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.

We live in apocalyptic times ...

Well, it’s currently my middle child’s birthday weekend, so I have not much time to devote to a post.  But I did have a thought tonight, while watching television with the kids.

We decided to go back to Sweet Tooth, after a long break.  It’s a good show; we had just gotten distracted by other things.  But, as we were watching, I was suddenly struck by just how many shows we’re watching nowadays that have post-apocalyptic themes.  So I went back to my big list of TV shows I’ve either started or finished since the pandemic, and found that all these are just flat out post-apocalyptic (even the ones that are for kids!):

• Station Eleven
• The Walking Dead
• Fear of the Walking Dead
• Walking Dead: The World Beyond
• Sweet Tooth
• The Last Ship
• The Stand
• American Horror Story: Apocalypse
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts
• Last Kids on Earth
• Oats Studio

These are not truly post-apocalyptic, but definitely portray a dystopian future:

• Westworld
• Altered Carbon
• Lost in Space
• Cowboy Bebop
• Alice in Borderland
• Nightflyers
• Avenue 5
• Arcane

These aren’t really either of those, but they do have at least references to apocalyptic events:

• The Magicians
• The Nevers
• Umbrella Academy
• Made for Love
• Star Trek: Discovery
• The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
• Witcher
• The Watch
• Legends of Tomorrow
• The Hollow
• Inside Job

Not sure if there’s exactly a point to all this musing, but I thought at the very least it was interesting.

Next week, a longer post.

Dark and Dreamful Daughter

After the cessation of “free Fridays” last month, my $work is kindly tailing us off slowly by offering us one “free day” per month for a few months, to be taken whenever we like.  I took my October free day this past Friday, so this weekend I’ve been enjoying the break.  I’ve only a couple of things to tell you about.

Tonight, all the family except my youngest and I went to a homeschool association teen event, leaving us two to have a father-daughter night.  I took her out to Taco Bell (which for some reason she finds quite exciting), then we came back and she suggested we watch a movie.

Now, the background you must understand is that, a few months back, I quoted something from The Crow to her.  Of those movies which I consider my all-time favorites—I sometimes refer to these as my “top X movies,” since the number only ever increases—one of my main criteria is quotability.  A good movie should provide lots of great quotes that you can bring up in everyday life, such as “buck up, little camper!” or “fuck me gently with a chainsaw” or “screws fall out all the time: the world’s an imperfect place.” I forget exactly which of The Crow’s great quotes I used in this instance (probably “this is the really real world—there ain’t no comin’ back”), but, the point is, my daughter didn’t recognize it: at not quite 10 years old, she’d never seen the movie, of course.  So I suggested we watch it, and, for some reason I can’t recall right now, we were alone at home that night as well.  Now, if you’re going to watch The Crow, you absolutely must watch it at night, with all the lights off.  It’s a very dark movie with a very creepy vibe, so you have to establish the proper atmosphere.  So we fired it up on the big TV, with the sound turned way up, and every possible light extinguished.  And I suppose she was really enamored of this, because, tonight, she requested another “dark movie” night.

So my choice for tonight was Dark City (the director’s cut, natch).  She seemed to enjoy it (as she did the previous choice), and she’s already picked out the next one (The Matrix).  So I suppose it’s become a tradition at this point, and I’ll have to start thinking of even more dark movies for her and I to watch.

The other thing I’ve been working on this weekend is my character for my youngest’s upcoming Witchlight campaign.  My inspiration for this character has been a race from a moderately obscure RPG that I bought but never played (primarily because the mechanics are super-wonky, in my opinion): Earthdawn.  Earthdawn, supposedly set in the same universe as the fantasy post-apocalyptic (and far better known) Shadowrun, had a lot of great fluff ... just not so great on the crunch.  While many of the races are the same in both games, Earthdawn does add a few new options, including a species of swashbuckling dinosaur people: the t’skrang.  This pic should tell you all you need to know about them:

So I had to make up a custom D&D race for them, which I’ve named the tsaagan.  “Tsaagan” is a genus of dinosuars in the raptor family—although it certainly sounds like a fantasy name—and these guys look a lot like raptors.  Plus the “ts” at the beginning is a nice homage to their inspiration.  So far I’ve written up the mechanics (the “crunch”), but not yet the lore (the “fluff”).  But that’s sufficient to get started, I think.  Next up I have to nail down the class, but I’m leaning towards fey wanderer, which seem particularly apropos given the setting.

And that’s all I’ve got for this week’s mostly non-post.  Next time I’ll work on something with a bit more substance.

Short-Form ... Long-Form ... I'm the Content with the Shiny Object

Have you ever been listening to an interview with someone, and they are asked a question, and you think: hey! I have an answer for that.  No?  Maybe it’s just me.

In any event, I was watching an interview with some Twitch streamers, and the interviewer asked why they thought long-form content had become so popular lately.  Many Twitch streams last for hours, and have an audience for the whole time.  You can go to Twitch and watch people play videogames, board games, tabletop roleplaying games, and you can watch them do it for a long time.  Even interviews on Twitch are an hour or two long, compared to the 5 – 10 minutes that you might get on a primetime or late night talk show.  And Twitch is not alone: podcasts can focus on one game or interview for hours, or have limited series that go on for dozens of hours of content.  Turning novels into 2 hour movies is passé: nowadays they are turned into multi-season televsion shows.  Of course, movies themselves are getting longer and longer ... an NPR article puts it like so:

Seven of the year-end top grossers released during the 1980s ran under two hours. But from 1991 to 2000, only three of the top earners were that compact.

Only two year-end box office champs this century have had sub-two-hour run times, and both were animated: Shrek 2 (2004) and Toy Story 3 (2010).

That article decided that movies are getting longer (at least in part) because they’re competing with long streams and television shows, which seems to be begging the question.  More interesting was the answer of the streamers in the interview that prompted this whole meditation: they decided that, in today’s world of being increasingly disconnected from each other, sometimes you just want to experience personal interaction vicariously.  It’s an interesting theory, and probably not entirely wrong.  But I had a different thought.

