Winter 2022 TV
Mar. 27th, 2022 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroDisenchantment (Netflix, Season 4) – I have hopes that this series will eventually end in a satisfying manner, because they actually pay off several of the things they’ve been teasing for the past few seasons (the “very thing” secret under the castle, Elfo’s parentage, a few other random bits). I’ve grow tired of a number of the running gags, but at the same time have become more invested in the greater mythology, which makes me fear a sudden cancellation without proper payoff. We’ll see?
What If (Disney+, Season 1) – Xannoside complained that these were very movie-centric scenarios, which…yes? That’s their target audience? It’s a fun, if predictable set of AU tales that all wrap up together in the last episode. They take advantage of the cartoon format to make the action sequences even more over-the-top than the movies. I think frat bro Thor might have been my favorite.
Dollface (Hulu, Season 2) – This picks up with the wedding at the end of the last season being declared a super-spreader event, and then nothing changing through a year of lockdown, then the characters’ lives getting exciting again. The friends seeing the cat-lady seems to have been retconned and it’s clear that the cat-lady and a lot of similar outlandish happening are intended to just be metaphors that Jules is imagining. There are a couple of particularly clever bits (one of the Allisons secretly being a Karen; everything said by the security guard at the concert) and a moderately clever tone throughout. The product placement for the RealReal was the sort of obvious placement that stands out as stupid; I hope it didn’t get them any customers. I appreciated that not every ending this season was happy; some of them were more realistic than others, but all of them were in character, and it’s the sort of ending that’s acceptable whether they make a third season or not.
Peacemaker (HBOMax, Season 1) – Picking up six months after The Suicide Squad (after Peacemaker has recovered from his injuries in that movie), Waller sends a new set of handlers to have Peacemaker kill the members of “Project Butterfly.” They attempt to walk back some of Peacemaker’s assholishness by making his racism and sexism an inadvertent side effect of him being incredibly stupid and having been raised by a genuinely sexist and racist evil genius. And they add some genuinely tragic backstory beyond that, while making sure everyone around his is a similar level of socially dysfunctional (often hilariously so) but capable of genuine pathos. Where you watch MODOK and think, “This guy is an asshole and I hope he dies;” this is more like Harley Quinn’s supporting cast where you’re thinking, “These dumb assholes are going to suffer a lot, but I hope they get a little win at the end because they’re so entertaining.” Additional content warnings for a LOT of bloody deaths, including of children.
What If (Disney+, Season 1) – Xannoside complained that these were very movie-centric scenarios, which…yes? That’s their target audience? It’s a fun, if predictable set of AU tales that all wrap up together in the last episode. They take advantage of the cartoon format to make the action sequences even more over-the-top than the movies. I think frat bro Thor might have been my favorite.
Dollface (Hulu, Season 2) – This picks up with the wedding at the end of the last season being declared a super-spreader event, and then nothing changing through a year of lockdown, then the characters’ lives getting exciting again. The friends seeing the cat-lady seems to have been retconned and it’s clear that the cat-lady and a lot of similar outlandish happening are intended to just be metaphors that Jules is imagining. There are a couple of particularly clever bits (one of the Allisons secretly being a Karen; everything said by the security guard at the concert) and a moderately clever tone throughout. The product placement for the RealReal was the sort of obvious placement that stands out as stupid; I hope it didn’t get them any customers. I appreciated that not every ending this season was happy; some of them were more realistic than others, but all of them were in character, and it’s the sort of ending that’s acceptable whether they make a third season or not.
Peacemaker (HBOMax, Season 1) – Picking up six months after The Suicide Squad (after Peacemaker has recovered from his injuries in that movie), Waller sends a new set of handlers to have Peacemaker kill the members of “Project Butterfly.” They attempt to walk back some of Peacemaker’s assholishness by making his racism and sexism an inadvertent side effect of him being incredibly stupid and having been raised by a genuinely sexist and racist evil genius. And they add some genuinely tragic backstory beyond that, while making sure everyone around his is a similar level of socially dysfunctional (often hilariously so) but capable of genuine pathos. Where you watch MODOK and think, “This guy is an asshole and I hope he dies;” this is more like Harley Quinn’s supporting cast where you’re thinking, “These dumb assholes are going to suffer a lot, but I hope they get a little win at the end because they’re so entertaining.” Additional content warnings for a LOT of bloody deaths, including of children.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 05:38 pm (UTC)I just finished Peacemaker last night and I really loved it! I'd seen a complaint on an FB group that a slur for Jews is used in the first episode, and that they would not watch further. It put me off, but enough other Jewish friends sang its praises that I watched it.
...yeah, if I'd known who had said it, and what their context was, I would have watched it way sooner.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-28 08:04 pm (UTC)Speaking as a Jew, I was perfectly fine with the White Dragon as a character, especially because he gets shot in the face. It worked much better than the transphobic villain on Supergirl who wasn't allowed to use any actual slurs, which made the confrontation with Dreamer really weird because he spent it talking around anything a normal person would say in awkward ways.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-29 02:20 am (UTC)However, if the warning had been, "hey, this really awful white supremacist says a lot of slurs including one for Jews" I would have taken the warning way differently.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-29 02:36 am (UTC)