The Boys (2019) s03e08 – The Instant White-Hot Wild

So, before getting started with the episode itself, I just want to say it’s a very good episode, with excellent direction from Sarah Boyd, a great script (credited to David Reed and Logan Ritchey), and fine performances from most of the cast.

There aren’t any bad performances. Well, maybe Cameron Crovetti as Antony Starr’s superpowered son, but we won’t know until next season if he’s hitting his limit or if it’s part of the role.

But the end of the episode, setting up season four, goes on forever. It goes on so long, it becomes clear lots of season three was just very slowly moving the pieces in position for next season. Or, worse, the action and the arcs were all for nothing. With some of the character development, it’s too soon to tell; they’re pushing off having to address it until next time.

The episode leaves many unanswered questions, even about the ground situation after the big blowout. The episode only runs an hour but could use at least another five minutes to make the epilogue not feel so tacked on. It sets up each epilogue beat as an ending—even when they’re clearly not—then drums on and on. The longer it goes, the more it cuts into the show’s effectiveness.

Most of the season’s stakes get wiped out or reverted this episode to one degree or another. The characters have more history between them now, but their pieces are in more or less the exact same spots (with some exceptions).

Things kick off with Karl Urban ditching Jack Quaid at a gas station so Quaid won’t get killed when Urban and Jensen Ackles go to take on Starr. They’re planning on directly attacking the skyscraper where the superheroes hang out, which will have massive civilian casualties.

Quaid rejoins the Boys, who’ve teamed up with Erin Moriarty and an escaped Dominique McElligott to stop Urban and Ackles. Except since Ackles is Starr’s biological father, all sorts of loyalties are getting confused and questioned, and everyone’s got additional hurdles before reaching the objective.

Eventually, there’s a big superhero fight, lots of wanton destruction, lots of lasers, lots of fisticuffs. It’s a reasonably good fight sequence, though the editors let it run long between checking on the various fronts. Sometimes it’s for emphasis; sometimes, it just runs long. It’d be fine if the big finale weren’t so lackluster.

So maybe the episode needs another five minutes during the first and second acts, then another five during the epilogue. Given where it takes certain characters, it’s rushed.

Lots of good acting from Urban, Starr, Ackles, Quaid, Moriarty, McElligott, and Laz Alonso. The episode gives Tomer Capone and Karen Fukuhara very little compared to how much they’ve been getting lately, but it’s okay.

Jessie T. Usher and Chace Crawford get their arcs pushed until next season (presumably, they could run them as C plots forever, I suppose). Though it certainly seems like they’re setting up season four to be the finish, but since everyone spent season three acting like it was going to all resolve—which makes sense for the characters anyway—it’s too soon to tell.

But other than the visuals of the big fight literal finish, some of the editing, and the epilogue ad nauseam, it’s an excellent episode.

The Boys (2019) s03e07 – Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed

Despite primarily being a setup for next episode’s season finale, this episode of “The Boys” gets a lot done, and most of it’s excellent, with the occasional exceptional. It gives Karl Urban another great acting showcase, even though he’s stuck in a nightmare where he’s entirely reactive.

Great direction from Sarah Boyd; it’s her first episode of “The Boys.” Also outstanding is the script, credited to Paul Grilling (his first writing credit on the show).

The episode starts a week after the previous episode’s bombshells. Antony Starr and Colby Minfie are doing damage control on Erin Moriarty telling the world how the superheroes are actually shitheels; Dominique McElligott is still missing, Jensen Ackles is still on the run, and “The Boys” are broken up.

Moriarty and Laz Alonso are laying low—it’s unclear what they’ve been doing in the week, other than Instagram posts from Moriarty—when Tomer Capone and Karen Fukuhara show up looking for refuge. Fukuhara’s still healing, Capone’s getting high again, and they need help, which Moriarty and Alonso provide. So they pair off, boys and boys, girls and girls, and work on their respective subplots until later in the episode when Fukuhara and Capone get back together for another of their devastatingly tragic scenes. While Moriarty remains the show’s de facto protagonist, Fukuhara’s really the heart at this point, especially since she’s lost her powers and has learned the dangers of being without them.

