The Stop Button
blogging by Andrew Wickliffe
Category: 2021
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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,…
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So, A Woman’s Place Is in the War Effort! bombs Bechdel in a really, really bad way. Like, there better be a scene cut or some really good excuse because it fails it by not giving Kimleigh Smith a name. She’s a Black woman working in an airplane factory in World War II; the Legends…
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Outside wistfully hoping Edward Norton would bring art-house sensibilities to the mainstream, “Hawkeye” is the first official MCU property I’ve ever been emotionally invested in. I mean, obviously, East Coast “MCU” (the Netflix series) were a thing—and “Hawkeye” reminds of them immensely—but in the straight Disney-for-teens MCU? “Hawkeye” ’s it. Go read the Matt Fraction…
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Most of this episode—save a brief appearance from rubber masked villain Rochenda Sandall—is quite good. Not just the best episode of the season so far (though it’s handily the best episode of the season so far), but an actual good episode. Doctor Jodie Whittaker is solo in late sixties small village England, trying to stop…
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“Legends” hasn’t been renewed yet, and it’s kind of been a bubble show forever, which is why it’s always so nice when they get an early renewal. But this season now seems to be arranging things for a send-off. At least, potentially. Events are perturbing towards closure—or at least not unresolved cliffhangers—and it kind of…
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This episode has several things going on, like Wolé Parks delivering (compared to before) when the story requires it, Emmanuelle Chriqui having a great mom scene (shedding any memory of her lackluster performance a couple episodes ago), one low-key but big twist, what sounds like Man of Steel music cues (but for Super-sons Jordan Elsass…
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So, A Brief Reminiscence In-Between Cataclysmic Events confirms a question I didn’t realize I had—who’s the perfect director for a Superman movie? Small Soldier turned “Everwood” star turned TV director Gregory Smith. This episode’s chock full of Superman: The Movie references, most of which fail earnestly, and then some genuinely excellent Lois and Clark stuff…
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One of the reasons it’s easier to look at this season of “Doctor Who” through the lens of previous sci-fi is just talking about the new season of “Doctor Who” is boring. And narratively cheap. Chris Chibnall’s script this time uses two major manipulative devices just to get it across the finish line, and it’s…
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When I read Matt Ryan was leaving “Legends of Tomorrow” as John Constantine but returning in a different part, I initially assumed it was Constantine-adjacent. But it’s not. Even after he started showing up in the opening credits photo roll—“Legends” does a speed-roll of the regular cast without text—and then appeared in every episode’s “starring”…
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This season finale of “Doom Patrol” is not perfect because it realizes all my hopes for the season; it’s perfect and just happens to realize all my hopes for the season. First and foremost, it doesn’t play chicken with the network (or, in this case, streaming service) as far as renewal. We get closure. There…
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The third act of Shang-Chi makes it real obvious what’s been wrong with the movie the whole time–it doesn’t matter if Simu Liu is onscreen. The third act has a bunch of different characters fighting a bunch of different bad guys, and Liu disappears for a few minutes to do the whole “how’s the hero…
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Turns out when “Superman and Lois” wants to do a fairly straightforward “Superman” episode, they can do it. Like it balances out well, even if Elizabeth Tulloch gets shockingly little to do but stand around in a show where her character’s name is in the title. And there are some performance problems, but it’s a…
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So, one thing I don’t understand about “Doctor Who: Flux” is writer Chris Chibnall’s Marvel Cinematic Universe nods. Last episode, they established the only good special effects were going to be the Thanos disintegration effect (presumably the VFX staff bought an iPhone app for ninety-nine cents to get it done), but this episode…. Well, this…
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Right up until the second, harder cliffhanger—the first cliffhanger ought to be a hard one, but ends up being soft, which actually might end up being better given the characters involved—but right up until the finale, it’s a really effective episode with solid acting throughout. And a good explanation for why bad guy Adam Rayner…
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Oh, come on, "Equalizer," stop getting my hopes up. Thanks to this episode—directed by movie "star" Mark Polish (quotations because I knew he existed but have never seen him in anything, and I also thought he co-directed all those) and with a script credited to Zoe Robyn—I am once again approaching bullish on "The Equalizer."…
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I don’t know what other time period “Legends of Tomorrow” could get trapped in for a season—which presumably keeps costs down (as does no one really having any expensive superpowers anymore)—but the twenties is working out. Especially with Tala Ashe getting to directly address the racism, sexism, and homophobia they’re all now experiencing. Well, except…
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The episode opens with a flashback to 1917, when April Bowlby is still new to the past, and before Michelle Gomez has killed her boyfriend and turned all of her friends into unwilling weapons. It provides some more context for Bowlby and Gomez in the present, ready to duke it out, only Bowlby isn't prepared…
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Jodie Whittaker’s lame-duck season gets off to an inglorious start. It’d be inglorious no matter what—it’s Whittaker’s last season—but there’s an added dig with the next series being outside the BBC’s control or something. Sadly, instead of going out with a bang, writer Chris Chibnall, whoever hired the effects companies, and director Jamie Magnus Stone…
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Halloween Kills is a fascinating sequel. It’s a terrible movie—though probably better than the previous one just because there’s so much less Jamie Lee Curtis, so you’re not watching her embarrass herself the entire time (though she’s got some really embarrassing moments). But given it’s the ninth Halloween sequel and the second remake of Halloween…
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I’m not getting roped into the “maybe ‘The Equalizer’ will actually be good” game again, but this episode’s solid. It improves some things, it maintains some things, it fails at some things. The fail is Tory Kittles teaming up with Dominic Fumusa for a bit. Kittles has all these buddy cop one-liners he dismissively spouts…
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If Superman ’78 weren’t written for eight-year-old fans of Superman: The Movie—ones who don’t have home video technology yet because otherwise you’d just rent the movie instead of reading this terribly written comic—I’d say this issue were the best. Even with the retconning for fan service’s sake and the pointless stunt cameos. Writer Robert Venditti,…
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This episode starts like it’s going to be a “Lois Lane in therapy” episode—a la Aunt May and Ultimate Spider-Man, obviously—but it quickly turns out Elizabeth Tulloch’s entire arc is to support the boys. I think it technically passes Bechdel—the therapist is a woman, played by Wendy Crewson—and there’s one portion where they don’t mention…
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It’s the one-hundredth episode spectacular, which makes sense given the litany of guest stars, but it’s also the episode where Amy Louise Pemberton becomes a proper Legend. Since the pilot, she’s been on the show, but just her voice; she’s the AI running the time-traveling spaceship. She’s appeared a few times over the years in…
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On rare occasion, a show will do an episode where they realize all the things I’ve been waiting for it to do, good or bad. But nothing has ever quite come along and repudiated my concerns like this episode of “Doom Patrol.” Subconscious Patrol, directed by Rebecca Rodriguez, with a script credited to Tanya Steele,…
The Stop Button 