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Lost in Space (2018) s03e07 – Contingencies on Contingencies
This episode has such an exhausting amount of Toby Stephens being macho someone calls him on it to his face. Stephens is convinced the robot—now on Alpha Centauri with the humans—has gone rogue. Raza Jaffrey, who points out he almost stole a space-camper and abandoned over a hundred people to the elements, tells him to… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s03e06 – Final Transmission
Yet another short episode. And it’s got a huge dramatic beat in the latter half, but not for the cliffhanger. In fact, everything after the dramatic beat just serves to reduce the impact of that beat. It plays very awkwardly, which isn’t director Julian Holmes’s fault, just the script’s. Katherine Collins gets the credit; as… 📖
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New Love (1996) #2
It’s a very religious issue. Creator Gilbert Hernandez does four saint pin-ups, each with a text paragraph describing their lives and sainthood. Beto calls the series “A Gallery of Humanitarians and Beloved Martyrs” and leans so heavily into it, the angry atheist protagonist of the final feature story is a big surprise. The pin-ups are… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s03e05 – Stuck
It’s another short episode, but it’s also a Leslie Hope-directed episode, and she does not disappoint. Even saddled with flashbacks to when Taylor Russell was a baby, and Molly Parker has taken her home to mom Colleen Winton’s farm to raise her. It’s where we find out Parker gave up being an astronaut to have… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s03e04 – Northing Left Behind
So far, this season has had fifty-ish-minute episodes. This episode’s only forty. It’s got a couple things to do, and it does them expediently, which makes it a bridging episode of sorts. While the kids are safely in spaceflight, thanks to Taylor Russell and Russell Hornsby, their parents—half a galaxy away or whatever—are in more… 📖
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Resident Alien (2021) s02e01 – Old Friends
It’s been nine months since the first season finale of “Resident Alien” aired, and this episode picks up the following day. So, long enough I’ve forgotten who was doing what and where; other than Alan Tudyk finally free of Earth and his evil pursuers, headed into the stars, on his way home. Only to discover… 📖
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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… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e10 – The Fixed Point
This episode’s so well-paced when the surprise guest star appears, I thought it was the end of the episode cliffhanger. Nope, there’s time for another action beat and setting up for next time. The team goes back to June 28, 1914, intending to save Franz Ferdinand from the assassin, throwing the time line into turmoil… 📖
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Halloween H20 (1998, Steve Miner)
Halloween H20 is an impressively short motion picture. It’s got an eighty-six-minute runtime, but the end credits run four minutes plus. The opening titles run three minutes, plus the cold open teaser runs ten. So the main action barely runs seventy minutes, thirty minutes of story, forty minutes of slasher suspense. It’s been twenty years… 📖
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Selected Declarations 22.01.31
I just turned back on WordPress’s publicize posts feature for Twitter, which I turned off when I started working on all the catalog posts for podcasts and blog collections. That project took about a month. I intended to do it gradually but steadily, five posts a day, but I started doing them in bulk as… 📖
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New Love (1996) #1
I was unclear about a couple things when I started New Love. First, I thought it would be Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez splitting like the old days, but it’s just Beto. Which tracks. Beto was more about the Love than Rockets. Then I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to remember the main character from… 📖
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Superman ’78 (2021) #6
I read this comic twice because I’m going to make many negative comments about it, and I wanted to see if I was missing something. The only thing it appears I missed—outside the Goonies cameo, which is something or other—is writer Robert Venditti really wanted to get in a last-minute dig about how science is… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s03e02 – Contact
It’s only taken twenty-two episodes, but “Lost in Space” finally addresses some fundamental questions about its robots. Did something make them, or did they make themselves? The show skirts around the robots having agency and sentience to make the human eagerness to enslave them a little less creepy, presumably. Though Molly Parker salivates over the… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e09 – Lowest Common Demoninator
