARD, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE) from a screenplay by novelist/playwright Barry Hines (Ken Loach’s KES) and nominated for seven BAFTA Awards, “the most terrifying and honest portrayal of nuclear war ever filmed” (The Guardian) has now been fully restored from a 2K scan for the first time ever.

The Cured trailer

The Death of Stalin trailer

The Movie Chain: #4: Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Last week: Strange Days

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

One of the more controversial movies of the last decade is Zero Dark Thirty. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow of last week’s Strange Days with script from Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty presented a cinematic version of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the eventual raid on his compound that would lead to him being killed by elite Navy SEALs.

The controversial part of Zero Dark Thirty was that it depicted torture as being used as one of the ways that would eventually lead to the location of Bin Laden. On the one hand I can see the controversy here since the movie links torture to the eventual outcome, which may or may not be factual depending on who you trust. But on the other hand if it is historically correct why not put it in the movie and then audience members have the debate if it was necessary/right or not? Which is kind’a what happened.

Regardless, if Zero Dark Thirty was controversial it’s got to be the most controversial yet influential movie in modern history. By my count there are at least four TV series on now that all, shall we say, borrow heavily from the raid on Bin Laden’s compound by the SEALs featured in Zero Dark Thirty. There’s SEAL Team on CBS, Six on History, The Brave on NBC and Valor on CW. Now these series pretty much ignore most of the theme of Zero Dark Thirty — that it was years of hard work by people working on the ground in dangerous places to that lead to the raid — and instead just concentrate on the action aspects of soldiers kicking down doors and shooting guns while wearing night vision goggles.

Next week: Motion capture never looked so good.

The Reading List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

The best TV series of 2017

CategoriesFeature, TVPosted on

Mindhunter

Serial killers have been stalking lots of TV series in one way or another for decades now. They play a sort of “boogeyman” to all sorts of various procedural shows and even turn up in regular old dramas from time to time. It wouldn’t surprise me if one day to lift sagging ratings that one might show up in a series like Modern Family. I jest, but it’s true that they’re all over modern TV yet there’s never really been a TV series to address where serial killers come from — that was until Mindhunter on Netflix.

Here, FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff), Bill Trench (Holt McCallany) and professor Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) stumble upon the science of profiling active serial killers by interviewing jailed ones in prison. Back in the late 1970s when Mindhunter takes place everyone knew serial killers existed, but no one had taken the time to figure out how to find them. Then, the FBI was setup to take down bank robbers, not men who murder others for seemingly no reason. Enter Ford, Trench and Carr who spend the series trying to come up with ways of figuring out why serial killers are the way they are and if there’s any way to stop them in the future.

That’s why I think Mindhunter works so well as a series. The show isn’t about the FBI tracking down serial killers — that’s been done many times before on many other shows. Mindhunter is the thinking person’s CSI where the characters aren’t gunning down suspects, they interviewing and probing convicts to find out how they tick to try and develop a science as it were in order to be able to put together an intelligent profile of the killers to be able to catch them before they’re able to murder again.

Better Call Saul

Three seasons in and Better Call Saul is still one of the best things on TV — as of right now it’s the only reason to watch AMC. I’m constantly astounded at the quality of the writing, acting, directing, set design … well, everything about this show.

The third season of Better Call Saul finds lead character Jimmy McGill’s (Bob Odenkirk) life slowly imploding around him as important people in his world turn their backs on him while his law practice goes up in flames leaving him with very few options for a future where he’s got next to no money coming in with the bills still piling up.

GLOW

Another Netflix series, GLOW takes place in the 1980s at the heart of a real burgeoning women’s wrestling TV series called the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling — or GLOW. What, you don’t remember women’s wrestling in the 1980s!? The good thing is with Netflix’s GLOW you don’t have to as this show isn’t so much about the wrestling as it is about all of the women and men who went in to make GLOW a reality. Like Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie), an actress who can’t land a part to save her life where GLOW represents a last chance for her to be in the entertainment industry.

I think what works best about GLOW are the characters like Ruth — they’re all different and they all want different things out of their experiences with GLOW. Sometimes what they want goes together and sometimes what they want doesn’t.

Stranger Things

The second season of the bonafide pop-cultural phenomena Stranger Things debuted on Netflix a few months back and was easily the series the most people I knew were excited about returning. Stranger Things is a show that cuts across different demographics — I know 50 year olds who watch the show along with 10 year olds. It’s not necessarily a family show but is a show I think families can watch together. As long as those families don’t have kids who are too little and might be frightened of terrifying things that go bump in the night.

The Orville

I can’t say I was much looking forward to The Orville when I first heard about it last summer. A live-action sci-fi show from animated series impresario Seth McFarlane who seems to reveal in being controversial? And the first TV spots for The Orville sold the show as a sort of TV version of Galaxy Quest where the crew of the ship are buffoons.

But even watching a single episode of The Orville it’s plainly obvious that the series has got nothing to do with Galaxy Quest. In fact, The Orville might be the show that’s closest to the true spirit of the original Star Trek since, well, the original Star Trek.

The Punisher

Netflix really “hit one out of the park” with their latest Marvel series The Punisher. Like I’ve said before the character of The Punisher is one of my favs, so I suppose I’m predisposed to like this show. But I didn’t just like The Punisher, I loved The Punisher. It’s certainly one of my favorite series based on comic books ever, and is certainly my favorite Netflix superhero show.

Legion

I’ve never really been a fan of comic book TV shows. They tend to put the story ahead of the characters when to me it should be just the other way around. That’s why I loved the FX series Legion so much. There were parts of that show that literally take place inside of characters heads in this weird mental space where I had no idea of what was going on. Yet the characters of Legion are so strong I would, and did, follow them almost anywhere.

The Expanse

I know SyFy has been trying to turn their image around for years now. And while the quality of most of SyFy’s shows are questionable at best — as I write this SyFy.com which is a website that’s ostensively there to promote SyFy’s TV shows instead has articles about Stranger Things and Thor Ragnarok on its homepage, neither of which appear on SyFy — there’s one bright spot on the bleak thing that SyFy has become which is the TV series The Expanse. One of the best, if not only, hard-sci-fi series on TV these days, in its second season The Expanse continued to improve and tell quality stories about life in the future where humanity, on the brink of extinction, is still squabbling over trivial matters.