Meanwhile, Urban and Jack Quaid are babysitting Ackles at Paul Reiser’s country home. Brief scenes from the very funny Reiser, who dishes the real dirt on Ackles’s “Ultimate Captain America.” Less winning World War II, more bashing in Civil Rights protestors’ heads. Racist Ackles leaps out during an inspired flashback for Nathan Mitchell, who’s still on the run from him; Starr’s so pissed off about Moriarty turning on him, he’s not concerned with Mitchell going AWOL. It’ll probably be crucial next episode, along with a lot of other things.

Starr’s public breakdowns are getting bad enough Claudia Doumit, now committed to the superhero cause, intercedes to introduce another subplot for later. Of course, given the big reveals at the cliffhanger, that subplot may wait for next season.

Ackles’s next target is psychic Ryan Blakely, who’s been living off the grid for decades; when they find him, he traps Urban in a nightmare, leaving Quaid to manage Ackles. Ackles, who’s incredibly stoned (Urban’s keeping him that way to compensate for Ackles’s PTSD) and incredibly obnoxious, shatters even more of Quaid’s illusions during their adventure.

There are a couple significant character surprises throughout—one at the beginning, then one later–both setting up for next episode. The majority of the episode is character work for Urban, Quaid, Alonso, and Fukuhara. Fantastic work from all of them, plus, obviously, Ackles, who’s just getting better the worse his character gets.

While it’s all technically setup, including some running subplot check-ins, it’s still a great episode.

Oh, and then Chace Crawford has a humdinger of a comedy scene. It’s actually unclear if it’s set up for anything or just a reminder he’s a depthless jackass.

George Carlin’s American Dream (2022, Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio)

The first half of George Carlin’s American Dream is a history lesson. Big history and little history; it’s the history of comedy in the second half of the twentieth century; it’s the story of Carlin and his family. It’s the story of his career and how success changed his life; how some things got better, then new things got worse. It’s fascinating and humanizing.

The second half is about directors Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio trying to figure out how they can work in sensational footage from twelve years after Carlin died. They try to tie it in with interviewee Paul Provenza talking about how people wished Carlin were around to comment on the dumpster fire the world’s become since he’s left. But it was always that dumpster fire; we just didn’t have it on video. Carlin in the smartphone era would have been more interesting than a poorly cut montage—Joe Beshenkovsky does a fine job throughout the three-and-a-half-hour documentary, but when they ask him to ape The Parallax View, Beshenkovsky flops.

It’s not all his fault; I’m sure he didn’t pick the Carlin material to accompany the visuals, but the cutting’s not good. The material selection and the piece in general—only a few years after Spike Lee did it earnestly and sincerely in BlacKkKlansman—is a lousy finish for American Dream. The second half is rocky overall; the landing is bad; if it weren’t for interviewee (and daughter) Kelly Carlin, they’d have sunk it. It’s a bad idea, drawn-out, coming at the end of a half-assed conclusion.

Because the second half of American Dream starts with the promise of Ronald Reagan’s presidency fucking with Carlin’s mojo just when he was determined to prove everyone wrong. According to the doc, nothing worked out for Carlin during the Reagan years. He was too busy working to pay off the IRS. So, creatively, he kept hitting snooze.

Except… he didn’t. He started his HBO specials, did “Comic Relief,” and apparently changed his entire professional perspective because of Sam Kinison (or so Dream tries to imply). The first half gets Carlin through high school dropout, radio DJ, traditional stand-up comic, mainstream TV guy, seventies counter-culture sensation, pseudo-has been, coke fiend, wife’s alcoholism, fatherhood, comeback precipice.

Only nope, the comeback would take fourteen years. Per Dream, even though in between Carlin was in Bill and Ted, for example. The movie’s something the documentary doesn’t address until—it’s got a linear structure, which is problematic anyway—but it doesn’t address his casting until it’s covering years later.

