"Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous" Season Four Reviews (Spoilers)
Also reviews for the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery, the season finale of Doctor Who, the latest episodes of Hawkeye, Spidey And His Amazing Friends, Young Justice: Phantoms, Teen Titans Go!, The Flash, The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo, and The Blacklist, and the novels Jurassic Park, and Holes.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Beneath The Surface"
That was good, but I'm questioning why I'm still watching the show. I'm as tired of dinosaurs as the campers are, and feel every inch of their frustration and fear. It never freaking ends, and dinosaurs never shut it off. But that's the premise of the show, so I'm wondering why I'm still here.
Sheesh. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "At Least...."
Sabretooth tiger? This franchise is really reaching.
That primal scream scene was beyond lame. Embarrassing, actually.
Invisible compound? Like I said. The show is reaching.
Didn't like it. *1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Turning Dr. Turner"
Talking robot dinosaurs? Like I said, really reaching.
Man, Yaz is kind of pathetic. What kind of hot mess do you have to be to be rejected by Ben? Yeah, he misread things completely. But that should NOT have been his reaction to her if she was actually coming on to him. Embarrassing.
The inventor of the Brad is a total brat.
Eh. **1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Rude Awakening"
I think it's good they are exploring PTSD, but you can't just pick and choose that specific psychology. Yaz suffering from that so severely here is inconsistent with her jokey and flirty demeanor in the previous episode. What kills me is they could have explored this exact premise with Ben and it would be consistent.
I'm with Yaz in being upset that the kids missed their ride for helping a dinosaur. After all that? Screw the dinosaurs. And screw Darius for always screwing over his friends and always convincing them to do the wrong thing that is against their own self-interest. These dinosaurs shouldn't even exist. They are a literal abomination. Darius wanting to freaking HELP them makes him the most annoying and useless character on the show. I've come to loathe the little creep.
I'm glad trauma is being explored. I am not glad that Darius has still yet to really be called on his crap. This is getting old and he keeps screwing over the group time and again. **1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "The Long Game"
I disagree with many of the conclusions the episode made. Yes, Sammy had little chance if she confronted Kash by herself. But nobody in cartoons like this ever does the obvious. Maybe it's because they're kids, and it's forgivable. But I think this season could have been REALLY short if I were in charge of those kids and not an idiot like Darius.
There are 6 of the kids. Kash is most dangerous when he's giving orders to the robots. If I were in charge of the kids, I'd 6 on 1 bum-rush him and knock him the hell out. Yeah, there were two Brads there at the time. But they had to confront them anyways, along with some uninvited Raptors. Bad guys like Kash can be thumped thoroughly and good if you take them down FAST. (This is also what superheroes needed to be doing to Amazo, Taskmaster, and the Super Adaptoid). They wouldn't need to be playing The Long Game if they had the wits to play the Take 'Em Down Hard And Fast Game. One big problem with my idea is that it would be majorly, majorly violent, and this is a kids show. But still, I don't think Sammy was wrong for wanting to confront and take down Kash when she did. She just needed proper back-up and a quickly put-together plan.
I mentioned I've come to loathe Darius this season. No sooner had I written that than this kid decides for all the kids they have to stay and the protect the dinosaurs and they can't leave until the job is done. In fact, one of the reasons I felt supportive of Sammy doing what she felt was right, is that all of the kids have been far too deferential to Darius' insipid wants and needs to their own sorrow. If Darius think some righteous payback is a bad idea, that means it's probably actually a good one. The pained look at Yaz's face as he said that made me loathe the stinker even more than I already do.
Ben continues to be the series' most valuable player, and the only one of the kids to get in an actual win by spying on Kash and observing he's got a phone. Do I find Ben's "Nature Boy" shtick obnoxious? Yes. But none of the rest of those dumb kids thought to tail Kash.
If I were Darius, I'd be calling "Dogpile on Kash!" and the season is over. Because Darius is Darius instead, this crap will never end. **1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Mission Critical"
I'm digging this. I've been mentioning what a little turd Darius is. That might be the point of the season. Him having no idea his friends were experiencing nightmares and trauma suggests it's possible he might be about to learn about thoughtfulness and doing what is best for others rather than his own wants and needs. The jury is still out there, and the series could still mess it up, but this was the step in the right direction.
