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What Kamala Should Have Said

I’m sure by now everyone’s seen at least clips of Kamala’s Fox “News” interview with Bret Baier.  Several excerpts have been replayed ad nauseum, but the one that interested me was this one:

Bret: If that’s the case, why is half the country supporting him?  Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states?  Why—if he’s as bad as you say—that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the 47th president of the United States?  Why is that happening?
Kamala: This is an election for President of the United States.  It’s not supposed to be easy.
Bret: I know, but ...
Kamala: It’s not supposed to be ... it is not supposed to be a cakewalk for anyone.
Bret: So, are they misguided, the 50%? Are they stupid?  What is it?
Kamala: Oh, God, I would never say that about the American people.  And, in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he’s the one who tends to demean, and belittle, and diminish the American people.  He is the one who talks about an enemy within: an enemy within—talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.

Now, Kamala is currently getting credit for not “falling for” that “trap” (although it was so clumsy and obvious that I can’t really believe that anyone would have fallen for it), and I understand that she had her talking points that she needed to get out, and this was a score for her in that department.  But here’s what I wish she would have said instead:

Imagine there’s a user car salesman.  And he sells a lot of cars.  But the reason he keeps selling those cars is because he keeps telling lies: he makes claims about the cars that just plain aren’t true.  And people keep believing him, because they assume that he wouldn’t be allowed to outright lie like that.  Surely, they think, surely if he were completely making shit up, someone would come along and stop him, because that would be bad.  Probabaly illegal, even.  So he keeps conning people into buying the cars.  Now, in this situation, we wouldn’t blame the victims of this con job ... we wouldn’t say that the people buying these cars are stupid.  We have to blame the conman, right?  He’s the one doing the lying and cheating.

(And we could also blame the TV station who keeps showing ads saying how great this criminal is even though they know he’s lying.  But that might be too subtle for a Fox audience.)

So that’s what I wish she’d said.  And, I know, she needed to get her point in about the Nazi quotes Trump keeps spewing (quick, who said this, Hitler or Trump? “Those nations who are still opposed to us will some day recognize the greater enemy within. Then they will join us in a combined front.”^*), and also there’s no way she could have gotten through an answer that long without Baier interrupting her.  Multiple times, even.  But, still ... that was the right answer, I think.

Beetlejuice Redux

This weekend we rewatched Beetlejuice, in preparation for watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice next week.  Here are the the things I had to explain to my children:

• This movie is so old that the “little girl” in this movie is the mom in Stranger Things.  (And you should have heard the gasps of disbelief.)

• Who Ozzie and Harriet were.  And, looking back on it, that was an outdated reference at the time: the only reason I know anything about The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is because of second-hand stories from my parents.  Not sure what Burton was thinking on that one.

• The sandworms look like they escaped from The Nightmare Before Christmas because of Tim Burton’s involvement in both.

• Why the concept of a “talking Marcel Marceau statue” is dumb (and therefore funny).

• That’s a Johnny Carson impression, which is totally wasted on the youth.

Despite all that, they really enjoyed it (again/still), and are now sufficiently refreshed on the story to watch the sequel.  Just in time for spooky season.

__________

* And are you willing to admit that you only knew it was Hitler because Trump isn’t that articulate?

Actual Play Time, Part 2: Depends on How You Slice It

[This is the second post in a series.  You may want to begin at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

[Last time, we talked about my discovery of actual play and my realization that it was a whole new medium.]

You know, for writing about novels there’s the language of literary criticism; for writing about movies, the jargon of movie critiques is also well-established.  But actual play is new enough that the terms haven’t evolved yet.  Which means I get to make up my own.

In examining the burgeoning actual play medium, there are a few different ways to cut it up, but the most useful one, in my opinion, is by length of story arc.  For this purpose, I think of actual plays as falling into one of three categories: short form, medium form, and long form.

Short form content is your typical one-shot.  A “one-shot,” in TTRPG parlance, is a short adventure designed to be played, start to finish, in a single session.  Of course, a session of D&D (or any TTRPG) can last several hours, so even short form actual plays are often 3 – 5 hours long.  And, sometimes, you just can’t fit it all into one session after all, because things always take longer than you think they will, and the “one-shot” ends up becoming more of a two-shot (or even three-shot).  So a short form actual play is typically one episode, but up to 3, and it’s typically anywhere from 2 – 10 total hours of viewing time.  That doesn’t seem particularly short, if you’re comparing it to a sitcom, or your average comic book.  But trust me when I tell you it’s short compared to other actual plays.

Medium form content is usually around 5 – 20 episodes, which can be 50+ hours of viewing time.  These are longer stories, often corresponding to a longer adventure in TTRPG terms.  You can think of it as roughly equivalent to a season of television, just with more hours and more likely to be wrapped up at the end.  For some people, this is such a massive investment that it hardly seems possible, let alone worthwhile.  Yet there are several medium form actual play shows that are well worth the time investment.

Finally, long form content is a full TTRPG campaign.  For regular people playing TTRPGs, this is often a multi-year proposition, and we rarely get the opportunity to wrap them up neatly.  Somehow actual play shows manage to polish them off on a regular basis, with there being far fewer actual plays that peter out mid-storyline than there are TV shows cancelled mid-season.  (There are reasons for that, which we’ll dive into shortly.)  But we’re talking about anywhere from 50 – 150 episodes here, with the total time investment often ranging into the hundreds of hours.  Which means that the shit’s got to be pretty damned good to get people on board for a time expenditure of that size and scope.

But it also begs the question: why are there so many of these, when each one has the potential to produce hundreds of hours of content?  Surely there can’t be that much of an audience ... right?  Well, a number of factors in our entertainment landscape have conspired to change the way we think about these sorts of things.

When I was a kid, right on up to the point where my children were born, the landscape of entertainment, but television in particular, was moderately simple.  There were movies and novels and so forth, but those were seen more as one-off time investments.  You could produce a book, but you had to think about how long it was: readers might be intimidated by an overly large tome, and they might also have a big backlog of reading material, meaning that your longer novel might be less attractive than a short book that could be knocked out with a smaller time investment.  Same for movies: people were willing to sit still for maybe two hours, if you were lucky, but often the major studios shot for an hour and a half, tops, with many stories of crucial cinematic scenes getting “cut for time.” All of that eventually changed, of course: Harry Potter proved that people would gobble up multiple near-thousand-page novels, and Titanic proved that you could make people sit through 3+ hours of a movie if it was popular enough.

But television was a bit different.  We had 3 major networks, because creating a TV network was a gargantuan task that took a huge amount of money, and the existing networks didn’t much care for any more competition.  We had PBS, sure, and the occasional indy TV station, but, in general, 3 networks, and each one had 24 hours in the day, and that was it.  The attention span of the consumer was no longer the limiting factor.  No matter how much content people might want to put out, there simply wasn’t room for any more than 72 hours of it every day.  Where would it go?  As a result, a lot of great ideas never got made, and sometimes you’d even get great ideas that were made and then never saw the light of day.  Television shows were cutthroat, and they lived and died by ratings that purported to tell how many people were watching, and any show that didn’t appear to be garnering a big enough following was swiftly replaced by what they hoped would be the next big thing.  Even after we (finally) got a couple more networks in the 90s, things didn’t change all that much.

But then there was cable, and suddenly there were dozens of channels.  And then along came streaming, and suddenly the number of hours in a day was no longer relevant at all.  The Internet can play as many shows at once as there are users (at least theoretically), and suddenly the race for more content was on.  Of course, the audience was completely fractured as well.  In the “golden” era of television, every show had to appeal to the broadest possible audience to justify its existence.  And it meant that, on the consumer side, you often had to settle.  But now you can demand—and usually find—the exact sort of content you want.  I recall that, 10 years ago, I used to work upstairs from the offices of the Tennis Channel and, every day I would walk past their door on my way to the elevator and think to myself, do we really need a whole channel for tennis?  But then again I am not a tennis fan, so of course I would think that.  Other people who are tennis fans no doubt think the Tennis Channel is a great boon.  So we ended up with channels for just about everything, and streams for even more things, and a huge raft of content.

