D&D Story #1: The Demon Doll

You know, the great thing about having your gaming group be comprised of you and your children¹ is that all your D&D stories double as cute kid stories, so perhaps if you reader don’t care for the one aspect, you’ll enjoy the other.  Of course, if you don’t like either one ... well, see you next week, I suppose.

Now, as I explained in my post on game rotation, we’re actually doing a few different games—different campaigns, sometimes whole different systems—and occasionally we put aside one and start a new one.  Mostly this has to do with the sessions that my eldest child runs, because I just keep the two I have going and don’t experiment with new stuff.²  But that one is full of ideas, and every once in a while we just play something new and different for a while ... remember, one of the advantages that I talked about with the game rotation system is that you’re more open to experimental stuff.  Anyhow, the latest experiment is try to play a Pathfinder game.

If you don’t know what Pathfinder is, the short answer is that it’s an offshoot of an older version of D&D.³  The components of roleplaying games (TTRPGs, in any event) typically get divided into two categories: the nitty-gritty, mechanical bits, and the more abstract roleplaying bits like the setting and advice on how to roleplay and that sort of stuff.  Or the crunch and the fluff, as we generally refer to it.  The current version of D&D tends to try to strike a balance of about half-and-half crunch vs fluff, but there are other games which lean hard on the fluff and are pretty crunch-lite⁴ ... and then there are games which are super-crunchy.  Pathfinder is one of those.  That’s mostly why we haven’t tried to play it yet: it’s a lot to take in for our younger players.  But my middle child is ready (mostly), and my youngest has been playing for over a year now, so despite her young age she’s got some real experience under her belt.  So we thought we’d give it a shot.

I eventually came up with a character idea that I thought was pretty hip, and my middle child went with one of their first-ever⁵ non-shapeshifter-centric characters, basing him on the old videogame character Vexx.  But I promised you a cute kid story, so let’s focus on what my youngest came up with.

She’s going to play a young child: specifically, the long-lost brother of her character in the Freak Campaign,⁶ Rose Redd.  His name is Levi,⁷ and he’s 11.  At first, my eldest was none too keen on this plan, not wanting to run a game where they regularly had to put a young child into dangerous situations.  But my youngest persisted, and she explained further.  See, this young boy doesn’t actually fight when there’s trouble.  Instead, he lugs around a stuffed toy that he found (who knows where) on his long travels.⁸  This toy looks like a demon—a fluffy, lumpy, child’s toy version of a demon, granted, but a demon nonetheless.  Horns, red skin, pointy tail ... the whole kit and caboodle.  But it’s beat up: it’s threadbare, one of its eyes is missing, part of its stuffing has fallen out so it’s lopsided and parts of it are a bit flat, and so on.  It definitely doesn’t look menacing, but perhaps a bit creepy ... who thought this was going to make for an adorable children’s toy?  But here’s the dark secret: when Levi is put in danger, this demon doll actually morphs into a full-sized, very real demon, who goes rampaging off and attacks the enemies.  So the demon does all the fighting, while the kid very intelligently stays hidden and safe from danger.  Outside of combat, the kid can contribute in more roleplaying-focussed ways, like helping to solve puzzles or maybe some light scouting (the kid’s got to be very good at remaining unseen to have survived this long), and is probably decent at using his power of cute to make friends.  But, when the swords and spells come out ... so does the demon.

Now, this on its own is a pretty inventive concept.  (For those of you wondering how we plan to implement this mechanically, Pathfinder has a class called a “summoner.” It’s never been my favorite Pathfinder class,⁹ but this is actually one place where it can make sense.  The demon will not be an actual demon, but rather Levi’s “eidolon,” as a summoner’s pet creature is called in the game.)  Is the demon real?  Is it perhaps a protective spirit from some other plane that just somehow got stuck in this unsettling form?  Or maybe it’s a psychic projection of Levi himself, hinting at potential power that might be unlocked someday.  But that’s not even the point of the story.

See, in addition to being wildly inventive, my youngest child is also very crafty.  Like, as in arts-and-crafty.  She’s a maker, is what I’m saying.  And, at some point while we were coming up with all these ideas about Levi’s demon doll and how it would work in the game, she decided to draw it, for reference.  And then she decided she’d just make one.  So she did.

To be clear, she drew that picture all by herself, then (with minimal help from her mother) cut out some fabric pieces, put them together with hot glue, stuffed it with stuffing, then hot-glued all the pieces together, including the button for an eye.  What was once just a vague idea in her head is now an actual, tangible thing in the real world that she can hold on to at the gaming table.  It just blows my mind.