I bet there will be a ton of people upset over how underwhelming the Brads are. Their scanning capabilities are laughable. They always miss their shooting targets unless an actual person is actually aiming them. And they seem to be super easy to destroy. But I actually find that quite realistic. And it's a bit comforting to me too as someone who didn't believe they belonged in the franchise. Jurassic Park may be science fiction, but it's set in the present. And present day robots are startlingly ineffective. Almost every robot currently in service in the world has only a single function, because mankind has not developed the robotics technology to make them capable of more than one thing. The fact that the Brads suck and don't work as they are supposed to isn't a case of the writers making overly incompetent villains. It's a case of them making more realistic present day technology. And I totally approve of that.
The ending of Darius' brother realizing he was alive was pretty cool.
We'll see how things go, but this is the right path forward. ****.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Staying Alive"
Darius isn't a very good liar, but fortunately he doesn't need to be because Kash is both a narcissist and an idiot.
That huge dinosaur was legit scary. Gave me the willies. Took care of the sabretooth tiger though.
Pretty good. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Technical Difficulties"
Not the baby dinos!
Finding out none of the chips worked sort of made the adventure feel pointless, didn't it? Oh well. At least the kids have a way to talk to Darius now.
Pretty good. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Dino-Sitting"
Those baby dinos sure are cute.
Kash is an underwhelming villain simply because he still hasn't figured out that Darius has accomplices. It's pretty obvious when you think about it. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Taking Control"
Oh my God, Bumpy at the end is totally Seymour from Futurama! What a great, sad, and unexpected update.
The action on this show continues to be top-notch. I feel like Fast & Furious Spy Racers' tone is totally outside of that franchise. But the scary dinosaur scenes on this show are pure Jurassic Park even if the Dreamworks Animation dialogue is as clunky as Spy Racers.
And also maybe I should amend that. The dialogue may not be great here, but it's nowhere NEAR as clunky as Spy Racers. ****.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Who's The Boss?"
Great ending. Kenji's dad is the Big Bad? That solves quite a few problems. And opens up a ton of new ones. I'm predicting next season is the last. That's a pretty great hook.
The best thing is that him being a villain sort of explains Kenji's pampered and spoiled attitude from the first and second seasons. If he seemed like a spoiled, entitled jerk in the beginning, that's simply how he was raised. I love how perfectly that fits his arc thematically in hindsight.
I also want to give the show a shout-out for being the scariest U.S. kids show in existence. Arguably Doctor Who from the U.K. is scarier. But not every single episode. This show's scares and tension are legit, and pretty consistent episode to episode too.
On the negative side I want to kick the kids for not setting a guard or two on Kash. They are really bad at this.
That was probably the best ending for a season so far. I'll grade the episode accordingly, even if it wasn't actually perfect. *****.
Star Trek: Discovery "All Is Possible"
One thing I think I need to address about the Kurtzman era of the show. And I don't think the current stuff gets enough credit for it. But the way the characters deal with things like grief and conflict are far healthier and more realistic than they were during the Roddenberry and Berman eras. For the Roddenberry era in particular, I think a lot of ideas about psychology on The Next Generation were outright harmful. Star Trek was envisioned to be about conflict resolution. And I think that for much of its tenure, most of the characters resolved their problems the wrong way. The notable exception being Deep Space Nine. But even I don't think the characters there are quite as emotionally healthy and self-aware as the characters on Star Trek: Discovery, and weirdly Star Trek: Picard, which takes place only a couple of decades later.
I was not digging the Starfleet Academy mission, until Adira reveals the Orion kid's dad was a civil rights activist, and stood up for people like the alien guy with the grievance. That put the entire thing in a different perspective, which I like. You can say it's unrealistic that the Orion kid coincidentally has a historic amazing father to give him that kind of credibility. It's unrealistic for us, sure. For Star Trek? Starfleet Academy is supposed to be for the best and brightest. That specific martyr's kid gaining acceptance as a legacy is totally on-brand for it, especially since Starfleet is sort of currently in the business of rehabilitating its tattered image. The Orion grouses that Orions have to do everything twice as good just to be accepted. And that's probably the only reason he's in the Academy to begin with.
I like the stuff with Culber and Book. I especially like that Culber acknowledges that he really shouldn't be talking about his past with Book, as it's unprofessional. But the truth is, what was truly unprofessional was the Enterprise bridge crew having therapy sessions with Troi and hanging out with her outside of office hours. Culber acknowledges that it's not ideal to have a therapist you know in your outside life. But there need to be allowances on a starship. I don't necessarily agree with that logic, but it beats the Roddenberry issue, because the conflict is brought up instead of crazily ignored as if it weren't an actual issue. Regardless of whatever nonsense Gene Roddenberry believed, society and how people interact with each other can change. People themselves cannot. And I want a future where I can recognize myself in the characters who have got their crap together and live in a nice Universe. I find the humans on four of the first five Star Trek series far more alien than most of the aliens the producers used as surrogates for other groups of people.