But of course content takes money to produce, which means that folks are always looking for cheaper and cheaper ways to put out more and more content.  That’s how we got reality TV: with no need for scripts—and therefore no need for script writers, script editors, script supervsiors, etc—and with most performers being non-union, unscripted TV is often significantly cheaper ... and, in an often overlooked aspect, significantly faster to produce.

And actual plays fit this mold.  You can make an actual play with minimal equipment, zero scripting, and whoever wants to be a player at the table.  You can crank out tons of content with only a modicum of effort, and there is apparently a hunger for it.  As with any new medium, more and more people are discovering it, and discovering what it can do.  So they’re willing to watch a wide variety of options.  Now, of course it is the case that the low-effort actual play shows will likely be the least popular, with the really well-established ones having full crews these days: directors, producers, sound engineers, editors, etc.  But you can make it cheaply and quickly, especially when you’re first getting started, and that’s the key.  It’s not really that surprising that a show can put out hundreds and hundreds of hours of content when the cost of doing so is moderate at worst and the appetite of the audience is continuing to be expansive.

Next time, let’s look at some of the big names in the space and see how they got that way.

Actual Play Time, Part 1: Discovery of the New World

[This is the first post in a new series.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

[If you’re wondering why D&D is such an important part of my life, I encourage you to read my D&D and Me series.  Parts of this post are adapted from part 8 of that series.]

While I am safely on the Gen X side of the Garofalo curve, I have to cop to being on the backside of that arc.  And one of the things I never understood was the fascination with watching other people play games, especially videogames.  My brother (11 years younger than I) and his friends would do it all the time: I specifically remember going out with him and his friends our first Christmas home after his high school graduation.  We went to someone’s house to play videogames; there were about six of us, and two controllers.  And, when people weren’t playing, they were avidly watching.  I was bored.  I don’t specifically remember thinking to myself “I’m too old for this shit,” but I may as well have.  (And, given that the rest of the crowd was only 10 when the R-rated movie which that quote references came out and so likely never got to see it, it would have been oddly appropriate.)

Later, when I had kids, there was a lot of watching other people play videogames, because: YouTube.  Twitch and YouTube have made videos of watching other people play games something of a new artform (often called “Let’s Play” videos).  These are often very long videos—hours and hours, sometimes—and yet our children, with their suppoedly short attention spans, watch them all the time.  Sometimes this is to see if they want to purchase the game (videogames can be quite pricey, so it’s a good way to be smart with your allowance money), and sometimes it’s just background noise while they do other things, but often they just enjoy watching the people play.

And I was always someone to whom this seemed kind of silly.  Why watch other people play? just play yourself!  Or so I would think.  And I always just shook my head in a “kids today” sort of fashion.  I didn’t tell them not to watch, of course—nothing makes your child want to do a thing more than forbidding them from doing it—but I thought it was a dumb thing that hopefully they would grow out of eventually.  Certainly I never imagined that I would ever spend hours watching someone else play a game.

I can no longer remember when this happened—hell, I can’t even remember which kid it was at this point—but it was most likely in 2016 or ‘17 when I happened to wander through the room where one of my kids was watching a Let’s Play video.  No clue what game it was either, but I distinctly remember the joy in the player’s voice, and the lilting Irish accent.  The guy was hilarious.  “Who’s that?” I asked, drawn to watch over my child’s shoulder.  And, the answer, delivered in that “what are you, stupid?” tone that only your children can deliver, was: ”Jacksepticeye.” This was unlike any of the other Let’s Play videos I’d ever seen: Jack wasn’t trying to make me love the game, he wasn’t trying to make fun of the game, he wasn’t trying to do some artsy or clever commentary on the game ... he was just playing the game, and having fun, and being damned entertaining while doing it.  Even though I can’t claim to have become a big Jacksepticeye fan after that—I didn’t go around watching a bunch of his other videos or anything—I have to credit him with changing me in a fundamental way.  Before I discovered Jacksepticeye, I didn’t think watching other people play games could be fun.  Afterwards ... it was like discovering I’d been fundamentally wrong about something my whole life, and, now that I had realized it, I couldn’t go back to the way it was before.  Pretty much exactly like that, in fact.

And I began to understand that my whole attitude (which, from hanging out on the Internet, I already knew was not unique to me) was kind of stupid.  Why watch someone else play a game when you could just play yourself?  By that logic, the entire sports industry becomes meaningless, and yet there’s a multi-billion-dollar business—several, even!—in having people play games so other people will watch them.  But of course this illuminates why it’s tricky: sure, watching an NBA game can be pretty damned exciting, but that doesn’t mean that watching any random game of people playing basketball will be fun.  There are many factors to consider: the talent of the players, the production value of the presentation, the knowledge of the commentators, and so on. 

But, still, Jacksepticeye proves one thing: it is possible to make watching other people play videogames entertaining.  And, if I could enjoy watching someone else play a videogame, when I don’t even like videogames all that much, surely I could enjoy watching someone play D&D, which I absolutely adore.  Because, up until that point, the idea of watching other people play D&D had seemed just as stupid as watching other people play videogames.  How could that possibly be entertaining?  But now I was living in a whole new mental paradigm.  And I knew that there were a lot of these D&D videos out there (what would eventually come to be called “actual play” shows) ... not just videos, but podcasts too.  The field was still fairly young back then, but there was already a bewildering array of choices.  So, cautiously, I decided to try a few.

And, honestly, none of them were that great.  Oh, sure, they had their moments, but they weren’t sucking me in the way good ol’ Jacksepticeye had.  There were a bunch of “CelebriD&D” videos on YouTube, but they were edited to hell and back.  In a way, this makes sense.  Going with the sports analogy, D&D is not basketball.  In terms of pacing, it’s more like baseball ... if not golf.  And, if you don’t have time to watch the 3 or 4 hour baseball game, what do you do?  You watch the highlights, of course.  But the thing is, you can boil a baseball game down to just highlights.  There’s not a whole lot of context required for any given play, and what little there is can be described by a competent color commentator in a few brief sentences.  But D&D is different: there’s an underlying story, and, without that context, the exciting moments are far less exciting.

Eventually I came across Force Grey (this would have been the first season).  Now, I didn’t really know who this Matt Mercer guy was, though I recognized him from a bunch of the other videos (apparently he was quite popular for running D&D actual plays).  And I’m sure I knew Ashley Johnson because I had almost certainly started watching Blindspot by that point.  But mainly I was here for Chris Hardwick and Jonah Ray.  A couple of comedians I knew and liked, playing a game of D&D?  This should be good!  And it was ... okay.  Mercer was competent, and discovering Utkarsh Ambudkar was an unexpected joy, and the story was decent, but it just didn’t grab me.  Some of the players were competent, others were just learning, but it was obvious they were having difficulty gelling as a team.  Once again: you can’t just throw 10 people off the street onto a basketball court and expect magic to happen.  Season 2 would eventually come along and be much better, but season 1 was just ... meh.

And then I heard that a new show was going to come out with Deborah Ann Woll, who I knew (and liked) from True Blood and Daredevil.  And, back then, it was still fairly unusual to see a woman in the DM’s chair, and I thought that might be worth checking out.  Episode 1 was set to feature Matthew Lillard, who most probably think of as Shaggy or “that kid from Hackers,” but I always preferred him in Scream and Thirteen Ghosts, so that seemed promising as well.  As soon as the first episode was out on YouTube, I sat down to watch it.