I’m just old enough to remember movies with intermissions.  They weren’t common even then; a holdover from the intermissions in plays or operas, which could last for 3 – 4 hours.  (Sure, some were shorter, but then some were even longer.)  Long-form content isn’t new, by any means: it’s old.  Like so many things, it’s destined to come around again.  These types of trends tend to be reactionary, in my opinion.

Becuase I’m also old enough to remember, much more clearly, the advent of MTV in the 80s and the growing popularity of quick cuts.  This even has a formal name, apparently: post-classical editing.  It was a stylistic choice, but somehow it became a mandate.  According to Wikipedia, Lawrence Kasdan said in a documentary “that the generation of people who grew up on MTV and 30 second commercials can process information faster, and therefore demand it.” This assumption that the modern audience can’t handle anything long-form without getting bored was so prevalent by the 90s that the brand new “Comedy Channel” (which would eventually become Comedy Central) even anchored its programming with a “show” named “Short Attention Span Theater,” whose title was, so far as I could tell, completely non-ironic.  What it actually was was small snippets of stand-up routines, because obviously no one had the brainpower to sit through a whole stand-up show, right?

Except that I challenge all this conventional wisdom.  Short-form content wasn’t what the audiences demanded.  It was just a reactionary fad, a way for the modern consumer to differentiate themselves from their parents and grandparents, who had sat through Wagner’s Götterdämmerung and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and even It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Lawrence of Arabia, both of which were 3½ hours or more long and written as recently as the 60s.  We were young and hip and cool, so we wanted more stuff packed into less time ... or at least that sounded cool, because it was different.  But you know what always happens: it’s only cool while it’s new, and once everyone is doing it, then it’s old hat and we want something different again.  The magic of “Short Attention Span Theater” (which I watched a lot of) was that you could experience a bunch of different comics in a short time.  The sheer quantity of people I was exposed to in that decade is completly unrivaled by any other time of my life.  But, the thing is, once I discovered someone I liked, I wanted to watch a whole show with them.  Five minutes of Bill Hicks is great, but two hours of Bill Hicks is fucking amazing.  So I thank SAST for all its contributions—not the least of which is introducing us to Jon Stewart—but it was never the endgame.  Just a vehicle to get us there.

And now the pendulum has swung back in the other direction.  Now people are just tired of little short snippets, and sound bites, and quick cuts.  We want substance, and nuance, and we’re perfectly willing to devote the time to get it.  So I think that is the truly the reason why long-form content is so popular now ... just as it was back in the “old” days.

Give it another couple of decades and there’ll be a hot new trend for watching everything at 1.5× speed, or watching two things at the same time, or somesuch.  Or maybe it’ll be simpler than that: maybe everything will go to Talk Soup style summary shows of the long-form content that no one wants to invest the time to actually watch themselves any more.  Who knows?  But time is a flat circle—although perhaps we don’t have to interpret that as pessimistically as True Detective’s Rust Cohle meant it—and everything will come ‘round again.  Eventually.

Isolation Report, Week #63

No long post this time, but I will point out that this week saw the last episode of round 2 of Narrative Telephone.  You may recall my first talking about it back in week 8, again briefly in week 14, and I even gave it a 5-star rating in my pandemic TV roundup part 2.  Well, that was all about round 1.  Now they’ve done round 2, adding guest stars to help them achieve maximum chaos.  This last one was an amazing story kicked off by Aabria Iyengar, which of course the Crticial Role crew butchered beyond recognition.  But you should watch ’em all.  It’s the closest to joy I’ve gotten out of the past year and a half.

• R2E1: Return of the Matt (Matt Mercer starts; Brian W. Foster guests)
• R2E2: Two Brothers, One Coast (Brian W. Foster starts)
• R2E3: The Night Before Winter’s Crest (Laura Bailey starts, Micah Burton guests)
• R2E4: Two Brothers, One Coast (Micah Burton starts)
• R2E5: Questions and Quackery (Liam O’Brien starts, Dani Carr guests)
• R2E6: Familiar Feywild Fables (Dani Carr starts)
• R2E7: Chutney’s Christmas Vacation (Travis Willingham starts, Aabria Iyengar guests)
• R2E8: Of Heists and Horses (Aabria Iyengar starts)

Again, you don’t have to understand anything about Critical Role—or anything about D&D at all—to appreciate these.  It’s just the delight of watching 8 friends (and guests) struggle to recreate what has gone before, and then watch each other fuck it up completely and give each other shit about it.  It’s fun, and it’s funny, and it’s weirdly sweet.  Take happiness where you can find it, especially these days.

P’raps something more substantial next week.

Virus Isolation Report: TV Edition (part 2)

Welcome to the second half of our year’s worth of pandemic television.  For general information on what this is, consult part 1.

You know, the one thing I didn’t mention last week was how I’ve sorted these.  In order to figure out how much time I’ve put into watching all this content (and remember what I said last week: this ain’t even all of it!), I had to come up with rough guesstimates of how many hours each series took up.  Mostly that’s just saying, oh, this show’s episodes are about 45 minutes long (that’s an hour-long network show, minus the commercials), so multiply number of episodes by .75.  Or, this show’s episodes are mostly an hour long, even though some may be shorter or longer, so we’ll just call it episodes == hours.  Once I had hour totals for all the series, I thought it might be fun to just use that to sort them.  So the first half was everything with a total running time of under 8 hours.  Of course, 8 – 10 hours is a common run-time for today’s streaming content: 8 or 10 episodes of a roughly hour-long show with zero commercial breaks is almost a standard season for Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc.  So there were quite a few in that range.  And then there were the show where I watched a whole shit-ton of seasons ...

Basically, what I’m telling you is: hold on to your butts.  Here’s where the numbers get really insane.  (Grand total at the end.)

American Gods S2 (Starz, ~8 hours) ★★

American Gods is the Great Masterpiece of Neil Gaiman, one of my pentagram of literary idols.¹  And American Gods S1 was incredible: one of the shows that proved that televsion shows based on books can both capture the essence of a great novel and offer something new—perhaps not, like True Blood, be better than the source material, but, like Game of Thrones or The Magicians (see below) or Good Omens or The Witcher (see below), bring something different, something valuable.  Then the showrunners got fired, and a bunch of cast members left, and S2 is not the same show.  It still has its moments, of course (I almost gave it 3 stars), but not enough of them, and it just doesn’t do a great job of recovering from the fallout of its troubled production.  Of course, after this season, the showrunners got fired and a bunch of cast members left.  I think I’m going to pass on watching S3.