Did I mention she’s only just turned nine?

Anyhow, that’s my D&D story for today.  Or my cute kid story, if you prefer.  Tune in next week for what will probably be a more normal-sized post.

__________

1 For more details, see my post on the Family Campaign.

2 There’s also the game that my youngest—just barely 9 at this point!—runs, but that’s pretty sporadic.

3 And the long answer is: read this.

4 Pretty much any Powered by the Apocalypse game, like Dungeon World, for instance.

5 Outside of one-shots, anyway.

6 Again, see game rotation for (a few) details.

7 Currently.  He’s gone through a few name changes so far.

8 It is yet unclear whether Levi was kidnapped or ran away from home, and, if the former, who took him, or, if the latter, what possessed him to run away at 8 or 9 years old.

9 In fact, given that you summon a creature from a pocket dimension who can look like anyhting and evolves as you get to higher levels, I long ago pegged being a summoner as playing a Pokémon trainer in Pathfinder, and dismissed it outright.  I can tolerate a lot of atypical high fantasy in my D&D—monks, psionics, dinsosaurs ... even guns—but I gotta draw the line somewhere.

Saladosity, Part 18: Egg Salad

[This is the eighteenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start 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.]

(If you need a refresher about my salad-making lingo, go back and review our first salad.)

Well, after six years, I’ve finally gotten to the last salad from my original plan for this series.  Who knew it would take so long?  Well, I suppose pretty much anyone could have predicted it, given my track record.  But, still, it’s nice to finally arrive at the end ... of what I’d originally conceived.  Of course, in six years, one can come up with even more things to blather on about on a given topic, and salad-making—one of the best things to come out of my search to transform my diet into a more healthy one—is a font of boundless ideas.  So perhaps this won’t be the end after all.  But we’ve arrived at an end, so let’s see what awaits us here.

Egg salad.

Now, I hear what you’re saying: egg salad doesn’t count as proper salad!  It’s a sandwich spread, for fuck’s sake!  But there’s where I think you’re wrong.  I always liked egg salad as a kid, and I’ve occasionally tried to buy an egg salad sandwich at various restaurants.  They used to make a pretty decent one in the sandwich joint in our office complex at my last job.  Unfortuantely, they charged $6 for it.  So I didn’t get it very often, and, every time I did, I would shake my head at my own foolishness: I could have made a week’s worth of egg salad sandwiches for myself and still have had a few bucks left over.  And it would have been just as good ... maybe even better.  ‘Cause egg salad is easy to make, and delicious to boot.

But what does it have to with salad, you ask?  Because, despite having the word “salad” right there in the name, egg salad isn’t salad.  I don’t think there’s much debate about that.  But, once I gave up bread (temporarily¹), I started looking for other ways to enjoy things I used to use bread for.  Lettuce-wrapped burgers are just dandy, I found, while hot dogs are great if you use the mustard and relish as a dip.  I invented² “cheesewiches,” which is turkey or ham or whatnot in between two slices of cheese—bread isn’t really needed to enjoy luncheon meat; it’s just there to have something to hold on to to keep you from getting mayo on your fingers.  And, when it comes to egg salad, you can just eat it straight up, no bread required.

Or ...

Or you can actually use it as a salad dressing.  It may sound like a wacky concept at first, but give it a try: I think you’ll find that you like it as much as I do.  All it really does is give your egg salad a little crunch, and, honestly, a lot of egg salad needs crunch.  And, if you think about it, none of the individual ingredients of egg salad are that weird in the context of a salad: we used eggs in our chef’s salad, we used mayo and mustard in our autumnal salad, and salt and pepper is perfectly reasonable on salads.  And that only leaves us with ...

Pickle Relish

Okay, at first you may be thinking: who puts pickle relish in salad?  But, actually, we already did that.  We made Thousand Island dressing for our chef’s salad, and you can’t make Thousand Island dressing without pickle relish.  So, I’ve talked about pickle relish before: both for chef’s salad, and also when discussing buying pickles while shopping for dry goods.  But here’s a refresher:

• Sweet relish is too sweet.  If that’s your thing, feel free to use it, of course.  But we’re not dressing a hot dog here: we’re dressing a salad.  And you don’t need the added sugar.
• Dill pickles have zero calories, zero fat, and zero carbs.  Whether you subscribe to Whole30, Atkins, or Weight Watchers, dill pickles are an entirely free food.
• Dill pickle relish is hard to find, but almost trivial to make.

