A few TV shows I watched this winter wrapped up their first seasons last week.
The Passage ⭐
The Passage was incredibly average, which for a network sci-fi horror drama is probably the best-case scenario. That being said, I really enjoyed the final episode of the season that was set after the vampires had broken out of the facility holding them and had spent a month sucking their way across the country, turning thousands, if not millions into sun-phobic blood-suckers. This isn’t the post-apocalyptic setting of The Walking Dead it’s the actual apocalypse where the government and military are still around fighting back, which hasn’t been done on TV before as far as I’m aware. However, the series looks to jump 100 years into the future and go straight to post-apocalyptic territory next season.
If there is a next season, that is.
Project Blue Book ⭐⭐
Slightly better than The Passage, and one series that’s definitely getting a second season, Project Blue Book ended in The X-Files territory with the UFO chasing events of the first season leading the
characters to Washington DC where it seems the conspiracy of wanting to
hide the UFOs from the public goes right to the top. I’m guessing the
creators of this History channel series will keep looking for the truth
behind the UFOs for many, many seasons to come.
Umbrella Academy: Everyone I know really
digs this show and I like it quite a bit, I just wish it didn’t move at a
snaaaaaaaaail’s paaaaaaaaace. ⭐⭐
The Punisher: I’m slowly working my way
through this one since it was recently cancelled by Netflix which means
this will probably be the last of the Jon Bernthal as the title
character. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Project Blue Book: A decent show, Project Blue Book really plays with the truth as episodes of the series are based on real-life UFO events that turns out to only be slightly based on these events. ⭐⭐
I Am the Night: Six episodes into this one and I’m not sure there’s really a story here yet? ⭐
Corner Gas: I’m re-watching this Canadian sitcom on Amazon Prime and like it as much now as I did when I first watched it years ago. ⭐⭐⭐
The Passage: I had high hopes for this one and The Passage is alright if a bit stuck with the typical drama contrivances that seem to plague network series these days. ⭐
As a kid I was fascinated with all things UFOs and aliens. I read
every book in my school library that covered them and found the idea of
“Project Blue Book” to be fascinating. This was an official governmental
investigation into UFOs that went from the 1950s until the late 1960s
at a time when aliens came in all shapes and sizes where people would
report being whisked off to Venus or Mars for the afternoon on a regular
basis.
While officially Project Blue Book didn’t find any evidence that
aliens were visiting the Earth in flying saucers, none-the-less the case
files from those investigations have cast a long-shadow on all sorts of
things in pop-culture, especially with the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the TV series The X-Files. I mention that show because while the new History channel series Project Blue Book reportedly takes much of its story from those actual case files, I think it takes just as much from The X-Files as it does those investigations.
In the first episode of Project Blue Book Aidan Gillen plays
real-life Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a university professor trying to get a
grant to study launching cameras in space in the late 1950s. Contacted
by the Air Force to work on a special project since he also served in
that branch during World War II, he’s brought in to be the civilian
scientist helping investigate UFOs along with Capt. Michael Quinn
(Michael Malarkey). Hynek helping the Air Force will also help with him
with that pesky grant he can’t seem to convince anyone to give him.
Quinn and Hynek’s first investigation involves a pilot in South Dakota
who chased a UFO one night, hit it and brought back evidence in the form
of a damaged and radioactive aircraft. While Capt. Quinn and the Air
Force want an open and shut case, they blame this one on a weather
balloon, Hynek sees something different when weird elements of the
pilot’s story begin adding up and pointing towards something much more
scary.
The truth is out there!
Well, kind’a. I thought the first episode was good, if it were a bit too much The X-Files in the 1950s with one character being like Mulder a believer and
another like Scully a skeptic for my taste. While this worked in The X-Files because the person driving the story was the believer and the skeptic followed, those roles are reversed in Project Blue Book with Quinn, the skeptic, in charge and Hynek with his alternate view is
just along for the ride. I kept thinking during the episode that if the
Air Force wanted reports that debunk UFOs rather than confirming them,
why not just hire a skeptical civilian scientist rather than a believer?
Wouldn’t that be easier?
Which is apparently what happened in real life. Hynek started off as a
skeptic but was turned into a believer by what he experienced during
his investigations. Which to me at least is a much more interesting
story and a deeper character arc with someone changing rather than
starting out one way and then staying that way until the end. And now
that I think about it, that’s what happened to Scully. She started out a
skeptic and by the end of The X-Files was more of a believer than Mulder.
My main concern for the show though is that if it’s all going to be
cases based on Project Blue Book then that’s a little limiting. The X-Files wasn’t all aliens all the time, it was also monsters, supernatural entities and computers gone amok. If all Project Blue Book has are “little green men” I’m worried that’s going to get boring.
Also, I gotta assume that while Project Blue Book is based
on real case files, they’re going to be, shall we say, “embellished” at
the very least. The first episode was based on a real-life incident that
occurred in 1948, which would have put it a few years before the
official start of Project Blue Book, and does seem to have a pilot
really chasing lights in the sky in his fighter but not everything else
that happened with Hynek and Quinn reenacting the incident in another
plane or the pilot ending up in an institution.
Whenever I come across a movie or TV show that was based on something that really happened I always think of this axiom from Mystery Science Theater 3000, “’Based on’? Yeah, in that they’re both in English!”