Goliath S3 (Amazon Prime, ~8 hours) ★★★

The first season of this lawyer show (typically a genre I don’t care for, but the big names of Billy Bob Thornton and William Hurt sucked me in) was great: the mystery was convoluted but understandable, the villains were suitably evil without being unbelievable, and the show had a tendency to swing wildly from really funny to tensely action-packed to bizarrely surreal in an impressive manner that, surprisingly, worked.  The second season was not as good, I thought, but this third one is a half-step up.  Solidly between the first two in terms of quality, I’d say.  Worthwhile to watch the whole thing, if you haven’t yet check it out.

Jack Ryan S2 (Amazon Prime, ~8 hours) ★★★

Tom Clancy, like John Grisham, is one of those authors who writes novels with subject matter that I normally don’t care for.  But the books—and the characters—are so good that I enjoy them anyway.  This adaptation of ... well, I don’t think it’s any of Clancy’s novels in particular; it’s more of a reboot of the Jack Ryan character.  But it’s surprisingly good, and John Krasinski gives the character depth and likeability, which helps overcome the complexity of the plots, which can be ... challenging.  But, overall, pretty good.

Westworld S3 (HBO, ~8 hours) ★★★★

Okay, so the first season of Westworld is, obviously, brilliant.  Like, fucking amazing.  You pretty much have to watch it multiple times to understand what’s going on, and unlike some other shows that mess around with criss-crossing timelines (see also The Witcher, below), the confusion actually adds to the impact of the story.  Then came season 2, and I felt they were just trying to show off at that point.  While the storyling for Thandie Newton’s character was engaging, the rest of it I thought didn’t really benefit from the continued reliance on conflicting timelines: it just muddied things at that point.  Well, season 3 finally abandons that (mostly) and tells a more or less chronologically straight-forward story, but it’s still full of intricacies and subtleties that make it top notch.  The men in the show (Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, and, new for this season, Aaron Paul) are very good.  But it’s the women who really knock it out of the park.  The first season was all about Evan Rachel Wood, and S2 was all about Thandie Newton; well, S3 was, in my opinion, the place where Tessa Thompson got to shine the most.  But Wood and Newton are still great too.  Still not as good as S1, I think, but absolutely worth watching.

Lucifer S5 (Netflix, ~8 hours) ★★★

The story of Lucifer begins with Neil Gaiman, who is, as mentioned above (see American Gods), one of my literary idols.  Lucifer was originally a character in Gaiman’s Sandman, one of the most brilliant examples of graphic storytelling in our lifetime, and one of the two that everyone, regardless of how they feel about comics, really ought to have read.²  Then he had his own comic series, then his own television series, where he was brilliantly portrayed by Tom Ellis, then it got cancelled, because it was on Fox, and Fox cancels everything good.³  But then Netflix picked up what Fox dropped on the floor, and it limps on.  Mostly what’s wrong with show is nothing to do with the acting, which is great, or the characters, who are mostly great (I’ve honestly never been a fan of Chloe, despite the fact that she’s ostensibly the protagonist, even more so than Lucifer himself).  It’s just that this is a tough premise to keep on doing well after all this time, and forcing the two main characters to be “tragically” kept apart when all they want is to be together eventually gets both old and implausible.  Listen, showrunners: when two people finally get together, they can still have interesting lives ... promise!⁴  Anyhow, the show’s still good.  Just ... not as good.

Altered Carbon S2 (Netflix, ~8 hours) ★★★

Very close to a 4, S2 of Altered Carbon, subbing in Anthony Mackie (Falcon from the MCU) for S1’s Joel Kinnaman (more famous in his native Sweden, but seen in a few things in the US, such as House of Cards) continues its transhumanist story of Takeshi Kovacs (same character, new body) with almost as much flair and verve as the first season.  The fight scenes are just as good, and the standout character continues to be the AI Poe (played by Chris Conner, who apparently I don’t know from anything other than a few episodes of Bones), but I think the main plot of S2 tries too hard to be deep, whereas S1 stuck with the whodunnit and left the philosophical meanderings to the setting and the subplots.  I enjoyed it—and especially the addition of Simone Missick (the exquisite Misty Knight from Luke Cage et al)—but I think it’s step down from S1.  Not a big step, but a step nonetheless.

The Boys S2 (Amazon Prime, ~8 hours) ★★★★

Okay, wow.  The Boys is based on a comic by Garth Ennis, and he’s the guy who dreamed up Preacher, so that ought to tell you what you’re in for.  There is a lot of sex, a lot of “good” guys doing terrible things, and a metric shit-ton of blood and guts spattered all over the place.  Not to mention uncomfortable combinations of all the above.  The first season was a hard act to follow, but S2 does a pretty amazing job of it, going more in depth for some of the supporting characters and having some pretty interesting twists.  Just make sure you have a twisted sense of humor and a strong stomach.

The Witcher S1 rewatch (Netflix, ~8 hours) ★★★★

The Witcher, hotly anticipated and much talked about, almost lives up to its hype.  Honestly, I think season 2 really will be the amazing, epic story that season 1 tries to be.  This is the first thing I’ve really liked Henry Cavill in, and he is astoundingly good in it.  The state of the art for fantasy series has advanced significantly since I was a kid, and this one is gorgeous: the monsters are terrifying, the action is thrilling, and the sex is steamy.  My only complaint is that I’m not sure the nonlinear structure is really serving the story here.  I had to watch it twice to get the story straight, and, while it does all fit together in the end, it seems unnecessarily complex.  But still really good, and it makes me excited to see what season 2 has in store.

