Category: 2020
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This episode’s about how awful both Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin turn out to be when it comes to money. Baskin’s won a lawsuit against Joe Exotic and he owes her a cool million. Carole and Howard aren’t doing it to prove a point or to stop Joe from doing his cub petting roadshow, they’re…
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Flimsy’s Mewsings is approximately thirty-seven single page comic strips—there’s one two-pager, a recipe—of adorable kitten Flimsy offering life advance. Gentle stuff like be kind to yourself, remember the lesson and forget the mistake, be genuinely interested in other people, email the friends you haven’t in a while, drink wine, try to remember “guys” is a…
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Has Michelle Pfeiffer ever played a femme fatale? I almost want to say no, which will make Tim Burton’s Tigers even better. Because Carole Baskin sure does seem like she killed her second husband, rich guy Don Lewis (it’s unclear how he got rich but they’re in Florida so it doesn’t seem like it was…
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Somehow this episode manages to bury the lede. Will I spoil that lede? Not yet, but probably. “Tiger King” is a masterwork of manipulation as far as narrative non-fiction. Directors Rebecca Chaiklin and Eric Goode have a great sense of what to hold back and what to get out there. For example, a disaster at…
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First off, let’s just get the following statements out of the way. Netflix needs to hire Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski and Tim Burton to make “Tiger King” into a movie and they need to cast Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Val Kilmer. George Clooney can stunt cameo. It’s what we deserve. Though the first…
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Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) is a Margot Robbie vehicle, which is excellent, because Robbie’s great and the filmmaking, particularly on Robbie’s scenes, is outstanding. Retitling it the Fantabulous Emancipation of Harley Quinn would be the best move; the Birds of Prey are going to be a bonus, with…
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It’s another big win good episode of “Legends.” It’s the farewell episode for Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford, which has all sorts of feelings but also Routh not being able to tell best bro Nick Zano the truth. Routh and Ford tell everyone else they’re leaving—in this great line for the bathroom scene—but when it…
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I think I know “All Rise” continuity better than the writers because when they introduce previously unmentioned Third Musketeer Ryan Michelle Bathe (she went to law school with Simone Missick and Wilson Bethel), they bend the backstory about Missick and Bethel knowing each other as kids. Or they don’t completely break it—Missick and Bethel meeting…
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Despite a forced start with Jessica Camacho and roomie and BFF Lindsay Mendez going hiking in some canyon before work and not finding a body, with some particularly forced angst from Camacho regarding boyfriend J. Alex Brinson declaring his love for her, the episode works out to be one of “All Rise”’s best. Gregory Nelson’s…
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So when I thought “Hunters” was going to use the tenth episode to set up next season… turns out I was mistaken. There’s some setup for next season, complete with some betrayals and cast changes and very big surprise surprises, but it’s mostly a resolution to this season. To things the show never established needing…
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“Hunters” must’ve had the same thought I did about hammering in the point “Operation Paperclip” was a real thing as this one starts with another of the show’s overly stylized, retro PSA videos. But it doesn’t need the history lesson for this episode, because this episode is where everything comes together. “Hunters” does the penultimate…
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Well… while this issue has some great stuff for Carol Kane and Saul Rubinek, pretty much everyone else is at the other end of the stick, which seems like a mixed metaphor but basically there’s some not great acting this episode. The Nazis blowing up a subway was the final straw to convince Logan Lerman…
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“Hunters” and the secret history of July 13, 1977! It doesn’t just tie into an actual historical event, it causes an actual historical event. It also then directly ties into Summer of Sam then… I wonder if you could cut the entire movie into “Hunters” and just have it be a subplot. The Nazis cause…
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Mr. Parker’s Cul-De-Sac is an exemplar of “Legends of Tomorrow.” Writers Keto Shimizu and James Eagan provide a great script—just the right amount of subplots, just the right pace—and the cast is outstanding. The episode opens on a red herring to get things moving. In the Wild West, Adam Tsekhman is cleaning up after a…
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This episode opens with what seems like a dream sequence for Tiffany Boone, who outside getting to have a giant afro and an occasionally acknowledged daughter, doesn’t have a character. Not really. She gets home from her shootout with the rest of the “Hunters,” covered in blood (not hers), and gets into bed with aforementioned…
