What I Watched In September

I haven’t been very diligent in my television viewing the past few weeks. These shows are what I was able to get through in September. What with the glut of  genre programming, I’ve gotten a lot pickier about what I watch the past few years. There are some shows, I thought I’d be interested in, but after watching a bit,, I lost interest. There are a few I barely got thirty minutes into, before getting tired of the premise, like The Dark Crystal. This was a show I was initially excited about, but once it came time to sit down and watch it, I just didn’t fee like making the emotional investment, no matter how shallow. Of the shows below, I at least managed to get through an entire episode.

 

Carnival Row

Well, first  of all, the show is gorgeous, but ultimately, I probably will not finish the show because I got really tired of looking at the lead actress’ face looking all sad. She just glowers through the entire show, and we spend far too much time looking at the same facial expression, sometimes for minutes at a time. You know what would be radical? If she smiled. But I don’t believe that actress knows how to do that, because I have never seen her do it. Ever!

On the other hand , it’s fascinating to watch Legolas be a human detective. He glowers a lot too, but he looks more handsome doing it, and he has the exxcuse of looking at mangled bodies all the time. The show does have some other bothersome shit in it, like the fact that there is one, light skinned, woman of color in the show, and she is a one of the Fae, and a sex worker. There is one Black man in the show, and he is a rich,  aristocratic, Fae, who has decided to woo a regular human/White woman, who is a kind of fairy bigot.

Its’ obvious that the Fae are stand-ins for people of color, and the situation on the show is an echo of our current immigration system. For the record, this show takes place in an alternate universe, where certain things in history didn’t happen, like slavery (I think), and magic works, and multiverse travel is a thing. The Fae in the show are all from a parallel universe, which is at war with  some human looking invaders. They are flooding into the current universe as refugees, along with some type of monster, that’s preying on Fae homeless and streetwalkers, while Detective Legolas is on the case.

There’s also a frustrated romance,  which I wasn’t too interested in, between Legolas and the lead character, but I will tolerate it, I guess, but just wasn’t buying the relationship. The two actors have no chemistry at all, and all their drama was unconvincing, but then I haven’t seen anyone that that particular actress (I think her name is Carla Delevigne) has ever had chemistry with. Maybe she’s just a bad actress? I don’t know. I want to like her ,and she is very pretty, but I’ve never liked her in anything I’ve watched her in. What she does have is intensity, and gravity ,and I wish she would choose the kind of roles that better highlight those qualities.

There are parts of the show which are fascinating, like the worldbuilding. I’ve also been told by a friend of mine, that I trust, that the show does get better as the season moves forward. And let me say it again, the show is absolutely gorgeous, to look at. I want to dislike the show, but I can’t, because I’m a ‘ho for a pretty show. I don;t know. Maybe I will finish it.

 

 

Titans

I started the first episode of season two, and it took a minute for me to be impressed. The last episode, Raven brought her father, the demon Trigon, to Earth and asked him to resurrect Garth, in exchange for her soul or something. Outside her house, the rest of the team were trying to figure out a way to get inside and save her, and they do manage to get inside, but one by one, they all succumb to the worst part of their egos, and Trigon takes over their bodies, or something, and they turn all black-eyed and evil. Trigon gets defeated by Raven, and she absorbs his powers or something, and that frees the others from his influence. Or something. Honestly, I really don’t care about the plot,  which is pretty pedestrian for these types of shows.

But I am interested in the individual characters, and their  relationships to one another, because I find them fascinating, for different reasons. This is one of the reasons behind my love of ensemble shows and movies. Last season, it was the relationships I saw developing between Garth and Raven, and Dick and Kory, that captured my attention. Donna Troy, also known as Wonder Girl (Wonder Woman’s little sister) was introduced at the tail end of the season, and I like the relationship I see developing between her and Kory/ Both of them are close friends of Dick Grayson, and I  wonder how that works. There’s still never enough Garth, who turned out to be my absolute favorite of last season. I’m still indifferent to Raven, even though I loved her in the comic books.

I’m still not a fan of Hawk and Dove. I just think they are the two least interesting characters in the entire show, and I wish so much time was not devoted to them. On the other hand, I would love to see more of Jason Todd’s bratty Robin, and his conflict with the elder Robin, now Nightwing. Bruce Wayne makes a cameo too, but I don’t know that actor, and I found it difficult to wrap my head around the idea that that was Batman.

I plan to finish up the rest of the season, in time, because there will be lots of nice cameos, including Cyborg, who is now starring in Doom Patrol. New shows air on Thursdays, on the DCEU streaming app.

 

 

American Horror Story 1984

This season is built on a number of slasher movie tropes, all of which should be instantly familiar to anyone who watches Horror movies. A lot of slasher movies get referenced, like Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Cabin in the Woods. It contains the usual cast of characters that make up such movies, where the basic plot is introducing a group of unlikable people to an environment they can’t escape, and dropping a monster into it. But the show also interposes real life serial killer Richard Ramirez into the plot in a big way.

Brooke is the virginal/ good girl, who meets the slut archetype, named Montana or Monique, or something, in aerobics class, along with the handsome pretty boy, the dumb and angry jock, and the token negro, named, naturally, Ray. Those were the only names I got out of this episode. I will be watching more of this show because it does seem like the season will be fun, and since this is Ryan Murphy, I know that its going to get more and more batshit as the season progresses. It certainly seems like more fun then the rather gloomy last season. Perhaps I will actually remember some names by the third episode.

This group of barely likable/unlikable people (I have decided that I like Brook) decide to become camp counselors for the Summer, to get away from  Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker, who went on a house invasion/killing spree of  the women in LA at that time, for …Satan. I guess.

The night before they are set to leave, Brooke is actually attacked by him, and survives, although he threatens to get her later. On their way to the camp they hit a traveler on the road, and take the severely injured man to the camp with them. I do have an objection to the addition of Ramirez to the show because I think it glorifies, real life killers, and his deeds, which were truly atrocious. He shot, bludgeoned, and  even macheted his victims. I feel like the show will run into the same problems, with this character, that Netflix did when it showcased Ted Bundy, in a couple of dramatic documentaries. But then that seems to be the risk anytime television references serial killers. There will be a contingent of people who glorify and empathize with the killers.

Once they get there, the camp owner turns out to be a deeply religious evangelistic woman, who expects them all to abstain from sex. It turns out, like Brooke, she is the survivor of a serial killer massacre, at the camp, when she was a child. Her survival is the reason behind her religious fervor. The guy who killed her camp mates, (named Mr. Jingles), escapes from the asylum, where he was kept, and hheads to the camp too. So you’ve got a head on collision of various killers, an injured stranger, religious extremism, and horny young people.

I know I was a little dubious about watching this because the fashions and music are every bit as annoying as I remember, (even though I generally like 80s Pop culture). However, it was nice to hear Salt N Pepa, or some Whitney Houston, because usually, when White people remember any pop culture after the 70s. they never seem to remember the existence of Black culture, and/or music of that time. I mean how the hell do you forget the existence of Prince? At least I think I heard this music, and if I did, then its a bit anachronistic, since neither one of them produced albums until 1988, and 1985, and I thought the show was only referencing music from 1984.

Anyway, the second episode has already aired, and it looks like fun. I’m not necessarily a fan of serial killer movies, but I have watched my share of them, and I do have at least a couple of favorites, so I’m looking forward to seeing references to them, at some point in the season. Also, I remember studying Ramirez in college. (By studying, I mean that I read a lot of books about serial killers and profiling, because apparently, that’s a phase that a lot of autodidacts go through.)

 

 

Prodigal Son

Speaking of serial killers, there’s this thing. I’m not exactly sure what to call it, since it wants to be a whole lot of different shows. I want to like this  because  of the vibes I’m getting off the actors, but its hard, because everyone acts like they are all in a different show, and there is an unusual comedy aspect that keeps cropping up at odd moments. The show cannot seem to make up its mind if it wants to be a comedy, a drama, a detective show, or a buddy cop show, but is only doing one of those things well. Guess which one.

The show stars Michael Sheen (Woohoo!!!!) as a serial killer who has been caught and jailed. He has a strong relationship with his son, played by Tom Payne, who looks vaguely familiar (He played Jesus in The Walking Dead. I’m glad to see hie’s still working.) and yeah, he’s kinda cute. The lead character’s family was torn apart when his father was discovered to be a serial killer, after which he decided to study serial killers as an agent of the FBI, while using his father as a resource. The two of them eventually have a falling out (which we don’t get to see in this episode) and he doesn’t see his father for ten years. After being fired from the FBI, for being reckless, he becomes  a New York city detective, and he has to see his father, to solve a case where the killer is copying his father’s crimes.

Now, I really want to like the show for the characters, but like I said, they all act like they are in different shows. The lead character has a mother and a sister. His mother is essentially useless, as a character who thinks she is in a soap opera, while his sister thinks she’s in a teen dramedy, even though she is not a teenager. The coroner, a cute, and  tiny, older Asian woman, acts like she is in a completely different, yet zanier, comedy, and she is obviously attracted to the lead character. There’s a very young Black woman detective, who is obviously supposed to be a future love interest, and who acts like she is in a police procedural, and Lou Diamond Phillips is also present, but thinks he is in a buddy cop movie.  You know what the show could do to change things up a bit, have a romance develop between the older woman coroner, and the lead character. I happen to like that pairing, and they  actually seem to  have chemistry. It could also tone down some of the comedic aspects too. Michael Sheen should be the only funny person on the show.

This show caught me by surprise. It wasn’t on my list and I caught it by accident. I was  intrigued because of the dynamic of a father who is a serial killer, who intensely loves his son. Michael Sheen is superb in the role of course, appearing to be warm and genial, while giving off just enough off-kilter vibes, to seem menacing. Plus there are  the Hannibal the series vibes I’m getting, as both shows are about the intense relationships that develop between a serial killer, and another man, close to him, whose trying not to get roped into madness. I think I’m gonna stick around for a little bit and see where this goes. I generally don’t watch cop shows, or network broadcast television, but it is Michael Sheen, and Tom Payne is just really, really, cute.

 

 

Treadstone (Preview)

One of the creators of this show is Tim Kring, and I trust him with this show because he at least has some experience working with an ensemble cast, on a global scale, having been one of the creators on the series, Heroes. This show is based on the Bourne franchise, which is based on the Bourne books, and is about the clandestine organization that created Jason.

In the first episode, we ‘re mostly just meeting the primary characters, three sleeper assassins, called Cicadas in the show, who awaken to their special skills with no knowledge of their former selves. Some White guy in Alaska, another White man, being held hostage by the Russians, and a Korean piano teacher. We also meet a Black woman journalist, who is set on uncovering the  purpose behind Treadstone and the Cicadas, by a Korean defector.

I really enjoyed the action scenes, which are smart and well shot. These are people who know how to shoot acceptable action scenes. The show follows the protocol of the movies, by respecting the female characters, and giving them plenty to do. They are smart, capable, and know how to kick ass as well as any of the men, giving as good as they get. One of the major set pieces of the episode is the Korean piano teacher, duking it out with the Korean defector. It’s not simply a good action scene, it has a story in it, with suspenseful moments. There are a few things that seem farfetched but I’m willing to let those things slide because the Bourne franchise has moments like that too.

I think I’ll stick around for this show, which doesn’t actually air until October 15th, because this was a free preview. It’s not too emotionally heavy, and it has just enough intrigue and action to be interesting.

 

PS: Sunday Night was the final episode for the Preacher series. I’ve been watching this crazy-as-shit show, off and on, for about three seasons, so I’ll be reviewing the finale sometime in October.

My 2019 Fall Lineup

Here’s a quick rundown of the shows I’m most interested in for Fall. Some of these are already playing. Some, I’m less excited by the idea of the show, than the potential for it to be good, but of course, I always hope they’re good shows, whether I stick around for them or not.

Playing Now

Carnival Row (Amazon Prime)

I watched a couple of episodes of this, and  just wasn’t feeling it. I felt really distant from the characters, and I think its because of the acting. In a lot of ways this is  a typical historical romance film, but with an overlay of politics, as the different races of The Fae are displaced by violent colonization, to another world (not this one), where they are refugees and immigrants. There’s a lot going on with politics, some heavy enemies to friends romance, some tragic romance, and a police procedural. I’ll get into more details in a later post. I think some elements of the plot are intriguing, and some of it is just exasperating, but at all times, I definitely think it’s a more well thought out world than that Will Smith’s Bright,  which aired on Netflix, and  featured a lot of the same themes.

 

Wu Assassins (Netflix)

I watched a few episodes of this, as well, and I liked the plot, and a couple of the characters. The fight scenes are very well done, but there’s a slight tongue in cheek element to the show that kept pulling me out of the story, because some of it is a little ridiculous, and the writers seem to know that, on some level. Ironically, I would have been more intrigued without any of the supernatural elements. I’m going to watch a few more episodes, and see where it goes, but I’m not especially invested, although its not a bad show, and its nice to see Asian characters headlining TV series. I kept wanting to compare this series to Warrior, which was excellent, and Into the Badlands, which got three seasons, and this show came up wanting, mostly because of the acting.

 

The Dark Crystal (NETFLIX)

I haven’t watched this yet, but I fondly remember the movie from the 80s, and when I finally watch, it I’ll let you know what I think.

 

The Terror: Infamy (AMC)

Okay, I did watch a couple of episodes of this. I know a lot about Japanese history, and Japan  as a society, (basically I have a head full of trivia), but I am not Japanese, and just like the series Warrior, this show throws you right into the deep end, and you have to  understand what’s happening, and try to keep up. Since I’m not Japanese, or an immigrant, I understand what’s going on, on a surface level, while suspecting that there are deeper meanings behind what I’m watching, because there’s a lot of Japanese mythology involved. Is it scary? Yeah, sure, but its mostly scary to me, because I have no clue what the fuck is happening beyond some malignant  spirits,  tormenting people at a Japanese internment camp.

 

Two Sentence Horror (CW)

I watched a couple of episodes of this, and I’m lucky I found it, because there’s no promotion of this show at all. It’s  an anthology series, with each episode focusing on one story, for thirty minutes. I enjoyed the first story I watched, which involved a murderous vlogger, and it was interesting because the vlogger was a Black, female, serial killer, who made makeup products out of her victims. I am going to check out a few more episodes too, because I like the idea of the two sentence story, and it seems to have taken a page from the new Twilight Zone, by casting PoC in unusual roles. The second story I watched was about a Japanese family with an abusive ghost, that ended with me all up in my feels. So far, its not delivering what I expect, and I like that.

