The Last TV Set of 2025
Dec. 22nd, 2025 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroHarley Quinn (HBOMax, Season 4) – Harley is trying to be a hero as part of the Bat-family. Ivy is taking on the corporate world as the CEO of the Legion of Doom. Techbros and billionaires are particularly terrible people, but in general it sucks to be everybody. Is there anything standout as new? No. Is it still fun and entertaining? Yes.
Wednesday (Netflix, Season 2) – Wednesday returns to Nevermore to discover she’s become popular in the wake of her saving the school, which she hates. Pugsley, having inherited Fester’s electrical powers, becomes a regular and starts getting into his own trouble. They still have their big issues when they try to “have it both ways” with the classic Addams Family (who should never be in mortal peril and who only make sense in contrast to “normies”) and the reimagined Addams Family (marked by tragedy and secrets and engrossed in a society where they’re normal). The body-swap episode did show off how brilliant the lead actresses are, though.
Peacemaker (HBOMax, Season 2) – In a cosmic rewrite, they actually went back and edited the end of season 1 so that the Justice Gang (from the new Superman movie) show up instead of the Synderverse Justice League; continuity now includes everything James Gunn has had a hand in. But then again, Chris has inherited an extradimensional portal from his father and it leads to alternate realities, so who knows if we’ll see another Crisis eventually. In this story, Peacemaker discovers one of those alternate realities where his dad and brother and still alive and they’re all superheroes together, and realizes that he’d rather live there. Poor life choices ensue. (This ties in Lex Luthor and ends on a Planet Salvation cliffhanger that might get addressed in the next season or might show up in a movie. Who knows? I’m honestly annoyed at the horrible pacing of the last episode that barely wraps up the season, and doesn’t address ongoing questions within this narrative in favor of chasing plot threads that tie into something else, and wastes so much time on concert footage.)
Poker Face (Downloaded, Season 2) – Entertainingly, they wrap up the “chased by the mob” plotline in the third episode and instead opt for seven more episodes of Charlie traveling to find herself before bringing back some recurring cast (in a two-parter finale) to get her back properly on the run for any subsequent seasons. It continues to be a guest-star-studded fun time where Charlie’s bullshit-reader is an excuse for clever procedural mysteries. The finale twist honestly was a little bit of a cheat, but it’s fine. The standalone episodes are generally very good, and that’s most of the series anyway.
Ironheart (Disney+, Season 1) – While there are plenty of Watsonian and Doyalist explanations you can patch on for why Riri’s major motivation is that Tony Stark was rich and she’s poor, it still annoys me when Tony notably built his first Iron Man suit IN A CAVE! OUT OF SCRAPS! The bigger issue with this series, though, is that Riri isn’t actually a particularly likeable character: It’s not that she messes up or pushes people away so much as she’s in her 20s but comes off as a petulant 13-year-old; and she shares an important trait with every other “smart” character in this narrative, that she has such bone-headed tunnel vision that she comes off as incredibly stupid. (Which Hood, Joe, and pretty much the entire crew do as well.) This series plays less as a heroic coming-of-age and more like a start of darkness; and if Riri comes back I kinda expect it to be as a villain fighting Dr. Strange.
As a side note, I decided to go ahead and cull Echo off my list, as I’m clearly losing interest in Marvel series that don’t actually have a gimmick that appeals to me.
I also watched the new Knives Out movie Wake Up Dead Man, which I think was my least favorite of the three but I will argue is still very good. (I did see a couple of the twists coming, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.)
Overall: Decent TV to close out the year but absolutely nothing new. I’ve got a couple more series to finish out but I think I need to go through another cycle of trying new things and non-sequels soon.
Wednesday (Netflix, Season 2) – Wednesday returns to Nevermore to discover she’s become popular in the wake of her saving the school, which she hates. Pugsley, having inherited Fester’s electrical powers, becomes a regular and starts getting into his own trouble. They still have their big issues when they try to “have it both ways” with the classic Addams Family (who should never be in mortal peril and who only make sense in contrast to “normies”) and the reimagined Addams Family (marked by tragedy and secrets and engrossed in a society where they’re normal). The body-swap episode did show off how brilliant the lead actresses are, though.
Peacemaker (HBOMax, Season 2) – In a cosmic rewrite, they actually went back and edited the end of season 1 so that the Justice Gang (from the new Superman movie) show up instead of the Synderverse Justice League; continuity now includes everything James Gunn has had a hand in. But then again, Chris has inherited an extradimensional portal from his father and it leads to alternate realities, so who knows if we’ll see another Crisis eventually. In this story, Peacemaker discovers one of those alternate realities where his dad and brother and still alive and they’re all superheroes together, and realizes that he’d rather live there. Poor life choices ensue. (This ties in Lex Luthor and ends on a Planet Salvation cliffhanger that might get addressed in the next season or might show up in a movie. Who knows? I’m honestly annoyed at the horrible pacing of the last episode that barely wraps up the season, and doesn’t address ongoing questions within this narrative in favor of chasing plot threads that tie into something else, and wastes so much time on concert footage.)
Poker Face (Downloaded, Season 2) – Entertainingly, they wrap up the “chased by the mob” plotline in the third episode and instead opt for seven more episodes of Charlie traveling to find herself before bringing back some recurring cast (in a two-parter finale) to get her back properly on the run for any subsequent seasons. It continues to be a guest-star-studded fun time where Charlie’s bullshit-reader is an excuse for clever procedural mysteries. The finale twist honestly was a little bit of a cheat, but it’s fine. The standalone episodes are generally very good, and that’s most of the series anyway.
Ironheart (Disney+, Season 1) – While there are plenty of Watsonian and Doyalist explanations you can patch on for why Riri’s major motivation is that Tony Stark was rich and she’s poor, it still annoys me when Tony notably built his first Iron Man suit IN A CAVE! OUT OF SCRAPS! The bigger issue with this series, though, is that Riri isn’t actually a particularly likeable character: It’s not that she messes up or pushes people away so much as she’s in her 20s but comes off as a petulant 13-year-old; and she shares an important trait with every other “smart” character in this narrative, that she has such bone-headed tunnel vision that she comes off as incredibly stupid. (Which Hood, Joe, and pretty much the entire crew do as well.) This series plays less as a heroic coming-of-age and more like a start of darkness; and if Riri comes back I kinda expect it to be as a villain fighting Dr. Strange.
As a side note, I decided to go ahead and cull Echo off my list, as I’m clearly losing interest in Marvel series that don’t actually have a gimmick that appeals to me.
I also watched the new Knives Out movie Wake Up Dead Man, which I think was my least favorite of the three but I will argue is still very good. (I did see a couple of the twists coming, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.)
Overall: Decent TV to close out the year but absolutely nothing new. I’ve got a couple more series to finish out but I think I need to go through another cycle of trying new things and non-sequels soon.
