TV
Krypton
Superman on TV is nothing new. The on of the first live-action superhero TV series based on a comic book was The Adventures of Superman in the 1950s, there was a popular series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the 1990s and a very successful teen-oriented show Smallville in the 2000s. And Supergirl on The CW on now is one of the more popular shows airing on that network too. So the new Krypton series on SyFy is really just the latest in a long line of shows based on the man of steel.
Well, kind’a sort’a as Krypton doesn’t actually feature the strange visitor from another planet, its focus is on Superman’s granddad Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe) and doesn’t take place on Earth. It tales place on that “another planet” Krypton 200 years in the past.
In that time on Krypton the house of “El,” of which Superman, aka Kal-El will one day be a part of, is no more after Seg’s granddad Val (Ian McElhinney) was executed for insisting that there’s life on other planets which also meant the house of “El” was striped of their rank and name. Seg’s a bit of a wild-card, I think he got into more fistfights in the first episode of Krypton than is usual for a whole season of a similar regular series. When he’s not beating people up he’s running off to be with his girlfriend Lyta Zod (Georgina Campbell). But when mysterious Earthling Adam Strange (Shaun Sipos) appears and tells Seg that the future of Earth, if not the universe is is at stake, Seg must get his life back tougher and finish Val’s work to stop to stop a massive interstellar threat so that his genes can continue on.
Krypton is interesting if it’s a bit all over the place. On the one hand some of the characters and characterizations are as over-the-top as those in the 1940s Superman movie serials, yet in other times Krypton tries to be a modern series with sex and violence and a season-long story. I don’t mind either over-the-top or modern, I just wish the producers of the show had settled on one.
The visuals of Krypton are right in line with the current ethos of the DC movie franchises — dark and dreary like in the Man of Steel movie. I’m not opposed to this, it’s just a different view of Krypton that we’ve thus-far seen on TV. Always before Krypton was this bright, shining beacon of hope, even if the scientists of Krypton couldn’t see that their own demise was coming. The Krypton of Krypton is a worn-down nub of a civilization where people hide from the weather under domes, corruption is rife and most of the populous is under the sway of a religious leader who’s taken over the government of the planet.
I’m kind’a sort’a interested in seeing where Krypton goes from here, but my guess is that after a few more episodes I’ll probably be done with Krypton for good.
Santa Clarita Diet
All episodes for the second season of the Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet dropped last Friday. This series about a realtor/mom Shelia (Drew Barrymore) who one day unexpectedly becomes an undead flesh-eating ghoul, but not turning totally zombie as long as she eats enough human meat was funny enough last season. This new season starts right where the first one left off, with Shelia’s husband (Timothy Olyphant) and daughter (Liv Hewson) along with neighbor (Skyler Gisondo) trying to find a cure for Shelia’s undead-ness before she either totally zombies-out or rots and falls apart.
I liked the first season of Santa Clarita and was looking forward to the second, if I can’t quite all remember what went on in that the first? And I’m usually pretty good at remembering those things. I don’t think that Santa Clarita Diet is a bad series, it’s just there are so many shows on now and they’re all coming so fast and we consume them so quickly, that even if a show is good, if it doesn’t really stand out it can be as quickly forgotten as it is watched.
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