 

Cannon Busters (NETFLIX)

I haven’t watched any of this yet, and I’m eager to get started. It’s an anime by a Black team, with a Black cast, which is kind of cool. It heavily reminds me of Afro Samurai, and really looks like fun.

 

 

September

6: Travels with My Father (NETFLIX)

I’m really enjoying Jack Whitehall’s travels with his father. I watched the first two seasons, and really liked the dynamic between Jack, and his rather staid, and conservative, British father, who is annoying, but still manages somehow to still  be hilarious. The first season was Jack trying to get his father to loosen up by visiting some of his favorite places around the world. The second season was about his father giving him the same treatment on the continent. I’m looking forward to their adventures in the new season, when they visit some of the crassest places in America, thanks to Jack’s ideas about what American life is actually like.

 

6: Titans (DC)

I was a little disappointed at the ending of the first season, but I like the trailer for the second season, and it looks like fun because of the addition of Krypto and Superboy!. I’m going to check it out and see what other new cameos show up.

 

10: Mr. Mercedes (AUDIENCE)

I didn’t get into the last season too much, but this is the third season, and its  loosely (kinda) following the events of the second and third books, and its okay. I’m not a stan or anything, but its the kind of show you watch on a lazy Sunday night, when not much else is on TV.

 

18: American Horror Story:1984 (FX)

So, I know I’m going to watch this, although I am not in the mood to relive any of those 80s hair, clothes, and musical numbers. On the other hand, it does feature an 80s style serial killer, and the writers are all batshit, so I expect this to be halfway enjoyable, to the point where I just might stan, and geek out, since I lost interest halfway through the last season.

 

26: Creepshow (Shudder)

I haven’t seen much of this beyond the first trailer. I probably won’t see much of it because I refuse to sign up for yet another app just to watch one show.

October

*4: Raising Dion (NETFLIX)

This one I’m really excited about, as I saw the trailer for it over a year ago, about a young Black boy with superpowers, who is on the run from the government.This trailer really got me in my feels, because it isn’t so much about Dion and his powers, as it is about his mom, and her ability to cope with raising a super, and I like her already, just from the little snippets I’ve seen.

I’m here for it!

 

6: Batwoman (CW)

A lot of people hate this show based on the trailer, but I’m actually intrigued. I first saw Batwoman, cameoing on another show, and I’ve read all the comic books about her. Yes, the dialogue needs some serious help, but I like the actress, and the action scenes look like fun. Kate Kane is not the only gay character in the DCEU, but she is the only one with her own show, so I’ll check it out.

 

10: Supernatural (CW)

I’m looking forward to the fifteenth and final season of this show. I told ya’ll I was in it to the end, and I meant it. The last couple of seasons aren’t as exciting as they used to be, but at least two or three times a season, the show airs a real gem, that reminds  me why I stan. As problematic as this show is, I still love The Winchesters, and I’m sticking with them.

 

11: Charmed (CW)

This is one of the few fantasy shows with women of color as the cast, including an Afro-Latina, and also several lesbian characters of color. Its also not a bad show, either. I didn’t catch all of the last season, but I’m gonna be right there for the first episode of this new one, so I can see what’s what.

 

15: Treadstone (USA)

This is intriguing. Its a show based on the  brainwashed sleeper agent idea behind The Bourne series. Treadstone was the program that created Jason Bourne, and this show is about the aftermath of that third movie, after Jason put a stop to it. I’m gonna check it out, because that world was interesting, and the fight scenes look really good.

 

21: Black Lightning (CW)

When the last season ended the family of Black Lightning was about to go global, to fight some kind of intergalactic menace, and I’m here for it. I am more than a little tired of the Tobias Whale storyline,  and wish they would move away from it. Also I’m deeply intrigued by what’s going on  in the ThunderGrace relationship, and I’m looking forward to some answers.

 

TBD: The Watchmen (HBO)

I no longer have access to HBO, so I probably won’t see this. I’m not especially intrigued  because, while I liked the movie okay, I’m really not much of a fan.  On the other hand, it’s Regina King, and I love her, and watching her play a vigilante is gonna be the shit, and this trailer slaps!

November

12: Disney +/ Available At Launch

So the Disney network starts on the 12th, and I’m looking forward to it for a number of reasons. There will be plenty of content, so I’m getting a good deal on my money, and I’m looking forward to watching several of these movies, like Fantasia, and Bao.

Movies

“101 Dalmatians”
*“A Bug’s Life”
“A Goofy Movie”
“An Extremely Goofy Movie”
“Bambi”
*“Bao”
“Big Hero 6″
“Born in China”
“Cars”
*“Fantasia”
*“Finding Dory”
*“Finding Nemo”
“Free Solo”
“Frozen”
“Fun and Fancy Free”
*“Hercules”
“High School Musical”
“Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”
“Inside Out”
“Iron Man”
“Lady and the Tramp”
“Lilo & Stitch”
“Mary Poppins”
“Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers”
“Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas”
*“Moana”
“Monsters University”
“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”
*“Pixar Short Films Collection Vol. 1″
“Ratatouille”
“Remember the Titans”
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”
“Sleeping Beauty”
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”
“Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace”
“Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones”
“Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith”
“Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope”
“Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back”
“Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi”
*“Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens”
“Star Wars: The Clone Wars”
“Steamboat Willie”
“The Good Dinosaur”
*“The Incredibles”
*“The Little Mermaid”
“The Parent Trap” (1961)
“The Prince & the Pauper” (1990)
“The Princess Diaries”
“The Rocketeer”
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (short)
“The Sword in the Stone”
“The Three Caballeros”
“Thor: The Dark World”
“Toy Story”
“Tron” (1982)
“Up”
“Wall-E”
“Zootopia”

 

The Mandolorian

This looks like so much fun.

 

The World According to Jeff Goldblum

So does this! Also, who doesn’t love Jeff Goldblum.

TBD

The Witcher (Netflix)

I talked about this in an earlier post. I’m not as enthused about it as some people.  Ironically, I’m really not into High Fantasy shows that have elves and orcs and shit,  because of the simplistic messaging and overwhelming Whiteness. Game of Throes only caught my attention because of the addition of Ice Zombies.

 

 

AHS Apocalypse (Ep.1)

I’m going to put this here first. This is just these two, very nice guys discussing the events in the show, and giving their opinions. This is about twenty minutes long, and afterwards I’ll discuss what I thought about the show, my feelings, and my suppositions about what I think is actually happening, about which I may be totally, and completely, wrong.

Okay, so my thinking on this is that a lot of what we saw was faked. At least, I think their lives, after the apocalypse, was faked. I think maybe there was a limited nuclear exchange, and its possible it may even have been bigger than that, but I think the rest of the world is still there and  these people were brought to this place for the express purpose of harming and torturing them.

One of the biggest tenets of my personal belief system is: always question what I am being told, especially if it’s by someone in a position of authority, or power, over me. None of these people bother to do that. They’re  the kind of people who have unquestioningly gone along with the status quo their whole lives, and that has continued here, and I believe that’s why they were specially chosen to be in this place. None of them question anything they are told, no matter how nonsensical, or how much it conflicts with what they’ve been  told before.

A lot of the rules they live by just seem designed to be pointlessly malicious and make them unhappy and scared. For example, one of the first things the newcomers see when they reach the Outpost is an execution that I feel was timed and staged just for their arrival. I think the execution itself was probably real, although it serves no purpose to be killing off the members of your survivor group because they had sexual relations with one another, and if that was true, then why was Stu and his partner allowed to be a couple at all, before Stu’s probable death.

During the episode, there were a number of instances where I thought the two lead characters were engaged in what I call “harrowing”. They are basically there to make sure the participants suffer. There’s the possibility that the Coperative, or whatever, is simply a cult of some kind ,and this is the closest they will  get to willing participants.

The food cubes  are to keep them miserable and distracted by hunger, so they don’t think to ask proper questions. After one of the participants goes on a long rant about why there isn’t any food, when they paid so much money to be there, it’s awfully coincidental that the two women just show up with stew, possibly, or not, made from Stu, a moment I found hilarious, and may itself have been staged. Notice that Stu’s partner is the first one who jumps to that assumption. It’s possible that Stu is dead, but I don’t think they made food out of him.  Turning a human being  into hamburger is a very labor intensive activity, and we haven’t seen either of the two women involve themselves in any activity more strenuous than changing clothes. And besides, that’s what the conveniently hierarchical  slave system is for, which is also designed to make the less rich participants just as miserable, too.

Everything in this setup strikes me as being just a little too pat, and a little too well thought out. How convenient is it that they know there are mutants and whatnot trying to infiltrate their borders? And then there was the pigeon. This is what clued me in that all of this might just be a huge farce designed to keep these people trapped. They ration the food pellets again, and then say their border was infiltrated…by a messenger bird from another Outpost. One of the women asks if they could eat the bird, and the attitude is that the bird is inedible because it’s been irradiated by the environment. Then there’s this huge thing where they claim someone is irradiated and could contaminate the others with it, so that person needs to be found and ferreted out.

Yeah, that’s not how radiation works. I know something about this topic from having watched hundreds of Scifi movies, and that is the one topic such movies always get right. Radiation isn’t contagious. It’s not a virus or bacteria. You can’t pass it on to someone, although there can be contact transference. It mostly just causes sickness. Radiation poisoning is only dangerous to the person who has it, not to people who happen to be in their orbit.

Yet, the two leaders of the group act like radiation is this horrible sickness that they can all catch, so the person who has it needs to be sorted out.

They freaked out about one of them being contaminated. But bringing that irradiated pigeon ( its too poisonous to eat) inside is okay. Those two things directly contradict each other.

None of the participants in this charade are quite smart enough to figure out that all the rules are a pointless mess designed to keep them so miserable they can’t think straight about their circumstances.

Another clue, for my theory, is the horrible music played on a constant loop, over and over, for months, only to be arbitrarily changed to another horrible song, for several months. The point of it all is to make everyone deeply miserable, thereby making them all more easily managed.

When they are visited by the so-called leader, at the end of the episode, he rides in on a carriage with Black horses, which are subsequently killed. Now I can understand not wanting to eat irradiated horses, because imbibing it is one of the few ways a person can get radiation sickness, but really, why kill the horses? He doesn’t plan on leaving, that’s why. And why bother to travel on horses at all, if their borders are constantly being violated by irradiated mutants trying to get their stuff.  And once again, bicycles are readily available everywhere, and anywhen,  but no one ever thinks to ride those after the apocalypse.

I think the whole story is bullshit, including the story about the other fallen Outposts, is designed to keep the participants scared and trapped. They can’t be allowed to know that the rest of the world is still out there, or they would try to leave. These are people too lazy and soft to ever leave their comfort zone. They didn’t leave their comfort zones even when they were back in the world, and they need to remain in that hellish place, for the “Cooperative’s” agenda.

And remember, the two women in charge of the Outpost are both unreliable sources of information, and we only know about the world what they have chosen to tell their prisoners. None of the things they’ve said, about the rest of the world being gone, might be true.

The bottom line is, I don’t trust any of this.

Or I could get up off my lazy behind, watch the second episode, and find out I was completely wrong about all my assumptions…

Now I also want to point out how much I loved seeing Joan Collins, and what a thoroughly bitchy delight she is as a character. This is the kind of woman, after being told she may be eating human flesh, shows she seriously doesn’t give a fuck, and says  that it tastes great. Cannibalism doesn’t bother her at all.

I also thought the scene where the Black guy declares they’re eating his boyfriend was hilarious. It’s just so incredibly over the top and ridiculous. Stu is Stew!!! Omg!

I lowkey thought that Paulson’s and Bate’s characters were in a lesbian relationship. They still might be, but I thought that was what we were going to see, for a moment there. it turns out that the two of them are simply up to no good together, is all.

Adina Porter is her usual awesome self, and I’m glad to see her again.  Actually, I’m having a few gleeful moments, as I watch these rich twats get treated like shit, and made miserable. They were such unlikeable people, when they were out in the world, that it’s really a lot  of fun watching them have these meltdowns over their lack of food, and freaking out about the music, which I also find lowkey hilarious.

By the time you read this, the second episode will have aired and I haven’t yet watched that. Depending on what happens,  I’ll have more about the show later. But this season looks to be fun in a way that last season was not, as it was hitting a little too close to home. I think Ryan Murphy is the one of the only showrunners who can infuriate me, keep me in a state of outrage, and still keep me laughing so hard, and glued to my TV, at the same time.

Next Week Hiatus

I won’t be doing my usual weekend reading post. I’m taking a bit of time off until next week so I can work on my long form posts. I’ve got about 5 or 6 long form posts Ive been working on for the past month, and life (illness) and work (full-time) keeps interrupting my publishing of them.

I have been watching what shows I can, when I can . I watched some episodes of Iron Fist, but was ultimately disappointed, despite actually liking a couple of episodes. I’ll have more on why later. I watched The Mayans, which wasn’t bad, but didn’t hold my interest much. I generally do not watch crime shows involving PoC, and it’s about Mexican bikers, so I kind of knew I wasn’t going to fall in love with it, but I didn’t hate it either. I just watched an episode of some show on HBO, called Random Flyness, which was really, really weird, unabashedly Black, and kinda soothing, like a freeform version of the show Atlanta crossed with an episode of Key and Peele. I want to write about that.

I’m most excited about American Horror Story Apocalypse. I did watch the first episode and I have a lot to say about it. I don’t know that I’ll post a review every week on it but that first episode deserves its own post so I’m starting work on that.

Right now I’m working on a post about landscape as an essential narrative element, and my highly ambitious second and third posts about White Male Pandering in Entertainment, along with a couple of review anthologies where I write about multiple shows.

Since the racist cartoon of Serena Williams was released, and the man who drew it claimed to know so little about a profession in which he fully takes part, I’m thinking of doing a post on the history of racist caricature, to explain exactly why what he did was racist as fuck to anyone who knows anything on the subject, and even a few who don’t. Beyond the drawing itself, I’m livid at the idea that this man claims to know nothing of the history of his craft of political cartooning.