It also buries some ledes later when it presents Dogma as being about Carlin, the ex-Catholic; though the doc does not use much of that footage—and never points out Carlin was right about the priests raping kids, probably because it’d piss off useless, pearl-clutching interviewee Stephen Colbert. Then it talks about Dogma as Carlin’s mourning picture; his wife died just before filming. But then it reveals it’s actually about Carlin meeting his second wife. After spending the almost two-hour first half showing its subject’s facets and collisions… the second half goes for easy manipulation. Apatow and Bonfiglio half-ass the finish, but there’s probably no way not to half-ass it since they’re covering thirty years in less time. Plus they need their five-minute “America sucks, subscribe to HBO Max and rebel” commercial.

Carlin, of course, deserves better. American Dream does an all right job showcasing old material, though nowhere near as much as you’d think. It doesn’t discuss the popularity of the HBO specials after the first one, doesn’t discuss his wife producing them (after making a big deal out of her feeling left out during the events in the first half, it leaves her out of the second). The second half feels like parts two and three, and the epilogue abridged. It’s a shame.

Hopefully, it’ll get more people to watch more George Carlin. But not, oddly enough, on HBO Max.

Lost in Space (2018) s03e03 – The New Guy

While I’m sure they didn’t bring in Russell Hornsby—as Taylor Russell’s long-lost (in space) biological father—to offset Toby Stephens’s energy vampiring, but Hornsby does have that effect. The nicest “Lost in Space” has been in ages is when Mina Sundwall, being introduced to Hornsby, gives him a hug.

Hornsby will have an arc, mostly with Russell, about being a real spaceship captain and not one who lets the computer fly for him. They’re prepping the ship for take-off, and he can’t stop talking about the importance of real experience over autopilot, even an autopilot programmed by Molly Parker. The show’s cagey about Parker and Hornsby’s history, allowing for a backstory bombshell in the resolution. Well, as much as a twenty-year-old, mostly inconsequential reveal can be a bombshell.

Parker spends the episode with Stephens, Ignacio Serricchio, and their robot. Regular robot is just helping get the ship ready for take-off, but the new robot (the one the humans enslaved to fly them across the galaxy) is helping Parker and company get an alien engine to save the day.

Stephens doesn’t trust the robot (what with the enslaving thing), while Serricchio tries humorously to bond with it, and Parker tries to form a meaningful connection. That plot is an action-thriller one, involving planning, a chase sequence, and last-minute twists and turns. The CGI is a little off—not the action, but the rock formations where Parker and the robot hang out (down the block from Kirk and the Gorn). The director, Sarah Boyd, directs for better scenery than Parker ends up with. It’s okay—thanks to a good twist—but ought to be better.

It’s not all the CGI’s fault. Mopey Stephens drains the energy out of scenes.

Meanwhile, Maxwell Jenkins has a sci-fi Indiana Jones plot in the alien ruins, complete with Indiana Jones-esque music. Sure, it’s more like a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull spin-off than Raiders and kind of tedious for the payoff—he finds a giant space pipe organ and plays tones while he ought to be getting ready to get on the spaceship.

His delay does give Parker Posey something to do, in this case, ominously threaten Russell because the kids are planning on putting adult Posey in cryosleep for take-off. They’d rather have Hornsby be the awake adult, sucking up extra oxygen. Posey’s got a decent arc about not wanting to be put under since she’s kind of a fugitive. The writing on it’s not great, but Posey’s panic is good. Plus, it all ties up neatly with Jenkins needing a co-conspirator.

The tense action finale—space action John Williams riffs, not space grandeur John Williams riffs—has a lot of emotional impact, which is cool. But, on the other hand, the hard cliffhanger is less effective because it’s a wheel-spinner.

The episode’s better throughout than its conclusion, with some definite highs.

Nightwatch (1997, Ole Bornedal)

Thanks to a weak performance from lead Ewan McGregor and an obviously altered ending, Nightwatch straddles being a reasonably perverse suspense thriller and a scalding commentary on middle-class white male masculinity. McGregor is a third-year law school student who takes a job at the morgue to help pay for he and girlfriend Patricia Arquette’s giant apartment. She’s from a wealthy family, but McGregor wants to pay his own way. The film takes place in L.A. but never emphasizes it; the action is either the apartment, the morgue, or one of the various locations McGregor ends up with best buddy Josh Brolin. Those locations usually involve drinking and Brolin feeling bad because he’s not toxically macho enough. Being shitty to girlfriend Lauren Graham is getting less and less rewarding to Brolin, so he needs to take it up a notch.