I actually explained how to make your own pickle relish for the Thousand Island dressing, but I glossed over it quickly because there was a lot more going on there.  I’ll slow it down this time:

• Take your jar of dill pickles that you bought at the store.  Pour out maybe half the juice.  (A little less than half is probably better than a little more in this case.)
• Just dump all the rest of it into your food processor or blender.
• Pulse it until it looks like relish.
• That’s mostly all there is to it, but you may need to stop and stir it all up a few times just to keep the bigger pickle chunks from hiding out in the corners and never getting diced.  And, honestly, you’ll probably still end up with a couple of bigger hunks.  But that’s fine.

And, voilà: pickle relish.  Couldn’t be simpler, really.

Egg Salad “Dressing”

Now we’ll make egg salad.  You don’t have to use this only for salads, of course.  You could put it on bread, if you’re still doing bread occasionally.  Or just eat it straight out of the container: it’s very good.  But give it a try on some veggies.  You’ll be surprised at how well that works.

Here’s all you need:

• 2 hard-boiled eggs (we boiled a bunch for chef’s salad, remember?)
• 2 big spoons of our homemade mayonnaise
• 2 full squirts mustard (I like yellow for this, but you do you)
• 4 little spoons of the pickle relish we made up above
• 2 heavy pinches of salt
• about 10 grinds of black pepper

I like to prepare the eggs the same way I would for making deviled eggs.  Just cut each one in half and pop the yolks out into your bowl.  Take the whites and cut them into big chunks: perhaps four slices the long way and four the short way.  Set the chunks aside.

You might want to use a fork to mash up the yolks a bit, but basically it’s just mixing at that point.  Put the whites in last after everything else is mixed together so they retain their shape a bit.  Tweak the pepper to your taste, but I like a lot of pepper in my eggs.  Remember, a “big spoon” is a tablespon and a “little spoon” is a teaspoon, but I’m talking about the ones you eat out of, not necessarily the exact measurements ... I very rarely measure things when making salad stuff.  Again, we’re talking quick and easy here.  Use the big spoon from the mayo to do the mixing: that saves a dish to clean up afterwards.³  You’ll probably want to use a slotted spoon for the relish to avoid getting too much juice into your egg salad; otherwise you get runny egg salad, which isn’t good for anyone.

Egg salad

As always, you’re ready, and it’s just assembly.  At its simplest, you could just take your base veggies and toss some egg salad on ’em.  (In my dressing parlance, I would advise “heavy”: this is less salad veggies with egg salad dressing and more egg salad with some salad veggies in it.)  But I’ll offer you some helpful tips:

• As always, use whatever type of veggies you like.  However, personally this is one of the very few types of salad where I usually forgo the cucumbers.  You can leave ’em in, of course—they’ll taste perfectly okay—but they’re not adding any crunch, and I don’t find the flavors mesh that well.
• On the other hand, the scallions (or onions, in a pinch) and peppers are great.  You might think it sounds weird at first, but go with it.  The lettuce, of course, is no different than having lettuce on your egg salad sandwich: it’s perfectly lovely.
• The celery is the truly amazing part though.  In fact, what I usually do is add the finely chopped celery directly into the egg salad.  Even when I’m eating the egg salad in other contexts, that celery really kicks it up a notch.
• For a truly fancy egg salad, see if you can find some watercress.  I personally can’t ever find any, but I had bought some egg salad once from a grocery store, at the butcher counter where you can buy meats or potato salad and stuff like that by the pound, and they were selling egg salad that they made fresh right there, and it had watercress in it, and it was awesome.  One day I’m going to find some watercress at some grocery store I go to and I’m going to buy a whole bunch of it and take it home and make massive batches of egg salad with it.  If you’re gonna dream, dream big, I always say.

And that’s all there is to it.  Salad with egg salad (egg salad salad?) is surprisingly good, surprisingly healthy (if you made the mayo and the pickle relish as I suggsted, there’s zero sugar and very few carbs⁴), and, if you enjoyed egg salad as a kid like I did, kind of nostalgic.  But also with a crunchier, more sophisticated taste that lets you know you’re not just easting kid stuff.  It’s a win-win.

Next time, we’ll look back over what’s changed with my salad-making procedures over the past six years.  And maybe even toss in a bonus salad or two.

__________

1 This was part of doing my take on Whole30, you may recall.

2 Probably not.

3 And you can even use it to eat your salad with afterwards.  I eat most of my salads with a spoon because I hate chasing bits of veggie around a bowl, but this one in particular is more of a spoon-type affair.

