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.
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
What To Watch This Week
Sunday
The follow-up to last winter’s James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction is the new Eli Roth’s History of Horror that premiers on AMC tonight.
After airing on CBS for a season before moving to The CW where it became one of their more-popular series, Supergirl begins its fourth season today.
The new HBO series Camping about a family forced to get along together on a vacation to the outdoors debuts this week.
Monday
The only sci-fi movie to star Pee-Wee Herman, even if he’s listed in the credits as Paul Mall, Flight of the Navigator airs tonight on TCM.
Tuesday
Insomniac Theater: The mostly forgotten 1979 post-Star Wars Disney gem The Black Hole airs on TCM very early today.
Roseanne minus Roseanne The Conners premiers tonight on ABC.
Wednesday
TCM is set to air a whole slew of horror movies starring Boris Karloff including one of my favorites The Old Dark House tonight.
Friday
The third season of the Netflix hit Daredevil drops today.
Set 40 years after the original, Halloween premiers in theaters today. Though if we’re really picking up 40 years after the original, wouldn’t that make Michael Myers a 60 to 70 years old dude?
Saturday
Insomniac Theater: The totally trippy Dreamscape from 1984 about people traveling within other people’s dreams airs very early Saturday morning on TCM. DVR this one for the “Snake Man” scene alone!
The Reading & Watch List
- MOOSE
- How the Beatles got their famous logo
- ‘Halloween’ at 40: Their ‘Horrible Idea’ Became a Horror Classic
- Yuki Kawauchi Is Distance Running’s Elite Oddball
Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week
The Bermuda Depths 
Hellboy