We get this character set up during the opening credits; the film opens with a girl being murdered, then there’s opening credits with the four friends—McGregor, Arquette, Brolin, Graham—having a party (complete with McGregor wearing a native war bonnet, which simultaneously ages terribly but also tells you just what kind of dipshit McGregor will turn out to be). Intercut with the party are clips of cop Nick Nolte on the news giving an interview about a serial killer; the opening scene showed one of the murders.

Nolte’s going to be very important to Nightwatch—the eventual star and absolutely fantastic—but he’s not going to show up until the second act. The first act is about McGregor getting settled at the morgue, and then he and Brolin’s middle-class, white-collar white boy attempts to butch up. Or Brolin’s attempts and McGregor fawning over him because McGregor’s in deep need of a male authority figure. It actually figures into the plot and puts McGregor and Arquette in danger, so it turns out the first act buildup pays off. Even with the reshot ending, which ends things a little too abruptly and artlessly (I mean, Nightwatch has a killer Taxi Driver homage, it ought to have a good ending), everything in the film eventually pays off so well it smoothes over the bumps.

The second act will have Brolin escalating and becoming more and more dangerous to McGregor’s well-being—bringing sex worker Alix Koromzay into their lives. Koromzay does pretty well with a bad part; one of the bumps the film has to smooth out is when Brolin humiliates her for his own pleasure while McGregor sits by dumbfounded. Because Nightwatch is all about guys being shitty, actually. They’re either abusive like Brolin, impotent like McGregor, resigned like Lonny Chapman (the former nightwatchman), doped up like doctor Brad Dourif (it’s a small part, but he’s outstanding), or content with the failure like Nolte. It’s a profoundly misanthropic film and is the better for it. McGregor being a limp noodle makes his unsure performance hit better. In the first half the problem’s McGregor’s American accent; in the second half, everyone is more interesting than him—including Brolin, who gets astoundingly far on just an “I’m an asshole” bit. Especially once Arquette gets something to do.

For the first half of the movie, Arquette’s barely in the film. She snuggles McGregor every once in a while and sends him off to work, but she’s not active. But once she gets active, once McGregor and Brolin’s shenanigans start getting more serious, it’s kind of her movie. Outside being Nolte’s movie, because Nolte runs off with it. Director Bornedal holds off on letting Nolte loose because there’s no way to bring the film back once he does. Nolte runs it. It’s a mesmerizing performance.

The excellent performances—Nolte, Dourif, Chapman—and the eventually really good performances—Arquette and Brolin—make up for McGregor. Plus, the character’s a twerp, so there’s not much required of the performance; a better performance from McGregor, one capable of holding its ground with Nolte, would entirely change the film. Nightwatch gets away with the juxtapose of thriller and masculinity musing because of McGregor. With a good performance in the part, it wouldn’t.

Technically, Nightwatch is stellar. Bornedal’s direction, Sally Menke’s editing, and Richard Hoover’s production design are the big winners. Dan Lausten’s photography and Joachim Holbek’s music are both good and sometimes essential, but they’re not actively excelling the other cylinders.

The script’s also got some really intense moments—Bornedal adapted his Danish version, with Steven Soderbergh cowriting—particularly for Nolte.

Nightwatch is good.

The Equalizer (2021) s01e10 – Reckoning

Yeah, I knew Joseph C. Wilson credited scripts weren’t good, which is a real bummer because this episode deserves better. Queen Latifah gets a case close to home when daughter Laya DeLeon Hayes and her friends become collateral damage in a drive-by shooting. The episode becomes a race: will Latifah get justice for the victims before Hayes figures out her mom doesn’t work for an international charity. Because now Hayes is entering Latifah’s world, specifically the precinct where detective Tory Kittles works.