Speaking of which, I like the idea that Bajor, Earth, and Cardassia are all at peace with other. Those alien features on the President's face told me good things had happened between Star Trek: Picard and this, and it's good to learn those specific conflicts were totally squashed. Particularly rewarding as a Deep Space Nine fan.
I like that the Navar President likes Saru. Is she actually into him? I would prefer not, because I think it would be refreshing if the reason she is taken with him is because she senses and appreciates the serenity he gives off. The character was a bit nervous and frayed in the first two seasons. It's sort of cool how he's evolved into The Sage of the ship. And possibly now the Federation.
Where did I stand on the conflict between Navar and the Federation? I thought the Federation's position was unfair. But what got me was that it wasn't just Navar it was unfair to. And Burnham and Saru's solution of setting up a bipartisan council to make the Federation accountable to ALL its members, not just Navar, was great. Navar's demand is not unreasonable under the circumstances. It was a good thing and rejected because other worlds would want it. That meant the idea was actually sound, and the solution was making something like it available for everyone, not just Navar. Now it's not an exception. It's the way they do business going forward.
I hope Mary Wiseman hasn't left the show. Discovery is VERY based around Starfleet Headquarters so I very much hope Tilly is still a series regular. But I think the thing I appreciated about her being offered to teach at the Academy was what the Starfleet guy played by David Cronenberg told her. That specific character, introduced last season, was interesting, because frankly, I never trusted him. He was far too close to the Section 31 drama, and he never seemed to like or warm up to our crew. When he describes here that he and most of Starfleet distrusted the crew of Discovery because they seemed to believe a better future was possible, that made me like him. The specific words he said about that were, "It stung." And frankly, I have never heard that idea or anything like it verbalized that way on the first five Star Trek series. And it makes the characters recognizable, relatable, and yes, human. And that's what Star Trek should be.
Do I blame Gene Roddenberry for failing his ideals about how people in the future should interact with each other and make friends with new species? No. For the most part (and I don't count the first season of Next Gen which was terrible) they were sound for the era they were created in (the 1960's). The reason Star Trek became stagnant and less relevant is because when humanity itself made real-world progress on psychology and bigotry, Star Trek refused to course correct and stuck to Roddenberry's old ideas and opinions, even if they were completely dated. With the possible exception of Garak on Deep Space Nine (who was never actually outed, and in fact placed in an awkward doomed romance with a female character) there was not a single gay character on the first five Star Trek series. And Enterprise ended in 2005. Think about that. As late as 2005, gay people had zero representation in Star Trek. So you can badmouth me for talking smack about Roddenberry's ideals, but that fact means that Kurtzman's course-correcting there with gay and transgender characters in the new stuff means the humans in Star Trek now have full representation. And I think that's a very good thing.
It was a very talky week. But it's Star Trek. Talky episodes are best. ****.
Doctor Who "Flux: Chapter Six: The Vanquishers"
On some level, I'm disappointed, but on another I'm not. While it was not the potential mindscrew the series has always been promising (but never delivering), I felt like it ended the "right" way, although the fob watch in the TARDIS raised questions. Did she get the memories back or not? It's suggested that when she's made whole that was what she's referring to, but that could have just meant her three selves merging. The fob watch in the TARDIS buys back a bit of the satisfaction I felt about believing she regained the memories.
And if she did, the series did it the right way. She gets her answers, fulfilling the arc of the season, but she doesn't share them with us the audience, thereby preserving the hook and mystique of the series.
I found Jericho's death particularly pointless and bittersweet which was kind of the selling point of doing it. Whatever else HE thought about his place in the Universe, HE personally did not believe he went out like a punk. And that soothes it a bit even if I think he's wrong. I get why he thinks that at least.
Speaking of pointless, I thought killing the entire race of dogs was a terrible move, and something Russell T Davies would have done at his worst. The survivor howling is even as unintentionally comical as a LOT of similar Davies stuff during his tenure and Torchwood. My biggest objection is that as far as bad guys go, the Sontarans are comical, and on some level lovable. The whole obsession with chocolate is a case in point. The problem with doing that is I will never view the Sontarans as comical as they used to be ever again. Yeah, it was a bold and dramatic move. That permanently made the long-term health of the show MUCH worse, which is Davies in a nutshell. I'm alarmed to see Chibnall doing that specific thing and embracing that kind of storytelling. It makes me worry about the New Year's special.