I’m an artist. I’ve been a visual artist since I was a pre-teen. I was considered a talented draftsman, and even won local awards for my skills. I’m no cartoonist but even I know enough about the history of political cartooning that I would know a racist caricature if I drew it. I made it a point to learn about the history of my craft and improve, improve, improve. You cannot improve in your craft if you don’t know the history of it. I’m incensed because the man is being lazy and stupid (or just lying) about what he did. Either reason is equally shameful, and I have something to say about that, not just as a Black woman, who felt incredibly attacked by that image, but as an artist as well. Here are some other people who felt some kind of way about what happened:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/11/opinions/racist-serena-cartoon-mark-knight-rebecca-wanzo/index.html

 

This article may sit behind a paywall so be aware. Some of it is about the racial history of Australia, and how these images of Black people have contributed and enabled racism in Australia and the US..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/09/12/what-the-herald-suns-serena-williams-cartoon-reveals-about-australias-racial-history/

 

Warning: This website is an archive of racist cartoons. I wanted to add this for informational  purposes, for those who haven’t really seen such images before, and you can contrast and compare the image in the Australian newspaper, to the historical caricatures of Black women.

The two articles above reference some of the Australian imagery like “The Golliwog”, and the Jim Crow Museum has images of this doll on the site. It also discusses the racial history of Australia, and why and how the doll was created.

There is also a drop down menu under The Museum, which goes into the details behind many of the images, what the various images are called, and the history of their creation, like The Mammy, The Jezebel, and the Black Brute.

https://ferris.edu/jimcrow/cartoons/

 

 

TA Ta until next week.

Fall Watch List 2018

There’s not really a lot of network TV that I’m looking forward to this Fall. There are some interesting shows on cable and streaming, though, and there’s some mid season releases I’m looking toward.

Sept. 4th

I have not watched the show that this one is a spinoff for, but I don’t care. I remember saying I couldn’t get into shows about Bikers because I know too much about actual Bikers, and the ones on TV are really just too damned pretty to be believable as a Biker Gang. The same is true here, but I’m gonna watch this anyway, even though I generally avoid watching shows that are about PoC committing crime.

The Mayans (FX)

 

Sept. 7th

I’m gon try this one mo’ agin! The trailer doesn’t look promising. In fact I’m expecting a certain level of racist wtf*ery anyway, but I’m gonna try to like it, if only because Colleen and Misty play such prominent roles. I’m probably never gonna like Danny Rand or the actor that plays him, but I can tolerate him, because I am a strong black woman!

Iron Fist (Netflix)

 

Sept. 12th

I skipped last season of this show because it was hitting too close to home, but I’ll try to watch this season, even though I skipped the very first season of AHS, too, which this is based on. It looks good though.

I’m moving away from in-depth episode reviews, unless it’s a show I’m super enthusiastic about, (like anything by Bryan Fuller). Some shows that are classed as being mildly interesting just won’t get that sort of treatment, but I will review as many season  premieres as I can.

American Horror Story (FX)

Sept. 21st 

I have no idea what this is about, and I am not a fan of either Emma Stone or Jonah Hill, considering them to be the blandest, most colorless actors that anyone could have chosen for these roles, but the premise looks mysterious, and mildly intriguing, in a science-fictiony kinda way, so I’m gonna watch it.

Maniac (Netflix)

Sept. 28th

This stars Jeffrey Wright traipsing through the wilderness, and some wolves, and that’s really all that’s needed to grab my attention, but the creators decided to add Alexander Skarsgard, who I’ve been in love with since True Blood, and now I’m committed. (It is possible after watching this I’ll  be committed, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

Hold the Dark

 

 

 

Oct. 5th

I couldn’t find a trailer for this, but I know it’s out there. Somewhere. The synopsis sounded as interesting as the title, so…

Into the Dark (HULU)

 

 

Oct. 7

I’m kinda off zombie shows, but this may be the last season to see Michonne get her kill on, and watch her and Rick canoodling. I plan to skip any and every episode that features Negan. I’ve  had about quite enough of him. I’m not super enthused about this season considering how the last episode ended. I’m not a particularly enthusiastic Maggie fan. She’s okay, but I suspect she’s going to be the next person I get really tired of seeing.

Oh, and I also have to keep watching to determine if Jesus is, in fact, as gay as I suspect he may be!

(Sorry for all the unnecessary bolding  above, but I’m too tired, and lazy, to undo it on this iPad. You’ll just have to turn down the volume on your computer.)

The Walking Dead (FX)

Oct. 9th

I don’t know why people are waiting so long to give us a trailer for this new season. I haven’t seen one yet, but when I find it, I will post it, forthwith!

Black Lightning (CW)

 

 

Oct. 11th

Well yeah….

Supernatural (CW)

 

 

Oct. 14th

I don’t know what to think or feel about this show yet.  I hated the original, but this one doesn’t inspire a great deal of enthusiasm either. I will watch it because I want it to have the support, especially after the fans of the original showed their racist asses about this casting, and hey, Mermaids turned out to be okay, so why not give this a try. Hopefully the magic represented on the show will have some elements of the ethnic backgrounds of the characters, instead of the usual European, colored lights styles, seen all over most of TV.

Charmed (CW)

 

Oct. 22

I’m watching this new season because the trailer is ridiculous, and I think Constantine is still visiting the gang. I do have this vague fear that this trailer I put up may be for last season, though, as my punishment for skimming those episodes.

Legends of Tomorrow (CW)

Oct. 26th

Heres a quick 9 minute rundown of what to expect in Season 2 of  Charlaine Harris’ second show. I thought the first season was completely uneven as far as the plot, but I did manage to get into the characters. This show does not have HBOs budget, or acting chops, but I think the show needs to embrace its cheesiness a bit more, like True Blood.  After all, this takes place in the same universe as that show.

Midnight Texas (NBC)

Nov. 28th

I think this is the last season for this show. I’ve been watching since the beginning, and haven’t always liked it, but it has been interesting.

Vikings (History)

 

Mid-Season Series – TBD

Brooklyn 99

This show,  which had run for a good five years, had been canceled by FOX, but has been picked up by it’s original creators at NBC, and will air for 13 episodes, instead of the usual 22, in January.

 

The Orville

I still don’t know how to feel about this show. It tries really hard, but it’s uneven, and sometimes the characters are hard to like. I watched quite a lot of last season, and it does look promising. If it can figure out what it wants to be it might be a great show one day.

 

 

The Passage

I really loved the books this show is based on, and the trailer looks intriguing with a father/daughter relationship between a rogue FBI agent and the little Black girl who trusts him. I’ve already posted the trailer , so here are some interviews with the actors about what to expect on the show.

 

Roswell New Mexico

Yeah, I’m  not watching this because I’m allergic to schmacting, but you know what, somebody, somewhere, is gonna love the hell out of this show. It’s like a teenage soap opera about pretty aliens.

 

Titans (DC SubScription)

I’m not subscribing to this.

 

Star Trek Discovery/ Season II (CBS All Access – Subscription)

I might subscribe. I’m still thinking about that, or just getting a jailbroken Firestick instead.

 

*I won’t be watching any of the 80s reboot shows that are all the rage this season. I’m not interested. I lived through the 80s already, I don’t wanna relive it through a bunch of shows I wasn’t all that hot about when they first aired. I’ll  try to find a better listing of new Fall shows for cable and streaming networks.

Things I’ve Been Watching (October 2017)

Here are some of the shows I’ve been looking at this month. There’s a lot of releases, and I can’t keep up with a lot of them, but I’ll watch what I can and get back to you on what I thought about them.

The Gifted Season Premiere

I’m simply not in the mood for this show, and I’m fed up with this type of plot, now. It’s loosely based on some of the X-Men and New Mutants comic books, in that it has some Sentinel plotline, and some of the characters from those groups. Stephen Moyer stars as a lawyer who used to prosecute mutant criminals, and  the father of two young mutants, now on the run from the government, which is rounding up mutants and imprisoning them in scientific camps.

I tried watching the first episodes, and while I like a couple of the characters, the show is simply not compelling enough to keep me watching it every week. The characters have the usual teenage angst, with superpowers, that made me dislike the First X-Men movie. Blink is a teenager who can teleport by creating portals, and Thunderbird, who is Native American, is a kind of tracker of people and things. I’m dismayed that the show used the Native American tracker stereotype, as that’s nothing like Thunderbird’s actual powers in the books, which consists of speed and strength.

And I’m just not here for yet another plotline of people with superpowers being rounded up and used by the government. This seems to be the only plotline they can come up with for superpowered characters, especially on TV, and once again, there is only the focus on how this affects White, suburban, middle-class families.

Just like with the show Heroes, there is no focus on how the discovery of superpowers would affect any marginalized communities, something I would consider much more entertaining, and which the show Cleverman handled with a certain amount of depth. As I complained about before, we keep getting stories about middle-class White characters being subjected to the same oppressions that have been visited on marginalized communities. This show would have had far more depth and been much more interesting if it had been set in the G/L community,  or the Black and Latinx communities, in which this type of interment is already occurring.

In the forties, the Japanese were rounded up in internment camps because they were considered a danger to the US, and later, authorities used to raid the gay and lesbian communities and lock them in jails with the full force of legal authority behind them. Today, its immigration officials grabbing random Brown people out of their homes, and locking them up on suspicion of being illegal immigrants. What do you want to bet that none of these things will be addressed in yet another show where we see average White people being treated in the same manner?

 

Legends of Tomorrow

I’m looking forward to this new season. I really enjoyed the season premiere, which was a lot of fun and addressed a couple of cliffhangers from last season. This season will also introduce one of my favorite characters. Constantine.

Constantine’s show was something of a bust, but I think he’ll fit right in on this ensemble show, because he just works better when interacting with other super powered, snarky,  characters, and yes, the writers have promised to keep his canonical bi-sexuality intact, something which was never addressed in his own show.

Also, returning this season is Captain Cold, played by the very candilicious, Wentworth Miller.I always loved his dynamic with Heatwave (yeah, I totally ship those two) and I’m looking forward to the two of them meeting again, especially after Cold sacrificed his life to save the team, in a previous season.

I generally like all the characters on this show. My top favorite is Firestorm. I remember reading those comics as a kid, and briefly again in the 90s. He’s an interesting binary character of an older White man named Stein, and a Black teenager named Jackson, and I love the friendship that has developed between the two of them. The show has managed to carefully avoid the stereotype of the Black brute, who is nothing but the muscle in their relationship, by making Jackson an engineering genius, with Stein as his mentor. so naturally, Stein will be leaving the show later this season. I wonder who Jackson’s new partner will be.

I least like Black Canary, but I think that has more to do with the actress, because I like the version from the comic books just fine.

In the last season, the Legends broke the world by causing a set of time anomalies, which caused them to get kicked out of their spaceship. We open the episode with them leading normal lives on Earth. Black Canary is working, unhappily, in a department store, and Jackson is attending college. Stein appears to be the only happy one, spending time with the daughter he never knew he had, from another timeline. Heatwave, played by Dominic Purcell, is also having the time of his life, vacationing on the beaches of Aruba, before he is attacked by Julius Caesar, another time anomaly.

The team gets called back together to fix the problems they caused with all their time travelling last season. This show airs after The Flash, which is absolutely perfect, since I’m really starting to like The Flash a lot more, and have started regularly watching that.

 

 

Brooklyn 99

When we last left The 99 last season, Jake and Rosa were sent to prison, for a crime they didn’t commit, by a corrupt cop. When we meet up with them at the beginning of the new season, the two of them are not adjusting well to their situation. Jake’s roommate is a cannibal, played by Tim Meadows, (he is extremely funny), but we don’t get much insight into Rosa’s situation. We spend most of our time with Jake, as he tries not to get outed as a cop by the Warden, who is trying to capture a drug smuggling ring, run by Lou Diamond-Phillips. I liked the guest stars more than I liked Jake in these episodes, and I hope to see more of Lou Diamond’s character in the future. He so rarely gets to do comedies, and I think he’s hilarious here.

Amy and Charles are working hard to find proof that Jake and Rosa were set up and come up with zany schemes to do this, even though Charles thinks his podcast about Jake should be enough to free him. One of the funnier running gags is that he invited Terry on the podcast, but the interview wasn’t successful, and Terry is confused about why.

By the end of the second episode, all is well in the Kingdom of 99, Jake and Amy have been reunited, Charles can give up his podcast, and well, Rosa remains very much Rosa. I normally do not watch shows about cops, (as I consider all of them to be thinly veiled propaganda about the inherent goodness of law enforcement), but I will make an exception for a really great, or funny show, and Brooklyn 99, along with the very politically incorrect Reno 911, are worth the watch.

 

The Exorcist Season Two

Well, I think its too much to say this is an enjoyable show, because its supposed to be scary, but it does star John Cho as one of the shows leads. The show does have some issues though. I’m not at all interested in the storyline of the two priests who have made off with the possession victim from last season, and the gruff speaking victim gets on my nerves after about thirty seconds, but fortunately her onscreen time can be easily ignored. I just pretend I’m really engrossed in my knitting when she’s on the screen.

John Cho’s storyline is far more interesting, as he stars as the father figure for a home of orphans with severe trauma issues. The home is being visited and assessed for its level of care by an old flame of John’s, so the show is killing it in the Asian representation column, as this role is being played by an actress named Li Jun Li, and I’ve become very invested in their relationship, although I do fear for the life of the young lady, because TV loves to kill off  Asian characters, and that actress isn’t especially well known. The last time we saw Jun Li, she was the coroner from the show Minority Report, and was dressed like a Rave victim.

Well, inconveniently there’s some spooky happenings at the house and the kids are acting up and misbehaving in ways they didn’t before she came there, which increases the tension between her and John’s character as he wonders if she can be fair to him, especially taking into account their dramatic past together.

I’m looking forward to the rest of this season because its so rare to see Asian Americans as stars in a horror show. Actually, this show is pretty good about diversity, and a sensitive portrayal of children with various disabilities. The disabilities are not the source of any of the horror (some outside force is) so that’s another stereotype that’s been upended.  Its not as hysterically over the top as American Horror Story, so I’m able to get caught up in the mystery without getting a headache, and the characters are all mostly likable.

 

The Flash

I’m just really starting to get into this show. I watched most of last season and understood maybe half of what was happening, but I did like the characters, which is what mostly draws me into a show. My favorite characters are Iris, and Cisco, and I got to see a lot of both of them in the season premiere, although I like all of the characters on the show except Caitlin Snow. That actress acts like she’s in a different show altogether, but she has good chemistry with the other characters, so I can tolerate her.

Can I just say how much I genuinely love Iris. She is by every definition of the term, a  rare flower. She’s gorgeous, graceful, intelligent, and heavily reminds me of Nichelle Nichols version of Uhura, an example of the kind of woman I wanted to be as a child. I hate to say this, because I really like Barry, but she is waaaay too good for him. I also love that Iris is a Black woman, because it’s so rare that Black women get to be loved, sacrificed for, or  damseled in mainstream media, and I am here for it. She also gets some really nice speeches during the episode.