Relics and Rarities was all I’d hoped for, but also much more.  First off, it was perfectly edited: not just the highlights, like the failed attempts in the “CelebriD&D” videos, but not completely unedited, as seemed to be popular in other, longer videos.  It was still people sitting around a table and actually playing the game—no cheap gimmicks like animation or puppets—but the set dressing was excellent, and there were sound effects.  When Woll described the party as being in a dank castle with a fierce thunderstorm raging outside, a crack of lightning could be seen in the faux window set into the faux stone wall behind the players, and peals of thunder punctutated the table talk.  Just enough, mind you: not so much as to be distracting, but not so little as to make no difference.  Lillard knew what he was doing, obviously; I could tell he was a long-time player, but I could also tell that he was one of those folks for whom D&D is somehow a competitive game, even though it very much is not.  He was the sort of player who competes with his fellow players (and sometimes himself) to always do the optimal thing, always do the coolest thing, and often got frustrated when he couldn’t (or tried to and failed).  But the other four players were very solid: two were obviously actors, and the other two (who I would eventually come to know as two of the best players in the actual play space) were consummate professionals.  Watching Jasmine Bhullar and Xander Jeanneret play was perhaps not like watching Jordan play basketball, but certainly as satisfying as walking into a no-name dive bar and realizing that the rhythm section of the band that just happens to be playing that night is more amazing than three-quarters of the musicians on the albums you own.  And, by the end of the first episode, they had changed Lillard in a fundamental way, teaching him something about the game that he seemed surprised he could still learn.  And Woll herself?  A master storyteller, fond of setting puzzles for her players, always understanding how to motivate the PCs, perhaps a bit more lenient than I personally would be, but always in service of the Rule of Cool.  I was blown away.

Because, you see, I realized that I had been watching this new actual play thing all wrong.  I was treating it like sports: the thrill of watching people at the top of their game perform amazing feats, the empathy of experiencing the highs and lows, the satisfaction of armchair-quarterbacking a game that you yourself play well (or used to).  But, no: actual play is not that.  Or, it sort of can be that, and some of it is nothing but that.  But those aren’t the good ones.  The good ones are the ones that are taking advantage of this entirely new medium of storytelling to tell tales that you can’t really see anywhere else.  Just as a novel can tell stories that a movie can’t (and vice versa), or a comic book series can tell stories that a TV series can’t (and vice versa), actual play can tell stories that nothing else can.  Unlike a novel, it’s collaborative, and far more so than a comic.  Movies and plays and televsion are more collaborative, but still there’s usually one writer (or at most a handful), and the characters in all those other media serve the plot.  If someone forgets something, it’s because they needed to forget that thing for events to be set in motion.  If one character hurts another, it’s because the one character needs to learn from it, or because the other character needs to have something to regret, or because the audience needs to pick a side.  Characters die because an author or screenwriter decided it would have maximum dramatic effect.

But, in actual play (at least when done well), the GM builds a world and sets the PCs loose in it.  Each character has their own arc, and that arc is completely controlled by the “actor” portraying them.  Normally an actor, whether in film, television, or stageplay, has the constraint of playing the character as written on the page, using the words they’re given.  But, in actual play, a player can do anything they want with their character, take them in any direction that feels natural.  And, most importantly, there are dice.  The element of randomness the dice provide adds something that no other medium can compete with.  A good DM harnesses that unpredictability, never letting it derail the story, but letting it add wrinkles and twists and complications.  The resulting tapestry of big swings and near misses, huge triumphs and massive failures, is both complex and beautiful, and unlike any other form of storytelling.

Actual play is a new medium.  The fact that you’re watching people play a game is almost incidental to that fact: it’s a bit fun, especially if you know the game yourself, but it’s totally unnecessary to enjoy the story.  The story is the thing, the thing that makes actual play special.  The stories told via actual play are unique, amazing, engrossing, and transcendent.  And that’s what this series will explore.

Next time we look at some of the different forms actual play can take.

How I loved your diamond eyes

When a show I thought was okay premieres its second season (or third, or fourth, or ...), I just watch the new season.  The recap is good enough.  When a show I thought was pretty good premieres a new season, I often back up two or three episodes to help refresh my memory and put me back in the vibe of the show.

But when a show that I really love puts out a new season, I go back to the beginning and watch it all again.  For instance, season 5 of Stranger Things (its final season) will come out next year, and I’ll go back to season 1, episode 1 and start watching, just as I did when season 4 came out, when season 3 came out, and when season 2 came out.  With the end result that, by the end of next year, I’ll have seen season 1 of Stranger Things five times, season 2 four times, season 3 three times, and season 4 twice.  Of course, I’ll only have seen season 5 once, but maybe I’ll rewatch it all from beginning to end a few more years hence.

I bring this up because season 4 of The Umbrella Academy (also the final season) is coming out next month, so I’ve started back around with episode 1 of season 1, and let me tell you: it’s just as amazing as it was the other 3 times I’ve watched it.  It’s about as close to a perfect episode of television as I can possibly imagine.  It sets up some extremely complicated family dynamics in an engaging way that epitomizes the maxim of “show, don’t tell”; it introduces a whopping 10 main characters in a way that cements them all firmly in our minds; it includes some amazing acting, some amazing music (including a gorgeous violin piece performed by Lindsey Stirling), and what may be the most perfect single cinematic shot that I’ve ever seen, set to (of all things) “I Think We’re Alone Now” by 80s pop star Tiffany.  I was really surprised how great it was all over again, the fourth time I’ve seen it.

Anyways, that’s my recommendation to you: go rewatch The Umbrella Academy.  Unless you haven’t seen it at all yet, in which case ... what are you waiting for?

Post-Pandemic TV Roundup (part 2)

This is part two of my post-pandemic TV roundup.  See last week for part 1.

The Power (Amazon Prime, 1 season, Scifi/Fantasy)

The ultimate expression of female empowerment, this posits a world where people start to develop powers ... but only the young girls.  Suddenly the abuse of young women becomes something you might die for, and this show does a great job balancing between making you root for the women who are breaking their chains (sometimes literally), and making you think about how the men are dealing with this, and sometimes even sympathizing with them.¹  Great show, great cast (mostly younger female actors, but also the always-reliable Toni Collette), thought-provoking material.

Dimension 20 “A Crown of Candy” (Dropout, TTRPG Actual Play)

This is an older season of D20, but I hadn’t watched it when it came out.  When they announced they were doing a sequel season,² I figured I’d better watch the original, which was described as “Game of Thrones meets Candyland,” which is about as incongruous a pairing as you could imagine.  And, yet, it’s a perfect description of this season, where the players are told up front to make two characters because you better expect one to die.  Brennan goes hard after the main D20 cast (Lou, Emily, Ally, Siobhan, Zac, and Murph) and the joy of having a rock candy king and his two licorice daughters, a chocolate bunny vizier, etc is tempered by some real pathos and tragedy.  But every player has at least one amazing, kick-ass moment, and the story hangs together beautifully; this is one of the best D20 seasons, hands down.

Star Trek: Lower Decks (Paramount Plus, 4 seasons thus far, Sci-fi Animation)

The idea to focus on characters who are not the main bridge crew of Star Trek was perhaps pioneered by John Scalzi’s Redshirts³ (although a case might also be made for the Babylon 5 episode “A View from the Gallery”, so the idea to turn that into a series was, I suppose, inevitable.  That it would be so compelling was a bit unexpected, and that it woudl be animated was completely out of left field.  But it really works surprisingly well.  Plus you have to be up on Lower Decks to understand the crossover episode in S2 of Strange New Worlds,⁴ which is just brilliant.

Warrior (Max, 3 seasons, Martial Arts Action)

In 1971, so the story goes, Bruce Lee came up with a show about a Chinese man doing kung fu in the Old West.  Studio heads took the idea and (of course) made it about a white man who knew kung fu in the Old West, which is how Kung Fu came about, and why it starred David Carradine instead of Bruce Lee.  44 years later, Lee’s daughter Shannon revived the original idea and created Warrior.  Starring a brilliant Andew Koji,⁵ embodying Lee’s style without doing a blatant impression of him, and some strong female leads as well, this semi-historical story is set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1870s, and covers the Tong Wars, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and lots of other very real things from the period.  The later seasons don’t quite live up to the gorgeous visuals and deep stories of season 1, but still a very strong showing throughout.