4 Technically, egg yolks have some carbs.  Just not very many.

Isolation Report, Week #59

This week saw a few things to give us hope.

Firstly and most crucially, the man who murdered George Floyd was found guilty.  The news told us that it was the first time in all of Minnesota’s history that a white police officer was convicted of killing a black man, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it weren’t the first instance of that in our whole country ... or at least one of the first.^*  Coupled with a recent story of a black female officer who had been fired for stopping a white officer from killing a black suspect and finally won her lawsuit restoring her back pay and pension,^** could this indicate things are actually changing for the better?  It’s hard to say.  Certainly we can’t say things are all better now.  Certainly we have much farther to go.  But a journey of a thousand miles, as they say, starts with a single step.  Even if all we have for now is that step, surely that’s still a good sign ... right?

As far as the actual pandemic goes, the vaccines are here, and finally it’s getting easier to get them.  In our household, there’s one appointment made, and one actual initial dose received—just earlier today, in fact.  That’s progress toward an inevitable state of full vaccination for all the humans here in the house.  Still, I wonder ... even after we’re all vaccinated, will things then be back to “normal”?  Being vaccinated, they say, doesn’t preclude you from potentially infecting others, so you still need to wear the masks.  And the virus has several new mutations: will the vaccine protect against those?  Even if you believe so, will you have enough faith in that to put yourself in a crowded space full of potential disease vectors?  Because it’s not just COVID-19, you know ... more COVIDs will come, and completely other diseases ... swine flus, avian flus, ebolas, zikas.  Maybe it’ll just be safer to stay home.  We have Amazon, and food delivery, and a biweekly veggie box.  We have five or six streaming services and a lot of videogames.  We have a decent Internet connection and no office to go back to any time in the foreseeable future.  Maybe this is the new normal.

I hope not.  But, as my mom was fond of saying when I was a kid: wish in one hand, shit in the other—see which one gets full first.  So I’ll continue to hope, but I won’t hold my breath or anything.

__________

* An article from USA Today suggests it might be the sixth.  In our 250-year history.

** This actually happened last week, but this week’s events put me in mind of it.

80s My Way II

"And Now You Find Yourself in '82 (1982 Part 1)"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the series introduction for general background; you may also want to check out the mix introduction for more detailed background.

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 covered 1979 ~ 1981, and there was alternative music aplenty, but it was just getting started, and there was plenty of borderline mainstream music as well.  And now, as Asia so eloquently puts it, we find ourselves in ‘82, the first year on the 80s mix where there was just so much damn music it required two volumes to hold it all.

Because, you see, 1982 is when alternative really exploded.  Oh, sure, there was still some not-quite-alt out there, presaging the takeover, like “Maneater” by Hall & Oates, whose blue-eyed soul sound would be fully transmogrified into alt-adjacent by the time they got to 1984’s Big Bam Boom.  While I truly loved that latter album, “Maneater” was truly a sign for me: the folks who had been singing “Sara Smile” and “Kiss on My List” were doing ... this.  And this was different.  I’m not sure Tommy Tutone’s post-punk anthem “Jenny” was much different from what the Knack had already been doing for a few years at that point, but it was certainly different from the rest of the radio fare at the time.  And I’ll never forget hearing “Voyeur” by Kim Carnes—this was nothing like her previous hit “Bette Davis Eyes,” and it suffered on the charts for it, but I was fascinated.  This was adjacent to Kim Wilde: buzzing guitars, subtle synth ... an almost new wave feel.

And even Asia, whose line from their ultra-excellent “Heat of the Moment” was too perfect not to use as our volume title, was a supergroup of prog-rock stars.  Combining former members of Yes, King Crimson, the Buggles, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, they somehow produced a sound that was beyond prog-rock and almost beyond description.  It was operatic in a new and exciting way; it wasn’t glam metal, though I might argue that Bon Jovi and Whitesnake would owe a lot to Asia; it wasn’t stadum rock, although it had nods to Foreigner and Styx at their most bombastic; it wasn’t synth pop, though there are strong synt throughlines in nearly every song.  Asia is such an amazing album, in fact, that it was tempting to include one of the other, lesser-known songs off of it: “Only Time Will Tell” and “Sole Survivor” were almost as big as “Heat,” but “Time Again” and “Wildest Dreams” are nearly as good, and yet criminally unremembered by most.  No, not quite alternative, but still exciting.

