Year: 2021

Superman & Lois (2021) s01e14 – The Eradicator

This episode picks up three weeks after last episode’s hard cliffhanger, which had Adam Rayner escaping the Army and zooming off to the sun to suck in its energies. He’s still at it three weeks later. Apparently, it takes a while to charge a Kryptonian flesh battery. We also hear all the voices stuck in his head because he assimilated the Eradicator device (becoming The Eradicator, sans bitchin’ sunglasses). The voices aren’t great. The sun-sucking effects are surprisingly good. But the voices… I mean, I hope it’s the crew of “Superman and Lois” doing the recordings just so there’s an excuse for them being terrible. Without a cute story, however, they’re just awful.

The three-week jump is only important because it’s enough time for Smallville to start going under. Four businesses have closed. You think construction on your street is bad, wait until Dylan Walsh moves the Army in and encamps. The episode starts with Walsh pissed off the local newspaper is calling him on his shit, but it’s too little, too late from newspaper publisher Sofia Hasmik, who’s going to have to sell the paper anyway.

Three weeks is also enough time for Emmanuelle Chriqui and Erik Valdez to have given up on trying to stay in Smallville. Even though Tyler Hoechlin tries to talk Chriqui out of it and Victoria Katongo appeals to Valdez, it seems set. It’s important because Inde Navarrette doesn’t want to move away from Alex Garfin. The show’s really lost track of their character relationship; it doesn’t help Garfin’s kind of bad this episode, but there was an effectiveness to their bond the show’s lost. But seems to know it shouldn’t have.

There’s also the interesting detail Valdez was the only person at the Smallville Fire Department who wasn’t either sexist or racist to Black woman Katongo when she started, which might not be the message to send about this town we’re supposed to care about. Even though everyone’s basically a shit. Though not Kayla Heller, it turns out. She explains to Jordan Elsass she’s really from Central City and the daughter of a convict (so “The Flash” meets Spider-Man: Homecoming maybe?), so they moved to Smallville to get away from it all.

At least Elsass is good. Especially given he and Garfin go to an ill-advised house party, just as Rayner’s ready to invade Earth or whatever.

Hoechlin and Wolé Parks fight Rayner in (Chicago) Metropolis. It’s a good action sequence, with Chicago used for most skyline shots, then clearly Vancouver for the close-ups, and has some tense moments. It takes Elizabeth Tulloch to figure out Rayner’s evil plan for the good guys. Hoechlin and Parks rely too much on punching. And also on Walsh, who has no idea what’s going on either and just postures. But some good scenes for Walsh this episode. It takes him out of his element.

And then the cliffhanger’s great.

Oh, and Hoechlin and Tulloch get this great “parents’ worst nightmare” scene. It’s screwy because of Hoechlin’s Superman muscle suit, but the emotions come through.

Next episode’s season finale ought to be a banger.

Superman & Lois (2021) s01e13 – Fail Safe

There’s some good, bad, and weird this episode. Mostly good and weird. The bad—besides A.C. Peterson ever-wanting Emperor Palpatine and then Eric Keenleyside’s similarly weak performance as the conniving Smallville mayor—is when all the adults of color are mean to Erik Valdez. Valdez and Emmanuelle Chriqui are feeling the fallout from Valdez cheerleading literal supervillain Adam Rayner building a factory. They run into Valdez’s fire fighting crew at the diner, and they’re all super shitty to Valdez, and it’s hard not to see the literal racial optics of it.

Also, the “Superman and Lois” drinking game is how many times Valdez says, “y’all.” I think you’d finish a fifth every scene.

But there’s some more of my imagined Valdez backstory after Inde Navarrette tells Alex Garfin—before they get harassed by the cops, so it’s good to know ACAB works in Smallville too. Navarrette tells Garfin the family’s originally from Mexico, but they’ve been in Smallville for generations, which syncs with my theory Valdez’s dad was some shitty white guy, and his mom was a quietly suffering Hispanic lady.

Anyway.

Navarrette and Garfin are skipping school because Navarrette’s sick of people talking shit about her family. Garfin’s along because they’re de facto dating at this point. Meanwhile, Jordan Elsass is skipping school with junior Kayla Heller, who all of a sudden is showing interest. Of course, everyone at school knows Garfin and Elsass’s grandfather is Dylan Walsh now, and since Walsh is the general encamped in the town… people want the story.