It’s kind of fun seeing Kittles and Hayes together. We rarely get to see Kittles in scenes where his personality matters. Usually he’s just acquiescing to Latifah for plot reasons or taking shit from his white superiors for similar plot reasons. This episode he also goes to visit dad Danny Johnson in prison; Johnson is an ex-cop who started stealing because he realized the system’s garbage so why not steal. It’s a really good scene from Kittles. Not the best writing (or even good), but Kittles acts his ass off.

And there’s almost good stuff with Hayes standing up to her classmate’s racist white mom, which Wilson’s script too quickly dismisses as rude Karening. It’s a miss after the episode takes the time for Latifah and aunt Lorraine Toussaint to sit and mourn Hayes being yet another generation of Black child who has to learn what it’s like for their friend to be killed. That scene between Latifah and Toussaint is so good, thanks to the actors, not even Wilson’s hackneyed dialogue can mess it up.

But Wilson can definitely mess up every pointless appearance from Adam Goldberg and Liza Lapira this episode. They’re background, with Lapira occasionally spouting off single expository lines to remind viewers of the plot, while Goldberg’s just… there. Even though part of the plot involves someone calling Hayes’s phone and threatening her, which seems like a very technological angle. Though since Wilson writes Goldberg and Lapira so badly, having more of them wouldn’t really help things.

Also not appearing this episode is Chris Noth, who’s on his second episode away. I can’t remember… Latifah might be mad at him but it just goes to show how little “The Equalizer” needs him. Never good to showcase how little your show needs its “and” credit actor.

It’s an okay season finale if an at best middling episode—Wilson’s dialogue’s real, real bad—with the family stuff for Latifah a lot more engaging than anything else thanks to the actors. Though it’s an incomplete; whereas Kittles gets some resolution to his arc, Latifah’s family troubles is the cliffhanger.

House of Hummingbird (2018, Kim Bora)

Eun-hee (Park Ji-hu) is an average Seoul eighth grader circa 1994, which would be fine if being average weren’t a one-way ticket to nowhere. Park’s the youngest of three children; while presumably eldest sister Park Soo-yeon has already screwed up and is going to a crappy school across the bridge, son Son Sang-yeon is doing great. Studies hard, works hard; sure, he regularly beats the crap out of Park, but it’s actually just one of the things making her average. At least Son doesn’t hit her in the face—Park’s best friend, Park Seo-yoon, gets hit in the face and has to hide it.

The only thing Park’s got going for her at the start of the film is boyfriend Jung Yoon-seo. Except working class Park isn’t supposed to have a boyfriend. She’s not supposed to karaoke either. She also smokes. Her classmates think she’s a troublemaker and her parents—well, mom Lee Seung-yeon is worried about it. Dad Jung In-gi has long since decided all the hopes and dreams are on Son. Though we find out in the first act, when mom’s drunken brother Hyung Young-seon shows up and establishes she had the smarts as a kid and Hyung screwed it up for both of them as it turned out.

This visit from Hyung is one of the inciting actions. It kicks off the sibling comparison subplot—theme, theme seems more appropriate—while Park goes through her routines until something else interesting happens. She gets a new Chinese teacher. Instead of a boring straight-edge guy, it’s cigarette smoking—out the stairwell window no less—Kim Sae-byuk. Thanks to some drama in Park’s friendship with Park Seo-yoon, she unexpectedly has the opportunity to bond with follow flounderer Kim. Of course, Kim’s at least ten years older—or more, she’s on an extension of an already extended break from university—and she’s had some time to think about how damaging reality can be on eighth grade girls.

Except reality also doesn’t let Kim intervene. There’s this frangible quality to Kim and Park’s relationship and their scenes are probably the film’s best in terms of character development. The limited character development is generally fine—Park’s like fourteen, right? It’s a character study in how it’s studying how her character develops.

Because it’s a big year for Park. Six major events. Seven if you could a first kiss. One of them is national news and presumably the point of the precise 1994 setting. No spoilers but… turns out House is going to have deus ex machinas to its deus ex machinas. Kim’s script stays fairly loose given how much it’s got to lead the narrative–House’s lyricism is in Kim’s direction and maybe what the script skips, not the script itself. The story—in an epical sense—is anticlimactic; thanks to Kim’s direction, the film instead gets to be passively climatic. Or at least significantly cumulative.

