End of 2021 TV Shows

Legends of Tomorrow (Netflix, Season 6) – This show knows exactly what it is and starts off with an incompetent-but-well-meaning bang to remind you of that. There’s a ton of logic that totally falls apart if you squint at it (Gary’s been an alien this whole time? How did that work with the demonic nipple if his glasses are just a hologram projector? Or the times we saw him without his glasses?! Then again, him sleeping with Constantine still makes sense, because John’s into all sorts of weird shit and doesn’t kiss and tell.) It turns into the crack-fic show and I love it for that: They play football with the nuclear football! They have a bowling episode and a cowboy episode! John Constantine remains true to himself by making horrible life decisions that get lots of people killed, including himself! Gay marriage inspires the alien mushrooms to save the world! And rather than having a lot of hanging threads (they actually resolve most things nicely, with Mick going off with Kayla and John stalking off by himself), they just blow up the Waverider in the stinger and trap the group with Spooner’s mom in 1925 Texas. This show is fantastic.

Superman & Lois (HBOMax, Season 1) – Entertaining how you can start with the same one-sentence summary as Black Lightning (Experienced superhero raises his two teenage children while an adversary with longtime connections to his family advances plans for conquest) and change literally everything else. I like Tyler Hoechlin’s Clark Kent a lot, and I think he does a pretty good job at being a dad. Something that worked particularly well for Black Lightning—having the teenage characters make all of the stupid bad decisions so the adults can be competent—continues to work well here. It’s still early in the series, of course, but most of the bad decisions characters make seem reasonable and in-character for them to make without them being actively stupid. (I particularly like that Clark and Lois both get to be exasperated and angry and pissy at each other, but acknowledge and apologize and move on.) This season holds together pretty well as a stand-alone. Except for one episode with John Diggle and ARGUS, you couldn’t guess it was part of the Arrowverse—and they had to rewrite the established Clark/Lois history in the Crisis in order to get the sons to the right age for this series anyway. I’m cautiously optimistic for another season, though I’m afraid they’ll get into the annoying tropes if it goes on too long.

The Sex Lives of College Girls (HBOMax, Season 1) – Mindy Kaling was behind this, which I could have guessed both from the overall style of the humor and the fact that the Indian girl is the best character. The first episode is a little rocky and the “embarrassment humor” quotient is a bit high; that evens out as the series goes on. This is very much a dramady/sitcom; it’s funny but also pulls in a lot of “ripped from the headlines” fairly serious stuff. And sex, if you hadn’t guessed from the title. Because this is a new series: ( SPOILERS )

Recommended if you enjoy Kaling’s other writing credits.

Quick Video Games Reviews

Power Blade (NES, Played on Nestopia) - A later-era NES platformer that straddled the line between being an explore-em-up and a Ninja Gaiden clone by having six stages, available in any order, that had multiple mazelike paths; and in each one you have to find the contact with a keycard before you could go through the door to fight the boss. The other gimmick was that you fought with an energy boomerang, and powerups let you through more and stronger versions. There were also power suits that gave you three free hits and, until you took them, let you fire a much larger energy crescent. The nonlinearity makes the game a bit longer because you need to search the levels and can screw yourself by navigating all the way to the door without the keycard. The bosses are standard fare and the powerups are fairly plentiful, but some of the platforming is really devious despite the lack of knockback. And the plot is throwaway: The machines that run our lives are out of control! Defeat them, Nova!

Cross Fire (NES, Played on FCEUX on PowKiddy Q90) - This is a relatively straightforward run-and-gun side-scroller released only in Japan, but a copy of it was on my PowKiddy Q90 and I tried it on a whim: Turns out that copy was hacked so that you had infinite health, so I played the whole thing. The fact that you start with just your fists and have to find and upgrade guns (but the enemies have no such limitations) makes the game hard to start and hard to continue from deaths, but it’s moderately entertaining for an alien-free Contra clone.

Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics 2 (NES, Played on Nestopia) - Despite featuring Mike time-traveling to fight aliens, this is markedly inferior to the original game. The movement is more granular than the grid, which is not actually an improvement because it makes it harder to line up with enemies, who often have weird hitboxes in the ¾ view. The dungeon puzzles are generally weaker (though the lack of instant-death dead-ends is appreciated) and the plot is even sillier than the original. Still, this maintained the edge gravity that made the platforming in the original stand out, and it’s a fairly fast play even with 9 chapters.