One Piece (Netflix, 1 season thus far, Live Action Anime)

I am not a huge anime fan.  There are a few shows I’ve enjoyed,⁶ but One Piece was not one of them.  It was just too silly for me, and I never could get into it.  So I fully expected this live-action adaptation to fall flat as well.  Amazingly, it was exactly the opposite: I was captivated early, probably by the infectious positivity of Iñaki Godoy.⁷  This show is gleefully insane, but in a mostly family-friendly way, and it’s just so much fun.  And the characters have surprising depth and likeability.

Deadlocked (Paramount Plus, 1 season, Documentary)

Via The Problem with Jon Stewart,⁸ I was introduced to the ladies of Strict Scrutiny, an amazing podcast focussing on the Supreme Court.  And, these days, that’s a pretty important topic to understand.  Even if you can’t commit to listening to Strict Scrutiny every week, you can watch 4 episodes of really insightful history about it (and two of the three SS hosts show up in this series as well).  I can’t count the number of times while watching I said “oh, that’s how that happened!” Highly recommended.

Bodies (Netflix, 1 season, Sci-fi Thriller)

I used to watch two types of shows, mainly: sci-fi/fantasy shows, and police procedurals.  I cut back on the police procedurals after the Black Lives Matter movement brought attention to how much they normalize bad police behavior, but I still enjoy the format.  And what better way to enjoy it than to combine it with a sci-fi/fantasy story—in particular, a time travel story—as 4 London detectives from 4 different time periods all fight to solve the same crime: the same dead body, in fact, which has somehow appeared in 1890, 1941, 2023, and 2053.  Time-travel stories live or die by how well they come together in the end, and this one does a bang up job of that in my opinion.  Definitely worthwhile.

Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix, 1 season thus far, Adult Animation)

An exploration of her own half-Japanese ancestry, Amber Noizumi’s Blue Eye Samurai, about a half-white outcast swordsman, is quite possibly the most stunning piece of adult animation I’ve seen, period.  Lighter on the gore than Castlevania or Arcane, but heavier on the nudity than either, it does an amazing job of bringing complex characters to life and putting them in remarkably interesting storylines, all set against the backdrop of Japan’s isolationist Edo period.  Gorgeous visuals, brilliant acting, tense action scenes: this one’s got it all.

The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix, 1 season, Horror)

Mike Flanagan is quite possibly the best director working in modern American horror.  His movies are brilliant, but it’s really his series that elevate him to the sublime.  The Haunting of Hill House, based on the novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson, still stands as the pinnacle, with one of the best (and well-earned) jump scares of all time, and that’s just one scene.  His follow-up, The Haunting of Bly Manor (based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw) was not quite as good, though still worth watching.  But the latest series, The Fall of the House of Usher, based on many Edgar Allen Poe short stories, is a worthy contender to Hill House.  Like the seasons of American Horror Story, Flanagan’s series reuse many of the same actors in different roles, and many (like Carla Gugino, Rahul Kohli, and Flanagan’s wife Kiate Siegel) give performances that would demand viewing just on their strength alone.  But Flanagan also has an eye for atmosphere, and the creep factor here is through the roof.  Especailly if you’re a Poe fan (but even if you’re not), this is a must-watch.

Culprits (Hulu, 1 season, Thriller)

Not quite a spy story, not quite a heist story, but containing elements of each, this British show features the talents of Gemma Arterton, Eddie Izzard, and the second appearance this roundup of Kirby⁹ (but not the last).  Plus it was my discovery of Irish actor Niamh Algar, whose turn as the cold-blooded killer codenamed “Psycho” was just breathtaking.  A twisty-turny plot, good (i.e. not confusing) use of flashback, and empathetic characters make this a great show.

Dimension 20 “Burrow’s End” (Dropout, TTRPG Actual Play)

Yet another Aabria-Iyengar-led season of D20, this adapts the world of Watership Down to use weasels instead of rabbits, injects a healthy dose of Cronenberg-ian body horror, and wraps it all in a bow of Arrival.  Aabria’s storytelling is top-notch, as always, and the players are a great group as well: Brennan as player (as is usual for an Aabria-helmed season), playing the mother to twins, portrayed by his wife(!) Izzy and Siobhan, Erika as the grandmother, and the lovely Rashawn Scott and Jasper Cartwright as the sister and brother-in-law.  Siobhan’s prepubescent boy weasel in particular is delightful, but they all do an amazing job, and this season is one of their strongest.

Fargo season 5 (Hulu, Surrealist Crime Thriller)

Whoever had the brilliant idea to turn the movie Fargo into a American Horror Story-style anthology series (by which I mean each season is a completely separate story) was a genius.  But not all of the seasons live up to the potential.  This one really does.  Recycling just a few of the tropes originally introduced by the Coen Brothers in the movie, but weaving a story just as bizarre and unbelievable, this season harnesses the acting of some major powerhouses: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dave Foley, and John Hamm; Lamorne Morris from New Girl and Woke; Joe Keery from Stranger Things; and, in the primary protagonist’s role, a breakout performance from Juno Temple.  The byzantine plots are there, the interconnections among the characters and the lunatic personalities ... everything you could want from a Fargo story.  And a (mostly) satisfying resolution.

Death and Other Details (Hulu, 1 season, Whodunnit Mystery)

If you like classic detective fiction like Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and/or modern whodunnits like Knives Out and Glass Onion, you’ll dig the intricate plot and colorful characters in this show starring Mandy Patinkin (who’s been in everything from Criminal Minds to Princess Bride to Homeland) and Violett Beane, and the supporting cast (including Rahul Kohli, from just up above in The Fall of the House of Usher) is magnificent as well.  With a number of great twists—some of which you may see coming and some of which you won’t—and very creative use of flashbacks, as well as reconstructions of past events by analytical minds, it’s a fantastic story that holds together in a very satisfying way.

Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix, 1 season thus far, Fantasy)

Somehow managing to be a spin-off of both Doom Patrol and The Sandman, the Dead Boy Detectives are comic book heroes created by Neil Gaiman for the The Sandman issue #25; they then showed up in both Swamp Thing and Doom Patrol in the Children’s Crusade crossover event.  Though they never made it to the Netflix Sandman, they did appear in an episode of the Max Doom Patrol.  And Kirby (Death from The Sandman) does make a cameo appearance in the first episode here.  But, most importantly, this show, about two ghost detectives who died young and now solve mysteries for other ghosts, is neither The Sandman nor Doom Patrol: it’s slightly more fun than the former, slightly less insane than the latter, ultimately charming, full of Gaimanesque characters (even the ones that he didn’t actually invent), and just a joyride of the fantastical and phantasmagorical.

True Detective “Night Country” (Max, Surrealist Crime Thriller)

The first season of True Detective was utterly brilliant, driven by great acting, a complex but grounded plot, and lots of touches of surrealism.  This season is in some ways superior: the acting is just as top-notch (including a Clarice Starling and a Dr. Who), the plot is just as complex, and the mystical aspects are heightened.  It culminates in a downbeat yet oddly satisfying ending, but there’s a surprising amount of body horror before you get there.  A fun ride.

Honorable Mentions:

These are the series that weren’t quite 5 stars, but a slight cut above 4 stars.  I thought I’d give at least a quick shout out to each.

• Invincible (Amazon Prime, 1 season, Adult Animation) – (Actually, there are two seasons out now, but I’ve only watched the first one.)  Bloody, tacky, shocking, borderline disgusting, and epically entertaining; it’s a superhero show that sets out to shatter superhero tropes.

• Hacks (Max, 3 seasons, Comedy) – With a stunning cast, including Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, this is a hilarious show that is also touching and relevant.

• Peacemaker (Max, 1 season, Superhero Comedy) – If you liked the bizarrerie that was The Guardians of the Galaxy, but wish it was even more insane and borderline offensive, you will absolutely love this show.  Great cast, weird stories, fun time.