Last season, Barry sacrificed himself to save the love of his every existence, and entered what is known as The Speed Force. I think its the source of his powers or something. I’m not too clear on that. Anyway Cisco comes up with a way to save him, but the Barry that comes back to Earth is deeply confused and unintelligible. The entire situation is complicated by a supposed new enemy, come to challenge Barry, a Samurai with a sword that causes earthquakes. The entire crew needs to save Barry, so he can save the city.

I’m looking forward to this new season as I’ve heard that Ralph Dibney’s Elongated Man will be featured on the show. I used to read  his comics as a kid.  Harrison Wells will be making another appearance, too, along with a character played by Danny Trejo. Katee Sackoff is also supposed to show up as a supervillain, I think. Killer Frost has already put in an appearance in this first episode, and this season is supposed to have a lighter tone than the last, which I think all superhero shows could use a dose of.

So, I’m in, I guess.

 

The Orville

I’ve been watching this off and on.. Its still rather uneven n tone, but hopefully it will settle down into what it wants to be by the end of the season. Its not a bad show but it wavers between wanting to be a comedy, with some rather juvenile humor, a drama relationship, and a space opera, and these three things while done effectively, are not meshing well with each other. The switches between styles can be jarring and obvious.

Seth McFarlane’s presence does bring in the guest stars, though. We got a Charlize Theron guest shot, and a cameo from Liam Neeson, which was pretty cool. I kinda like most of the characters, but the surprise for me was the ex-wife and  First Officer, played by Adrianne Palicki. Her, and most of the other women, are the  smartest people on the show. Most of the guys are well… kinda weird, and not too bright, but I like them anyway. There’s a metal robot, and an alien with a same sex husband, and so far the show has been very respectful of the two of them, treating them just like any other couple on the ship. I’m not sure this counts as gay representation though, since they’re both aliens from a mono-gendered  planet.

Its not a bad show. Or rather, not as bad as I thought it was going to be because I was a little dubious about McFarlane being on the show and he and I don’t share the same humor. We still don’t, but so far he hasn’t done anything to actually upset me, so I’m inclined to keep watching.

 

American Horror Story

I’ve pretty much stopped watching this. I’m just not in the frame of mind to consider it entertaining right now, even though it may well be for some people.

 

Outlander

I’m a lot less interested in Claire’s life in the fifties and sixties then I am in her life in the past, which is how this season has begun. In order to raise their chid in safety Claire has gone back to her own time period to raise her little girl. Her current husband has issues with this of course but is willing to wrap his head around the fact that his wife has two very different lives, and that her child is not his. That’s a lot to ask of a man, but he seems to be down for all this.

There’s slightly less Jaime in the opening episodes of this season, so I’m not really as invested as I normally would be. I generally do not like romances, and I haven’t read any of the books this show is based on, but I actually like the show for the romance between Claire and Jaime. Go figure! I guess I’m just a sucker for a period romance, I guess.

 

Forthcoming

This weekend is the debut of the show Mindhunter by David Fincher on Netflix. I’ll definitely be watching it, as its based on one of John Douglas’ non-fiction books on serial killer profiling. I’ve read all of his books as he makes the topic very accessible. Also I like David Fincher. The Atlantic review is here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/mindhunter-review-netflix/542781/

 

My review for the first few episodes will be next week along with my long form review of Bladerunner 2049.

I was supposed to see The Mountain Between Us with Mum, but she changed her mind, the night before, and kicked me out of the house to go see what I wanted, all by myself. I really enjoyed Bladerunner, and have a lot of feelings, and thinky-thoughts about it. My review is in two parts, covering the plot and characters, in comparison to the first film and the book, and then, in part two, some of the technical stuff, like the cinematography, music, and themes.

 

Amended to add: The Supernatural Fox Sisters have a thread up on Twitter listing 31 Horror movies that feature Black women, and rather than review The Thing vs The Thing, I think I’m going to review a few of these movies instead, as some of them are my favorites exactly because there are Black women in them as the main characters.

http://www.graveyardshiftsisters.com/2017/09/watch-31-horror-movies-starring-black.html

I chose five of these movies from the list to review. I’ll surprise you with which ones.

American Horror Story: Cult Election Night

I didn’t like this episode.

Not because it was a bad episode, but because it was really, really hard to sit through.

For the record, I don’t have a problem with clowns. Clowns don’t particularly bother me, but I do have a problem with the rhetoric spouted by Evan Peter’s character (Kai) during this episode, and Sarah Paulson’s character’s panic attacks.

It’s extremely difficult to watch someone have a massive panic attack, when you suffer from anxiety yourself, and I had no idea in advance of those scenes, that they were going to happen. Ally (Paulson) didn’t  have just one attack either, she had at least three of them, and seemed at least mildly  hysterical the rest of the time.

The episode is named after last year’s election night. On that night, we see Ally have her first attack, which I, at first, thought was a bit over the top (only because that wasn’t my reaction to the election), while acknowledging that she had some good points. Her reaction after the election was bad enough, but Ally is a person without any down points in her emotional makeup. She seems to be upset all the time, if only by a matter of degree. She is beset by a host of various anxieties, phobias, and panics, and the rest of the time she seems barely holding on by her fingernails.

Now couple that character with Evan Peter’s Kai, who saw the election as an opportunity to engage in unrestrained assholery, (just like plenty of White men did in the real world), and a speech he later gives at a local government meeting on the nature of fear, and you can see why I found this episode less than entertaining. I get the writers rather heavy handed point, but I still didn’t like hearing it, as it ‘s not too different from the kind of shit actually being said by the president right now.

This wasn’t helped by the show’s usual overwrought style of writing, and the general plot. The whole thing, when it wasn’t triggering my own issues, was also  unbelievably over the top.

After the election, Kai goes upstairs in his house, and smears his face with what appears to be Cheeto dust, Ally’s neighbors are murdered in a parody of the movie The Strangers, or The Purge, I’m not sure which, and Ally gets menaced/chased by clowns at the local store, while two of the clowns have sex in the produce section. (I had the distinct impression that that may have not been a consensual act, which upsets me even further. I will not watch rape scenes!) On top of all that, the young lady, who is hired to babysit her and her wife’s son, has all of the acting range of a lobotomy patient, and happens to be an associate of Kai. I guess her job is recruit Ally’s kid, or something.

When Ally’s neighbors are murdered by clowns, she later finds out that the babysitter had taken her son to watch the event through the window. This is really the point where I gave just up and just checked the fuck out. I don’t know, and don’t wanna know, what happened between any of these characters. At that point, I decided I really needed to watch something else, or just turn off my TV.

Lets face it. This show has finally defeated me.

It upset even my less than delicate sensibilities, and that’s saying something, since I’ve been a fan of this show for the past three years, and sat through some of the most  blatantly outrageous bullshit that the writers could possibly dream up. And that may very well have been the writer’s point. If so, then they won! I give up! They’ve finally gone so far that even I can’t watch this show without laughing, scoffing at it,  or crying, and sometimes all three at once.

Either that, or this show just struck too damn close to home for me to be able to comfortably watch it. I watch some shows to get away from reality, which is bad enough in Trump’s America, with its daily list of atrocities committed against PoC. On the weekends, I usually turn off all social media, just as a matter of self care. The last thing I ‘m going to find entertaining, right now, is a parody of my own  terrifying reality, (although I realize that this may be a form of coping for other people.)

I don’t know that I’ll watch this for the rest of the season. I’m loathe to stop, but I don’t know if I can sit through any more of this. Ally is a really hard person to get past, although her wife has the patience of Job. I like her. (As someone who not only deals with her own issues, I also happen to be the caregiver for someone who is not unlike Ally, so I could identify with her behavior.)

I love that the show depicts a loving and supportive relationship between these two women, where they talk it over,  and work at trying to do and be better, instead of simply fighting, for extra drama. They show love and affection for each other without it turning into titillation for the male gaze. It’s just another relationship, like hundreds/thousands, of other relationships. Their son is adorable too, but I’m also not here to watch their child be corrupted into whatever Kai is, which seems to be the babysitter’s plan.

Plus, there’s all the damn clowns. I get that clourophobia is a thing, but it isn’t my thing. I just don’t find clowns to be all that scary. They’re  less scary than all the other shit happening in the world of the show. And oh yeah, that skin crawling feeling you get at looking at images of human flesh dotted with holes, that’s called Tripofobia. I know you’re just going to ignore my advice, but nevertheless, I feel I absolutely must caution you DO NOT GOOGLE THAT WORD!!!!!

I probably won’t be reviewing any more episodes unless there’s a huge event of some kind.

How can a show be both terrifying, and absolutely ridiculous?

The Fall TV Season (2017)

Here’s a list of shows I’m interested in watching for August, and the new Fall Season. I also included shows I’m not particularly interested in, but some of you might enjoy viewing. i didn’t list some of the returning shows I will be watching though. (The numbers preceding the titles, are the dates of the shows, not a rating of some kind.)

August

4 – Comrade Detective  (Amazon)

I know nothing about this show, except it appears to be set in the mid-80s, and involves a Russian detective who comes to America to solve crimes. From what I saw of the trailer it looked like a parody of 80s cop shows. Its available on Amazon Prime.

 

9 – Mr. Mercedes   (Audience Network/DirecTV)

I read the books for this series, and it’s Stephen King, so I’ll watch this. It should be a good substitute for The Mist, which turned out to be disappointingly boring. The show airs this Wednesday. Just to warn you though, the show does contain some graphic, and possibly triggering imagery:

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/mr-mercedes-creators-expect-blow-back-opening-scene-article-1.3384814

 

18 – The Defenders  (Netflix)

I still have mixed feelings about this, but I will watch it. I hate Jessica Jones, and Danny Rand, but I love Luke Cage, Daredevil and Sigourney Weaver, so I actually hope the show looks, and does well, despite my misgivings.

 

25 – The Tick (Amazon)

I was never a big fan of this character but I have seen some episodes here and there over the years, and I know some people are huge fans of both the comics and the short lived cartoon, so I’m putting this on the list. I may or may not watch it. I will add that the lead actor is absolutely perfect for the role, though.

 

September

5 – American Horror Story: Cult (FX)

I’m gearing up for the final season of this show. Its got a brand new cast, along with three, or four, old cast members. I think this season is supposed to touch on some of the themes of the previous seasons. Here! Have a creepy trailer! Hope you’re not scared of clowns.

 

10 – The Orville (Fox)

I’m not sure I want to watch this because of the lead actor, (we do not share the same type of humor, really), but the special effects look like fun, and I’m always up for a Star Trek parody, which is what this appears to be. Trailers are sometimes misleading though.

 

10 – Outlander (Starz)

I kinda like this show, and not just because Jaime is a hottie. I’ve never read any of the books, beyond the Lord Grey series, because I thought they were Romances, and that’s just not my bag. But I like the show. I’m a sucker for a good costume drama, I guess.

 

10 – Fear The Walking Dead (AMC)

I don’t watch this show because one show about The Walking Dead is harrowing enough,  but I know some people love this one, too.

 

24 – Star Trek Discovery (CBS Access)

I’m eagerly looking forward to watching this. I’ll have to subscribe to the network to watch it though. CBS All Access is a subscription cable service like Netflix. It costs 5.99 a month. The show will air the first episode on network television, after which all the episodes will be available on Access, with a  hiatus after about six episodes, and the rest of the new episodes airing  in January.

 

26 – Brooklyn 99 (Fox)

The show’s last season ended on a cliffhanger with Rosa and Jake possibly going to prison on corruption charges. It sounds like a pretty heavy plot, but this show has a way of getting you to laugh at such things, without feeling guilty about it. I’m looking forward to the new season. I love these characters and don’t like to see bad things happen to them.

 

27 – SEAL Team (CBS)

I keep saying I’m going to watch these military type shows, because I find all this Spec Ops stuff fascinating, but I keep skipping them. There’s an unspoken American jingoism in a lot of them, that just doesn’t sit well with me, and I end up just not liking the shows. Also, David Boreanaz is in this one, and I don’t like him very much.

 

28 – Gotham (Fox)

Apparently, The Scarecrow makes his debut this season. I like Killer Croc and hope he’s on the show, or planning to be. I’ve been skipping this show, because it hasn’t been holding my attention, and because some of the acting was a bit dodgy. I hated most of the female characters because their acting was terrible. I hated this show’s version of The Joker. Penguin, however, continued to be a favorite. but I’ll watch the season premiere, and see what’s what.

 

29 – Marvel’s Inhumans (ABC)

This show just looks bad. But bad with the potential to be good. I’m still mad at the show runner, Scott Buck, for inflicting the mess that was Iron Fist on us earlier this year. I swear to gob the next person who mentions the words affirmative action, and undeserving Black hires, in the same sentence is gonna catch some hands. Mediocre stains like Scott Buck are allowed to fuck up multiple times and still manage to have careers. This show could have gone to some deserving PoC instead of this guy. Okay let me stop here, because this rant can, and will, go  for several pages.

     

 

 The Exorcist (Fox)

I stopped watching this about halfway through the first season, but I know some of you out there are still really into it. (It does look kinda scary from the trailers.) Let me now how its going, and I’ll check out a few episodes ,on your rec.

 

October

1 – Ghosted (Fox)

I’ve loved Craig Robinson, ever since Hot Tub Time Machine, a movie I profoundly hated. I also remember him from Reno 911, as the commercial conman who was always singing using the same five notes on his synthesizer. He also did some hilarious cameos on Brooklyn 99. I was wondering when he’d get his own show and I’m set to watch this one, where he plays some regular yahoo, who gets involved in some afterlife type of shenanigans, although it mostly just looks like a buddy-cop show, with ghosts.

 

2 – Lucifer (Fox)

I’m not a fan of this but I heard the show has greatly improved since season one. I’m still not inclined to watch any of it, because I object to the woobification of evil characters. That whole “I’m not really bad. I just like a little drinkin’ and whorin’,” shtick gets real old with me, real fast. If a character is gonna be evil don’t make excuses for them. Just let them be evil.

 

   The Gifted (Fox)

This show isn’t filling me with a great deal of confidence that it will be interesting. Right now it looks like Riverdale with superpowers, and I hate Riverdale so…nah! Also I’m kinda getting tired of the whole’ government is after superpowered people” plot. I find it difficult to believe that anything formed by the US government would have their shit together enough to be that organized. Private companies could pull it off, but not the government.

 

10 – The Flash (CW)

I watched the last season, and still have no idea what the hell is happening on this show. I’ll probably watch this just to figure out what’s going on.