When I was growing up in the 1980s, Disney wasn’t very popular with
the kids I knew. I don’t mean we didn’t see Disney movies, even if many
of them were released under the Touchstone Pictures brand, nor did we
not watch Disney on TV since there were quite a few cool TV movies
released then under the Disney brand then too. But as for what people
think of as Disney with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pluto and the rest, I don’t
remember them being around at the movies or on TV growing up.
The kids I hung out with were much more into characters from Looney Tunes than Mickey Mouse. In fact, for a time in the 1990s Looney Tunes characters like the Tasmanian Devil and Marvin the Martin were
everywhere, on t-shirts, cars and body parts with tattoos. But not so
much with the mouse.
And I think I know the reason why.
While in the 1980s episodes of Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry running after-school were ubiquitous across the TV dial, during that
time period Mickey Mouse was nowhere to be found. The reason was back
then all things Disney related were moved from regular TV to the new
Disney Channel, and back then the Disney Channel was a premium channel
you had to pay extra for like HBO. So if your parents didn’t pay up
you’d never see any Mickey Mouse cartoons. I knew of exactly one person
back then who had the Disney Channel as a kid, the rest of my friends
and family did not.
And because there was a whole generation of kids who grew up without a
way to easily see Disney cartoons we never had too much fondness for
them or their characters.
Which is why the whole idea of these new streaming services popping
up all over with that have their own series you can see no where else
frightens me a little.
If you want to see new episodes of Star Trek you can only do that on CBS All Access. If you want to see new episodes of the upcoming Star Wars TV show, and eventually any of the Star Wars movies outside of the theater, you’ll have to do that on Disney streaming.
Star Wars TV series
All of which is fine, except I wonder how this will affect those brands in the future?
Part of the reason I love all things Star Wars was growing
up the original trilogy of movies would turn up on broadcast TV from
time to time. And even when it eventually moved to cable it wasn’t on
the premium channels and was easy to see. I remember watching marathons
of Star Wars many a Thanksgiving.
The same goes for Star Trek. I only really started watching that series when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered. And when that show hooked me I went back and watched all of The Next Generation since it aired in syndication and was pretty easy to see.
And since I’m a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek I’ve spent many hours and more money than I’d like to think about on
them, collecting everything from the films to posters to toys and
everything in between.
I don’t think I’d be as infatuated with them if the only place to see
them would’ve been two outlets that my parents would have had to pay
extra to get. I might have bee into Star Wars because of the
films, but I’m not sure how into them I would’ve been if it wasn’t as
easy as it was to see them after the theater?
Right now it makes perfect financial sense to move Star Trek and Star Wars to these streaming services. They have this incredibly dedicated
fan-base who’ll follow those franchises to the ends of the Earth and
don’t mind paying $10 a month to do so.
My question is in 20 or 30 years when there’s a generation of kids
who grew up knowing about shows that only appeared on streaming they
might not have gotten, will they care as much as we do today? I think
not, I think they’ll be like my generation and Disney. We’re aware of it
but we’re not invested in it.
Ironically, right after my generation came of age Disney began
getting its act back together and in the 1990s the Disney Channel became
part of basic cable. Even more importantly they started releasing a
popular series of movies and syndicated TV shows that really connected
with the next generation of kids. To them Disney and Aladdin and Rescue Rangers and The Little Mermaid are their childhood touchstones where Looney Tunes and Transformers and G.I. Joe are part of mine.
It will be interesting to see if in a decade or so places like Paramount who owns Star Trek and Disney Star Wars will look back at what they’re doing now as some great mistake? That
instead of tapping into a well of fandom they’ve actually capped that
well and have taken short-term gains but setup a long-term collapse.
DC Entertainment is set to release the seminal Mark Waid/Alex Ross comic mini-series Kingdom Come in one of their gorgeous “Absolute” collected editions. The downside is this runs about $100 retail.
In the not-so-distant future, the DC Universe is spinning inexorably
out of control. The new generation of heroes has lost their moral
compass, becoming as reckless and violent as the villains they fight.
The previous regime of heroes—the Justice League—returns under the most
dire of circumstances, which sets up a battle of the old guard against
these uncompromising protectors in a conflict that will define what
heroism truly is. Collects KINGDOM COME #1–4.
Overlord movie trailer
Aquaman extended look
What To Watch This Week
Teen Titans! Go to the Movies
Sunday
The latest animated Star Wars series Star Wars Resistance premiers this week on Disney HD.
TCM begins gearing up for Halloween and will be airing a whole bunch of movies featuring mummies including The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse Sunday evening.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC for it’s 1,790th season.
Tuesday
The surprisingly underperforming Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is released on digital this week.
TCM will air the 1992 Stephen Hawking documentary A Brief History of Time today.
Wednesday
After “Mummy Sunday” TCM will air a “Christopher Lee Wednesday” with a
bunch of horror movies that featured the iconic actor with the likes of The Devil’s Bride, Horror of Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Horror Hotel, The Face of Fu Manchu and Rasputin, the Mad Monk.
Friday
Netflix will release its horror series The Haunting of Hill House Friday.
Matt Weiner’s first new series since Mad Men entitled The Romanoffs debuts on Amazon Prime.
First Man about astronaut Neil Armstrong starring Ryan Gosling premieres in theaters this week.