Park’s performance is good. Very strong performance. Not… singular. You keep waiting for Kim to throw something at her she obviously can’t handle. There’s something askew about the narrative distance, just a bit, and it ends up hurting more than helping. Because all it helps with is some narrative shortcuts—Kim maintains the same narrative distance throughout, even when it means dropping entire plot lines in addition to an indifference to the passage of time. They’re things you can cover with some nice direction and Kim indeed makes it up with nice direction. Kang Guk-hyun’s photography is good, Zoe Sua Cho’s editing is good.

Matija Strnisa’s music is fine. It never really sweeps when it needs to sweep. Sound is really important in the film only there’s no precision in the score… it always feels vaguely like stock music. Good stock music. But stock music.

Most of House of Hummingbird is really good. Until Kim gets to the third act and panics. It’s not one of those things where the deus ex machina is necessarily bad—or even the second one—but the work from the first to the second isn’t there. Kim employs this combination of a twist and a bait and switch; it doesn’t seem craven but it does seem cravenly pragmatic. The film’s pace slows down in the second act then speeds up so much in the third—when calling a scene a scene (versus, say, a snapshot) is a stretch—it feels like they needed another fifteen minutes.

Lots of House of Hummingbird is excellent and the way it showcases Park’s performance is at times just the right coming-of-age picture exquisite. But the finish is a mess of a mess of a mess of a mess.

Doctor Who (2005) s01e05 – World War Three

Digital video in the mid-aughts was still very rough. Around the time World War Three came out, some of the best DV cinematography wasn’t being done in film or television but in art and technical schools, as creatives were figuring out how to best light for the medium.

In other words, I understand why cinematographer Ernest Vincze shoots such an ugly hour of television. I don’t understand Keith Boak’s direction. Like, seriously, an out of focus foreground or background character in crappy DV… But I do get Vincze’s limitations.

The episode is full of them. The aliens go from disquieting giant suits to terrible CGI. You can even see the models reused in different effects shots. Vincze doesn’t even have the budget—or, let’s just say it, ability—to light the composites well. World War Three takes a big swing and a big miss as far as the visuals.

The story’s not much better. Christopher Eccleston resolves the previous episode’s cliffhanger quite perfunctorily and then there’s a lot of chasing—there are aliens chasing Eccleston, aliens chasing Bille Piper and Penelope Wilton (who almost makes the episode worth it), and aliens chasing Piper’s mum, Camille Coduri. Sadly, Coduri teams up with Noel Clarke and they work remotely to help Eccleston save the world.

Coduri’s not great. Her character’s bad but she’s also not great. Clarke’s real bad. So having Coduri around him the whole episode doesn’t help. Though the terrible subplot about Coduri wanting Eccleston to assure her Piper is safe as his companion is all on Coduri. And writer Russell T. Davies. It’s not quite a “Martha” moment but it’s in the same vending machine. Davies’s resolution to the dilemma is an eye roller.

The episode hinges on various deuses ex machina to get to its conclusion, which is sort of an extension of the first episode. It’s kind of a real stinker, thanks primarily to Boak and Clarke; Corduri is collateral damage.

The ending, which resets the stakes to where they were before the two-parter with a little change—oh, also—we find out Piper’s phone accepts incoming calls, which means the entirely twelve months she was missing, neither Corduri or Clarke tried calling her. Like… what.

Anyway. The ending threatens to make things worse, then returns them to the status quo.

I really hope Boak takes next episode off. I can’t handle any more Boak right now.

Doctor Who (2005) s01e04 – Aliens of London

Director Keith Boak is back and it’s obvious from go some of the problem with Boak-directed episodes is Boak’s a bad director. Some of the problems are budgetary, but Boak and cinematographer Ernest Vincze even make the non-effects stuff look like bad digital video. There’s an anti-suspense suspense sequence involving sympathetic coroner Naoko Mori, who finds herself trapped in the morgue with an alien. Vincze throws all these goofy lights at her to cover for Boak’s complete inability to direct the sequence.