     

 

Legends of Tomorrow (CW)

I’m really looking forward to this. The show is adding some  new characters, and Damien Darhk is rumored to be back on the show this season. Also I’m a huge Firestorm fan and never get tired of looking at Jax. Vixen is also a favorite who clearly needs her own damn show.

Black Lightning doesn’t air until 2018, but I’m going to check it out, as CW becomes the Official DCEU network.

12 – Supernatural (CW)

Yep! Gonna watch!

       Arrow (CW)

Nope. I always fall asleep on this show. I don’t know why!

 

22 – The Walking Dead (AMC)

Yep! Gonna watch!

 

27 – Stranger Things (Netflix)

I think I’ll watch the second season of this, which looks more interesting than the first.  I watched a few episodes, and wasn’t greatly impressed, but it also wasn’t bad either, in that I didn’t fall asleep. It does have kids in it, and I’m allergic to watching those sometimes. At any rate, it looks like a good tide-over until the release of Stephen King’s IT, in theaters next year.

 

November

2 – SWAT (CBS)

Another military themed show I’m planning to look at, and then don’t.

 

14 – Future Man (Syfy)

I got nothing. I know nothing beyond the fact that Seth Rogen is involved, and I sorta, kinda like him and this title. I know Josh Hutcherson is in it too, and I have no idea who the hell he is, nor do I care to Google him. I will, however, give the show a looky-loo,  see what’s up, and let you know what I think. The Trailer doesn’t tell you much either.

 

21 – The Runaways (Hulu)

This looks like a better match for me than The Gifted. The trailer for he Gifted just looks really bad, I think. But I like the idea behind this show, and I’ve read a few of the comic books its based on, about the sons and daughters of some kind of Superteam, (like the JLA) battling with their superparents. The showrunners say they’re not going to do the usual racist stereotype stuff, so I’m holding them to that promise. this is another one with no trailer.

 

29 – Vikings (History)

Hell if I know. I watched all the other seasons without understanding why I love this show. I might as well finish it up.

 

Midnight Texas, Charlaine Harris’ new show has already begun and is approaching its third/fourth episode. Teen Wolf is finishing its last season, and I’ve pretty much skipped it, for reasons, although I will watch the finale. The show has moved to Sunday nights at 8PM without telling anybody, though.

The most recent show to air is The Sinner, starring Jessica Biel, which I wasn’t particularly interested in, although some of you might be interested, because there may be some supernatural element involved in its plot.

Preacher is nearing its end, and I’m a little behind in my episodes because I’ve been watching movie re-runs (like The Thing and Robocop), and I need to stop it. Game of Thrones is also in its final season, but I’m not much of a fan and I’ve been skipping the episodes. I will watch the Finale though.

I will try to watch Ash Vs. The Evil Dead Season 3, even though I missed the last season. The Punisher is set to be released in November on Netflix. I really liked this character in Daredevil, and I’m looking forward to the show.

 

Coming in 2018:

We’ll be seeing the second seasons of Legion, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, this year. Cloak and Dagger, and The New Warriors is set to be released. I’m looking forward to the New Warriors because Squirrel Girl will be prominently featured.

This isn’t a complete list. For that, visit:

https://www.newsarama.com/30432-the-full-comic-book-television-release-schedule.html

 

And we promise to keep an eye on this show, since the showrunners already feel a need to get out ahead and defend it.

‘Kevin (Probably) Saves The World’ Creators Promise To Sidestep Clichéd People Of Color Trope – TCA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Horror Story Season 6: Finale

Well, that was pretty confusing, but I actually liked it. It was entirely in keeping with the generally snarky attitude of the entire season’s meta approach to televisual media.

We start off the episode with the courtroom proceedings at Lee’s trial and some shameless overacting from the lawyers, as they plead their case. Lee is pronounced “Not Gulity”. Flora, who testified that she witnessed her mother kill her father, was not a believable witness, because she believed in ghosts.

We get more backstory on Lee,  but this time told from the point of view of a cheesy MTV: Behind the Music style show called Crack’d, (which was hilarious) and a parody of some type of ConFest, thrown to celebrate the original Roanoke Nightmare, which totally captures the self serving bullshit of the celebrities featured at such events. Each one of the stars of My Roanoke Nightmare are at their obnoxious best, as they showboat to  try to garner as much attention from the audience as possible.  My eyeball rolling didn’t even reach maximum levels during this stage of the proceedings. Clearly the show runners were just getting started.

The episode itself is total crack-meta as it switches from one television genre to another, as shows within shows. From those opening scenes, we move on to a Barbara Walters type of show, with its overwrought and ponderous interviewing style, with Sarah Paulson reprising her role as Lana Winters, the newswoman from Asylum. She is interviewing Lee about  having been found not guilty of killing Mason, and hilariously has  the tables turned on her by Lee. That interview itself turns truly batshit insane when the last of the Polks,  Lot, shows up with a machine gun, and tries to assassinate Lee in the middle of the interview.

From there, we get a callback to the last episode with some intrepid spiritchasers, called appropriately enough, Spirit Chasers, visiting the Roanoke House during the Blood Moon. I had as little empathy for these obnoxious twits, as I had sympathy for the ones who died in the last episode. That last group didn’t deserve the horrible things that happened to them, but these guys were warned frequently, they watched the second season of Roanoke, so knew what to expect, and the house itself is cordoned off against trespassers with barbed wire. These assholes chose not to believe any of it, and got themselves (and some hapless policemen) murdered by the Butcher’s followers.

Although, when you think about it, the most common trope of all horror movies is people making stupid decisions, so  the show simply ends as it began. Matt and Shelby find a ramshackle old house in the middle of fucking nowhere and decide that would be a good place to live. The Spirit Chasers make the boneheaded decision to trespass on haunted land, where at least a dozen or more people have died. I don’t even believe in ghosts but, just like in that Stephen King story 1408, I don’t have to believe in ghosts to know that staying overnight, in a place where dozens of people have died horribly, is a good idea.

The spirit chasers meet Lee in the house. She is there hunting Flora. This is the part I find confusing because how did Lee know that’s where Flora would be, and how did Flora get there?  Uber? How did she get inside the house? She’s, like, twelve years old! and the place is surrounded by a  barbed wire fence!  In fact, this moment is so confusing, that when Lee showed up, I thought she and Flora were dead and being reunited as ghosts. I  was disabused of that idea because they showed up on the thermal sensors the spirit chasers were using.

It turns out that Flora came back to the house after her mother’s acquittal, to stay with Priscilla. One of the few truly emotional moments is Lee’s reunion with her daughter, and her utter dedication in protecting her daughter, no matter what. Lee, the ultimate survivor, sacrifices her life to keep her daughter from killing herself, so she can stay behind and protect Priscilla, in Flora’s stead, from The Butcher.

As the house finally burns to the ground, Flora sees the ghosts of her mother, and Priscilla, waving goodbye to her. Lee, as she has stated so many times this season, would indeed do anything for her daughter.

Now, I have read a rather shitty review which focused the episode on Sarah Paulson’s character and I was greatly offended by the writer’s complete inability to give Lee her due as the actual star of this season, instead of focusing their review on a White character from a previous season, who only shows up in the last episode of this one. This season wasn’t about Lana Winters, as her story has already been told, and I didn’t appreciate seeing Lee being reasoned out of her own story. I can see the parallels from Lana’s story to Lee’s, but that’s no excuse to remove Lee’s adaptability, determination, fortitude, and search for love and redemption, via her daughter, as the primary focus of this season.

 

I’m not saying Lee wasn’t a problematic character, but that’s why I liked her. One of my biggest complaints about TV and movies (among many, many, many, complaints) is the lack of unlikable women. She’s the kind of woman who is hard to like, because she’s complicated, and I like  that her complications make sense, and are consistent. She’s not just given random unlikable character traits to make you hate her.  Quite frankly, none of the white people on the show came across as people I would like to get to know. But I’d be friends with Lee, if I could. She seems like the kind of person that, once she lets you in that zone, you’re in there forever. When Lee loves people, she loves them wholly and completely, the way she does Flora. But if you wrong her, or betray her trust, you will soon be experiencing fine dining in Hell.

 

The final scenes of the actual show (and not a show within a show) is a shot of The Butcher, the Blood Moon, and all the police, and emergency service personnel, gathered in the valley below, and completely at The Butcher’s mercy.

Yeah, that’s not gonna end well.

But we knew that when the season began.

Overall, I really liked this season. This is coming from someone who generally hates the overwrought dramedy of Reality TV. I think the seasons have gotten  better and better over time. I enjoyed Freaks and Hotel, but those seasons suffered from a great deal of incoherence, and lack of focus, towards the end, with subplots being introduced that never got follow through. This season remained taut, focused, and nuanced, with a clear thematic goal of parodying Reality TV. I haven’t had this much fun with that sort of mockery since that Cops parody of the X-Files, titled appropriately enough, X-Cops.

And before I go, I have to give a shout out to Adina Porter. The first time I saw her she was playing a witch-con-woman on True Blood, as Tara’s broken, abusive mother. I loved her acting then, and she brings that same sense  of steely fragility to her role as Lee,  although I didn’t immediately make the connection when I saw her. Its funny how she keeps playing these broken widows, desperately  trying to win back their daughter’s love, and she has mastered it. She is an incredible actress that I hope to see even more of after this.

Well, ta-ta til next season, people! I hope you enjoyed this one. Let me know in the comments.

“American Horror Story 6: Chapter 7

Wow! Last night’s episode was a total massacre! Literally!!!

Last episode, we found out that everyone involved in the making of The Return to My Roanoke Nightmare died during the Blood Moon. And with the death of Rory, (Audrey’s much younger husband),  killed by the nurses, to complete the lettering in their favorite word, (MURDER), we were off to the races.

When everyone goes upstairs to investigate where Rory has gone, they find a pool of blood, with no body. When Rory gets killed, Sydney, his assistant and cameraman are taken down by Crazy Agnes. I didn’t name her, that’s what the show’s  writers named her, and since I disagree with calling homicidal people crazy, and ableism in general, I’m only calling her Agnes from this time forward. Agnes kills the entire film crew with some kind of hatchet, or cleaver, then goes to the Roanoke house and attacks Shelby. But not before Shelby kills Matt while Dominic just stands and watches.

Shelby is saved, from Agnes,  by Dominic, who wrestles Agnes into submission but doesn’t kill her. Earlier that evening Dominic spent  time trying to talk his way back under Shelby’s skirts, (or yoga pants in her case) but had no luck. Shelby is dedicated to reconciling with her ex-husband.

Even though Matt beat Dominic’s ass earlier that evening, he catches this  little episode between the two of them, and tells Dominic to go ahead and tap that because he doesn’t want her. Dominic thinks this is hilarious.

There’s not one of these people that is remotely  likable. Shelby is indecisive and sends mixed messages to everyone. She ‘s a total flake. Matt has no personality at all. Dominic, Audrey, and Monet are just jerks. Agnes is the world’s worst cosplayer, while Lee is the world’s worst TV cop.

Agnes cuts the phone lines to the house, and the film crew are all dead, so no one can call for help. (Remember everyone’s cellphones were taken, and Diana, Sydney’s first assistant died in a car crash.)

So characterization is just thrown completely out the window, while characters react to the batshitness that’s happening to them. Although everyone does go from not believing any of it is happening, and thinking Sydney is punking them, to using those stupid little cameras he gave them to film their horrific deaths for posterity.  Everybody films everything. One of the strangest moments is when Audrey films Agnes trying to kill her.

Matt is killed by Shelby. I didn’t see this coming but  he really pissed her off.   When Shelby finds him in flagrante with the Celtic witch, he claims he’s in love with her, and Shelby beats him to death with a tire iron.  Here she is turning down awesome sexual escapades with Dominic (C’mon, you just know he’s a dynamo in the bedroom!) for this fool, only for him to turn around and say he’s in love with the creature responsible for killing everyone. Since Matt never had much character to begin with this isn’t exactly the most surprising event.

I have to note,the show is especially graphic this episode. I don’t imagine those of you with delicate sensibilities have even gotten this far into the season, or are even watching the show, but I’m giving the warning anyway. I’m not a fan of torture porn. I always end up covering my eyes during  especially brutal moments, which means there’s a lot of this episode I didn’t see.I’m just here for the aftermath.

Lee, Monet, and Audrey sneak out of the house, via the underground tunnels, to go get help for Shelby, who is suffering from Agnes’ knife wound. They bring their cameras along. They  end up being  attacked by ghosts, find Rory’s body, and are then captured by the Polks, who are out in full stench this evening, because hey! Blood Moon!  Whooowhee!!! In a moment of surreal humor, they season Lee’s leg and chop it off.

 

Yeah see, this is what is meant by White people not being able to cook. You don’t season a haunch before its removed from its host. Really people! Who seasons a chicken leg before cutting it off the chicken? Although, I guess its a good thing that they remembered to use seasoning at all. (It looked like it might’ve been sage, since it was green.) After wards, they force feed the leg jerky to Monet and Audrey. I don’t know where the rest of Lee is, or even if she’s still alive.

In an ironic twist, Agnes gets cleavered by The Butcher, as Shelby and Dominic watch, with horror, from the windows.

There’s really not much plot to this episode. It mostly consisted of illuminating the circumstances in which everybody dies, and filming it all while it happens.

So far, Lee, (until we see otherwise), Monet, and Audrey are still among the living. So are Shelby and Dominic. I expect more character revelations to come out of left field, or even a new plot twist, in the next episode.

If you’re wondering why I’m so flippant about the blood and torture during this episode, after watching the Polks season Lee’s leg, it finally completely dawned on me that this is a kind of Horror mockumentary, like those Christopher Guest films, Best in Show, Mascots, (which is hilarious and on Netflix right now), and This is Spinal Tap. I’m not good with humor that hasn’t been spelled out to me, so while I suspected the show was meant to be funny, I wasn’t certain.

My mind tends to have a more literal bent, so unless its clearly spelled out to me that what I’m watching is meant to be funny, I probably won’t see it. Its  not that I don’t have a sense of humor. It just needs to be switched on.  Like a child, my sense of humor isn’t particularly subtle, either. (I get subtle humor, but you have to tell me its subtle first.) So those of you who caught on that this was a parody of Blair Witch shaky-cam, moviemaking styles, I am here right now. (I may be late to the party, but I made it.)

For further, in-depth ideas, read:

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/effective-american-horror-story-roanoke-turns-subt-244901

I loved this review. It tackles racial issues that were implied at the start of the series, and issues pertaining to privacy and filmmaking. This particular post had me rooting for Lee to be the last survivor. 