• Station Eleven (Max, 1 season, Post-Apocalyptic Drama) – Utilizing flashbacks in a way that generates tension as opposed to what it usually generates (which is annoyance), and featuring a stunning performance from Mackenzie Davis (of Halt and Catch Fire), this tells a self-contained story with a lot of heart and just the right amount of surrealism.

• Naomi (Max, 1 season, Superhero Fantasy) – Cancelled too soon, so don’t expect complete resolution, but this teenage superhero story is still pretty amazing.

• The Old Man (Hulu, 1 season, Spy Thriller) – A twisty-turny storyline makes this rise above the usual fare, but it’s the top-notch performances from Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, and Alia Shawkat that really bring it home.

• The Orville (Hulu, 3 seasons, Sci-fi) – Seth MacFarlane’s love letter to Star Trek, season 1 starts off pretty much exactly as goofy as you’d expect from the creator of Family Guy, but it rapidly achieves a depth of emotion and plots that is both surprising and rewarding.  Cancelled too soon, but wrapped up pretty neatly nonetheless; don’t sleep on this one.

• Sweet Tooth (Netflix, 1 season, Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy) – (Again, season 2 is out, but I haven’t yet watched it.)  Another great cast, with possibly an even better storyline than Station Eleven.  It’s a very different show, though, so it’s not a fair comparison.  Just watch both: you won’t regret it.

• Severance (Apple+, 1 season, Surreal Sci-fi) – A lot depends on where they go in season 2: if that is as satisfying as I hope it will be, it might elevate this to a full 5 stars.  It got a lot of attention at the time, so I probably don’t need to convince you to watch it, and, if you don’t like weird shit, you’ll hate it, but the story does eventually resolve in a satisfying way, so give it a chance.  Also, John Turturro doesn’t do bad shit, whether film or TV.¹⁰

• Little Demon (Hulu, 1 season, Adult Animation) – Another ultraviolent cartoon not for children (nor for the faint of heart of any age, really), this is elevated by the voice talents of Aubrey Plaza and Danny DeVito and a plotline that’s just plain fun.  Hulu seems to have jettisoned it, so you may not be able to find it, but, if you can, and if you don’t mind cartoon nudity and cartoon guts (and sometimes both at once), you might enjoy this.

• Lockwood & Co (Netflix, 1 season, Urban Fantasy) – It’s a bit of a YA show, and it was cancelled prematurely, but it’s still pretty great.  Teens hunt ghosts because they’re the only ones who can; set in an alternate timeline London.

• The Night Agent (Netflix, 1 season, Spy Thriller) – Decent acting and an intricate but not wholly unbelievable plot make this better-than-average modern spy fare.

• The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime, 5 seasons, Comedy) – If you’re a fan of Gilmore Girls, then you’ve probably already watched this, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s other great series.  But, even if you’re not,¹¹ the magnificent combination of Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein (both of whom are hilarious on their own), not to mention an amazing supporting cast with folks such as Tony Shalhoub, Caroline Aaron, and Luke Kirby as a brilliant Lenny Bruce, really make this show about female empowerment set in 1950s New York sing.  (Also contains possibly the best series ending episode since Six Feet Under.)

• Velma (Max, 2 seasons, Adult Animation) – I hate Scooby-Doo in nearly all its forms, but I love Mindy Kaling, and her reimagining of the origin of the Scooby gang as a multicultural blending is really entertaining and unexpected.

• Dimension 20 “Mentopolis” (Dropout, TTRPG Actual Play) – Yes, another season of D20.¹²  This one is not D&D, but don’t let that stop you: with every character representing a different facet of personality in a story that takes place inside the brain of a scientist embroiled in intrigue, this is The Maltese Falcon meets Osmosis Jones in all the best ways.

• Doom Patrol (Max, 4 seasons, Superhero Surrealism) – If you love batshit crazy storylines, it’s tough to beat Doom Patrol, based on another set of comics from Grant Morrison, the creator of Happy!.¹³  Not as much ultraviolence as Happy! or Preacher, not quite as much sex as either, but more actual superheroes (sort of) than both put together, none of the 46 episodes of Doom Patrol make any sense at all, and yet they tell some truly compelling, completely human stories while following the lives of a batch of misfit antiheroes that will make your head spin.  Very satisfying.

• Gen V (Amazon Prime, 1 season, Adult Superhero) – Every bit as demeneted as the show it’s spun off from—that would be The Boys—this is fantastic side-project.  If you love The Boys, you must watch this; if you hated The Boys, this definitely won’t change your mind.

• I Am Not Okay with This (Netflix, 1 season, YA Urban Fantasy) – Sophia Lillis was in It (where she was amazing), in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (where she was amazing), and this, which is almost criminally unheard of.  Being amazing yet again in a very Carrie-esque turn, this coming-of-age-but-with-powers story is a gripping one, even though it’s left unfinished due to premature cancellation.

• Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix, 1 season, YA Comedy-Drama) – Yet another show that was Netflixed too soon, this one is a lot of fun, and contains the best depiction of “twin language” I’ve seen.  The characters are fun, the stories are fun, the action is crazy but not over the top, and I wish they had let them bring the show to a more satisifying conclusion.

__________

1 Granted, not that often.

2 Which, in the end, wasn’t as good as this one.

3 Check out the audiobook, read brilliantly by Wil Wheaton.

4 See last week.

5 Seen in the G.I. Joe movie Snake Eyes, and the much better Bullet Train.

6 In particular, Cowboy Bebop.  Pretty much everything else I’ve watched I was a casual fan of at best.

7 Who you can also see in The Imperfects, which only narrowly missed being included in this roundup.

8 See last week.

9 She was death in The Sandman last week.

10 unless Adam Sandler is involved.

11 Like me.

12 For those keeping count, that makes six in toto.

13 See part 2 of the pandemic roundup.

Post-Pandemic TV Roundup (part 1)

Around about the one-year anniversay of the pandemic, I published a pandemic TV roundup, which described all the televsion I’d been watching during the lockdown.  Well, not all of it: even two, longer-than-usual posts wouldn’t have been sufficient for that task.  But all the TV shows that I’d both started and finished in that year.  And I rated them all, from one to five stars (well, except that nothing got one star, because, if the show had really been that bad, I wouldn’t have finished it, so it wouldn’t have made the cut).  Now, I was able to do this detailed overview because I keep track of all the TV episodes I watch.  Originally, I started doing this because many streaming services were terrible at remembering where you left off, and I was tired of spending half an hour scanning through old episodes trying to remember how much I’d already watched.  So I just added it to my mega-spreadsheet where I keep track of my todo tasks.

Of course, just like the todo list itself, the bonus to this plan is that it serves as a diary: since I never delete data (a principle that one learns fairly early as a database programmer), everything I’ve ever done—and, now, everything I’ve ever watched—is recorded.  Well, not movies: I never bothered tracking them, because you watch them all in one sitting.  And a lot of “regular” viewing, such as The Daily Show, I don’t bother to track, because I always stay current on it, so there’s never any need to remember which episode I was on.  But, for episodic TV,¹ I’ve got a pretty solid record.

So, it occurred to me to do another roundup, only this time, since I’m now covering a period of over 3 years, I’m only going to talk about the best of the best, the stuff I’ve rated as 5 stars.  (I’ll do an honorable mention at the end for shows that came in at perhaps a 4.5.)  I’ll keep everything brief and spoiler-free; these are basically tiny recommendations as to the best stuff I’ve discovered in the past 3 years.  Some of it may predate that time, but it’s all stuff that I watched in that period and was blown away by.  And, as it turns out, there were enough shows on the list—even limiting it to 5 star shows—that I couldn’t squeeze them all into one post.  So this is part 1; part 2 will likely come next week.  Finally, the order is just chronological in terms of when I watched them, which is close enough to random that you really shouldn’t read anything into it.

Without further ado then: the roundup.