I love Thirteen empowering the 19th Century British guy and basically telling him everything he had waited his entire life to hear.
Vinder's revenge on the Grand Serpent was pretty great, simply because it wasn't lethally horrible, and thus actually sanctioned by the Doctor. That meant I was allowed to approve of it too.
Is Kate in the New Year's special? If not this really IS the last time she'll see this Regeneration again.
Do I wish that was mindblowing? Sort of. But it is also totally in-character for the Chibnall era to not going absolutely nuts and sidetracked with flashy nonsense. Regardless of whether or not the story actually blew my mind (it didn't) it was still at least told in the manner it SHOULD have been told. And it's perhaps the first finale I can remember that did that. That's not nothing. ****.
Hawkeye "Partners, Am I Right?"
Oh, man, I suspect I'm gonna court a little trouble with this review. Because I didn't like the ending. I liked (and loved) everything else. But I was unimpressed with the ending. And when you hear my reasoning you'll probably think "Oh, Matt is just complaining for the sake of complaining again and simply likes to hear / read his own voice / prose." And I don't have too much vanity to admit that's what a lot of my negative reviews actually boil down to, but I hope you'll indulge my disliking the ending here, because this review isn't actually a negative one. I thought the rest of the episode was great. But when Yelena showed up, I cringed. Because the story isn't about her, and I don't want it to turn into that, and it inevitably will.
And fanboys who love that surprise twist will be pissed at me for not digging it, because it was totally properly set up at the end of the Black Widow movie, and it would be weird if she didn't actually pop up here. And I know that, but because the rest of the series wasn't really about or dealing with the Black Widow tag, I feel like this bit of Marvel synergy is less properly set-up, and more tacked on. And I shouldn't feel that way, especially since a large part of Clint's arc on the series is about his guilt over his responsibility over Natasha's death. Yelena should fit in thematically like a glove. But because they did the cliched "surprise twist", she doesn't. I'm not saying Yelena doesn't belong on this show. She clearly does. I just don't like her showing up out of nowhere and turning the series in all about her. That's not fair to the solid Clint arc, that I'm already having a hard time processing and forgiving.
Also, Maya's grudge is real, Yelena's is fake. So they shouldn't be teaming up as the melodrama in their arcs with Clint is totally unequal. Maybe that's the point, and Yelena will come around eventually and team up with Clint. But, man, that's unnecessarily messy, and this kind of messiness is the precise reason I was not on-board with Clint killing Maya's sweet father. This is not the sort of issue that should be confused for the viewer. And speaking as a viewer, my feelings are very conflicted and confused.
Did I mention the rest of the episode was great? I'll tell you what confusion I liked and appreciated feeling: When Jack is goofily dancing around Kate's mother and sweeping her off her feet. Kate actually LIKES him in that moment, even after everything else because she's never seen her mother that happy and charmed, even with her father. I thought it was an interesting choice that Kate didn't feel resentment or jealousy over that. She kind of likes him now, and now feels regret and guilt that he's the target of the investigation. If he's as guilty as she thinks he is, she'll be forced to take away the person who has made her mother happier than she has ever seen her. THAT is the specific right kind of character conflict I like seeing. None of this Clint feeling bad for doing an unforgivable thing and the show being crazy enough to ask me to forgive it anyways.
For the record, it's equally likely Mrs. Bishop herself is dirty and actually calling the shots. Also that Jack is really an innocent patsy. That would be totally on-brand for this franchise.
I love the Larp party. It's the little things about dealing with real people that the MCU gets that no other superhero franchise does. Frankly, the MCU is NOT my favorite superhero franchise. That's the DC Animated Universe. But only Kevin Feige would have a scene where the Larp woman is reluctant to give up the bag carrying the trick arrows because it was a gift from her wife, and it means something to her. Clint didn't think to bring a bag? It's the little realities of how real people would react to superheroes which is why I value the MCU so much. I also love that they can't simply make new trick arrows. Tony Stark ain't here. They have to retrieve the ones that were left behind. That is another thing that puts a level of reality in this show that Arrow lacks. It's really cool.
