More TV Reviews
Jul. 15th, 2020 06:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroShe-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix, Season 5) – The conclusion, in which we resolve the excessive romantic tension long-term running plot threads and battle Horde Prime for the fate of Etheria. The redemption of Catra felt a bit cheap (though it was clearly necessary for a proper Catradora ending); the redemption of Entrapta was a bit more acceptable given everything we already knew about her character. And Wrong Hordak was great. I generally liked the overarcing reveal that the First Ones’ technology was screwing with the natural magic of Etheria and restraining/channeling it, not creating it; which fed into the Princesses not needing their runestones and She-Ra not needing the Sword of Protection. (This also fairly thoroughly disconnected itself from any current or likely future He-Man mythos; the First Ones were assholes and if they still exist on Eternia, they have a lot to answer for.)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Hulu, Season 1) - Nominally a sequel to the books but doesn’t require remembering them, this features Elijah Wood spending a lot of time being confused and hapless, which he’s very good at. The plot holds very tightly together and they make good use of their eight episodes—they introduce a lot, but everything then either plays into the arc or immediately feeds into the season 2 cliffhanger. Oh, and Julian McMahon gets to play his standard role of schlocky sci-fi villain, and he does that so well. We’ll definitely watch the second season.
Catch-22 (Hulu, Miniseries) – A six-episode mini is a much better vehicle for this than a movie or two-hour stage show. They hit a lot of the major notes from the book and do so in a more chronological order, and do a nice job on the “black comedy” angle. And hey, Hugh Laurie as de Coverley and George Clooney as Scheisskopf. (I wonder if people unfamiliar with the source material realize what they’re getting into—most of the cast dies horribly by the final act, after all. If I didn’t know what I was getting, I’d have thought they were doing a misery parade for the hell of it.)
I’m working my way through The Flash (S6), Supergirl (S5) and Legends of Tomorrow (S5), and I watched the full Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. And while it was full of shaggy dog stories and some of the bits were messy, I thought it was some great TV. The cameos were great, but the ones that actually tied into other series (the Smallville coda, the 90s Flash coda, Brandon Routh as movie-Superman-turned-Kingdom Come-Superman) were the best. I’ll have more thoughts on the other shows when I finish them, but I thought Flash’s Bloodwork plotline was decent but the run-up to the Crisis was a bit of a mess (and thought the unceremonious fridging of Gypsy was a shame); and Supergirl leaned too hard into trying to make Lena a villain and I’m looking forward to them bringing Lex back.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Hulu, Season 1) - Nominally a sequel to the books but doesn’t require remembering them, this features Elijah Wood spending a lot of time being confused and hapless, which he’s very good at. The plot holds very tightly together and they make good use of their eight episodes—they introduce a lot, but everything then either plays into the arc or immediately feeds into the season 2 cliffhanger. Oh, and Julian McMahon gets to play his standard role of schlocky sci-fi villain, and he does that so well. We’ll definitely watch the second season.
Catch-22 (Hulu, Miniseries) – A six-episode mini is a much better vehicle for this than a movie or two-hour stage show. They hit a lot of the major notes from the book and do so in a more chronological order, and do a nice job on the “black comedy” angle. And hey, Hugh Laurie as de Coverley and George Clooney as Scheisskopf. (I wonder if people unfamiliar with the source material realize what they’re getting into—most of the cast dies horribly by the final act, after all. If I didn’t know what I was getting, I’d have thought they were doing a misery parade for the hell of it.)
I’m working my way through The Flash (S6), Supergirl (S5) and Legends of Tomorrow (S5), and I watched the full Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. And while it was full of shaggy dog stories and some of the bits were messy, I thought it was some great TV. The cameos were great, but the ones that actually tied into other series (the Smallville coda, the 90s Flash coda, Brandon Routh as movie-Superman-turned-Kingdom Come-Superman) were the best. I’ll have more thoughts on the other shows when I finish them, but I thought Flash’s Bloodwork plotline was decent but the run-up to the Crisis was a bit of a mess (and thought the unceremonious fridging of Gypsy was a shame); and Supergirl leaned too hard into trying to make Lena a villain and I’m looking forward to them bringing Lex back.