As does newspaper editor Sofia Hasmik, who finds herself disappointed in Elizabeth Tulloch’s journalistic ethics. Tulloch’s not giving Hasmik the whole story about how Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman and Clark Kent and villain Rayner is his half-Kryptonian brother. The Hasmik and Tulloch arc is necessary but sort of weak, at least as far as giving Hasmik anything to do. Another weird thing—she doesn’t have a computer on her desk. Hasmik. The editor of the newspaper.

Meanwhile, Hoechlin’s arguing with Walsh and Walsh’s stockpile of Kryptonite weapons. Wolé Parks is still around, too, figuring into some of the conversations. He and Hoechlin have the single superhero action sequence of the episode. But there’s some more super-powers stuff because Rayner’s sitting around in his cell and flashing back to his secret mission and Peterson being mean to him.

Plus, Valdez and Chriqui have a whole arc about being ostracized in their community.

It’s a full episode. It’s not exactly soapy because it’s a decompression from action episode. The dust has settled, and everyone’s getting their bearings. But not really because the season’s not over, and there’s more super-powered danger on the way.

The episode also reveals how much it’s leaning in on the nineties Superman comics, retroactively making Rayner’s villain costume a little more fitting.

Finally, I’m pretty sure they confirm Melissa Benoist and “Supergirl” don’t exist in this universe, meaning when David Ramsey guest-starred a couple episodes ago… it’s an alternate universe version.

Oh, and now finally, finally—in addition to the nineties Superman comics nods, there’s also some very Superman IV moments. And the promise of another one. But it works. I’m still not sure how much I’d recommend “Superman and Lois,” but I’m reasonably hooked.

The Equalizer (2021) s02e07 – When Worlds Collide

I’m trying to remember the last Chris Noth-centric episode of “The Equalizer;” it must’ve been last season. This episode has him running around with a machine gun and fist-fighting like they promised him he could do American James Bond or something. Instead, however, it’s old man James Bond with Noth teaming up with previously unrevealed son Wesam Keesh.

It’s a jam-packed episode, script credit to Rob Hanning, and there’s not enough time for cop Tory Kittles to do anything. Or even appear. Also, Laya DeLeon Hayes’s PTSD problem is done. Noth asks about it, Queen Latifah says it’s better, the show’s moved on. Especially since Adam Goldberg’s whole “I want to unfake my death” arc will be tied to Noth’s troubles here, one way or the other.

The episode’s action story has Latifah babysitting terrorist Anthony Azizi, whose men have kidnapped Keesh, while Noth tries to rescue Keesh. Both Noth and Latifah are going to need Goldberg’s hacking help, with Liza Lapira back to babysitting husband Goldberg duty. There’s some more static between Lapira and Noth, but it lacks energy. She generally disapproves of this episode, which is weird since the episode sets up his private security mercenary as a literal angel; he’s just gotten back from saving Syrian children—and then gets mad because he won’t help Goldberg. Or at least he won’t promise to help Goldberg yet.

The family story has the daughter of a college lover visiting Lorraine Toussaint and then Hayes pestering her for the story. Good acting from Toussaint; maybe it’ll go somewhere, maybe it won’t. It’s more than a bit sensational and soapy. But Toussaint’s real good, so it’s fine. It’s sort of like proto-character development for her. Who knows if it’ll last as long as Hayes’s PTSD.

And then Azizi’s a good foil for Latifah. Most of their scenes together are them bickering and broadly talking about global politics like it’s a pre-9/11 terrorism bit. Guess twenty years was long enough of a moratorium on the stories.

Keesh isn’t great, which is also fine because it’s more like Noth’s having fun than actually playing a part.

Solid suspense direction from John Terlesky and the first momentous cliffhanger I can remember in the series, so we’ll see what comes of it.

I’m not sure if “The Equalizer”’s finding its legs, but it certainly seems to be sturdier than it started the season. Not the biggest swings—eschewing the PTSD arc isn’t great either—but it’s gotten a lot better, especially the weaker elements like Goldberg and Lapira.