I enjoyed Kate's Christmas dinner with Clint, and them getting to know each other. And I'm appreciating more and more what a wonderful and amazing wife and partner Laura Barton actually is. It doesn't excuse Clint's actions as Ronin. But I sort of get how a person would go totally nuts if they lost that and believed it was gone forever.
Clint confronting the dude in the car was a well-written scene, especially him throwing away the gun in the distance. If Clint were a bigger hardass, he would have stolen it. But he's not gonna make it easy for the guy to retrieve it either.
And you'll notice very little of that review was actually negative. But it's the negative thing that will piss people off because Yelena is the crowdpleasing moment, and the part of the episode everyone else but me will unreservedly love. But be gentle with me, readers. I really wish I didn't feel uncomfortable with that last scene. ***1/2.
Spidey And His Amazing Friends "Web Beard's Treasure / Washed Away"
Web Beard's Treasure:
The name "Web Beard" is a little on the nose, don't you think?
Eh. **1/2.
Washed Away:
I liked Gobby's "What a world!" when he falls into the water. There has always been a lot of Margaret Mitchell in this version's design and performance.
Cool. ***.
Episode Overall: ***.
Young Justice: Phantoms "Nomed Esire!"
Oh, my God! I loved that. Imperfect, and I do have gripes, but really not enough to really damage my opinion.
My biggest complaint about every Greg Weisman show since Gargoyles is that Weisman is essentially a one-trick pony. Once you've seen The Gathering, Weisman has shown you exactly how the magic trick works. For me? That means it never works again, especially because Weisman never varies the way he performs it. And this season with its expositiony fights and torpid drama is easy for me to bash for that reason.
Until we get to the Zatanna arc. Now? I'm receptive to those magic tricks. They are expected. I may understand the mechanics of them, and how they work, but the magical world and characters makes them fun again. I want to believe in them again, even knowing they're fake. You actually can't out-Puck Puck. But only a magical story and character like Klarion can come close.
I really love and appreciate Savage's narration over the course of the arc. It is a criminally underused form of storytelling to unload that big of an information dump upon the viewer all at once via a Narrator. It should happen more often than it does. And I think Season 4 is a great place for it to happen. I personally already felt the show was stale, but most fans did not. This keeps things fresh, and it's still early enough in the life-span of a series like this (at least if we ignore the first cancelation) for it to feel refreshing in how soon we got to this big-picture stuff. Savage as the father of Atlantis is great. Explaining logically why Atlanteans have the ability to breath underwater is even better.
I like that the Child believes Klarion sucks at his job. Bold opinion: He does, Especially when she puts it like that. There is possibly no bigger fan of Order in the DC Universe than Vandal Savage, so Klarion tying himself to that specific fascist is beyond puzzling and counterproductive to the goal of Chaos. Yeah, as Klarion has noted, he's created a fiasco here and there, but nothing bigger than Savage would ever let him, which is why the Child's calm glee at his failures felt so good. Because as dangerous and evil as she is, she's also right.
I thought the Etrigan rhymes sucked. The wick line told me they were present, but they were TOO clever. They were focused on rhyming complicated words instead of an audible pentameter and pleasing rhythm. There is such a thing as making a rhyme too complex for its own good. Because it no longer actually sounds like a rhyme. The too-clever dialogue was one of Weisman's few already known well-worn tricks that I didn't actually appreciate here.
I also really didn't dig the stuff with either M'Gann or Gar. In fairness to Gar, it's just one emo scene, but I think Weisman and Vietti actually think the M'Gann stuff with her sister is clever. It's not. It's the one intolerable thing in the episode, and the reason something this otherwise dynamite will not actually be receiving a perfect grade. On some level the idea of M'Gann calling her sister on forcing a catharsis, her sister asking if it's working, and then them breaking out in laugher is clever. In practice, on the screen, it's cringe. It's TOO clever, and not remotely believable. If realism in this franchise is the dealbreaker (and it supposedly is), the characters talking like sitcom writers instead of grieving people is an actual fault. So there.
Is Savage Nabu's father or Zatarra's? Either would be interesting, but Zatarra would add a personal stake to Zatanna that I would love to see. I really hope that although he was addressing Nabu about the crisis, he was addressing Zatarra as the son.
Savage relocating all his friends and resources off of Earth says he doesn't take any chances. Although if the Child is as bad as I think she is, nowhere in the galaxy will actually be safe for him. He made a mockery of the Lords of Chaos with that Klarion "alliance". I would be shocked if they were just willing to drop it once Earth was in ruins. As Angelus once said about Buffy treating him like a human being: "That's not the kind of thing you just forgive."