American Horror Story Chapter Six

So yeah, the twist is indeed in, as well as the shift in focus of the show. Everything has been shifted about. In the interests of openness I have to admit it o a hatred of most of reality TV. I’ll watch travel and eatery shows, or shows about wilderness survival, with experts in them, and  I’ve even seen a couple of episodes of Naked and Afraid, but that got boring pretty fast. I am however really liking this season of AHS, mostly because it’s not focused so much  on the inane dramas between the characters, but on the actual horror of the situation they’re all in.

The idea that we, and the cast, would be revisiting the Roanoke Nightmare House isn’t the twist though. Sydney, played by my precious cinnamon roll, Cheyenne Jackson, is the creator of the show we just watched in the first five episodes, and his proposal to his television backers is that he should gather together the entire cast, go back to the house, and film the results during the Blood Moon. It turns out that what we were watching for five episodes was a huge hit for Sydney and he wants  to cash in on that, despite what has happened to the cast since then. So ,in chapter six, the show goes completely, full-on meta, and I don’t think what we saw tonight is the last of this season’s surprises.

Now, the show has a tendency to go off focus during the season, as the writers get carried away with their storytelling ideas, and start throwing everything into the plot, just to see if it will stick,or just because they like it. This season, with the exception of a few scenes thrown in just to have some action, or a jump scare, has been kept pretty tightly reined in, so I’ve enjoyed it a lot more than previous ones. Tonight’s episode was kept ion point, as well, making it easy to understand, despite how complicated the plot has actually become.

Since their time at Roanoke, Matt and Shelby have divorced. Matt didn’t care for the fame that came to him because of what happened there, that Shelby called the police on his sister, and accused her of killing her husband, Mason. Yes indeed. That was a dick move on Shelby’s part. Yeah, I don’t like Shelby either. The final straw was when Shelby had an affair with the man who played her husband in the reenactments. His name is Dominic. The actress who played Shelby on the show is actually British, and we get to hear Paulson’s accent, as Audrey, which sounds a bit dodgy. She got married to the actor who played Mott in the last episode, and his name is Monohan. And since he’s so much younger than her ,she’s really super-sensitive about that. I thought it was a scam, on his part, but he seems to genuinely be in love with her.

The actress who played Lee became an alcoholic,  just like the original Lee because she was having trouble dealing with being the public face of the real Lee, who has been accused of killing her husband for the insurance money, and custody of her daughter.  (Angela Bassett’s character is named Monet.) Fans of the show started a petition to have Lee charged with murder, her mother in law is suing for custody of Flora, and everyone treats her with nothing but contempt, including Monet.

But the worst result of the show is Kathy Bates character, Agnes, who played Thomasina The Butcher, in the reenactments. That actress had a complete mental breakdown and started believed herself  to actually be The Butcher, running through  he streets of downtown Hollywood with an ax, before she was captured and hospitalized. Sydney serves her with a restraining order after a ring of animal organs are found on the new set of the show. He is hoping she will show up on set anyway becasue that will make for great drama. My precious baby is a complete asshole in this role.

When one of the crew gets killed on set with a chainsaw, Sydney’s assistant quits and drives off in an angry huff. She encounters what appears to be a The Butcher by the side of  the road, but is attacked by someone in her car, too, and she crashes. The notecard for her states that she was missing for six months before they found her car, and her body was never found.

The sixth episode is mostly about the setup, as Sydney lies, cajoles, and coerces all the actual people, and the actors who played ,them into staying at the Roanoke house for several weeks, while they film the entire thing with hidden cameras. And you know it’s going to be explosive because while all the characters have their reason for joining the new cast, they all hate each other.

Matt wants nothing to do with Shelby, who thinks that they might be able to reconcile, during the show. He would love nothing more than to beat the snot out ofDominic, because he slept with his wife. The Shelby actress,Audrey,  is deeply insecure about her marriage, and has nothing but contempt for the real Shelby, as being weak and pathetic. The real Lee  hates the real Shelby. The actress who played Lee, Monet,  hates the actual Lee, and the all actors  have contempt for the actual people they portrayed on the show, laughing and joking about them, whenever they leave the room. Also none of the actors believe in any of the stuff that they say happened to them.

I don’t think this bodes well for non-believers because non-belief won’t save them from what’s happening at Roanoke House.  Like Stephen King’s 1408, what’s happening there isn’t dependent on whether you believe it or not. One of the reasons Shelby, Matt, and Lee survived is because they  simply believed what was happening to them.

Things get off to a rousing start when Lee attacks Shelby, calling her weak and pathetic, just as Audrey does later. Here’s where I have to admit to a certain amount of prejudice towards Shelby myself. As soon as I heard what she did for a living my first thought was that she was a  useless woman, and not someone you want to have in a crisis, but she proved to be okay in that regard. I still don’t like her though.

Later, Matt attacks Dominic and they have a knockdown, drag-out fight, as soon as Dominic steps through the front door. This certainly makes for exciting television for the viewers, but that’s not the point of this episode, because this  isn’t the twist.

It turns out we’re all looking at whatever footage was leftover from a show which never got a chance to air because ,with exception of only one person, the entire cast died.

So we’re really watching final days of everyone involved with the making of My Roanoke Nightmare. And they’re might even be additional twists as the season moves forward.

So yeah,I’m really getting into this. When that note-card appeared onscreen, I got chills. This is awesome!

This Week On Geeking Out

These are the shows I watched this week. Only three of these shows are actual premieres: Channel Zero, Legends of Tomorrow, and Wolf Creek. Aftermath has been on the air for two weeks and the Exorcist has been on the air for about three. Supernatural also aired this week but will get a separate review, along with American Horror Story. I haven’t even tried to review Luke Cage, preferring to let more eloquent writers approach this topic, but I’ll have something o say about it, very spoilerific, by the end of the month, when I think most people have seen it, and somewhere during this time I promised reviews of some of my favorite horror movies.

American Horror Story:

We begin this episode, Chapter Five, with backstory on the Shaker House, that Matt and Shelby bought in episode one. It turns out the original owner has a connection to the fifth season of AHS:Freakshow, with the story of how Phillipe Mott, ancestor to the Motts mentioned in that season, bought the house in 1792. He was a closeted gay man  and a recluse, who eventually got killed by Thomasina and her minions, after he locked his servants in the cellar, when  some of his  prize paintings were vandalized.He screams a lot, even when he’s not actually in  physical pain, and you can see just a touch of the madness of the Mott family that touched them down through the centuries, culminating in Dandy Mott in 1952.

In the present day, we spend most of the episode running around the forest with Matt and Shelby, as they try to escape The Butcher, save Flora, and get repeatedly kidnapped by the Polks, who are Thomasinas aides and abetters. They made a deal with her to protect their family, and provide the sacrifices Thomasina says she needs, to consecrate the land. They escape from the Polks several times that night as the Polks attempt to deliver the two to Thomasina. At one point, since this is during the blood moon, Phillipe Mott comes to their aid. During all of this, Lee is in jail, answering questions about her husband’s death.  I’m still pissed off at Shelby for calling the police on her. That was a total dick move, Shelby! Anyway, Lee is released, and after getting one of Matt’s texts saying Flora is safe, she shows up just in time to give them a ride to freedom.

Thomasina is killed by one of her own people, who turns on her after having tired of all her killing. So it does seem as if this particular chapter of the story is over. Matt and Shelby’s story is wrapped up, Thomasina has been killed again, and Frances Conroy (Yayy!) put in her appearance as Mama Polk. The Polks also turn out to be inbred cannibals, straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as we find Elias still alive, but missing a limb. When one of the Polks gets sick, they blame him for having rancid flesh and kill him in front of Matt and Shelby.

The episode was especially gory, as we see Elias get his head bashed in, Mott get stabbed through the chest with a wooden pole, and Shelby’s leg is broken by Mama Polk, in a scene straight out of the movie Misery. There are a lot of movie references this season, with a little bit of J-Horror thrown in this episode, when Flora gets snatched by  one of the black haired ghosts of Ju-on, in a pointless scene thrown in just to have action. Thomasina and her followers are a reference to the movie The Wicker Man, where out of town strangers get burned alive by a modern day cult of Celtic worshippers., to consecrate the land. The Amityville Horror, Insidious, and The Hills Have Eyes get a shoutout, as well.

Next week, for episode six of season six, we go behind the scenes of the reality show, as finally, my precious cinnamon bun  Cheyenne Jackson😘, puts in his first appearance this season.  Hopefully, we will see the film crew visit the house in the present, and see what fresh Hell occurs then.

Supergirl:

So yeah, I went  and watched the season premiere of Supergirl, and while I can’t say I’ll ever be a fan, or regularly watch this, I can see it’s appeal to a certain segment of the population, namely very young, white women. Like The Flash, it’s not a bad show, it’s just not to my tastes. It’s a little corny/cheesy in the dialogue area, Flockhart’s character is still an asshole, but gives some of the most excellent career advice I’ve ever heard, and Hoechlin looks really weird (he has a funny face) as Superman, but he’s not bad. I think his pants are waay too tight as Clark Kent,  but okay. Speaking of clothes, I don’t like how Kara and Clark just rip open their shirts when they’re getting into character. I mean, that’s losing a lot of buttons, and as far as I can tell, Kara can’t sew.

Kara is still too young and twitchy for me. Like Flockhart’s character, Cat Grant, I  just want to shake her really hard, sometimes. She’s not a bad character, but she’s wishy-washy when she’s not being Supergirl, and I find women like that highly annoying. I understand why they’re like that, I just don’t like it. On the other hand, I like her relationship with Jimmy, who is really cute, and patient with her, and her relationship with her sister is really cute. I’m glad they’re shown getting along instead of some manufactured drama.  I just wish Kara acted a little more sure of herself, and it wouldn’t make my brain twitch. Nevertheless, she made a couple of command decisions in this episode, as Kara. I didn’t necessarily agree with all of the decisions, but at least she made ’em.

I’ve never been a Supergirl fan, I’ve never even read the books, but I am a huge J’onn Jones fan, though. I got most of his backstory from reading the Justice League books. I can’t articulate why, but I just love this character. Maybe it’s nostalgia for the comic book version. I like the actor who plays him, and I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before, but it escapes me, now. Kara’s sister started out pretty boring but became a lot less so when I saw her kicking  ass later in the show. What can I say, I love a good fight sequence. The best ones are like watching good dancing.

In this episode, Kara gets a visit from her cousin, Superman, and their relationship is really cute. Kara seems to get along with everybody. Last year she got a visit from The Flash and they seemed to hit it off pretty well. She’s like “the everysister”. Yet another dropship from Krypton falls out of the sky, delivering who knows what, or who. Superman and JJ don’t get along because JJ is a pragmatic paranoiac, who keeps Kryptonite at his facility, and Supe doesn’t want anything to do with that. Lex Luther has a sister, Alex, and someone has been trying to kill her. Well, really it was just murder attempts all night, really. Everything gets resolved though. Kara breaks up with Jimmy, decides she wants to be a reporter like Clark, and Metallo gets created. I was never impressed by Metallo, in the comic books either, but he looks kinda cool in the show.

I still don’t see me ever being a fan, or regular viewer of this show. It just wasn’t galvanizing for me, but it’s not a bad show, as it has improved a lot since that first episode.  Supergirl, and The Flash, are really kind of middle-of-the-road type characters for me. Watching these shows is like watching Superman’s best budds, when what I really want is to just watch a show about Superman. It’s just not powerful or exciting enough for my tastes.

Although, I might need to watch it again next week, just to be sure.

Channel Zero:

I hate to be a wet blanket but this show needs to step up the scares and mystery if it hopes to keep my attention. It has the feel of the first season of American Horror Story, except with more lackluster acting. I didn’t know what to expect going in. I thought maybe it was an anthology show. It’s not. It’s about yet another guy who goes back  to his old hometown where something tragic occurred to him when he was a child, and finds that maybe it’s starting all over again. It’s one of those slow burn mysteries, where you have not one damn clue what’s happening, except that it involves an old tv show that’s back on the air and is influencing the town’s children, and this show ain’t trying to hard explaining shit. Nor are the questions that arise, compelling enough to keep me watching this every week.

One sure way to get me to not like your show is to torture a child. At one point one kid bullies another kid, breaking his finger, while a bunch of other kids stand around and watch. As someone who always intervened when I saw other kids being bullied, I was enraged by this. (Not just the bullying but the standing around watching it.) Apparently, such scenes are one of my few triggers. Having been on the receiving end of a few of these sessions, as a young girl, I have no shame in confessing that I hate bullies with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, and cannot tolerate watching kids harm each other in movies and tv shows. (One of the reasons I refuse to watch movies like Hunger Games, or Battle Royale.)

I also had the impression, from the  trailers, that it was supposed to be scary, but I wasn’t scared. I was however, very irritated. This was not helped by the acting. There are a lot of awkward pauses, and greetings, and  significant glances with no explanation forthcoming, other than maybe nobody likes Mike.  Mike, the guy who goes back home, is quiet and creepy and not one person has a natural sounding conversation with another person. Everything sounds portentous, and ominous for no particular reason that I could discern. Maybe some of you guys will have better luck and then come back and explain to me what the hell I just watched.

I’ll wait!

Aftermath:

I still haven’t watched this show, but I plan on it. It looks like it might be fun, like The Walking Dead, with added demons. I probably won’t get to it until something goes on hiatus in November. Until then, it’s just sitting on my DVR. For my Non-American readers,  Fall premiere season happens in the space of two months (October and September) and there were a lot of genre shows (a good thirty plus) released this season, at least 5 or 6 of them on Tuesday night, alone. Aftermath airs on the same night as Brooklyn 99, From Dusk Til Dawn, Channel Zero, and Agents of Shield, so my dance card is pretty full, and Aftermath, no matter how interesting it looks, is going to have wait it’s turn.

Legends of Tomorrow:

Okay, I watched this but I don’t have much memory about it. Not that it was bad, just kind of lightweight , I guess. So, now the team isn’t superheroes anymore, but time lords, or travelers, or something, trying to right the various wrongs throughout history, being committed by Damien Darhk, like giving nuclear weapons to the Nazis so they can blow up NY city. That’s all  I managed to get out of this episode beyond Jackson feeling salty for being left on the ship all the time,  Rip Hunter being his usual dickish self in having contingency plans he keeps refusing to tell his crew about, and somewhere in there, Albert Einstein was involved.