Doctor Who (2005) s13e05 – Survivors of the Flux

“Doctor Who” has been around for almost sixty years, but its plot reveals are recycled plot points from last summer’s popular entertainment. This episode opens with a terrible CGI sequence as we find out what happens to Doctor Jodie Whittaker after she gets turned into a Weeping Angel statue.

Nothing, it’s just carbonite to transport her to meet She Who Remains (Barbara Flynn, who appeared in a quick ominous cameo earlier this season). There Whittaker finds out everything she knew about the Time Lords and the Universe was wrong (again). Flynn runs the anti-Federation, called the Division, which breaks the Prime Directive to change species’ evolutions for the Time Lords’ purposes. Oh, and Flynn has a secret identity important to Whittaker’s history.

Only not really.

I mean, sure, technically, but at most, it’s Whittaker’s “history” from last season. But the weightiness of it is more from this season, like three episodes ago. Writer Chris Chibnall doesn’t even try to get away with the recently introduced fluff; instead, he relies on Whittaker and Flynn to make the scenes effective and then—since Flynn’s playing a caricature—it ends up being all on Whittaker.

Who’s fine. It could be a lot worse. It will be a lot worse. Chibnall actually manages to hold on to the narrative cheapness until the end of the episode. Well, the most narrative cheapness. There’s a bunch throughout.

Starting with companions-lost-in-time Mandip Gill, Josh Bishop, and Kevin McNally, who are much better without Whittaker. They’re trapped in 1905, where “Doctor Who” continues its British jingoist timeline where no one was racist or sexist and instead thinks Gill’s wonderful. They’ve been trapped in the past for three years, and this episode has them figuring out how to get back to the future. It’s literally something they should’ve figured out on the second day. Their adventures are kind of Indiana Jones, but with a lot of colonialism thrown in. Like, do the British not see themselves?

Anyway.

There’s also some stuff with returning mawg Craige Els, who’s no more charming than before. Not even after finding out he’s thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years old or whatever. He’s got a couple tasks this episode, including dragging down Thaddeus Graham. Then Jacob Anderson’s off doing something too.

Craig Parkinson’s back—he was a racist future villain in another episode this season. Now he’s just in the British government in the late twentieth century, where they reward racist villains. Nice cameo from Robert Bathurst; I, unfortunately, cannot remember his “Downton” nickname. But having, you know, good actors cameo makes you wonder why they don’t hire more of them.

It’s a better episode than most this season, but solo writer Chibnall really should’ve brought back his co-writer from the last episode. There’s only so much Gill, Bishop, and McNally being charming can cover for and the episode finds that limit way too quickly.

Podcast 60 on the Sunset Strip – 1×7 – Nevada Day Part 1

Episode 7: Nevada Day Part 1 – Podcast 60 on the Sunset Strip

The gang returns after a year long break to address the first two parter in the series. So many questions remain unanswered? Will they bring up Rosanne? Will they talk about legalized brothels in Nevada? Will Jamie make a Bee Movie reference? Tune in to find out!

WHERE TO LISTEN

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Halloween 5 (1989, Dominique Othenin-Girard)

What is it with Halloween sequels and hospitals? This time it’s Danielle Harris spending most of the movie in the hospital. Sure, it’s officially a children’s clinic and appears to be shot in a converted house, but it’s still a Halloween movie where the lead damsel in distress is in a hospital bed. The plot decision may be a nod to the original Halloween II; Harris is playing Jamie Lee Curtis’s kid (Curtis wouldn’t be back to the franchise for another nine years, of course), so there could be some kind of analog between the two films and experiences.

Only, no, because even if director Othenin-Girard could come up with such a device, he couldn’t shoot it. And even if he could somehow shoot it, cinematographer Robert Draper wouldn’t be able to light it. And even if they managed to pull it off, Alan Howarth’s music would crap it out. Because there’s nothing good about Halloween 5, at least not in the filmmaking itself.

Harris is not bad. She’s effective. Because she’s a little kid, who’s being stalked by a giant, unkillable spree killer. Plus, her adoptive parents have abandoned her in the clinic since Harris tried killing the mom at the end of the last movie. End of the previous film, she succeeded; this one opens with a slight retcon. Mom survived but didn’t come back. So instead, adoptive sister—they call her a step-sister, which is weird—Ellie Cornell visits her a bunch, bringing along her super-cool late eighties friend, Wendy Foxworth. They’re possibly in high school. It’s never clear.