Narrative Telephone R1 (YouTube, ~8 hours) ★★★★★

This is one of the ideas that the Critical Role cast came up with to do before they figured out how to stream D&D during the pandemic, and it’s difficult to convey just how amazingly hilarious it is.  I already talked about exactly what it is, so I won’t belabor it, but just to reiterate: while most of the stories will be all the more entertaining to fans of their stream, you don’t have to play D&D (or know anything about it) to appreciate the humor here.  Can’t recommend it enough.

The Stand S1 (CBS All Access, ~8½ hours) ★★★★

The original mini-series of Stephen King’s second-biggest masterpiece⁵ was pretty decent, with Molly Ringwald and Gary Sinise as Fran and Stu.  There were some other inspired choices (I liked Laura San Giacomo as Nadine, and espeically Matt Frewer as the Trashcan Man), but overall it wasn’t epic.  This version ... I dunno, I think it almost achieves that.  James Marsden is no Gary Sinise, but Whoopi Goldberg is an amazing choice for Mother Abigail, Greg Kinnear made a surprisingly interesting Glen, and Jovan Adepo (whom you may remember as the younger version of Louis Gosset Jr from HBO’s Watchmen) is a much more intriguing Larry Underwood, who was so forgettable in the 90s series that even now when I looked him up I still couldn’t remember anything about his performance.  But it is perhaps Alexander Skarsgård who really sells this: playing the complex Eric from True Blood has given him an insight, I think, into playing murderous monsters.  Eric, of course, had redeeming qualities, which are all sanded off here, but he’s still sexy and seductive and very, very scary.  Plus the “smaller” parts are filled by amazing people such as Fiona Dourif,⁶ Ezra Miller, J.K. Simmons, and Heather Graham.  Despite being on CBS, it doesn’t really hold back too much on the violence, and I think that’s appropriate for this story.  Overall I was pretty impressed with this version.

Harley Quinn S1 – S2 (HBO, ~9 hours) ★★★★

Remember when I talked about Castlevania and how modern animation is moving toward a lot of sex and (even moreso) ultraviolence?  Well, Harley Quinn (originally on DC Universe) is a primo example.  It’s really weird how, despite being unutterably bloody, this show actually has a very positive message for young girls.  I suppose you’ll need a very special little girl to be able to enjoy something this raunchy and gory with her, but I happen to have one, and, let me tell you: I enjoyed watching this with her immensely.  Pretty much all the male characters are completely useless, and the women do all the interesting things.  Plus the voice acting is stunning: Kaley Cuoco (from The Big Bang Theory; see below) is the main character, but there’s also Lake Bell, Sanaa Lathan, Rachel Dratch, Kaley’s sister Briana, Alan Tudyk, Ron Funches, Tony Hale, J.B. Smoove ... I particularly enjoyed Christopher Meloni’s perpetually-besotted Commissioner Gordon.⁷  Highly recommended for those who enjoy bloody superhero shows (like, say, The Boys, just up above).

Cake S1 – S3 (Hulu, ~9½ hours) ★★★

I started watching Cake because it was the only way to see Dicktown (see last week), but I decided to watch the whole thing.  It’s sort of a modern take on MTV’s Liquid Television, which gave us Æon Flux.  There are super short animated bits, longer (but still fairly short) live-action segments, many of which are recurring, and really bizarre interludes that just sort of make your brain melt.  Like anything of this type, it’s a very mixed bag: some of Quarter Life Poetry is brilliant; Oh Jerome, No is actually kind of touching (eventually); Drifters is often fascinating; Troll: Therapy is often fun.  Then again, Two Pink Doors is just terrible, and Shark Lords is a bridge too far, even for me.  But, overall, I’m not sorry I experienced it.

Blindspot S5 (Hulu, ~10 hours) ★★

Okay, so the sunk cost fallacy really is true for TV shows.  I knew Blindspot was getting terribler as it went on, but I was committed to seeing it through to the end.  Not for the main characters: I like Jamie Alexander well enough, but Jane Doe is just an irksome character, and neither Kurt Weller nor his actor interest me at all.  But Ashley Johnson and Ennis Esmer are the real draw here, and I was happy to see some resolution for the super-sexy nerd whose dad is Bill Nye the Science Guy and the pansexual, so-incapable-of-taking-anything-seriously-that-he-legally-changed-his-name-to-an-Internet-domain guy ... you know, those classic tropes.  The best thing I can say about Blindspot S5?  Well, it’s finally over.

Nightflyers S1 (Netflix, ~10 hours) ★★

The idea of a scifi show based on a book by the same guy that wrote the series Game of Thrones is based on sounds better than it actually turns out to be.  There are a lot of interesting ideas here, but I just didn’t feel like any of them came together that well.  I enjoyed Gretchen Mol (from Boardwalk Empire) and Angus Sampson (from Shut Eye); Jodie Turner-Smith and Maya Eshet I was less familiar with, but found them interesting to watch as well.  I just don’t think the whole thing came together in the end, and it left me feeling a bit underwhelmed.

Hunters S1 (Amazon Prime, ~10 hours) ★★★

This is an amazing, if once again ultraviolent, series, featuring an insane cast: Al Pacino, Saul Rubinek, and Carol Kane have nearly 400 IMDB credits among the three of them, and Josh Radnor (from How I Met Your Mother) and Logan Lerman (from the Percy Jackson films) aren’t too shoddy either.  The story is a bit of a Jewish revenge fantasy, as the families of Holocaust survivors hunt down Nazis living in America.  It’s always satisfying to see Nazis get killed in bloody ways—see also Inglourious Basterds—but, unlike Tarantino’s take on it, this story is much more complex.  Unfortunately, it takes a hard left turn near the end that I’m not sure works completely (or at all).  Still good enough to recommend, however.

Helstrom S1 (Hulu, ~10 hours) ★★★

Many people love Disney+, but I will always hold a grudge against it, because its coming killed all the Marvel TV shows, many of which were fantastic and almost all of which were at least good.  It not only offed all the Netflix shows—Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Punisher—but it also took down several other properties: the magnificent Runaways on Hulu, the interesting Cloak & Dagger on Freeform, and possibly the psychedelic Legion on FX.⁸  And poor Helstom was practically stillborn: killed before it could ever air, stuck debuting with a cliffhanger that can never be resolved.  Still, this extremely unlikely Marvel property (Daimon Hellstrom is the sort-of-superhero Son of Satan, and his sister Satana is a borderline villain, not to mention the whole occult connection practically designed to have evangelicals up in arms) came off pretty decent.  It’s much more of a horror series than a superhero series, but the property is definitely comic-derived, and it embraces that anything-can-happen philosophy.  I enjoyed it, though I thought it could have been better.