Dimension 20 “Pirates of Leviathan” (Dropout, TTRPG Actual Play)

One of the few seasons of D20 to be filmed entirely remotely during the pandemic, this still manages to be quite possibly the best season ever, and certainly up there in the top 10 (if not the top 5) medium-form actual play shows, period.²  This is like the all-star game for streaming D&D: Matt Mercer and Marisha Ray from Critical Role, B. Dave Walters from Idle Champions Presents and Invitation to Party, Aabria Iyengar from Worlds Beyond Number and Battle for Beyond, Krystina Arielle from Sirens of the Realms and Into the Mother Lands, and Carlos Luna from Rivals of Waterdeep and content producer for Roll20, all GM’ed by regular D20 game master Brennan Lee Mulligan, surely one of the best GMs in the space.  It’s a stunning season; highly recommended.

The Nevers (originally HBOMax, 1 season, Urban Fantasy)

Due to controversy over creator Joss Whedon, HBO cancelled this show after 1 season and then pulled it from their site, so you may not be able to find it anywhere.  But, if you ever get a chance, watch it: Whedon may be a toxic person to work with, but he puts together some magnificent content.  The story is not entirely resolved, but it’s sufficient that you won’t feel let down if you watch it all the way through.  There’s a twist that blindsided me in all the best ways, and the primarily female (primarily British) cast is just amazing.  Plus smaller roles from genre faves like Claudia Black (Farscape), Nick Frost (Spaced), and Pip Torrens (Preacher).

Dimension 20 “Magic & Misfits” (Dropout, TTRPG Actual Play)

The summer of 2021 was often referred to as “the Summer of Aabria,” because Aabria Iyengar was suddenly GMing for the top actual play shows: she did 8 episodes of a side story/prequel for Critical Role, 3 episodes of a where-are-they-now story for The Adventure Zone, and this season of D20, the first ever not GMed by Brennan Lee Mulligan (who instead sits in as a player).  This would not be the last time Aabria ran the dome at D20, but it is perhaps the best.  Including the entire cast of what would become Worlds Beyond Number (i.e. Lou Wilson and Erika Ishii were also present), plus the ever-engaging Danielle Radford, this off-kilter take on a Harry-Potter-like world manages to both celebrate and criticize that series all at the same time, with a surprisingly deft hand.  Brennan’s character of Evan Kelmp, the person pegged to become the Voldemort of the story, is perhaps the standout, as he rails against his fate in extremely amusing fashion.  It’s hard to beat “Pirates of Leviathan” for me, but this comes damned close.

Locke & Key (Netflix, 3 seasons, Urban Fantasy)

Based on a comic by the excellent (and prolific) Joe Hill, this fantasy centered on the 3 Locke children, who have recently lost their father and are forced to move back into their ancestral manor, features some magnificent acting, magnificent writing, and magnificent effects.  Plus recurring roles for genre faves such as Aaron Ashmore (Warehouse 13) and Kevin Durand (The Strain), and a story that is neither too rushed nor overstays its welcome ... just a gem.

Reacher (Amazon Prime, 2 seasons thus far, Action/Mystery)

I never understood why someone let Tom Cruise play Jack Reacher, a character who is a full 10 inches taller than the actor.  I’ve never read the books myself, but I do know that the character is supposed to be an imposing, almost hulking, figure.  Alan Ritchson is still 3 inches too short, technically speaking, but he much more embodies the energy of the character.  Season 1 was insanely good; season 2 only a very slight step down.  Looking forward to future seasons.

Legend of Vox Machina (Amazon Prime, 2 seasons thus far, Adult Animation)

The idea to turn Critical Role campaigns into animated series was a natural one, and, after a record-breaking Kickstarter, the first of these, based on C1 of CR, became a reality via Amazon Prime.  The original cast all record their own characters, naturally, while the numerous NPCs are cast with a dazzling array of vocal talent, from the core voice actor pool (such as Grey Griffin, Darin De Paul, and Kelly Hu) to big name genre stars such as David Tenant (Dr Who), Gina Torres (Firefly), Khary Payton (The Walking Dead), Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn 99), and Lance Reddick (Fringe).  This is absolultely not a kid’s cartoon (although perhaps not quite as adult as Castlevania³), and it has a bit of a rocky start (the first two episodes can’t quite seem to find their tone), but give it a chance and you’ll be hooked.

The G Word (Netflix, Documentary/Educational)

As I said in the last roundup, I don’t typically do documentaries.  But Adam Conover, formerly of College Humor and mastermind of Adam Ruins Everything, gets a pass because he can make any topic entertaining.  With little introductions from President Barack Obama, each episode Adam delves into a different aspect of our government (“our” presuming you live in the US), and often how it’s been corrupted by capitalistic efforts.  I’m not sure there’s anything else you could watch that will simultaneously make you laugh, make you learn, and piss you off quite like this will.

Archive 81 (Netflix, Horror)

Starring Mamoudou Athie, who I knew as the titular Jerome of the “Oh Jerome, No” segments of Cake,⁴ and weaving a twisty little tale of surreality and bizarrerie, this genuinely creepy split-timeline story centers on a data archivist hired to clean up some tapes documenting the mysterious end of a sinister cult.  Mind-bending, but in a very good way.

The Problem with Jon Stewart (Apple+, 2 seasons, Comedy/News)

Less of a news show (like The Daily Show), and more of a deep-dive into topics of current interest (like Last Week Tonight with John Oliver), the excellent return of the master of injecting humor into the often dark topics of our news cycle was cut short because Apple refused to let him discuss certain topics (like AI, where it had a significant monetary investment).  Still, the 20 episodes he managed to put out before being silenced covered some fantastic topics such as racism, climate change, gun control, and incarceration.  Educational, funny, and not to be missed.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, (Paramount Plus, 2 seasons thus far, Science Fiction)

I was legitimately surprised at how good this Star Trek prequel series was.  Featuring Christopher Pike, the original captain of the Enterprise (from the pilot of the original series), as protrayed by Anson Mount in his best turn since Hell on Wheels, this series collects an amazing array of both new and old faces in the Star Trek universe.  It’s primarily episodic (unlike, say, Discovery), and hits all the best Trekkie tropes: court case to defend an officer accused of something that is both unjust and undeniably true, diplomatic mission with impossible-to-please aliens, memory loss, reality warps, time travel, and weird Vulcan mating rituals.  If you love Trek, you’ll definitely love this.

Game Changer (Dropout, 6 seasons so far, Faux Game Show)

There are various forms of the faux quiz show: the Brits practically invented it, with news shows (e.g. Have I Got News For You), wordplay shows (My Word), improv shows (e.g. Whose Line Is It Anyway?), and trivia shows (e.g. QI).  Most of those format have made it to America (e.g. Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Says You!, Whose Line Is It Anyway?⁵), so it’s pretty rare to find something new in this space.  Game Changer is not an improv show, definitely not a news show, incoroporates some trivia and wordplay, but isn’t those either ... in point of fact, it’s a bit impossible to say WTF it really is, because it’s a different show every time.  The gimmick of the show is that the “contestants” (generally comedians from the College Humor/Dropout troupe) have no idea what the game is going to be at the outset and have to figure it out as they go along.  Some of these are utterly brilliant, others less so, and occasionally they run out of ideas and repeat a concept from an earlier show, which is a bit disappointing, but overall it’s a great show.  Season 1 is probably the best, but Season 5 has some of my all-time favorite episodes (although it also has 6 episodes doing perverted versions of The Bachelor and Survivor, which I didn’t really care for).  Addictive, and highly recommended.

Stranger Things (Netflix, 4 seasons so far, Urban Fantasy)

I probably don’t have to tell you how good this show is: the blockbuster series made Netflix a shit-ton of money and is generally credited (along with Critical Role) for the resurgence of D&D.  What really gets me is how the show consistently maintains quality across the seasons, adding more and more characters (and more and more great actors) and more complex storylines without ever getting predictable or tedious.  Few shows can match it.  The series finale will be next year, so I’ll likely go back and watch it all from the beginning again, which is a thing I only do for the very best shows.  This is one of them.