They’ve got a third friend, Tamara Glynn, and they’re all going to party at Cornell’s since her parents are out of town for Halloween and, therefore, the only intelligent people in the movie. Get out of town when it’s time for a new Halloween.

Foxworth and Glynn aren’t important except as potential targets for killer Michael Myers (played here by Don Shanks; it’s hard to tell if he’s doing a good job because the mask looks terrible and ill-fitting). Glynn’s got a dipshit boyfriend (Matthew Walker) who’s going as Michael Myers for Halloween, Foxworth’s got a dipshit boyfriend (Jonathan Chapin) who’s got a muscle car and is also named Michael. You know, in case a large part of the second act is going to be Shanks impersonating Chapin after stealing his muscle car. And then chasing Harris through a Christmas tree farm. With the image flipped, so he’s driving on the wrong side of the car. Because Halloween 5 is thirty years old and no one ever thought to fix one of the film’s goofs in the countless home video releases.

Harris doesn’t have the worst support system. For example, at the clinic, she’s got a nice friend in Jeffrey Landman, and nurse Betty Carvalho is good to her. But Donald Pleasence is apparently her attending psychiatrist, and he physically abuses her to force her psychic connection to killer uncle Shanks.

Halloween 5’s that odd combination of shitty and wrong. It’s a bad movie where they make poor creative choices.

Pleasence is risible. Halloween 5 definitely did not help his acting legacy. None of the teenagers are good. Cornell’s the best, then Foxworth, then everyone else is worse. Troy Evans is in it for a bit, and he’s actually good, which is weird. And Beau Starr is okay. He’s able to muscle through the trash script better than any of the other adults.

There’s a weird Die Hard connection with Carvalho and David Ursin appearing in the film; they both had bit parts in Die Hard. The movie also wants to treat Shanks’s Michael Myers like the Frankenstein Monster, opening with an “homage” to Bride of Frankenstein, then what appears to be a nod to the old blind man trope, but more from Young Frankenstein than anything else. Especially when there’s a “roll in the hay” moment.

It seems more likely it’s a coincidence since a Young Frankenstein deep cut seems beyond Halloween 5.

The only way this movie makes sense is if it were some intricate tax dodge or money laundering scheme. But, as a feature film, the badness is simply inexplicable.

The Equalizer (2021) s02e06 – Shooter

It’s a city-in-crisis episode, with a sniper terrorizing New York. Only the show skips the first two attacks, and it doesn’t appear there’s a lot of crisis going on. Even though the expository dialogue makes it sound like everyone’s staying inside when Queen Latifah and Liza Lapira go to the crime scene, there’s a bunch of people loitering around, and the streets behind them are full.

So the danger never seems super imminent.

Lapira’s along because it’s a sniper episode, and she was a sniper in the army. We get some backstory with her shitty misogynist former C.O., Terry Serpico, and then Lapira gets a big standoff scene in the third act. Lapira’s a lot better when she’s not spending all her time mollycoddling Adam Goldberg, who’s barely in the episode.

Tory Kittles also gets a bunch more to do than usual since the city has hired Latifah to find the sniper because they’re incapable. So to keep track—men in the military are at best sexist incompetents, while the NYPD is just incompetent. “Equalizer” doesn’t exactly have politics, but it doesn’t mind casting aspersions on terrible institutions.

Jennifer Ferrin shows up as the DA again; she’s the one who okays hiring Latifah. It’s strange they don’t call the FBI. Or bring in some Army guy to track down their vet-gone-killer.

Of course, given the B-plot is all about Laya DeLeon Hayes having a PTSD panic attack from watching her friend get gunned down in last season’s finale… the show making weird plotting decisions isn’t a surprise. The Hayes arc is fine—though a complete cop-out at a certain point when it stops being about Hayes and is instead about Latifah and Lorraine Toussaint trying to help Hayes—and the ending resolution is strange. Latifah decides Hayes needs professional help to make sure the PTSD doesn’t get any worse but instead brings in… well, there’s that weird plotting thing again.

Because “The Equalizer” knows some things should be taken seriously, except it’s a CBS procedural programmer, so there’s only so much it can do. What if Hayes’s mom wasn’t someone with a very particular set of skills like Latifah, who knew what to do in these situations? The show also doesn’t really address Hayes’s reaction to mom Latifah being out there risking her life in this perilous episode. Bat signal’s up, and Latifah’s got to go, and Hayes is okay with it.