But some of the biggest true alternative songs ever appeared in 1982.  After the Fire was a one-hit wonder from Britain who took a minor German-langauge hit from Falco (who of course would later go on to be a one-hit wonder of his own with “Rock Me Amadeus”), rewrote the song in English retaining essentially none of the meaning, and turned it into a synth-heavy, sing-songy, pseudo-rap with intellectual lyrics like “she said ‘babe you know I miss you and Joe and all my funky friends’,” but somewhow it all came together.  “Der Kommissar” is certainly the height of ATF’s artistry, but, if you’re into synth pop like I am, see if you can find one of their compilation ablums: “Laser Love” is goofy fun, and “Dancing in the Shadows” is nearly as good as “Kommissar.” This was also the year we were introduced to the glory of Boy George and Culture Club, and “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya” will always have a place in my heart as a poppy, fun tune that was so different from everything else on the radio at that time.  But the pinnacle of synth pop for me will always be Yazoo, and 1982 was when I first heard “Situation,” which would lead me to Upstairs at Eric’s, which continues to be one my all-time favorite albums.  “Situation” isn’t even my favorite track off that album—probably not even in the top 5, really—but it was my intro, and it deserves its spot as closer here.

There are 3 songs that I put back-to-back here because they are somehow linked inextricably in my mind.  The first is “I Eat Cannibals” by Toto Coelo, which was only a minor hit in the US, but I remember hearing it and thinking, “what the fuck is this?” But in a good way, you know?  That sort of female-fronted new wave was also behind Toni Basil’s bizarre breakout hit “Mickey.” Basil is older than my mother, and had been recording music as long as I’d been alive by the time she managed to fit into her high school cheerleader uniform for the video for this pop gem that seeped into our collective unconscious to the point where it might actually be the only song to be both parodied by Weird Al and featured in a Wayne’s World movie.  But what really puts the icing on the cake is the power punk (and percussion) of Bow Wow Wow, with just enough new wave that their remake of a 1965 early rock song sits in my brainspace right next to the other two.  Annabelle Lwin’s voice, backed by the former Ants (as in “Adam and the”), is always going to be a mainstay of 80s music for me.

But the true breakout of 1982 was no doubt A Flock of Seagulls, whose “I Ran” is so emblematic of the 80s that it will forever appear on every 80s compilation record until the end of time.  While I still say Gary Numan defines the sound of new wave,¹ AFoS comes pretty damned close.  They elevated it from a fringe sound to something that could carry the pop airwaves, certainly.  They were not one-hit wonders (both “Space Age Love Song” and “Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)” were top 40 hits in the US, and actually beat “I Ran” in the UK), but “I Ran” is the one which most embodies my 80s self.  There was never any doubt that it would be featured here.

I first heard “Talk Talk” as a freshman in college, so I was two years too late to have enjoyed them at the time.  The Party’s Over is an interesting synth-pop artifact of the time, reminiscent of the Human League’s Dare.  Although “It’s My Life” was more familiar to me from the radio, I have a great fondness for the eponymous song title and the surreal cover art of the album.  Other new wave classics that I had to spotlight include Sparks’ weird and wonderful “I Predict,”² the amazing Motels’ ultra-classic “Only the Lonely,” the peppy “I Know What Boys Like” by the Waitresses (whose songwriter Chris Butler would write the theme song for another 1982 milestone, Square Pegs³), and of course we mustn’t forget the Psych Furs.  Like “Talk Talk,” I only heard “Love My Way” after the fact; I totally missed the Furs’ existence until Pretty in Pink, when John Hughes introduced them to me along with the rest of the world.  But, as I began digging through their back catalog, I discovered quite a few gems, including this one.

80's My Way II
[ And Now You Find Yourself in '82 (1982 Pt 1) ]

“Der Kommissar” by After the Fire, off ATF [Compilation]⁴
“867-5309/Jenny” by Tommy Tutone [Single]
“Heat of the Moment” by Asia, off Asia
“Maneater” by Hall & Oates, off H2O
“Voyeur” by Kim Carnes [Single]
“I Eat Cannibals” by Toto Coelo [Single]
“Mickey” by Toni Basil [Single]⁵
“I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow, off The Best of Bow Wow Wow [Compilation]⁶
“I Predict” by Sparks, off Angst in My Pants
“Talk Talk” by Talk Talk, off The Party's Over
“I Ran” by A Flock of Seagulls, off A Flock of Seagulls
“Only the Lonely” by the Motels, off All Four One
“Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs, off All of This and Nothing [Compilation]
“I Know What Boys Like” by the Waitresses [Single]
“Puttin' on the Ritz [single version]” by Taco [Single]⁷
“Best Years of Our Lives [7" version]” by Modern Romance, off The Platinum Collection [Compilation]
“1999” by Prince, off 1999
“I'll Tumble 4 Ya” by Culture Club, off Kissing to Be Clever
“Stray Cat Strut” by Stray Cats, off Built for Speed
“Situation” by Yazoo, off Upstairs at Eric's

