Category: 2019
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After the casual nod here and there—the “hub” in the space-camper looks a lot like the Alien mess hall—this episode goes all-in on the Aliens homage, complete with a little girl (Nevis Unipan) surviving on her own for months and months with aliens out to eat her. Leslie Hope directs the episode. It’s excellent suspense…
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Alex Graves is back directing this episode; unlike last time, he lets “Lost in Space” take advantage of its John Williams theme music to do some Williams-esque riffs. The major disaster sequence, which sets up the rest of the episode, gets very emotive music. The action immediately follows the last episode, with the family assembling…
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After a reveal about last season’s finale, the episode reestablishing the ground situation—the Robinsons and friends have been marooned on a mostly water, very toxic planet for six months because the Cylon engine has stopped working. I may just call the robot’s “species” the Cylons. I haven’t decided. After they set it all up, the…
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No question, Garth Ennis has still got that old Punisher magic. Soviet is a change from most of Ennis’s post—Punisher MAX limited series, which have been military historical fiction with the Punisher inserted, filling out the character, peeling the onion of his tragedy. Soviet’s not about Frank. Soviet is about Frank’s Russian alter ego, one…
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Knives Out is very successful, very neat riff on the Agatha Christie-esque genre of mystery stories, specifically the limited cast, the intricate death, the “gentleman detective.” Out’s gentleman detective is Daniel Craig, who plays his French-named character as a Southern Gentleman with aplomb. He’s always delightful, even though he’s—intentionally—not particularly good at the investigating, rather…
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A few minutes into Extra Ordinary, after a stylized prologue and then opening sequence, I realized it was a low budget marvel. The film has under five locations and six characters. Directors Ahern and Loughman widen the proverbial lens to make it feel bigger with choice location shooting—being able to do the driving in the…
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I’m not sure what I thought Elizabeth Is Missing was going to be—I only half read a description—but when it became clear Glenda Jackson’s character (not Elizabeth) would be searching for that character (played by Maggie Steed) but also Jackson having Alzheimer’s and also sort of live action flashbacks with her younger self… Well, I…
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In terms of ambition, scale, and execution, I’m not sure there’s anything better than Ezekiel Patrol. Writers Tamara Becher, Jeremy Carver, Shoshana Sachi, director Dermott Downs, the cast—they set a new bar. With Ezekiel, even though it’s from Grant Morrison, “Doom Patrol” has just fulfilled the concept of Vertigo TV. It’s sophisticated… okay, not suspense.…
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It’s a superb episode. Lots and lots of content—including some surprising devices to extend the narrative, which seems iffy at first but ends up working out great. Although you see the budget when it comes to a Groundhog Day-esque montage and the exact same footage keeps getting reused. “Doom Patrol” is even more impressive when…
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Devan Long is back this episode—looks like he might recur the rest of the season in fact—and he’s so good I almost want to watch his other stuff. He’s got the right amount of humor and the right amount of heart for the show. He’s stuck with Matt Bomer, Diane Guerrero, and Robotman (Brendan Fraser—and…
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The episode opens with Cyborg (Joivan Wade) imprisoned by the U.S. government—led by Jon Briddell, who is still nowhere near good enough for his part and they also don’t explain how they went from him being missing two episodes ago to the main villain in this one—only Wade has turned off “Grid,” his cybernetics’ operating…
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I remember opining “Doom Patrol” might give Matt Bomer a great part, but it was the pilot (I think) and they managed to simultaneously ignore his character development while also doing the peculiar flashbacks to the 1950s and Bomer’s closeted affair with Kyle Clements. Then it got better a few episodes ago, then Bomer took…
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Does Matt Bomer get an episode with the electric demon next or what, because he’s really left out of this one, which is the secret origin of Timothy Dalton—including explaining, or at least implying, why he looks so good for one hundred and fifty plus years old. No explanation for Diane Guerrero still but doesn’t…
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Holy shit, they didn’t get a female writer for this episode. Holy shit. Marcus Dalzine. Holy shit. I thought it was…. Wow. Okay. So this episode is about Brendan Fraser—guest starring in person and turning out to not be anywhere near as occasionally amusing in person as when he’s voicing and they’re filtering his voice—but…
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I just ran a find on this episode’s cast list because I couldn’t remember who did the voice of the new character, Danny the Street. Only to remember Danny only ever talks in text messages. Not, like, SMS messages, but text they’re able to arrange on the… well, not on the street because they’re the…