“Legends of Tomorrow” doesn’t have bridging episodes; it has rest stops and layovers. Last episode had the cast playing their evil android counterparts; this episode has them back playing their regular parts, just in a trashy reality show. Several characters get subplot work, mostly Shayan Sobhian and Olivia Swann, Tala Ashe and Nick Zano (and… 📖
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Whoa, Nellie! (1996) #3
Leave it to Jaime Hernandez to get me tearing up for a wrestling story. But he’s got a great finale reveal, which ties the series together as well as echoes back to Love and Rockets Prime. Even after deliberating establishing reveals are going to be a thing in the issue, the last one comes as… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s03e01 – Three Little Birds
When I said “Lost in Space” was going the “Battlestar Galactica: The Revival” route, I didn’t realize how far “Space” remake creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless were going to go with it. This season premiere opens soon after the previous one, with Taylor Russell in a spacesuit in the spaceship wreckage they found last… 📖
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Selected Declarations 22.01.25
I don't know how well I can touch type on this iPad keyboard. Not particularly well based on the number of red squigglies. I forgot to write a Selected Declarations earlier, and now I'm getting the word count in before going to bed, up much later than I ought to be but also… I mean,… 📖
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Woman in the Dark (1934, Phil Rosen)
Woman in the Dark is literally a movie from before they knew how to make movies like Woman in the Dark. The film’s also fairly obviously done on the cheap, and director Rosen doesn’t bring anything to it. But it’s a film noir story trapped in a Pre-Code romantic drama. For a while, it’s a… 📖
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Eternals (2021, Chloé Zhao)
The nice thing about Eternals is the film’s most damaging element is obvious. Richard Madden is terrible. He’s not the lead—when Eternals has a lead, it’s Gemma Chan—but he’s top gun, so he gets a lot of screen time. And he’s terrible. What’s even funnier about Madden being terrible is the film leans into him… 📖
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Summer Days, Summer Nights (2018, Edward Burns)
Summer Days, Summer Nights never really has any “grabber” moments. It’s got a couple big misses, one I’ve got a lot to say about, the other would technically be a spoiler. If it weren’t also a total cop-out. The movie looks the cop-out in the eye and blinks, with writer, director, and costar Burns deciding… 📖
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Aliens (1986, James Cameron)
Thirty-six years after its release, recreating the original Aliens (albeit on home media) experience is difficult. Not only has there been a direct sequel, there have been multiple reboot sequels, and the extended, “special edition” version has been readily available for nineteen years now. I’m not ready for an Aliens canon deep-dive, but when did… 📖
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Whoa, Nellie! (1996) #2
While I wasn’t “worried” about Whoa, Nellie! last issue, I was concerned creator Jaime Hernandez didn’t have enough story, just the impulse to do a bunch of women’s wrestling art. After this issue, two of three, I’m very sad there’s not a fourth because Jaime gets the story going, and it’s good. He also brings… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s02e10 – Ninety-Seven
After spending most of the season away, this episode’s writing credit goes to reboot creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. I figured they were back to get the show in shape for season three, but I didn’t realize it’s all they were going to do. Sure, they spend fourteen minutes to resolve all the cliffhangers… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s02e09 – Shell Game
This episode may be the perfect example of “Lost in Space: Season Two.” It’s got a bunch of problems, and they’re all ginned up and exacerbated by the main cast. Mostly Toby Stephens and Molly Parker because they’re the parents. But this device—ignore an obvious problem and then act surprised when it becomes a dire… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s02e07 – Evolution
Well, the robot’s back. Only took seven episodes. As Maxwell Jenkins teaches the robot how to care for horses, the episode flashback to JJ Feild’s intentions—cripple the robot and force it to fly the mothership to a new galaxy. Juxtaposed against the robot trying to tell Jenkins it’s not nice to subjugate other beings. And… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s02e06 – Severed