Bosch S5 (Amazon Prime, ~10 hours) ★★★★

I discovered Michael Connelly after seeing him in a cameo on Castle.  His books about fictional police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch are an interesting modern take on the hard-boiled detective genre.  So when Amazon Prime decided to do a series based on the books, I was in.  Titus Welliver makes an excellent Bosch, and the series manages to maintain its momentum even this far along.  Partially that’s due to a radically reimagined Chief Irving as portrayed by Lance Reddick, partially it’s due to the character arc acceleration of Maddie Bosch (wonderfully played by Madison Lintz), but I’m guessing mainly it’s just due to fantastic source material.

The Outsider S1 (HBO, ~10 hours) ★★★★★

I was hesitant to watch this one: while I love Stephen King stories, having one dressed up as a police procedural didn’t really seem like a good idea.  Sure, I love ’em both, but, as I’m sometimes fond of saying: I like both spaghetti and ice cream, too, but that doesn’t mean I want to eat them together.  So I put it off for far longer than I should—as it turns out, The Outsider is pretty awesome, and it kicks in fairly early (around episode 2 or so).  Ben Mendelsohn’s cop Ralph is ostensibly the protagonist, but that’s a bit like saying that Mikael Blomkvist is the protagonist of Stig Larsson’s Millenium trilogy.  Sure, he is in many ways the “main” character, but Lisbeth Salander is the real draw—there’s a reason why the English title for the first novel is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and not The Magazine Editor with the Slight Pudge Around the Middle.  Here, Cynthia Erivo plays the Lisbeth Salander character, and I would watch “The Adventures of Holly Gibney, P.I.” all day long.  Great show.

Happy! S2 (Netflix, ~10 hours) ★★★★

There’s a blog post brewing in me about some of the best comic book shows that have little to nothing to do with superheroes, and this show will be near the top of the list of examplars.  What makes a comic book story is not the presence of superheroes; it’s the fact that anything can happen.  In a comic, a preacher, a vampire, and an assassin on a roadtrip to find the missing God is perfectly plausible, as is a boozy, washed-out detective who solves all his problems with violence and is suddenly visited by the all-too-real manifestation of his estranged daughter’s imaginary friend, who is a flying blue unicorn.  That latter is the rough premise of Happy!, although I don’t do it justice with that bland synopsis.⁹  With former Law & Order star Christopher Meloni as the ex-cop and the always delightful Patton Oswalt as the not-so-imaginary Happy, this is another one heavy on the gore, not to mention the massive amounts of smoking, drinking, drugs, and sex.  But it’s a delightful insanity, and S2 is just as weird and whimsical and at the same time action-packed and bloody as S1, plus it’s still delivering on the emotional payoff of the father trying to maintain a connection with a daughter that’s growing up too fast.  You need a particular kink in your brain to enjoy it, but, assuming you’ve got that, you should not miss this one.

The Magicians S5 (Netflix, ~10 hours) ★★★★★

Chris Hardwick once described The Magicians as “Harry Potter for adults,” and that’s not too far off.  In fact, S1 of the show was too much just that: while you might have (rightfully) wondered what the hell kind of high school kids they had at Hogwarts who never even tried to sneak off and have sex, the kids at Brakebills went far beyond mere sex and drugs and rock-and-roll—it seemed like the writers wanted to do horrible things to every main character just for the sheer shock value.  But persevere: by season three, it starts to get amazing, becoming almost more like a scifi show than a fantasy one ... multiple timelines, parallel worlds, time paradoxes, dystopian futures, and small recurring guest roles for genre favorites such as Felicia Day, Jewel Staite, and Matt Frewer.  But, honestly, Margo (the only character to be significantly revamped from the novels, even to the point of a name change) is the reason to stick with it.  Strong, foul-mouthed, unabashed and unafraid, never hesitating to name herself “High King” or tell her companions to “ovary up,” Margo’s amazing journey provides the best character and the most laughs.  This, the show’s final season, does not disappoint.

Lovecraft Country S1 (HBO, ~10 hours) ★★★★★

It’s difficult to describe how awesome this is.  First of all, Lovecraft is such a racist author that it’s difficult to imagine a positive story set in his universe with black protagonists.  I was also a little nervous that the depictions of racsim—and never doubt that the actual horror in this series comes from the white people of the 1950s, not the monsters—would overwhelm the supernatural elements and make the whole thing more depressing than scary.  But I knew that Jordan Peele (here the executive producer) had skillfully woven these two things together before, with Get Out, with Us, and with his deft hand at resurrecting The Twilight Zone.  He’s good, showrunner Misha Green is also good, and this show not only tackles thorny issues of racism and sexism, but does so with complex characters that are never perfect but rarely completely despicable (okay, some of the white people come close), and a veritable shitload of awesome Lovecraftian effects, which kick off right in the first episode and don’t let up until the powerful and satisfying conclusion.  Loved every minute of it.

Umbrella Academy S2 (Netflix, ~10 hours) ★★★★★

I was completely unfamiliar with the comic this show was based on, which was apparently written by the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, of all people.  But it’s fucking brilliant—at least the show is, and I’ve heard that many fans of the comic found the adaptation satisfying.  It’s sort of about superheroes ... but also not really.  Some reviews will try to convince you that it’s all about family, which it is ... but that also sells it remarkably short.  It’s utter surreality, nonsense which makes perfect sense, all wrapped in a time travel story that will make your brain explode but also tracks perfectly when you go back and view it again.  I rewatched S1 almost immediately after watching it the first time through, and nearly did so again before starting S2.¹⁰  S2 builds on the insanity of S1, but also takes it in new directions, and also hops backwards a few decades for the majority of the story.  There’s also a rockstar cast including Ellen Page, Colm Feore, and Mary J. Blige—not to mention the people I only learned of from appearing here, such as the amazing performance of Robert Sheehan, and the nuanced complexity of Aidan Gallagher, playing an adult in a child’s body, something which few can pull off.¹¹  It’s also completely batshit crazy.  And also brilliant.