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For “Doom Patrol,” there’s before Therapy Patrol and after Therapy Patrol. It doesn’t just have an exceptional reveal at the end, which informs the entire episode–Therapy is fragmented, following each character as they prepare for a morning’s team briefing—and the reveal doesn’t just explain the whole thing, director Rob Hardy and writer Neil Reynolds manage…
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I failed to appreciate how nice it was to have Diane Guerrero not playing her regular character, Jane. Or Hammerhead. Hammerhead is the tough one. Guerrero’s not good at either of them. She’s also not good as the Babydoll one. She’s good as the blue-eyed one, nothing else. Especially not when everyone else in “Doom…
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Is Diane Guerrero’s core identity—“Doctor Harrison,” who’s got ice-blue eyes like she’s from the “Star Trek: TOS” Shatner pilot or maybe someone in X-Men—supposed to be the far and away best performance Guerrero gives on the show or is it unintentional? But also the best character for her to play? Because Dr. Harrison doesn’t play…
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No way, Willoughby Kipling (Mark Sheppard) is a real comic book “Doom Patrol” character. Is he a desperate Constantine rip-off in the comic or just in the show? I seriously thought they had to really quick come up with a character when they couldn’t make the Constantine cameo work. Like I thought it was seriously…
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Try as it might, this episode doesn’t lose all the second episode gains over the pilot. It does seemingly revolt against them—facing off team mom April Bowlby with serious superhero Joivan Wade but have it be all about how she’s just too negative and, like, needs to get with the team spirit stuff. Maybe do…
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I Lost My Body is the profoundly vapid tale of a man (Hakim Faris) and his hand. The hand has been chopped off and as it travels through a computer animated Paris, the film flashes back to Faris’s tale and, presumably, how he lost his hand. Along the way, the hand kills a young mother…
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So presumably someone at Warner Bros. watched the “Doom Patrol” pilot and thought it lacked a certain something. Whoever realized what it needed was Jovian Wade’s Cyborg deserves a bonus. Who even thought to ask if the character was available given the Justice League movie. And it’s not like Wade’s great—he’s fine and amiable—or even…
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Alan Tudyk is “Doom Patrol”’s red herring. So far, anyway. He’s in the prologue, which has him getting powers from a Nazi scientist in the forties, and then he narrates. There’s always narration. Some of it’s good, some of it’s bad. When it’s good, when Tudyk’s not being to snide, it nears Jean Shepherd. When…
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Valley of the Gods is a cautionary tale. If you’re going to make a combination of Citizen Kane—with either actual footage or a recreated shot—and then a bunch of vague Kubrick nods, including Keir Dullea (arguably in the film’s best performance) as a snippy butler and a HAL while doing a retelling of the Navajo…
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Samurai Marathon has some strange epilogue problems; all of a sudden the movie’s about marathons, when it turns out the marathon isn’t a particularly big deal in the story. It’s central to the story, but as a narrative tool. It provides the right stage for these characters. Though, with a title like Samurai Marathon, you’re…
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I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to see Ashfall if it hadn’t been for a blogathon. Maybe never. While I’m a Ma Dong-seok fan because how can you not be, I’ve always been lukewarm on top-billed Lee Byung-hun. Lee’s not actually the lead; the lead is Ha Jung-woo, who I don’t follow.…
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Confession time—I never read Blankets, creator Craig Thompson’s first big work. And it now turns out Ginseng Roots is a somewhat direct sequel. This issue opens with Thompson going back to Wisconsin—he’d been living in Portland, OR (of course), which makes the questionable L.A. cartography last issue more permissible—and meeting up with his younger brother,…
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Creator Craig Thompson has a hell of a hook for the first issue of Ginseng Roots—he gets to be interesting. Thompson grew up in Wisconsin in the seventies and eighties when the state was the number one grower of ginseng in the world. According to Thompson; I’m not going to check it because you’ve got…
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This season finale is a trip. And not in a good way. Though I guess Geeta Patel directing probably saves it from being any worse, no matter how insipid writers Liz Feldman and Abe Sylvia’s plot points get. Like when forty-one year-old Linda Cardellini, who’s all spiritual and worked in a retirement communities for however…
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I’m curious about “Dead to Me”’s writers’ room. Did they talk about how Sam McCarthy stole a handgun, brought it to school, sold drugs, yet is totally back to petulant White teenager with no consequences this episode or did they just think… well, petulant White teenager, of course there aren’t consequences. Because when McCarthy decides…
The Stop Button 