Total:  20 tracks,  77:51

As usual, “unexpected” is a difficult label to apply to a mix that’s all about the 80s, but I’ll apply it to Modern Romance.  I theoretically discovered them while searching for songs for Salsatic Vibrato,⁸ but as soon as I heard “Best Years of Our Lives,” it felt familiar in a very visceral way.  I’m sure I must have heard it at some point, even though it was never a hit in the US (but, strangely, their biggest hit in the UK, going all the way to #4).  Was this song ever a part of my 80s?  Maybe; maybe not.  But it’s such a damned great song, I knew I had to include it here.

Then we have Prince.  Some people might not consider Prince’s music to be alternative, but what else can you call it?  It wasn’t funk, or soul, or hip-hop, though it had touches of all those things.  Along with flashes of hard rock or even metal; synth pop, power pop, and just flat-out pop; and maybe even a bit of new wave or post-punk here and there.  Prince’s music really isn’t anything but itself, and, the first time I heard “1999,” I was blown away.  I bought that album and listened to it throughout the 80s, and it will always be a huge part of that decade for me.  I loved “Delirious,” and “Little Red Corvette,” and “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” and “All the Critics Love U in New York,” and what is probably the synth-poppiest Prince song ever, “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute),” but “1999” always had something extra that called to me, so it gets pride of place here.

Just as Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” doesn’t owe too much to the Strangeloves, so too is “Puttin’ On the Ritz” fairly well divorced from the Fred Astaire “original.”⁹  This synthy, thoroughly new wave reimagining was a one-hit wonder for a Dutch singer born in Indonesia who became famous in Germany.  But this sort of musical reinvention is a big part of what the 80s were all about.

And speaking of that: Brian Setzer today is a huge part of the retro-swing movement, and we’ve seen him on practically every volume of Salsatic Vibrato.  But we must never forget that he started out as retro-rockabilly, and that the Stray Cats were one of the first bands to actually make the style popular.  That would pave the way for psychobilly bands like the Cramps and the Reverend Horton Heat, some of which preceded the Cats, but were mostly unheard of before “Stray Cat Strut” came along.  Built for Speed was not truly rockabilly, any more than Americana Deluxe was truly swing, or Hot was truly hot jazz.  But it was an update of the sound for modern ears, exposing us to what our parents had enjoyed about the style while also tweaking it and telling us, here’s something that’s cool, even while it’s old.

Next time, we’ll return to that smoky, noir-lit acid trip for a sixth time.

⇐ 80s My Way I

80s My Way III ⇒

__________

1 I said that in talking about Totally Different Head, which you should also check out if you’re a fan of 80’s new wave and post-punk.

2 Once again, see Totally Different Head for a more in-depth discussion of this bizarre little track.

3 Whence cometh the very name of Totally Different Head.

4 The US version of this album is damnably hard to come by, but the UK release (called Der Kommissar) contains most of the same songs.  Or, you know: just grab the one song off YouTube.

5 The single is awesome, of course (and easy to find), but if you can possibly get your hands on Word of Mouth, you really should treat yourself.

6 There are also newer “best of” compilations that you can get your hands on; they all have fewer tracks, but you’ll get most of the good stuff.

7 Be careful not to get the album version.  It’s longer and not better.

8 We’ll hear their insanely catchy “Don’t Stop That Crazy Rhythm” when we get to Salsatic Vibrato VIII.

9 I put “original” in quotes because technically Harry Richman’s version came first, even if Astaire’s was the better-known.

Another week for wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming

Another tough week: I was sick a few days, and that $work project stubbornly refuses to be put to bed.  And, after spewing out nearly 12,000 words for those pandemic TV roundup posts, I’m feeling satisfied enough with my output to take a break for another week.  So I shall.

Word lag

Over the past two posts, I’ve written enough words for close to 8 normal-sized posts, so you get nothing this week (and possibly not next week either, if I’m being honest).  Plus it’s my baby girl’s birthday weekend, and, as awesome as you are, dear reader, you cannot compete with her power of cute.  So sorry; sucks to be you.

Let’s see what happens next week, shall we?

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?