Category: 2020
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So, funny thing about this season. The cops seem to have forgotten anyone hit Christina Applegate’s husband with a car and drove away. Like. When Diana Maria Riva is recapping her involvement with Applegate and Linda Cardellini for Natalie Morales? Doesn’t come up. It’s very strange. Though, I guess makes sense given where the show’s…
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It’s a team episode—or more of one—with Nick Kroll returning from the first season. Kroll was a posh New York vampire who was in love with one of Matt Berry’s hats. Unfortunately, that hat was cursed and Kroll’s having some very bad luck. He’s living in a sewer with one rapping sidekick Mike Dara and…
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Wow, more of the, no, really, you like Christina Applegate and Sam McCarthy as a mother-son comedic pair. He’s quietly sullen and she’s loudly obscene. Please laugh. McCarthy is a leech on this season, frankly. Thanks to Natalie Morales and new James Marsden, “Dead to Me” has a new lease on life—is that a no…
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So, first things first. Let’s get the negative out of the way; Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum does a poor job of directing. Not quite as bad as a first season episode, but definitely a return to the bad frame composition to cover for some of the actors not being very good. Like Sam McCarthy; I noticed…
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Did you know you needed a “Legends vs. Zombies” episode of “Legends of Tomorrow”? Because I did not know I needed such a thing. I also didn’t realize I needed to see how much range Adam Tsekhman can exhibit on the drop of a… carrot. I’ve always liked Tsekhman but in a comic relief sort…
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Rat murderer John Ennis is back for the first season, which starts this “Dead to Me” out on a high point. The only time it really weakens from there is when Suzy Nakamara and Sam McCarthy show up. Annoying neighbor Nakamara feels like a leftover bad idea from season one; she’s just there to let…
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Much like the season premiere, this episode takes place an indeterminate time from the previous episode’s cliffhanger and skips over what theoretically should be some very interesting scenes as Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini have now committed federal crimes by digging up a national forest to hide their other crime. Crimes. But it makes Applegate…
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Not only is the writing better this season—Cara DiPaolo this episode—but the direction is a major improvement as well. Tamra Davis directs this episode (Liza Johnson did the first two) and Davis has a whole bunch of experience. No more stupid portentous angles this season. I imagine the notes on “Dead to Me,” based on…
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How’s “Dead to Me” going to keep James Marsden in the cast when his character, Steve, has apparently absconded to Mexico following Linda Cardellini turning him in for money laundering? Well, luckily the creators of “Dead to Me” have seen “The Book Group” too, and James Marsden has a twin brother—Ben—and he gives Christina Applegate…
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Maybe the first half of the episode is following up from last season’s cliffhanger. The second half of the episode is then trying to get “Dead to Me” to a place where the show can go on. There’s been a seismic change to the relationship between Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini, a seismic cast change—or…
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In addition to being the most Matt Berry episode of “Shadows” ever, this episode also has the best Mark Hamill performance since… 1983? 1980? He’s only in the episode maybe five minutes so it’s hard to compare with the Original Trilogy or Big Red One. Hamill’s another vampire, one who Berry stiffed for rent on…
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And, now, in the “they all can’t be winners” category, we have Freaks and Greeks, which sends the Legends to Hudson University to steal a chalice from a frat. It’s not a frat in 1979. It’s a frat in 2020, run by special guest star Drew Ray Tanner; he’s Greek party god Dionysus, who’s finally…
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Friday is actually Friday #1. Or “Chapter One.” I went into it cold, only aware it was Ed Brubaker writing and Marcos Martin on art. I figured it was a done-in-one, but it’s actually the start of a new serial. The titular Friday is one Friday Fitzhugh, who’s just come home from college to her…
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“Upload” takes place in a mundane future dystopia where Bloomingdales runs liquor stores and Panera Bread was able to acquire Facebook. The most oddly prescient bit has a bunch of people on the packed commuter train wearing masks. Worker drones take the train it seems like. The middle class and above have self-driving cars, which…
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“Shadows” does a full Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) showcase episode this season (much more of a Proksch-centric episode than the one last season when he got a love interest). Last time he had to share with the love interest, this time it’s all Proksch. He gets a promotion at work and discovers the best way…