Umbrella Academy (Netflix, 3 seasons so far, Superhero Fantasy)

Like Stranger Things, this is an amazing Netflix show that I will undoubtedly rewatch in its entirety before the series finale season 4 later this year.  It’s absolutely a comic book show, though not really a show about superheroes (more a show with superheroes in it); it’s a show where any weird shit at all can happen ... and typically does.  The time travel aspects make it hard to follow sometimes, but it all slots together beautifully, even on repeat viewings, and the characters, outlandish as they are, are human in a way that is both poignant and relatable.  I suppose if you really hate comic book properties, you might not like it, but everyone else should absoutely watch it.

The Sandman (Netflix, 1 season so far, Dark Fantasy)

While Dream of the Endless—a.k.a. the Sandman—is technically a comic book property, it’s also a Neil Gaiman property, and that’s more the vibe here.  If you’re into the comics version, there are Easter eggs here a-plenty, but it will also absolutely grab your interest if you’re just a lover of fantasy stories.  Creating an immortal being who is also relatable to an audience, with all-too-human foibles, is a really difficult task, but the writers here (including Gaiman himself) and actor Tom Sturridge do an amazing job.  The cast is insanely good, including Gwendoline Christie (from Game of Thrones) as Lucifer and Kirby as Death, plus voicework from Patton Oswalt, and a smaller role for Stephen Fry.  Stunning visuals and a complex but satisfying storyline make it a must-watch.  Looking forward to season 2.

Pennyworth (Max, 3 seasons, Gritty British Crime Drama)

Yes, yes: techincally, this is another comic book show.  But it doesn’t really hit the proper absurdities of a comic book show till season 2, and, honestly, you should probably stop after season 1.  That first season, exploring the origin of Bruce Wayne’s butler, follows Alfred on his journey from a turn in the British army to the London underworld, à la Guy Ritchie.  I was amazed at how good they made it, and disappointed at how little they could keep it up.  Season 2 is watchable, but not great; season 3 I’ve never finished because it was just depressing how mundane it became.  I’ll probably get back to it someday though.

Mythic Quest (Apple+, 3 seasons so far, Workplace Comedy/Drama)

Many people adore It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  I am not one of them.  However, the team of Day, Ganz, and McElhenney scored a much bigger hit (to my taste) with this show about videogame developers.  McElhenney is great as the head guy who is both an enormous prick and also a lovable dork, but it’s really Charlotte Nicdao, a perennial on Aussie television but not much known in the US until now, that makes this show work for me.  Add in more amazing actors such as Danny Pudi and F. Murray Abraham, plus the ever-reliable Ashly Burch (voice actor from Borderlands and Horizon Zero Dawn as well as occasional guest on Critical Role), and it’s a home run.  I don’t think seasons 2 and 3 were quite as good as season 1, which has one incredible episode out of nowhere that actually made me cry like a baby, but they’re close.

Inside Man (Netflix, Crime Drama)

David Tenant and Stanley Tucci, British crime drama—I really shouldn’t need to say more than that to hook you.  But this also has a dogged crime journalist, a genius solving cases from behind bars, and Dylan Baker as a prison warden.  Plus an everything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong plot that could easily have been a comedy of errors, but here is played straight and becomes an inevitable tragedy.  Especially if you love things like Broadchurch,⁶ don’t miss this.

The Peripheral (Amazon Prime, 1 season, Science Fiction)

Chloë Grace Moretz had done 16 movies before I saw her in Kick-Ass, but that was the film that made me remember her name forever.  Especially after following it up with the mind-blowing Let Me In.  This series was a casualty of the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strike, which is as big a crime as the ones perpetrated on those unions in the first place.  The story isn’t entirely resolved, but I can’t tell you not to watch this season.  Excellent time travel, excellent scifi gadgets, excellent acting.

The Last of Us (Max, 1 season so far, Post-Apocalyptic Horror)

This is another one I likely don’t need to tell you how good it is.  Bella Ramsey, who has been great in everything I’ve seen her in, from Game of Thrones to The Worst Witch, is stellar here, and it’s tough to go wrong with Pedro Pascal, not to mention ancillary actors like Anna Torv (Fringe), Rutina Wesley (True Blood), and Nick Offerman in a single episode that punches you in the gut like an 800lb gorilla.  It’s scary, it’s gory, it’s creepy, and it’s impactful.  Not many series can do all that in one show.  This one does.

Dimension 20 “Neverafter” (Dropout, TTRPG Actual Play)

Yes, it’s a third entry for Dimension 20, and a second recommendation for Brennan Lee Mulligan as GM.  What can I say: they’ve been firing on all cylinders since the pandemic started.  This season, the D20 regulars (Lou Wilson, Emily Axford, Siobhan Thompson, Ally Beardsley, Zac Oyama, and Brian Murphy) each take on the personality of a different fairy tale character (Lou is Pinocchio, Emily is Little Red Riding Hood, etc).  And Brennan throws them into a dark, twisted version of the Brothers Grimm’s world (which is, to be fair, far more close in tone to the original stories than the Disneyfied versions we’ve become accustomed to), and the results are delicious, terrifying, and wondrous to behold.  Probably hit “Pirates” and “Misfits” first, but this should be a close third choice.

Next week: part two.

__________

1 Or streaming shows.  Can we just call it all “TV” please?  I watch it all on my television, even YouTube.  The fact that it isn’t being broadcast over the airwaves doesn’t make it not televison ... and, if it did, we wouldn’t have been watching TV ever since cable was invented.

2 For context, I consider short-form actual play to be the one-shots, or occasional two-shots, and long-form to be those ongoing campaigns that run anywhere from 50 to 100+ episodes.  So medium form is typically somewhere between 6 and 20 episodes, and is often the perfect place to start if you want to see if actual play is for you.

3 See part 1 of the pandemic roundup.

4 See part 2 of the pandemic roundup.

5 The trivia format doesn’t seem to have made it to us yet, aside from things like Funny You Should Ask, which is apparently a show on CBS that’s been running since 2017, though I confess I’ve never heard of it before writing this post.

6 See part 1 of the pandemic roundup.

Thou wast not born for death ...

[This post contains light spoilers for all three campaigns of Critial Role.  Well, not “light” in the sense that they’re not very meaningful, but light in the sense that they’re almost definitely facts that have already been spoiled for you by now.  Still, read on at your own risk.]

One day I hope to live long enough to see Liam O’Brien play a D&D character who actually cares whether they live or die.

If you’re not familiar with Critical Role, you have no idea what I’m on about, and you can probably just check out now.  If you are familiar with CR, then no doubt you know exactly what I’m talking about.  In Campaign 1 (Vox Machina), there was Vax, who almost eagerly promised his life to the Raven Queen to bring back his twin sister from the realm of the dead.  It took years (and dozens of episodes) for that promise to be reaped, but it did eventually happen, and Liam has staunchly refused to consider resurrection for Vax.  In Campaign 2 (the Mighty Nein), Caleb’s crushing guilt at what he had done in his past often made him feel his life was worthless, and that it wasn’t worth living unless he could find a way to turn back time.  Liam has spoken of Caleb’s willingness to sacrifice himself to defeat his archenemy Trent.  And now here we are in Campaign 3 (Bell’s Hells), and Orym—who at first seems like a bright, sunny character, but eventually reveals a classically tragic backstory—has now offered to give up the remainder of his life in service to a powerful archfey in exchange for the tools to keep his companions safe.

It isn’t limited to just D&D either: Liam’s character for his run (as a player) on Candela Obscura was Cosmo Grimm, a 97-year-old occultist who, due to his advanced age, had a built-in reason for being willing to sacrifice himself at every turn.  Even several (though admittedly not all) of his one-shot characters seem to have a bit of a death wish ... and even the ones who don’t often end up dead anyway.