Odd ambitions aside, good acting from Toussaint and Hayes (before she very literally gets put to bed) and probably series-best work from Lapira.

Goldberg’s arc about being recalled-to-life is still treading water, which is again a strange choice. Why introduce a subplot to just immediately stall it out? It’s like they gave Goldberg something to do in one episode and now have to tell him every episode they’re not going to give him more to do.

Nice direction from Milena Govich and some surprisingly solid fight choreography for this CBS show.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021, Andy Serkis)

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is under ninety minutes without the end credits, which is fine. While the third act is a perfectly decent bit of action “gore,” once it’s clear Naomie Harris and Woody Harrelson aren’t going to stop embarrassing themselves, the sooner the movie can end, the better.

Harrelson is the titular Carnage, and Harris is his girlfriend. They grew up together in a home for murderous children—though, twist, it seems most of the people these kids would’ve murdered deserved it, or at least the kids were acting in self-defense—and they took Harris away because she’s got superpowers. She has a Canary cry, a sonic cry, or a “Shriek” (her comic book villain name). When she’s being transported, she tries to escape, so the cop shoots her in the head. Everyone thinks she’s dead, but she’s really carted off to the facility where evil psychiatrist Sian Webber experiments on metahumans. I didn’t think metahumans were a thing in Venom 1, but whatever. They’re just all locked up at Webber’s hospital.

Webber doesn’t get a character name and doesn’t do anything but taunt Harris throughout the film, so it’s hard to have much sympathy. Especially since they’re like torturing the people.

Anyway.

We get all that backstory in the prologue, which has Jack Bandeira playing young Woody Harrelson. In the nineties. When Woody Harrelson was in his thirties. Harris is closer to actual age, but… Carnage asks for some extra suspension of disbelief in the silly movie about the head-eating space aliens who banter with their human hosts. Apparently, they really wanted Harrelson, who I hope got a nice check because his performance is atrocious. The part’s not good either, but there are times where there’s not zero potential. Harrelson and Harris’s parts could’ve been breakthrough roles with better writing, casting, directing, and so on.

The film will occasionally stumble into a Bonnie & Clyde-type tone and then run away from it like director Serkis doesn’t want to try anything at all; no one’s more ashamed of taking Carnage seriously than Serkis. With a better script and a less “realistic” visual tone, it might work as camp. But it’d need better performances. Harris, Harrelson, and cop Stephen Graham would have to go.

Graham’s the cop hounding Tom Hardy. Now, Hardy’s the star, but the story’s entirely about Harrelson and Harris, with Graham having been the one to shoot Harris back when she was a kid in his charge. Graham seems to be suffering from guilt over it, but maybe not. It’s impossible to tell with his acting and the script.

The film sets up Hardy—the human—as a complete doofus who can’t function without the Venom symbiote to take care of him. Hardy voices Venom, too, so large swathes of the film are actually just Hardy talking to himself. It’s fine. He’s slightly better as the symbiote than the human because it’s unbelievable Hardy the human could ever function as an adult with even the scantest responsibilities.

Michelle Williams is back as Hardy’s ex-girlfriend, who both Hardy the human and Venom pine for. But she’s marrying doctor Reid Scott, also back from the first one. Williams and Scott are like Hardy’s square friends. Thanks to Williams being phenomenal and holding the movie up whenever she’s around, it works out really well.

And Hardy’s pretty fun. Much of the dialogue’s bad, and Hardy and Graham are terrible together, but Hardy manages to be energetic while dejected, which is impressive. He always seems too good for the movie. It brings a charm, especially with Williams around.

The direction’s fine, albeit unambitious, rushed, and disinterested. Carnage’s script—credit to Kelly Marcel, from a story by she and Hardy—seems like three episodes of a poorly written cartoon strung together, so, really, anything’s a success.

It’s often silly, sometimes inept, sometimes bad, but usually kind of fun, which isn’t bad given all the constraints. If they could just get a better writer, Venom might be good?

Or at least better more of the time. Because despite some genuinely terrible performances from its actors, Hardy, Hardy, Williams, and even Scott make Carnage an almost all right outing.