I kinda like this show because its mindless good fun. I can knit while watching it as its not something I’m going to get particularly angsty about all week. I like the characters, who are dealing with problems just deep enough to keep them interesting, and of course, I love Firestorm whenever he gets to come out and play.And hey! next week…Vixen! and the Justice Society, who all look pretty awesome, even if I have no idea who they are.

Rip Hunter is still a jerk, though.

Wolf Creek:

As a general rule, I don’t watch serial killer movies, except when I do. Wolf Creek, the TV show, is based on a 2005 movie, which is based on a true story of a family that got lost in the  Australian Outback, and claimed they encountered a serial killer, sort of like in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, another movie I find annoying. (Whew! Thank you run-on sentence gods!) Anyway in the pilot episode, a family gets lost in the Outback and gets attacked by a serial killer. What a surprise! Anyway, I was dubious about watching this because torture-porn is boring, and its difficult to turn lack of character development and torture and killing into a good mini-series. I’ll get back to you guys in this one when I get around to viewing it.

Westworld:

If Westworld is going to cause more questions then answers every time it airs, I can’t keep watching this. Nevertheless, I’m hooked on it, for now. Most of the humans on this show are total assholes, but the robots are kinda cool. Last week we started the story from the Host angle. This week we get a glimpse of what it’s like for the Guests, and mostly I’m just deeply repulsed. I’m not sure if it’s the setup, or the Guests themselves, which I find more distasteful. I’m guessing that’s on purpose by the writers. We’re meant to hate the people as much as the robots would?

Two guys, one of  whom is a jerk, and the other a classic milquetoast (although there’s nothing wrong with that) visit Westworld. The jerky one seems mostly interested in fucking and/or killing the robots, so right away, his story is uninteresting. The other guy though, encounters Dolores (corrected from Dorothy, in my last post), and is immediately smitten. Apparently he’s looking for True Love. There was some girl on girl action in the saloon, and the jerky Guest likes both men and women, and I’m all for LGBT representation, except for how it’s presented in this show, as something that’s risqué, or taboo. It’s something the characters can engage in clandestinely, at Westworld, because it’s unacceptable in the real world, like all the raping and the killing they get up to. I don’t like the idea of gay representation being equated with all the other shitty behavior we see the Guests committing against the robots, especially when there’s no such representation outside of Westworld.

I’m still not clear about how people choose their adventures, how long they can stay, how much it costs and why don’t we see more women Guests being gunfighters, because I would totally choose to be a female Sheriff or something. How do bullets work there, and how do they keep Guests from killing Guests when you can’t tell who is  a robot and who isn’t? Also, the show is working really hard at getting us to believe Ed Harris guy is human but I’m still hedging my bets. I’m not completely convinced, as most of the statements he makes about himself are somewhat ambiguous. But he does know about “the world outside the world”,so I’m still confused, (and will remain so for some time apparently.)

The robots comtinue to be the most interesting characters in the show and behave in an offbeat manner. The “reveries”  code  is contagious because Dolores passes it on to Thandie Newtons character, Maeve, who starts to have flashbacks to a previous existence, where she’d been killed by Indians. One of the Indians morphs into Ed Harris’ Man in Black, and it’s been posited that he might be some kind of icon of death for the robots, like the boogeyman, or the devil, someone they’re universally afraid of. Dolores passes along the contagious code by whispering her father’s phrase into Maeve’s ear.

“These violent delights have violent ends.” Definitely a pronouncement of the future.

Maeve is set to have a diagnostics check, and be decommissioned, but unexpectedly wakes up on the operating table, using the very same technique that the techs have been using to put her to sleep. I think what she does, during her little freedom walk, is a precursor to everything that’s going to be happening later in this season, only bloodier. She comes across the lab techs, hosing down the dead bodies of a roomful of robots, and one of the techs explicitly states that they hope the robots never start remembering what the Guests do to them, which makes me feel disgusted all over again, because based on what I’ve seen of Westworld so far, the humans (even the ones working at the facility) deserve it.

Jeffrey Wright’s character, and Anthony Hopkins don’t seem especially worried about  these malfunctions, and even seem to be encouraged by them, as we see when Wright’s character secretly interviews Dolores about her thoughts. And Hopkins guy may be considering adding religion to the Westworld program. Earlier in the episode, one of the robots mentions God in an offhand manner, and I perked up, wondering if the robots had religion. If they get coded to believe in a God, they already have a devil. The Man in Black.

I have to mention the opening credits here. They’re just incredibly lovely, with its robot horse and rider, and Leonardo Da Vinci’s  ideal man imagery, and it heavily  reminds me of both the opening credits of the original Ghost in the Shell, with its contemplative, percussive theme song, which helps to set the existentialist mood, and its slow stately music, which reminds me of my favorite Bjork video, All is Full of Love, which is about a robot falling in love with itself.

State of the Onion! Mini – Reviews

This has been a very busy week. I binged Luke Cage, and a bunch more television premieres aired this week. I couldn’t catch all of them but I did manage to catch the few that interested me, while keeping up with shows I already started. This weekend I watched:

Versailles: 

Everyone in this show, which chronicles Louis XIV’s move from the capitol of France in the 1600’s, has luxurious, long, well kept hair, which I find hard to believe. I’m not saying people back then didn’t have  luxurious hair, just  that it’s distracting, when everyone has the same hairstyle. I kept staring at it, wishing I could run my fingers through it. No one ever seems to get distressed enough to have hair that   is out of place. They also all have clear, gigantic, blue, or grey eyeballs, including the men. Eyes so big, they can probably see me watching this show. It’s  kinda creepy.

From time to time, I do get the strong urge to watch something that’s not about superheroes,  although Louis the XIV often gets treated like one, by his courtiers. There’s the usual courtly shenanigans , most of it centering around the specific relationships between the king and his wife, the king and his semi-openly gay, younger brother, and the king and his various mistresses, and followers. So far, this is just an introductory first and second episode and hasn’t gotten deeply into the wider political issues of that time period. I do prefer that type of plotline but one of the drawbacks is that the show comes across as   “Trailer Trash in 16th Century France” , with better clothing.

There are the usual kingly activities, like intrigue, hunting, torturing dungeon prisoners, and philandering, estate planning, childbirth, and medical arguments, along with lots of significant glancing. I watched these episodes twice, and I must be really worn out after binging Luke Cage, because I couldn’t make hide or hair of the plot of this show, other than the King has decided to move to the middle of no and where, as a means to control his courtiers, because he thinks they’re out to get him. The show seems to move from scene to scene in an arbitrary manner, and although I knew all the scenes were connected, I couldn’t seem to hold in my thoughts exactly what that connection was. Luckily there’s a metric ton of background videos about this show, so I watched those too, otherwise I wouldn’t even know this much. I’m sure the videos are available on YouTube but I’m not going to give you the link because I don’t want to aid and abet this type of television viewing. (I work in a library! Go check out some books!)

If you like intrigue and old French costumes, or The Tudors, (involving intrigue and old Italian costumes), this is a good tide-over until Vikings (which has intrigue and 10th century Scandinavian costumes) comes back on the air.

The Flash:

This isn’t the first episode of The Flash I’ve ever seen but I’ve been told that its a really good show and I should try to watch it again. I stopped watching it because I didn’t think it was a show aimed at me, the mature (read more cynical) viewer. But I have watched a couple of episodes from last season and while still kinda corny, it is at heart, a very sweet show. Also, I told myself I was going to support more shows with WoC in them and I just want to stan for WestAllen.

So, I’m cautiously optimistic about liking it, after a tentative first date. I really started to get into the characters and started getting feelings for them. Last season Barry ended up in an alternate universe where Iris doesn’t know him, her kid brother, Wally, is The Flash, Cisco is the unsympathetic billionaire CEO of some kind of tech startup, Caitlin Snow is an Eye Doctor, and Iris’ dad is an alcoholic, who has an antagonistic relationship with his daughter, which is really sad because they had a great relationship in Barry’s old universe. On the other hand, the speedster that was about to kill his parents, Reverse Flash,  is locked up, and both Barry’s parents are still alive.

Unfortunately,  by altering the timeline he’s set in motion, the destruction of his current timeline is imminent. And since Barry wasn’t there, the universe put Wally in his place, and this somehow disrupted the West family, although Iris still seems pretty tight with Wally, neither of them ever mention their father.

It’s really fun  watching Barry navigate this new timeline. He meets Iris, and it’s really cute watching them flirt with each other, knowing their old relationship, and that no matter what the timeline, the two of them were meant to be together.

Wally spends most of the episode fighting someone called The Rival. You can tell he’s the villain because he’s wearing an evil black suit. When The Rival wounds Wally, Barry has to step in and defeat him instead, but the price for saving his parents lives’ might mean Wally’s death. Barry makes the tearful decision to let Reverse Flash kill his parents, and restore the original timeline.

Most of what I know about The Flash is from the comic books, and since I only read the team books, I pretty much only know anything about the speedsters of the DCU,  from reading The Justice League books. I liked the special effects and the show doesn’t seem as corny or juvenile as it did the first season, although yeah, it’s still a little corny. But it’s  fun corn, not cheesy corn, and unexpectedly emotional, since I genuinely like these characters. I think I’ll make a habit of watching this every week, even though there’s like 3 other shows on TV on that same night.

Ash vs. the Evil Dead: We’ll get to this show next week.

Westworld:

 

I had a lot to say about this show, only some of which has to do with the actual plot, so I guess Westworld, and shows like it, will be getting it’s own post soon.

I actually enjoyed this show, and will be watching this every week, as it airs. It looks intriguing. It starts a little slow, as we ease into the idea that the robots are behaving oddly because of new programming their creators have uploaded to them. We spend a lot of the episode with a robot named Dorothy, and we start off with her handler attempting to assess whether or not she has become self aware. Fair warning:  there is an offscreen rape scene, along with threats of female violence. And yes, the show is violent. There’s lots of shooting and gore, as most of it is set in the artificially Wild West environment, created by an annoying British character, who is just an asshole. I hated him immediately and wondered when he’d be shot. The other characters appear to have been thinking something similar, as no one likes him.

Anthony Hopkins plays the quiet, somewhat meditative, creator of Westworld, in a real low key style. He created the first of the robots and is prone to hanging out and drinking whiskey with his original Wild Bill Hickok robot, in the firm’s basement, where all the retired, underused, robots are kept in cold storage. He seems intrigued by the idea that the robots are starting to access previous memories of the lives they were given. The show feels a little bit like Dark City, where you have people who may, or may not, be aware of who and what they are being manipulated by beings who think they’re greater than them. Only in this case the humans do it for entertainment.

Hopkins character has introduced a new program into the robots code called “reveries” and some of the robots react badly. Some of them have strokes, or freeze up, or go on unexpected shooting sprees, involving milk. Before that though, there were already some glitches in the system but not in Dorothy. In one scene her robot father finds an old photograph that a human left behind, and viewing it seems to corrupt his programming, somehow. Dorothy ,when she is asked by a little human boy, if she is “one of them”, just smiles as if she didn’t hear the question. And she probably didn’t. Dorothy dismisses anything that doesn’t line up with what she is programmed to think of her world.

One of the rules of Westworld is that guests, (humans) can never be hurt by hosts (robots), although the robots can and do harm each other, a lot. When you realize these violent scenarios are created by the annoying British dude, you hate him even more. He’s vaguely disgusting.  At first it wasn’t entirely clear to me who were the robots, and who were humans, but the show doesn’t draw that particular mystery out as, by the end of the episode, you know who is who.

Ed Harris plays the iconic role of the Man in Black, originally played by Yul Brynner. He is most indubitably a bad guy. I think he was uploaded with the new program as well, but when all the other robots are killed  in a massive shootout (so as to gather up their bodies, and recode them) he doesn’t get found. It’s disturbing watching him on the trail of something he doesn’t understand. He’s essentially seeking the “real world”, and looking for clues in the other robots. Since he has only interacted with, (and brutalized), other robots, the entire time we’ve seen him, I suspect that’s why he doesn’t get rounded up with all the others. It’s been hypothesized that he’s a guest, but I didn’t see it. I thought he was reprising Yul Brynner’s role, from the original film, and in that film, The Gunslinger is one of the robots. Apparently, I’m going to have to watch the episode again, if I’m going to figure this out.

This is another show where humans don’t come off looking so good. Not because of what they say but what they do. In a show like this, you’re going to witness robots that look, act, and react like people, being hurt or  brutalized. In one scene, inside Westworld,  a human couple laugh at the twitching body of a female robot, that one of them has just shot in the head. But how is this any different from us watching fake violence on Game of Thrones, or this show, just for entertainment? Did I find their behavior repugnant because the robots look and act like real people? Well so do people in movies, so I’m not sure exactly where my disdain for these particular humans comes from. Although maybe it’s because they committed the act themselves and found it funny. The robots can’t  escape being violated in the real world either, as one human woman takes the opportunity to kiss one of the female robots, when she gets left alone with her for even a minute.

This show asks the usual questions that get asked whenever anyone makes a movie about robot. I think its some kind of law. At the end of the episode, Dorothy does something that none of the robots are supposed to be able to do, which does not bode well for the humans on this show.

Aftermath: 

I still have not watched this. So maybe next week.

 

 

From Dusk Til Dawn – Overview

This season is proving to be much better than last season . We’ve been re-introduced to Scott, who thinks he’s a total badass, with a sword he got from somewhere, last season. Seth and Richie go to recruit him from the Rock band he’s playing in.  Scott’s sister, Kate, continues to be possessed by this season’s villain, Amaru. In the last episode she attacked a town full of people with locusts, and put some kind of tentacled demon glop in their water supply, which turned them into cannibals. Seth got infected, and then everybody got cured.

During all this, Kate kidnapped Richie, and awakened his dark side.  Now Seth, and the team he put together to save Richie, are being hunted in the Asylum where Kate first woke up, by Richie, of all people. Most of this episode consisted of people running around , or being trapped in, various parts of the facility, while snarking at each other.This team doesn’t even like each other. Seth keeps ordering everyone around as if he were in charge, but the rest, who are all vampires, take exception to his orders and then follow them anyway, which is deeply funny.

At any rate, Richie gets saved from Kate/Amaru after Seth, lovingly, sets him on fire, because extreme pain is the only way to free Amaru’s slaves, and Richie is a vampire, so he gon’ be aiight. Frankie however gets enslaved by Amaru and stakes the vampire who confessed her love to him. I still find that kinda icky because she’s a vampire, and he hates them, and isn’t he still married? This is  like the second, or third, woman that Amaru has killed, or caused to be killed, since the season began, and I wonder why Amaru, who is, ostensibly, female, hates women.