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Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon is writing solo again this episode and, I mean, there are some bad scenes but the cringe factor is gone. Of course “Picard” is going to have poorly written and acted scenes, what else would it have; there’s no surprise in them anymore. This episode has Picard (Patrick Stewart) running…
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I feel like “Hunters” needs a real disclaimer to explain while the show itself is fictional, the U.S. government really did import a bunch of Nazis to the United States and turned them into citizens and paid to keep them quiet and happy and fat just so we could beat the Russians to the moon…
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The best part of this episode is Dylan Baker getting pissed off Lena Olin is cutting him out of the Nazi plans and scheming to get back into them. Baker’s stunt-casting, more so than even Pacino (who, playing a Jewish Holocaust survivor in old age is the heaviest lifting Pacino’s had to do in a…
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Maybe it’s just knowing Logan Lerman started in a YA franchise attempt (he was Percy Jackson) or because he’s got the dagger in his hand during the awesome opening titles every episode, but I wasn’t expecting him to have a whole “I feel super-guilty about killing these Nazis who are trying to kill us” arc.…
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The important series story development this episode is it turns out Logan Lerman isn’t okay with torturing and killing Nazis hiding in the United States. He’s still the same softie as in the first episode when he thought Darth Vader probably wasn’t all evil and didn’t, you know, kill a bunch of little kids in…
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“Hunters” fully realizes the potential of a popular entertainment revenge action-drama. There’s the Marathon Man-esque scene—not a Nazi dentist scene but a Nazi toy shop owner (a perfect Kenneth Tigar; “Hunters” seems like it’s going to be way too good at casting its Nazis)—but it ends with the good guys killing the evil Nazi bastard.…
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This episode of “Picard” has a Vulcan in cool sunglasses, who non-consensually mind melds, which used to be a thing, and talks about 300 gigabytes of data (hashtag details), a Romulan in a Battlefield Earth fighter jet, discount Han Solo sucking on a cigar, a 23rd century Alexa, the Black woman in the cast calling…
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This episode… really doesn’t impress. It ought to impress because it finally gets things moving—Picard (Patrick Stewart) heads to the Borg Cube to rescue Soji (Isa Briones). Briones is an android but doesn’t know it. Her lover, Harry Treadaway, knows she’s an android and wants to kill her for being an android because he’s a…
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Not sure why Dominic Purcell isn’t in the episode save a scene—he’s still off nursing catching feelings for an ex-girlfriend with lots of beer–but Caity Lotz uses her time off camera to direct this episode. She’s pretty damn good. The episode’s split between a series of John Woo homages in 1997 Hong Kong and John…
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Shadow of the Batgirl is a bit of a bummer, though I’m not exactly sure why. It’d be nice if it were good. It’s not bad… not if you’re getting it from the library versus spending the sticker price. And there’s a big library subplot in the book so it’s appropriate. It just feels stretched…
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This episode of “All Rise” has this super juicy white man part for guest star Ben Browder. Survivalist holds courtroom hostage; the cops came to kick him out of his home, which is apparently somewhere in the County of Los Angeles but remote enough you don’t see people and no one pays attention when you…
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The last episode. Finally the last episode. One could come up with the best order to watch the show, which isn’t the episode number order but also doesn’t work entirely randomly because some episodes jump ahead six years and whatnot—also there’s no point in making the order because you shouldn’t watch the show—but the finale’s…
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Still the eighties, still the investigation. Though we do get to see David Strathairn and Peter Sarsgaard facing off after the murder. Sarsgaard is very whispery with Strathairn, who’s telling him to investigate Kyle Gallner’s friend, third-billed but rarely onscreen for very long Kodi Smit-McPhee. This episode—eventually—has Sarsgaard interviewing Smit-McPhee in order to rule him…
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One of the few benefits of watching “Interrogation” in a non-linear fashion is initially missing out on certain trope episodes, like this one. This one is the trial, with a very poorly exposited look at Kyle Gallner’s trip through the criminal justice system as a minor. Albeit as a thirty-four year-old playing a minor. See,…
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I wonder if the “Picard” producers tried to track down Brian Brophy to appear on this episode. He originated the Bruce Maddox role on “Next Generation” Season Two, in 1989. I don’t have particularly good memories of his performance but whatever. Did they at least ask? Though he doesn’t have a credit since 2011; he…
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