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It’s a good episode with a great twist in the third act but it’s not the episode the cold open promises. We’re supposed to be getting pyromaniac, patricidal supervillain turned time-traveling adventurer and romance novelist Mick (Dominic Purcell) bringing daughter Mina Sundwall onto the time machine ship to hang out for the weekend. We’ve seen…
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Dancing at Los Angeles is an admirable effort from “All Rise,” cast and crew, but it’s not a particularly good forty minutes of television. There are a couple big parallels between the episode, a “Coronavirus shelter-at-home” special episode with the cast filming in their homes in character, and the episode content, Simone Missick trying to…
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So, remember last time when I was worried about Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) and his subplot with the vampire hunters and then said I shouldn’t be worried about it because I should just trust in “Shadows”? I was right, I shouldn’t be worried about it. This episode’s Guillén subplot has him now trying to infiltrate the…
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Okay, “Legends” is going to fifteen episodes this season; this one is episode ten and it feels like they’re getting really close to resolving the season’s main plot and I’m really hoping they don’t meander this season like they did last. They got lost meandering. This episode is split between John (Matt Ryan) and Zari…
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This episode leaves me with grave concerns—no pun—over Harvey Guillén’s continuing vampire hunter storyline. Vampire familiar Guillén has not only learned he’s a Van Helsing, he’s also proven himself a master vampire hunter already—killing off the Nosferatu sent after his familiar and his housemates. This episode has him meeting a team of would be vampire…
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It’s an unexpectedly strong episode. Not everything goes off without a hitch—teaming up Jes Macallan and Dominic Purcell as they go through time trying to make it seem like Purcell was a present dad ought to be a great comedy subplot but instead just seems rushed. And, despite some really good acting from Maisie Richardson-Sellers,…
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If IMDb is correct, there have been only ten other adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma, and I’m including the modernizations. So it’s not so much Emma is oft-adapted, maybe just it’s got a very memorable story. Memorable enough even I was anticipating how—oh, wow, it’s director de Wilde’s first feature. Like, remember when music video…
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Ghosts is a very well-balanced “What We Do in the Shadows,” meaning all three vampires—Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou—get their own showcases and there’s some left over for Mark Proksch’s energy vampire. Not a lot for Harvey Guillén, but he got last episode. The episode starts with the household discovering they’ve got ghosts. Or…
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So, there’s a lot to say about “What We Do in the Shadows”’s return, like how they figured out an amazing way to keep growing Harvey Guillén’s vampire hunter arc (as he is a vampire’s familiar) and how the show uses a time jump (summer is over, so we get some exposition—unclear if the show…
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This episode’s credited writers, Gregory Nelson and Aaron Carter, have written episodes before but they mustn’t have stood out enough I was going to remember the writers. The writing only stands out this episode because there’s a great courtroom scene with Jessica Camacho cross-examining a witness, Rodney To, and catching him up. “All Rise” is…
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At the end of The Tiger King and I, host Joel McHale—sitting in his living room because the coronavirus pandemic has him in lock down (the Trump Flu plays a big part, presumably, in all the interviewees ready availabilities)—makes a crack about how there’s nothing he won’t do for money, implying Netflix hired him to…
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I wonder if occurred to the producers they should’ve saved up to license With A Little Help From My Friends for this episode, which is mostly about Jessica Camacho–who started the show getting out of a physically abusive marriage—defending a client accused of assaulting his girlfriend and having major PTSD. The episode starts with Camacho…
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Based on his interviews this episode, it appears Jeff Lowe spent years getting Joe Exotic more and more enraged over Carole Baskin so at some point Lowe would be able to convince Exotic to hire someone to kill her. Possibly even just Allen Glover. Both “Doc” Antle and Joshua Dial think Joe was set up.…
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So now we’ve got the downfall of Joe Exotic, promised in the first episode, the pieces not aligned until now. Businesses undefined businessman Jeff Lowe has returned to Oklahoma after basically getting run out of Las Vegas to discover Joe has been forging his name on multiple documents in addition to using zoo money on…
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So, luckily, businessman Jeff Lowe beating tigers at the end of last episode was just a horrifying teaser not the actual content of this episode. In fact, Lowe doesn’t hit a single animal in this episode. They don’t even use the footage again. And the ominous “Jeff Lowe takeover” of the zoo… it wasn’t as…
The Stop Button 