Legacies S2 (Netflix, ~12 hours) ★★★

Okay, it sometimes happens that a show is crap, and then the spin-off of that show is only partially crap, and then the spin-off of the spin-off is not actually that bad.  Probably not that often, but Legacies, which is a spin-off of the barely tolerable The Originals, which is a spin-off of the execrable Vampire Diaries, is the exception that proves the rule.  Or something like that.  Supernatural teen dramas of course pretty much originate with Buffy, but they’re gaining a lot of popularity right now (The Order and the live-action Winx Club remake spring immediately to mind without even trying) in our post-Harry-Potter-and-Twilight world.  This one is ... watchable.  It’s nothing to write home about, and there’s at least one character that makes you want to drive a spike through her eyeball (I’ll be shocked if it takes you more than one episode to identify which one), but it has its moments.

Jessica Jones S3 (Netflix, ~13 hours) ★★★

The Marvel Netflix shows were all pretty amazing, at least at first.  I even thought Iron Fist was pretty decent, despite all the criticisms.  In the end, what they were building towards (which in my opinion was the inevitable combination of Simone Missick and Jessica Henwick in a show about Knightwing Restorations, which I would have killed for) was another casualty of Disney+ (see also Helstrom, above).  Jessica Jones, who by happenstance is the only superhero from the Marvel Netflix shows that I wasn’t previously familiar with, was surprisingly good in its first season.  Season 2 was a little less good, and by season 3, which is the final season due to the invention of the aforementioned streamining service of The Mouse (for which I will never forgive it), is the least good of all.  Krysten Ritter is still amazing, Carrie-Anne Moss and Eka Darville have interesting character arcs, but I wasn’t happy with Rachel Taylor’s Trish Walker.  Not that Taylor does a bad job ... I blame the writers.  Or possibly double down on blaming Disney Plus—it’s possible that the writers could have pulled it all together given another season (though I doubt it).  But I think I have too much love for the comics version of Patsy Walker to appreciate what JJ S3 is doing here.

The Blacklist S7 (Netflix, ~14½ hours) ★★

Another sunk cost fallacy.  After watching 6 seasons of something, you kind of want to see it through, even if it has been going downhill for a while.  Don’t get me wrong: James Spader is still an excellent actor, and some of the other characters still manage to engage.  But Elizabeth Keen is like Chloe from Lucifer or Jane Doe from Blindspot: I know I’m supposed to like her the best, but I just ... don’t.  Some of these shows should really pull a Good Fight (see last week).  (Interestingly, The Blacklist actually tried this, with its spin-off Redemption.  However, the fix to a weak female protagonist is not to replace her with a male protagonist.  The Good Fight really did this well, since Diane is so much more interesting and complex than Alicia ever was.  Blindspot could take a page as well: I’d watch the adventures of Patterson all day long.¹²)  But I digress, mainly to avoid talking about how depressingly bad Blacklist has gotten.  The last episode of the season, which was unfinished because of the pandemic, was particularly painful to watch.  Showrunners, I’ve a hard truth for you: if the only way you can finish your show is to fill it in with CGI-generated visuals, either leave it unfinished, or actually pay the money for good animation.  The halfway step is not a good look.

Batwoman S1 (HBO, ~15 hours) ★★★

This started out so well.  I adore Ruby Rose in just about everything I’ve ever seen her in,¹³ and she does an amazing job here with a little-known DC property.  Of course, one of the great things about making shows about obscure superheroes is that you can reinvent them without worrying too much about pissing off their fanbase, which is typically very small (though sometimes vocal).  Batwoman here is presented a strong, independent, kick-ass gay woman ... who inexplicably is constantly seeking to get back together with her ex, who is possibly the worst character I’ve ever seen in one of these shows.  I don’t mean the actor does a bad job with her, nor that the character is poorly written: just that she’s a terrible, terrible person.  It’s difficult to like a show when one of the people we’re supposed to be rooting for does more terrible things than the insane super-villain antagoinst.  And the fact that we’re supposed to believe as awesome a character as Kate Kane is (she’s Ruby fucking Rose, for fuck’s sake!) is constantly crawling back to a person who dumped her, lied to her, betrayed her, and tried to get her sister arrested (if we’re being generous) or even killed (she knew perfectly well what was going to happen when she sold out Alice) ... it makes it tougher to love the main character too.  Anyhow, Ruby left after the end of S1, so I’m out too.

The Order S1 – S2 (Netflix, ~15 hours) ★★★

Another one of those supernatural teen dramas (see also Legacies, above), this one is ... also okay.  Is it better than Legacies?  Well, it’s lighter on the teen angst and high school clique drama, so that’s a plus.  It’s giving screen time to the always reliable Matt Frewer, not to mention True Blood’s Sam Trammell and Katharine Isabelle from Ginger Snaps, so it’s nice to see those folks again.  But the actual kids in the show, who should be carrying the plot, are ... I mean, they’re okay.  I don’t have any specific complaints, I suppose, and some individual scenes are very funny.  But overall, it’s just ... okay.

Roll in the Family “The Slumbering Forest” + Holiday Special (YouTube, ~15 hours) ★★★★

Brennan Lee Mulligan is an amazing Dungeon Master, and the kids playing D&D here (along with their parents) are pretty awesome.  Kahlan Walters and Luke Bradford are probably the stand-outs, but Lexi and Maddy are also very fun to watch.  B. Dave Walters is always a treasure, and the other two parents were just fine.  The adventure here is not overly complex, but not dumbed down either.  A fun watch for those who enjoy D&D, or just those who enjoy watching kids have fun with their imaginations.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts S1 – S3 (Netflix, ~15 hours) ★★★★★

Every once in a while you find a “kid’s” show that has surprising depth and emotion.  This animated series on Netflix is about a “burrow girl” living in a future world whose home is destroyed and has to learn to live on the surface with mutated animals (all of whom are either talking or Godzilla-sized) and a world where everything wants to kill soft defenseless humans.  Yet, despite that dystopian description, Kipo is an amazingly fun ride that you can enjoy with your kids and still get sucked in yourself.  The animation is fantastic, the creatures and sets are whimsical and imaginative, the villains have complex motivations, and the ending is satisfying.  Plus lots of fun voices to try to recognize (like Sterling K. Brown and John Hodgman).

