Summer 2022 TV

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Disney+, Season 1) – After the first episode, I worried that it would take itself too seriously and I was concerned about Bucky’s plotline with the old Japanese man. Especially having watched Hawkeye first, where the way Bucky should have dealt with the problem was clearly shown: “Hey, buddy, your son was killed by a HYDRA assassin called the Winter Soldier. He was an accidental victim, totally wrong place and wrong time. The Winter Soldier is gone forever, Captain America made sure of that. I’m sorry there can’t be any more closure, but what happened to your son won’t happen again.” Just enough truth to assuage guilt, just enough misdirection to not make the situation ten times worse. And it took six episodes for him to…not really get that. Overall, this was a mess of attempts to straddle a line of making everybody a little right and a little wrong and I’m not sure how well they threaded the needle. The supporting cast of the Captain America movies are a fine group of characters but this was a interstitial piece at best and you can likely jump to the next movie they appear in without too much confusion if you skip it.

Stranger Things (Netflix, Season 4) – This season is full of really long episodes--too damn long and bloated with too much stuff. Brown is a better actor than a lot of the hulkspeak nonsense dialogue they give her to work with. (Though, to be fair, if anything Eleven’s misery parade was downplayed. She functionally has the language skills and emotional maturity of a child half her age and she’s had repeated massive traumas and losses. She should never have been in “gen pop” at the new high school…but the fact that the administration doesn’t care is one of the most realistic things in the show.) I’ve seen complaints about Will’s character, too, but Will being a taciturn asshole because he's secretly gay…I mean, it was already the 90s when I reached middle school, but doesn't anyone else remember how casually and horribly homophobic the 80s were? And how much we all just internalized that?

Honestly, I think the character scenes really work and the show would be better if they just cut out all the CGI monsters. I love the Dustin/Steve dynamic, I love the Robin/Steve dynamic, I LOVE the Robin/Nancy dynamic. I'd personally watch Wynona Rider read the phone book, but you've got to admit that she sells all the ridiculous bullshit they give her. Somebody on Tumblr suggested the Duffer Brothers just make a show where Steve and Robin get a new minimum wage job every episode and just banter for 22 minutes at a time. If Dustin and Erika alternated episodes showing up to make trouble I'd give that whole thing six seasons and a movie.

The Umbrella Academy (Netflix, Season 3) - As with the previous two seasons, it makes much more sense than the volume of the comic it was based on, and actually ties together a lot of the plot and character moments better. Opening with the dance-off was glorious. Vanya’s transition to Viktor was a little spontaneous if you don’t know the actor’s backstory, but it worked neatly into the family dynamic and (though they didn’t emphasize it) worked as one more crack that led to Allison’s degeneration. The Sparrow Academy members were underdeveloped and I feel like more of the 10-hour runtime could have been dedicated to their backstories and the alternate history. They teased more details about the “Jennifer incident” that killed original Ben and the “particles” that give the team their powers and caused their births, but ultimately gave us nothing; and in both cases that’s okay because the ultimate revelation won’t be as good as the mystery. While there are hanging threads at the end (Hargreeves is apparently running the world, Sloan’s whereabouts are unclear, how and why Five founded the Commission is nebulous, and how the team fits into the current history is an open book), I’d be perfectly fine with them ending the series here.

Love, Death & Robots (Netflix, Season 3) – As before, the Scalzi episode (while clearly written out of pique) is one of the best, and the rest are a mixed bag. Also, the animation continues to run the gamut from “goofy cartoon” to “renders from a PS4 game.” The final episode is particularly WTF, with a weird janky animation style which we couldn’t decide if it was stylistic or just incompetent. The fact that each episode is short is likely the reason we just watch the whole thing instead of picking and choosing.

The Sandman (Netflix, Season 1) - This is a delight, and I say that as a fan of the original comic. The first season encompasses the first two graphic novels and a few shorts. They updated a bunch of the material, excised a bunch of direct DC references (the Halls’ superhero careers and John Dee’s supervillainy, primarily), and while they kept it very much a horror piece, they removed a few of the more graphic segments (particularly regarding Fun Land and the Calliope story, I feel like the sexual nature of abuse was downplayed or referred to a lot more obliquely). The race-lifted and gender-swapped a bunch of characters and somehow made the incredibly queer original work even more queer; I’m very interested to see what they do with Wanda in season 2. Also, that’s Mark Hammill voicing Merv Pumpkinhead. My only two complaints are about Lucifer’s hair and that they removed, “You got what everybody gets. You got a lifetime.”

Movies, Much More Spread Out Than My Last Batch

A few of these I watched at home—including my last watch from my first batch of covid—and the last two I watched on planes back and forth to California.

Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers – Absolutely made “for me”. Chock full of 80s/90s cartoon references, but also some recent memes. Heavily influenced by Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Mulaney and Samberg are great and they aren’t doing the annoying chipmunk voices from the original cartoons. (And they got Tress MacNeil back as Gadget, though it’s a relatively minor role.) Basically, if you’re in the 38-42 age range and reasonably online, you should absolutely watch this movie.

Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness - In some ways it was just another Marvel movie, though to be fair, I like Marvel movies. They have a few creative fight scenes (music notes!) and fun cameos, and are true to Dr. Strange’s character of him being brilliant, impulsive, and entirely unwilling to consider consequences. I would say they’re really doing Scarlet Witch dirty throughout it and just repeating her storyline from Wandavision (but with the excuse that “the Darkhold did it” so she can come back if they want), and that’s annoying.

Everything Everywhere All at Once - The only thing I love more than an interesting take on the multiverse is a good Groundhog Day story, so this was already hitting my second-biggest sweet spot. It does something different and standout that doesn’t seem like a franchise or retread; it’s creative and clever and amusing. And it’s got middle-aged Asian people as all the main characters, which is noteworthy in and of itself. And it has a random reference to the song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” that I cannot explain but delighted me.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - This movie knew exactly what it was doing: Goofy comedy, Jim Carrey chewing scenery and doing spit-takes, direct references to various video games in the franchise, and standard cartoon “power of friendship / power of family” morals. Idris Elba was wasted as Knuckles but I’m glad he got a paycheck; Ben Schwartz continues to be pitch-perfect as Sonic. 100% good kids movie with bits for the Sega-Genesis-generation parents; absolutely accomplished its goal.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife - You know what the 2016 Ghostbusters movie remembered that this movie and the Ghostbusters comics always tend to forget? Ghostbusters was a comedy. It was made by a crew of comedians as a wacky workplace comedy that had some action and horror aspects to it. Then they made a Saturday morning cartoon that was also a comedy, where they took out the sex jokes and added more pratfalls and getting slimed. This? Is an action/horror coming-of-age film that happens to have some funny bits. It’s not bad for that-- Mckenna Grace is delightful as mini-Egon and Paul Rudd is just Paul Rudding it up. CGI Harold Ramis was necessary to the movie, but also…awkward and doesn’t sit right with me. I am, however, amused that the movie they made as a reaction to the 2016 film being “too woke” has a new team of kids that’s evenly gender split and only half white. That’s not a compromise that’ll actually appease the fanboys!