Tom Savini, from the original film, makes his debut in the show this season, playing some guy named The Eternal Hunter. He’s there to help Jake Busey’s character, (he’s the Sex Machine remake that Savini originally portrayed in the movie), to take down the demons that escaped from Xibalba ,when Carlos blew up the Titty Twister Saloon, last season.  Busey and  Savini are a match made in Heaven. I didn’t even know I wanted this pairing, but I would watch an entire show, of the two of them, just bitching at each other.

The action is awesome, and there’s lots of it. If you like Supernatural, you could give this a try. Its sillier, a little cheesier, and the action is definitely crazier, but its a lot of fun and has got some nice brotherly action scenes. It would be hilarious if the Geckos and Winchesters were to team up. I would watch the hell out of that and I’m enjoying this season a lot more, now that the Gecko bros. are back together, acting like an old married couple.

American Horror Story:

The action is flying fast and furious in the fourth chapter of season six, and has so far managed to remain on point. Last chapter, Cricket, who invaded Shelby and Matt’s life, made a deal with the real power behind Kathy Bates’ character, an old Celtic style witch, of some kind. She’s played by the nearly  unrecognizable Lady Gaga. So yeah, this parallels with the third season of AHS, called Coven, which introduced witches. It is now the season of the witch, people!

http://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Lady-Gaga-Character-American-Horror-Story-Roanoke-42519689

In exchange for not harming the people in the house, the Cricket promised to give her Matt who, hypnotized by the witch, was found doing the nasty with her in the forest…by Shelby, who is, understandably, pissed off. Matt doesn’t remember any of it though. Mad  about what Matt did, Shelby pulls a dick move and calls the police. She has Lee arrested for Mason’s murder, and  kidnapping her own daughter.

Later Shelby is attacked by the Pigheaded Man, which I kinda cheered, because hey! dick move Shelby, but Dr. Cunninhgham, who had been living in the outdoor cellar, saves her from him.He gives them some more background information on the house, claiming he can help them.  The last family that resided there were all killed by The Butcher and their spirits also haunt the land. It seems as if once you die on the land, your spirit is trapped there forever, which is kind of defeating the purpose of the Butcher, who claims to want to clear the land of…well…people.

Anyway, Dr. Cunningham gets killed while trying to save Flora from a pack of ghosts she’s seen to be playing with. Its uncertain whether Flora is a ghost or real, though. Cunningham gets shot with arrows from, I suspect, The Butcher’s people, which is a pretty novel way to die in the modern age, I guess. They’re able to kill him because they have just entered some special cycle of the moon that allows them to become corporeal  for about six days.

Shelby and Matt run back to the house where they meet Cricket who tells them that he encountered Flora in the forest and met the original witch, who has the hots for Matt because she has “needs”, as Cricket put it. Matt has some backstory to tell too, even though he doesn’t remember sleeping with the witch, about what happened to the original Roanoke colony. Cricket also tells them their house sits on the actual site of Roanoke.

Tomasina the Butcher, and her followers invade the front yard, with Flora in tow. They’re about to kill the child before Cricket goes out to parlay for the child’s life, but gets captured instead. Priscilla, experiencing a pang of conscience, rescues her friend, and the two of them escape into the forest, but Shelby and Matt have to watch as Cricket is slowly disemboweled. And I was just starting to like him.

Bye, bye, Cricket.

I know one thing though, I’m not getting too attached to any of the characters this season. They only seem to last just long enough to impart disturbing information, and then be horribly killed. I’m still feeling kinda nauseated about the disemboweling and its been three days. The body count so far is pretty damn high for just four episodes and we still have two more to go. I’m not feeling too good about Matt and Shelby’s chances.

Here are some further fan theories about this season, which if  true, make this season kinda awesome, already:

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/10/american-horror-story-roanoke-episode-4-freakshow-mott-family-number-six

 

 

 

 

AHS Season 6: Roanoke – Episode 2

I’m a little behind in my reviewing, probably because there were so many premieres this week. I should be back to my regular reviewing habits by mid-October, though. But here’s my review of last week’s episode with no bells or whistles though.

Lets pick up where we left off, when Shelby got lost in the forest after hitting an old woman on the road, when she fled from her new home. There’s a cult engaging in some kind of weird punishment, sacrifice, where they have put a pig’s severed head on some guy, and started to burn him alive, over a spit. We find out later that he is the previous owner of the house, and that Shelby is seeing images of the past.  Kathy Bates makes her season debut playing, yet another, villain.

So, the show really kicked it into high gear in this second episode, pulling out all of the various haunted house cliches, some of them effective, some less so. If you have ever watched the original Amityville Horror, the Paranormal movies, some of these tropes will be familiar to you. Im not saying some moments weren’t scary but a lot of them were predictable.

Shelby reports to the police that she saw a human sacrifice in the forest. The wooden structures are there, but she’s still not believed. Nevertheless, she has decided without any proof, to blame everything on her hillbilly neighbors, The Polks. I agree, I think they might actually have something to do with all these visions, just probably not the way Shelby thinks.

Lee’s daughter comes to visit. Take note that children only exist within most adult narratives to be put in danger. The only time you don’t see that trope is when the show, or movie, is specifically about kids. Flora meets a ghost  girl named Priscilla, who offers her a bonnet, in exchange for her help. Later, Lee finds an old style bonnet on the floor. Now that moment was actually kinda creepy.
That night, Matt and Shelby hear pig noises and find a burning construction of some kind in their backyard. Shelby pushes the police to go question Ishmael Polk and his sons. Shelby insists they offer police protection because she thinks the Polks will  retaliate for reporting them to the police. The couple get 24 hours of police protection.

Later that night, Matt has visions of two psychotic nurses torturing and shooting an old woman, while she lies helpless in bed. (Warning: this scene is pretty graphic for those of you who are sensitive to such imagery.) The story deepens, as Shelby and Matt find out their house was the scene of several murders, as the two young women ran an elder care facility,  where they killed their patients based on whether their first initials matched the letters of their favorite word: Murder. They would then paint the letters on the wall in what is now the main room of the house. The trope of the ominous reappearing bloodstain comes into play as the word refuses to stay painted over. Finally, the word is just  covered with ugly wallpaper.

The cops investigate Matt’s claim to have seen the two women under someone. My question is why no one ever turns on any lights in the house. Everybody just walks around  in the dark, with one flashlight. I know the house has electricity and that there are lamps so why everyone is running around in the dark, is the actual mystery here. Naturally, the cop finds nothing and Shelby and Matt are getting a reputation as kooks.

Lee’s daughter plays hide and seek when her dad comes to pick her up. I was immediately exasperated by the trope of the missing kid, which is only setup for when she goes missing for real later on.That whole pretending to be missing is a habit I would’ve nipped in the bud years ago. Ain’t nobody got time to be constantly looking for their kid all the damn time. Lee, and her ex, find Flora in a closet. She claims she was talking to Priscilla who told her they were all gonna die.  Dad, understandably upset at this piece of information, takes Flora and leaves in a huff. Lee’s response is to get falling down drunk.

Shelby and Matt find Lee in the kitchen with knives stuck in the ceiling directly over her head. That was a genuinely scary moment because we didn’t see that happen and we know it wasn’t Lee. After getting her into bed, the two of them spy a little girl, outside, in old fashioned clothes, and discover a hidden door to an underground cellar, where she was standing.

Lee experiences haunting visions ,while Matt and Shelby investigate the outdoor cellar. They find a tape made by the last inhabitant of the house, who is paranoid that he’ll be killed by something in the house, and how he’s moved out to live in the cellar. Dr. Elias Cunningham was investigating the story of the two nurses, Miranda and Bridget, two sisters who liked to kill their elderly patients. His theory is that something got to them before they could finish their project. In other words, as evil as the nurses were, they met a bigger shark.

After all this, Matt and Shelby find they can’t sell the house.

Lee has the bright idea to  kidnap her daughter from Mason, and brings her back to the house, but soon loses her in the forest because kids only exist in such stories to be put in danger. Flora’s sweater is found about fifty feet or so, up in a tall dead tree. Cue ominous music.

So, I’m hoping this season will be a little more cohesive than past seasons, with a through storyline, and fewer dangling plotlines. Since each episode seems to end on a cliffhanger of sorts, it looks promising that the  writers will remain focused, although once again a lot of plot threads have been introduced. I’ve gotten pretty used to the setup, and kind of like it, although I’ve heard from elsewhere that a lot of people don’t like it. There are apparently going o be lots of twists and turns, according to the writers, and I’m looking forward to those. I kind of like it when stories move in unexpected directions.

American Horror Story Season 6

The writers of American Horror Story  have  managed somehow to keep the theme of this entire season under wraps, so I’m going into this review  cold, just like all of you. I got no idea what it’s about or what’s gonna happen. So here we go:

What we have is a documentary style  reality show  of live interviews, mixed with actor reenactments, sort of like the show Paranormal Witness.  This includes all the various tropes of the haunted house, with strange presences , weird videotapes, angry hillbilly locals, and a House on the Borderlands type monster.

It stars Cuba Gooding Jr.  as Matt, the husband of Sarah Paulson’s Shelby, and the brother of Angela Bassett, who plays Lee, as the actors in the reenactments. There are also the live interview actors whose names I didn’t get. So we have two sets of actors. The ones being interviewed about their ordeal, and the more well known cast of American Horror Story, acting out their story. The title of this particular show is called My Roanoke Nightmare.

There’s a  tearjerking beginning as Matt is assaulted by some street hooligans while walking down the street with his wife, Shelby. And right away we have established race as an undercurrent to most of the action in the show, as the men who assault him yell racial slurs, and its mentioned later that what happened was a gang initiation, where strangers are assaulted for fun. Since the gang that assaults Matt and Shelby consist entirely of white men, the creators neatly sidestep race, while low key commenting on the racial component of urban myths about gangs. (In real life this type of initiation turned out to be an urban myth created  by the media.)

Its never  explicitly stated, but you find yourself wondering heavily about the racial implications behind certain activities, and character motivations, throughout the episode. There’s a current news component to this episode, as it involves questions of police competency, and racism. Since Matt and Shelby are an interracial couple, people’s reactions to them are sometimes alluded to, but not specifically stated, which sounds like a very subtle and ambitious project for the season.

After the assault, Shelby, who had just found out she was pregnant, has a miscarriage, and the two of them decide to move out of the city. (Sarah Paulson really sells it here. I was near tears in this scene. She’s a phenomenal actress, who simply doesn’t get enough love.) They find an old house in the middle of the North Carolina woods (NC is another racial reference) and bid on the house against some neighborhood hillbillies who warn them that they don’t want it. Now the hillbillies do look suitably dangerous, but I’m not banking on that. They may yet turn out to be helpful allies. We don’t know, but are meant to assume, based solely on their looks, and socio-economic station, that they’re bad people. This is what Shelby and Matt ,who are firmly ensconced in the middle-class, manage to  do, even though Matt is  not unfamiliar with experiencing prejudice based on his looks.

But really Matt! A Black man in the middle of rural America? Is this really a good idea? There’s a reason Black people generally do not frequent the woodsy lifestyle.

At one point Matt does explicitly state that there’s a racial component to the local police’s attitude towards them.

On their first night in their new home, they experience some great rumblings and crashing outside, and Matt goes outside to discover that the house, and yard, have been vandalized. The next day, while he’s in town, Shelby hallucinates that teeth, rather than hailstones, have fallen from the sky. So,  what we have so far, is a checklist of haunting activities, like Shelby nearly drowning in the hot tub, mysterious objects decorating the house, along with empty bottles that appear out of nowhere, strange noises, and the house being invaded by torch wielding phantoms, while mysterious videos play in the background.

Matt’s judgmental sister, Lee, comes to visit, so that Shelby won’t be alone. I know Matt loves his sister but why would you invite the one person who hates your wife? Oh that’s right! Lee used to be a cop. At first you think this relationship, and Lee, are  cut and dried, but it turns out that Lee has some demons of her own. She lost her job, her husband and custody of her child because of an addiction to painkillers. Lee also disdains Matt’s wife as a woman too soft, and hysterical, to be of any good. While the Shelby interviewee downplays her enmity about Lee, the Lee interviewee is pretty open about her feelings. The two women hate each other and I wonder how much of that hatred is because Lee doesn’t like  Matt being married to  a white woman.

Again its not something explicitly stated, but the kinds of complaints Lee makes about Shelby are the same kind of complaints I’ve heard black women make about white women. That they are useless, and soft, prone to hysteria, and can’t cook. Shelby’s complaints are low key about race too, about how Lee couldn’t keep her husband, and is too aggressive.

On the first night of Lee’s visit, while the two women are having a seriously heavy fight, some masked, torch bearing people approach the house and the two women are terrorized into the basement, while Matt rushes back to see what’s going on. He asked Lee to stay because he doesn’t trust the local police to do anything. There’s a Blair Witch style decorating of the house, mysterious videos playing on the basement TV, and all the lights are out.

I was kind of saddened at the thought of the two women not getting along. The two of them have much to commiserate on, and if they weren’t so judgmental of one another, would make great allies. The things they believe about one another, simply aren’t true, and are mostly figments of their own prejudices,which again, aren’t exactly racial, but aren’t exactly not-racial either. Shelby is not the soft and helpless damsel that Lee thinks she is. She’s been thorough some difficulties. Lee isn’t the unemotional, hard-ass that Shelby thinks she is, as she is also deeply affected by her losses in life, and if the two of them could get past that, they might do each other a lot of good.

Shelby runs out of the house and  hits an old woman on the road, who subsequently gets back up, and wanders off into the woods.  Shelby runs into the forest after the her, at night, and promptly gets lost. City people just refuse to understand, if you don’t keep the road in your line of sight, you will get lost. It doesn’t matter which way you think you came, as city people do not have the best sense of direction, having never had to develop one. She walks into a clearing with lit torches and a bleeding, pleading man.

So, this episode was definitely intriguing, but not for the plot. For me it was all the thematic tones under the plot that I found more fascinating. I’m not really into any of the haunted house movies that are all the rage right now, having been through the whole Amityville Horror fad of the late seventies, so I saw most of the  haunting activities as a kind of checklist that must be met, for the dwelling to be considered haunted.

Extremely old house with an unknown past.

Angry locals, warning away the happy newbies.

Something making noise outside the house.

Hallucinations.

Near drowning in a shallow tub of water, with camera shots from below.

Hopefully, there will be a few more twists and turns in the plot this season. I found the unexpected characterizations to be much better. I also hope that Shelby and Lee will get out of each other’s way and become better allies, if they live through this.