Young Justice S1 – S2 (HBO, ~17 hours) ★★★

I originally watched S1 of this show with my kids; S2 goes to a slightly weird place, and the show became harder to find, and we never finished the series.  So, when I discovered it on HBO Max, I thought I might give it another shot.  You have to really like superheroes and comics to fully enjoy this show, but, assuming that’s true, this is a pretty decent show.  It’s a reimagining of the Teen Titans, of which there have been many: two in the comics that I remember (and probably many that came along after I stopped reading), the Cartoon Network series, and the live-action series (see Titans, below).  This one is ... better, in some ways, and, at the very least, inventive.  There’s an angle on Robin that I haven’t seen before, a version of Aqualad with surprising depth, a younger, more earnest Zatanna, and some much-needed injections of diversity.  The plots are complex and interesting, but it really relies on you knowing (or being willing to look up) quite a few different heroes and villains from the comics to truly understand what’s going on most of the time.

Breakout Kings S1 – S2 (Hulu, ~17½ hours) ★★★

With the light that Black Lives Matter has shone upon cop shows this past year,¹⁴ I’m starting to sour on these types of shows.  But I found this one (nearly 10 years old at this point) while scrolling around, desperate for something to watch, and it had Malcolm Goodwin (four years before iZombie) and Jimmi Simpson (five years before Westworld, but actually concurrent with his recurring role on Psych, which I loved), so I figured, how bad could it be?  And it’s not bad.  The focus on the work-release prisoners, and the fact that they don’t devolve into criminal stereotypes, helps a lot, but there’s still several scenes where the cops on the show want to “bend the rules” or rough up a suspect, and you can’t help but cringe.  Still, not the worst such show in the world.

Titans S1 – S2 (HBO, ~18 hours) ★★★

I wanted to like this show ... I really did.  I has a number of interesting deviations from the standard Teen Titans retellings, including reimagining Starfire as a black woman, Hawk and Dove as boyfriend/girlfriend rather than brothers, and an older Robin, post-Batman and fairly disgusted with the whole superhero scene.  But a number of things keep it from reaching its full potential, in my opinion.  First and foremost, a radical shift in tone and plot from S1 to S2 is hard to reconcile; S1 is slow-paced, but that gives us time to learn the characters and what each can do.  S2 decides, fuck it: this is a superhero show, dammit! and takes off at a breakneck speed that can be wearing after a while.  I think budgetary constraints are problematic as well: Beast Boy, for instance, can turn into exactly two beasts, which really makes him far less effective than he should be.  My final analysis: good, but flawed.

Doom Patrol S1 – S2 (HBO, ~24 hours) ★★★★

While the Doom Patrol is a group of superheroes, Doom Patrol is not your typical superhero show ... or your typical any kind of show, for that matter.  Anchored by some magnificent performances by Timothy Dalton, Brenadan Fraser, and Matt Bomer, the real stand-out is the one character I wasn’t familiar with from reading the comics: Crazy Jane, as portrayed with amazing facility by Diane Guerrero.  Created by Grant Morrison (the same twisted mind for responsible for Happy!—see above), Jane came along a few years after I got out of comics.  She seems at first to be a cheap gimmick: she has multiple personalities, and each personality has a different superpower.  But there is surprising depth here, and that is only the beginning of the wonderful weirdness, which includes several alternate dimensions, a talking cockroach (voiced brilliantly by Curtis Armstrong), a sex demon, a chaos magician who uses a mystical cigarette to open portals and is in love with a ghostly floating horse head, and a non-binary sentient piece of urban landscape that can relocate itself at will.  What’s not to love?

Agents of SHIELD S6 – S7 (Netflix, ~26½ hours) ★★★

I used to watch this show religiously, but I somehow lost track of where it was airing during our journey from cable to satellite to full-on cordcutting.  Honestly, I didn’t find S5 to be living up to the high standards set by the first few seasons anyhow, so I wasn’t really missing it.  But, here I was with lots of time to kill, and there were only two more seasons and I could close it out for good ...  And, you know what? these last two seasons are better than the previous two combined.  Not as good as the first two or three, granted, but this is a very strong 3—almost a 4.  (Literally, as I was writing this, I kept looking at those 3 stars and thinking mabye I should change ’em ...)  If you enjoyed the first few seasons but aren’t sure if they could come back strong and finish on a satisfying note, put your mind at ease.  If you never enjoyed the show that much, though, this ain’t gonna turn that around.  But the timehopping in the final season gives them an opportunity to do a lot of creative things, storywise, and I was overall very satisfied with how it all came out.

Sense8 S1 + special + S2 + movie, rewatch (Netflix, ~26½ hours) ★★★★★

There’s something to be said for just giving up and watching something you already watched once, and enjoyed it so much you want to watch it all over again.  I wasn’t quite ambitious enough to do the whole interleaved Buffy and Angel thing again (maybe someday), but rewatching this brilliant, amazing, Netflixed-too-soon show that was a marriage of the creators of The Matrix and the creator of Babylon 5, a show that celebrated diversity, sexuality, and human connection over all else ... that decision was a no-brainer.  While the series conclusion feels rushed (because it totally was: the showrunners had to wrap up two or three seasons’ worth of storylines in one mega-long movie), the show overall is still radiant, and groundbreaking.  All the actors are great, and, while the recasting of Aml Ameen was unfortunate, they handled it well, I thought (Jela tells Capheus he’s “looking a little different these days,” to which Capheus replies: “new barbershop”).  The whole concept of this, as a show, shouldn’t work: 8 main characters—8 simultaneous protagonists!—is too much for an audience to keep up with: you’d either have to strip the characters down to make them completely flat, or else overwhelm the viewer with too much information about them.  The showrunners do neither, using an amazing, interwoven style of storytelling that lets one or two characters shine for an episode while the others’ stories simmer along in the background, waiting their turn to explode into action.  The most brilliant part of this scheme is that you don’t actually have to like all the protagonists to still love the show: personally I find Kala to be too mousy and Riley to be a bit bland, but the dynamism of Nomi and the controlled fury of Sun easily make up for it; Lito’s story is touching, Wolfgang’s dark and gritty, and Will and Capheus are interesting enough.  And the supporting characters!  Freema Agyeman as Amanita is utterly luminous, but Daniela, Felix, and Bug are all great too, and Whispers (Terence Mann, a long way from his Critters days) was the perfect villain.  This show is one of those great experiences that can be emotionally devastating one minute and then completely uplifitng the next.  Just an amazing, amazing show, and one of my favorites of the past decade or two.