To some extent this makes sense.  O’Brien started out as a stage actor doing, among other things, a lot of Shakespeare.  When asked once what books he would keep with him at all times if he had a real-life version of Caleb’s “book holsters,” Liam replied Hellboy and Hamlet.  There is absolutely no doubt that Liam has a strong affinity to tragedies, and tragic characters in particular.  And, don’t get me wrong: he’s excellent at playing these characters.  He’s a brilliant actor, and his talent for the dark, brooding hero with the tragic backstory can’t be overstated.

But, just once, I’d love to see him play a character with some joie de vivre, with no tragic circumstances either before or behind, someone who really lives life to the fullest and is in no hurry to die any time soon.  I mean, I think he’d be really good at that too.  And I think it’d be fun to watch.

But I’m getting old enough nowadays that I ain’t holdin’ my breath.

Call and response

Have you ever been listening to a podcast (or watching a show, or reading a book), and someone in the podcast/show/book says something so crazy, so outrageous, that you just respond out loud?  You know they can’t hear you, but it doesn’t matter: you just feel the need to correct, or clarify, or just answer.

This happens to me all the time.  And I often really do respond out loud.  This week, since it’s an off-week, I thought I’d just a quick rundown of my responses-to-the-air for this week.

There’s probably somebody in your life who you, you feel maybe you’re disconnected from.  ...  Maybe ... send them a letter, write ’em a handwritten letter and send it to ’em. They would really appreciate it.

— Cody Johnston on Even More News, “Santos’ Little Cameos, New House Resolutions, And EVEN MORE GTA VI Reactions”

No, they wouldn’t, because they wouldn’t be able to read it.

[Context: Even More News is the “in between weeks” podcast that goes along with Some More News, and every week they start with some wacky holidays that are listed on the various wacky-holiday-calendars around the Internet and comment on them.  This helps inject a bit of levity before they have to descend into the actual news, which is often hard to be humorous about.  In this case, it was National Letter Writing Day, and this was an easy response: my handwriting is terrible.]

And for Prosperity to be built, there is only one way only, Prosperity can be built.  Prosperity is built by entrepreneurs.

— Magatte Wade on Drilled, “Messy Conversations: Magatte Wade, Atlas Network’s Center for African Prosperity”

To quote Wikipedia, according to whom?

[Context: The Atlas Network is a web of “think tank” organizations with one goal: funded by the oil and gas industry (as well as the coal industry, lumber industry, mining industry, etc), they produce intellectual-sounding opinion pieces and “studies” that they then pass off to media outlets in order to spread the word that fighting climate change is bad.  Magatte Wade is an African native (she was born in Senegal) and she pushes the idea that it’s unfair to try to curtail oil and gas production in Africa, because that just keeps Africans locked into poverty.  Obviously what they need is for people to come in and help them exploit their natural resources, and that way they’ll develop their economies.  As you can imagine, this makes her a darling of right-wing talking heads (the first time Drilled used a clip of her rhetoric, it was from an appearance on Jordan Peterson’s show).  The sad part is, she actually has some valid points buried in there.  But, in this episode, where she challenges climate journalist Amy Westervelt to a “debaite,” you can see that she’s far more focussed on running roughshod over the arguments of the other side and “winning” the debate than in any sort of honest exchange of ideas.  She certainly isn’t afraid to play the “I’m from Africa and you’re not, therefore I know what I’m talking about and you don’t” card, nor is she (as you can see from the quote above) afraid to just state very shaky premises as “facts” upon which she then builds entirely unsound arguments.  What I found the most infuriating, though, was her tendency to just talk faster and more forcefully and just ... more ... than Amy.  This quote is from the first ten minutes, during which Amy lets her go on until she finally winds down; at the end of that, she lets Amy talk for about two minutes before trying to interrupt her.  She’s clearly from the “whoever talks the most wins” school of debate.)

[affecting nasal voice] And I would sing like this, which I never sang like before.

— Fred Schneider on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, “Fred Schneider”

Give it up Fred: we have ears.

[Context: Fred, talk-singer of the B-52’s and utterer of such iconic lines as “it wasn’t a rock ... it was a rock lobster!” and “love shack, baby!!”, was responding to a description of the improv game “Hey Fred Schneider, what are you doing?” He apparently doesn’t think he sounds like that.  This is reminiscent of Kurt Cobain adamantly insisting that Nirvana wasn’t a grunge band, or George Bush Sr’s response to Dana Carvey’s spot-on impression of him, wherein he claimed he’d never said anything like that in his life.  The problem with such denials is, you’ve been recorded.  We can hear you.  Yes, Nirvana, you are grunge (in no small part because the word was coined to mean “music that sounds like Nirvana”), and, yes, Mr. Bush, when you try to say “not gonna do it,” it quite often sounds like Carvey’s “na ga da,” and, yes, Fred Schneider, when you call out “hop in my Chrysler, it’s as big as a whale, and it’s about to set sail!” ... you sound kinda nasally.  You just do.  Own it, man.]

And that’s all for this week.  I thought you might enjoy hearing my (normally solitary) mini-rants.  If you didn’t, you can just wait around till next week, I suppose.

A small recommendation

You know, when I first got over my rather silly belief that I couldn’t enjoy watching other people play D&D, I started looking for really entertaining examples of people streaming the game.  (I talked a bit about this in my “D&D and Me” series.)  And I found some great examples ... but a lot of not-so-great ones as well.  If I had to put my finger on what elevates the good from the meh, it would have to be this: streaming D&D can be a whole new form of media, a whole new way to tell a story ... or it can be just watching people play a game.  The latter is entertaining ... ish.  Watching people play sports, or poker, or things of that nature can be entertaining too.  But I wouldn’t call those sorts of things a new storytelling medium.  D&D, on the other hand, if done well, can really tell a story in a fresh new way that you just can’t experience in any other medium.  That’s the magic of it.

And I’ve tried a lot of D&D shows: video and podcast, edited and unedited, zero production values and over-the-top gimmicks.  A few really stand out.  But I may have found a new pinnacle.

The first chapter of World Beyond Number’s first ongoing campaign (“The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One”) just concluded, and I am really blown away.  This is the D&D streaming equivalent of a rock supergroup: Brennan Lee Mulligan, DM of Dimension 20 and guest DM on Critical Role (and veteran CollegeHumor performer); Aabria Iyengar, DM on Saving Throw and guest DM and player on both Crital Role and Dimension 20; Erika Ishii, voice actor, player on LA By Night, and guest player on both Crital Role and Dimension 20; Lou Wilson, actor and comedian, player on Dimension 20, guest player on Critical Role (and announcer for Jimmy Kimmel); and Taylor Moore, producer, composer and sound-designer, co-creator of Rude Tales of Magic and Fun City.  These guys have a lot of mileage under their belts, and they’ve come together to produce a podcast, with premium sound design that makes it sound like an old-style radio broadcast.  The D&D elements are still there, but they’re not the focus; primarily they just serve to remind the audience that one of the things that make streaming D&D unlike any other form of storytelling is that random chance plays a factor.  Brennan is the GM for this campaign, and he has beaucoup experience and a flair for the dramatic.  Aabria, Erika, and Lou all have a great deal of experience committing to a textured, flawed, but lovable character, and they make you fall in love with these three unlikely companions.  Together they’ve built a new fantasy world, Umora, which is every bit as fascinating as Middle Earth, Narnia, or Oz.  And the story ... is just magnificent.

You can check out their website to get started listening, or just search for “Worlds Beyond Number” in your podcast app.  If you really want an amazing experience, go give them $5 at their Patreon and listen to “The Children’s Adventure,” which is a prequel series that explains how the 3 protagonists met as children and started to develop their powers (and their personalities).  You can easily get through it in a month, but honestly you should keep giving them money even after that, because it’s worth every penny.  But you can also listen for free if you’d prefer.

I’m not usually one to plug things this hard, but, really: even if you have zero interest in D&D, I think you’ll be seduced by this show.  It’s something really unique.  Check it out.