JJ Feild is shaping up to be more likable than I was expecting, but also far flatter. “Lost in Space” shrugs through its male casting too much. He spends the episode being secretive about his plans if the robot-finding expedition is successful. He’s down on the planet with Molly Parker and Maxwell Jenkins, horseback riding… 📖
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Legends of Tomorrow (2016) s07e08 – Paranoid Android
Every once in a while, “Legends of Tomorrow” will do an episode reminding Caity Lotz isn’t just top-billed on the show or the captain (now co-captain) of the time ship; she’s also really the star. This episode is done from the perspective of the (presumably) android Lotz introduced in last episode’s cliffhanger. Rogue Waverider AI… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s02e05 – Run
It’s nearly a concept episode of “Lost in Space.” John Robinson (Toby Stephens) is stuck at the bottom of a mine shaft, injured, without medical attention. Daughter Judy Robinson (Taylor Russell) is racing to get to him but her SUV breaks down. They’re on an alien planet and there are metal termites. She’s going to… 📖
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Tin Cup (1996, Ron Shelton)
Tin Cup’s got very few problems. It’s just a romantic comedy about a ne’er-do-well golf pro who decides to improve himself to impress his rival’s girlfriend. There’s a little more nuance to it, but not much. Kevin Costner plays the hero, Rene Russo plays the love interest, Don Johnson plays the other guy. Because all… 📖
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Whoa, Nellie! (1996) #1
Whoa, Nellie, one issue in, is just a Love and Rockets spin-off. There’s nothing wrong with it being “just” a spin-off; creator Jaime Hernandez has a great time with the wrestling scenes. The comic’s about would-be tag team women’s professional wrestlers Xochitl and Gina Bravo. They’re wrestler’s professional wrestlers; they’re just not a tag team.… 📖
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Selected Declarations 22.01.15
It doesn’t feel right to do a Stop Button Martin Luther King Jr. Day post, so the week’s Selected Declaration will be early. I don’t not have a relevant post; I just don’t have the confidence in it. I’d have to draft, consider, read, reread. I’d take it seriously. And it’s too late for The… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s02e04 – Scarecrow
Since this episode doesn’t have the opening titles, I spent the entire thing terrified Leslie Hope directed it too (she did the excellent job last episode), and that goodness was somehow a fluke. Nope, those intolerable, endless, pointless low-angle shots are courtesy director Jon East. It’s the worst direction on the show ever. I should’ve… 📖
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The Equalizer (2021) s02e09 – Bout That Life
How does “The Equalizer” deal with Chris Noth’s permanent absence? It’s like he was never there. He’s heavily featured in the recap because he got Adam Goldberg out of federal prison, then nothing. He was also supposed to be mentoring teenage Laya DeLeon Hayes, who was conspicuously absent from Noth’s last episode. I kind of… 📖
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Birdland (1994) #1
Birdland Volume Two is a comic for all the people who thought Gilbert Hernandez couldn’t do an entire issue of people screwing and still have it land with some kind of deeper impact. The last series ended winking at profundity, and the mood cares into this issue. Beto opens the comic the dawn of time,… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s02e03 – Echoes
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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Lost in Space (2018) s02e02 – Precipice
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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Lost in Space (2018) s02e01 – Shipwrecked
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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Lost in Space (2018) s01e10 – Danger, Will Robinson
If it weren’t for remake creators Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless getting the script credit, I would’ve thought there’d been a producer change in this season. This episode caps a maybe five-episode arc where they’re racing to get off the planet as fast as possible because it’s breaking apart, and their mothership can’t stay looking… 📖
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Lost in Space (2018) s01e09 – Resurrection
It’s unfortunate Molly Parker and Parker Posey are only going to get antagonistic scenes together because they’re good opposite one another. “Lost in Space” hasn’t really tasked Posey, and this episode’s the closest so far. Posey has kidnapped Parker after inadvertently killing Toby Stephens and Ignacio Serricchio. How was Posey supposed to know Parker was… 📖