Legends of Tomorrow S2 – S5 + crossover episodes (from Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl) (Netflix, ~58 hours) ★★★

I have a thing for obscure superheroes.  I never liked Superman, or Captain America, and Batman and Spider-Man were passing interests at best.  So it’s no surprise that, in the Arrowverse of shows (including Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman—see above), I gravitated right to the one starring the Atom, Firestorm, Hawgirl, and White Canary, as brought together by the super obscure Rip Hunter (Time Master), and throw in Captain Cold and Heatwave for a little Suicide Squad vibe.  Later seasons upped the ante by bringing in folks like Vixen, Steel, and the ever-awesome John Constantine.  This is just good, clean, dimension-hopping, traveling-through-time-to-fix-the-past, sending-monsters-back-to-Hell, superhero fun.  Although it probably wouldn’t play nearly as well for those not as immersed in comics as I once was.  Still, this show manages to be a whole lot of fun (surprisingly, a lot of that fun comes from Dominic Purcell’s gruff but layered portrayal of Heatwave, a very minor villain in DC continuity, but a superstar here), and I felt compelled to watch the whole run (I had watched S1 a while back, before the pandemic started), including biting the bullet and finding just those episodes of Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl that I had to watch to understand all the crossover events.  So it was a lot of content, and I still can’t bring myself to give it a 4 (though I’d say it’s a strong 3), but I don’t regret a minute of it.

The Big Bang Theory S1 – S12 (HBO, ~86½ hours) ★★★

For many years, I only knew of BBT, and so naturally I assumed Sheldon was the protagonist of the show.  Earning my scorn for being overly popular, I finally decided to give it a chance over the pandemic—what better time to binge nearly 100 hours of a 12-year sitcom?  Imagine my surprise to learn that Sheldon is not the protagonist (that would be Leonard); rather Sheldon is the comic relief.  Still, for all its easy jokes and poking fun at nerd culture, it satisfied my two criteria for a long-running comedy: give me characters I can care about, and make me laugh out loud at least once every show.  Oh, and: don’t piss me off.¹⁵  It’s not a great show, but it’s a good one, and I don’t regret the time investment, significant though it was.  I see a lot of my middle child in Sheldon, and a touch of myself in Leonard.  Plus now I adore Mayim Bialik.

So, that’s it!  All told, that’s 725 hours of viewing, if my math is right.  That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 12% of my waking hours, and, as I say: that’s not even considering the Critical Role (which is probably at least another 100 hours), or movies (it would only take 50 or so movies to be yet another hundred hours, and I’d be surprised if I didn’t hit that), shows that I started but never finished, a year’s worth of The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s Late Show ... I’m guessing 1,000 hours in front of the TV is a conservative estimate.  While you guys were fiddling with your sourdough and experimenting with new Zoom backgrounds, I was plowing through some great, and not-so-great, TV shows, mostly with an eye towards fantasy elements ... I freely admit I was hunting escapism with a savage intensity.  They weren’t all successes, but I’m not sorry to have watched very many of them.  They kept my mind off the state of the world, and that was, after all, the ultimate goal.  I think I achieved that much, at least.

I sincerely hope there’s never a need for another round-up like this.  It’s a little depressing to reckon up how much time I lost to what we used to call “the boob tube.” But, as I said at the beginning, we live in a golden age of television, and mindless pablum is slowly disappearing due to lack of oxygen.  Rich, complex, long-form storytelling is in, and I’ve always loved a good story.  There are a lot of shows here that I feel richer for having watched—and a few stinkers, granted—so I try not to beat myself up too much.  But, if I’m serving as a counterpoint to make you feel better about your own time management choices during the pandemic, I’m okay with that too.  We’ve all gotten through it in our own ways.

Here’s hoping that my use of the past perfect tense in that sentence is appropriate.

__________

1 For the record, the Great Masterpieces of the other four are It, Floating Dragon, Strangers, and Imajica.

2 The other being Watchmen.

3 Seriously, why do people even put their show on Fox any more?  They just know that, in a season or two, Fox is gonna cancel them, and then they’ll have a bunch of pissed off fans screaming at them.  Who really thinks that’s worth the hassle?

4 Examples of where this has worked (danger! spoilers ahead!): Farscape, Burn Notice, Chuck, Eureka, Bones.

5 First is, obviously, It.  See earlier footnote.

6 If you haven’t seen her yet in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, you really are doing yourself a disservice.

7 Between this and Happy! (see below), he may be in danger of getting typecast.

8 To be fair, the Legion folks claim they were never going to do more than 3 seasons.  But I’m not sure I buy it.

9 The former, of course, is the equally insane Preacher.

10 When S3 comes out, I may very well do a whole marathon.

11 The only other examples that spring to mind are Alicia Witt in Lynch’s Dune and Kirsten Dunst in Interview with the Vampire.

12 Though Critical Role fans would no doubt crucify me for even suggesting it.

13 Her brief run in Orange Is the New Black is great; her one episode of Dark Matter is even better.  For maximum Ruby Rose awesomeness, however, try The Meg or, even better, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, which may be one of the most satisfying franchise wrap-up movies of all time.  Sure, the Triple-X series is mindless popcorn fare, but it’s good at what it does, and Ruby Rose elevates it even further.

14 I touched on this briefly in last week’s review of Broadchurch.

15 Hear that, Friends?