The episode starts with Christoper Eccleston bringing Billie Piper back to “the present” (meaning Piper’s present) so she can check in with mum Camille Coduri. We immediately discover last episode wasn’t a fluke and Eccleston really can’t control when the TARDIS jumps in time. Later in the episode he does a fairly precise teleportation, so the problem seems to be fourth dimensional, not first through third. It’s kind of obnoxious watching them goof off with the absurdly silly navigation system on the TARDIS—has it been updated since 1963. Is it a series trope? Like the Enterprise crew “spinning” 360 degrees?

Eccleston gets Piper home a year late, after Coduri has given up hope for her safe return and after Piper’s boyfriend, the just-as-charmless-as-last-time Noel Clarke, has been a suspect in her disappearance. Cue drama. Cue more drama once Coduri finds out about Eccleston.

But Piper and Coduri having a showdown isn’t the episode, the episode is an alien spacecraft crash-landing into the Thames. The government response involves a missing Prime Minister, an inquisitive Penelope Wilton (who makes the episode given how bad everything else works), and a flatulent replacement PM, David Verrey. In fact, most of the melodrama hinges on… fart jokes. Lots and lots of fart jokes.

Really bad CG aliens eventually show up and everyone’s in danger. Cue cliffhanger.

It’s occasionally well-acted and Wilton’s a delight, but the bad direction and photography, Clarke being an energy vampire, and so on….

It’s needlessly tiring.

Doctor Who (2005) s01e01 – Rose

I am not a “Doctor Who” person. I’ve known some “Doctor Who” people, I count good friends as “Doctor Who” people. But there’s no way to talk about this show without prefacing with… I don’t get it. I still don’t get it. It’s like you have to be a certain kind of anglophile. What’s the Venn diagram on “Monty Python” and “Doctor Who”? Then with Quatermass and Hammer.

And this viewing is my second attempt to watch “Doctor Who (2005)” or whatever it’s official designation versus the old “Doctor Who.”

The first time was in 2005, when we were seeing television’s successful mainstreaming of season-long story arcs with “Lost,” “Veronica Mars,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and “The Shield.” Basic cable and UPN, oh my. So an awesome new “Doctor Who” was just what, ahem, the Doctor ordered. Do people make Who puns? Is the title itself just a pun? There’s fifty-seven years of “Who” lore. I couldn’t keep track of it as a kid just hearing about the show much less watching it.

This episode is full of puns. It’s full of puns, terrible editing (Mike Jones), and directing (Keith Boak). I remembered where I stopped watching the episode the first time I tried, which was already a significant ask for me because I’m a hard pass on Christopher Eccleston. I think I would’ve tried “Who” after 28 Days Later so I never would’ve been more positive on Eccleston. That oversized jacket thing didn’t age well.

Eccleston’s comic timing is better than sidekick Billie Piper—who’s either going to become Eccleston’s familiar or companion or something; the Doctor’s always got a Watson, or so I remember thinking in my youth (based on second-hand information).

The episode’s about plastic coming to life and trying to take over the planet. It’s more complicated, but basically there are these mannequins chasing and attacking Piper and Eccleston. They look like those B.O.B. dummies. It’d be disquieting if Boak’s direction weren’t bad or if the tone weren’t kind of silly. Campy. Is it supposed to feel campy? But, like, that British campy.

What’s the Venn on “Who” and Benny Hill, or “Who” and “Mr Bean.”

But apparently there’s going to be great acting on this show in later seasons from different actors so I need to stay positive.

Noel Clarke plays Piper’s boyfriend. He’s annoying. Piper’s writing is really thin in what’s essentially a scream queen part so far. Camille Coduri (who’s familiar because she was in two movies I saw when I was twelve, apparently) is okay as Piper’s mom. Not great writing but Coduri’s good. Mark Benton’s great as an in-world “Doctor Who” fanboy.

Also… are the special effects supposed to be bad? 2005 it could’ve been either way. But this episode multiple times feels like a lower rent Terminator 2 just fourteen years of technology later. Like, are they supposed to be silly?

The show’s perplexing.