Weisman has license from me to pulls quarters from behind my ear for these four episodes. As of now, I've got the goofy party-magic grin on my face again. Been awhile. Shucks. ****1/2.
Teen Titans Go! "A Holiday Story"
Holiday Mafia? Okay.
It was sort of a nonsense episode but I laughed at Santa torturing the Groundhog with shadow puppets. That was actually clever.
The rest of the episode? Not so much. **1/2.
The Flash "Armageddon: Part Four"
Not gonna lie. MOSTLY great. Of course, it being this show there were several moments of embarrassing cringe. I wish they existed in a worse episode. Because they greatly weakened this one.
Damian Darhk is right that Thawne's plan is evil genius, heavy on the evil. It's just a pure sociopathic idea of a fundamentally disturbed person. I love that once Damian learns Nora is alive in the proper timeline, even knowing he dies to save her, he wants that timeline back. As far as Arrow Season Four went, Damian Dahrk was one of the biggest bastards ever in the Arrowverse. From DC's Legend Of Tomorrow, on? Darhk is a lovable goofball. I can tell you it's the second way that Neal McDonough plays him best.
Speaking of Legends, it's clear Constantine is still a factor in The Arrowverse even if the damn character embargo means we can't ever actually see him. Have I mentioned I hate DC lately? Because I do.
The thing that took me out of everything and made me want to puke was the love story between Chester and Allegra. I could not have written a worse scene if I tried to. Ryan Choi is nonsensically breaking down in tears for God's sake, which is also another reminder that strong acting has never really been this franchise's selling point. And he just call Chester "his boy"? To a white and Hispanic character? And the writers thought that was okay? Man, I really wish this had occurred in a worse episode. Or crazy thought, I wish it hadn't occurred at all.
Speaking of bastards, Despero qualifies. Cecile is right that he's not a hero.
Parts of that, specifically the stuff with Thawn, Barry, and Damian, were pure gold. Other stuff, like the dopey background shipping stuff was some of the most inept writing I've ever seen in this franchise. Too bad. ****.
The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo: Game Edition "Shahadi Wright Joseph / Madison Reyes"
Honestly, I love the rare weeks where this specific show gives me a lot to talk about. This is happily one of those weeks.
Apparently it's all girl contestants in the first half of the season, all boys in the second. That's weird.
Cookie's bit with the arts and craft cookies would have been funnier if he had made a donut for variety. Although it's not as good as a cookie.
The mom choose a Muppet parrot as a parting gift. Unlike the rest of the swag the moms and dads always take, I doubt she'll be allowed to keep it.
Elmo loves puppets. Who knew?
I love Grover as the Mona Lisa. His Wubba Wubba pose is cute too.
Dippy the Hippy from Late Night With Conan O'Brien woulda been able to make a bong out of the toilet paper rolls, water bottle, and ball of yard. Any three items. It's a gift.
I noticed Don Music in the studio audience! One of my favorite characters as a kid has been unbanned! Bang Bang Bang!
Let me be blunt: That first challenge was the worst challenge the show has ever come up with. I know everything on the show is staged and fixed, but the idea of a timed painting competition is antithetical to art. And Elmo declaring it a tie because there is no wrong way to make a piece of art show why it's also antithetical to a challenge too.
Despite that, that was an entertaining week. ****.
'
The Blacklist "Dr. Roberta Sand, Ph.D."
Interesting way for Red to choose a therapist.
I am not loving the stuff between Red and Dembe simply because I think both of them are wrong. And it would be easier for me if I could pick a side. But I think if Dembe gave the letter to Liz after promising he wouldn't, that's not cool. On the other hand I think Red is a bit paranoid and crazy to believe that did harm to Liz. There is no way to know if Liz would have survived that night. But Red DID. And apparently he might not have if she hadn't read the letter. I get that Red valued Liz more than himself. Can he possibly understand Dembe didn't feel the same way? That he thought it would be best for Red himself if Liz knew the truth so she wouldn't kill him? That he didn't betray Red for Liz's sake, but for Red's own good?
I'll tell you what I do like. I like that Red is talking to Sands and explicitly saying he fears his anger about the situation and losing control. Things might have been better for everyone if he had done the same thing during the ordeal with Mr. Kaplan. Red makes mistakes when he isn't thinking clearly. And his thinking is most muddled when he perceives a betrayal by a friend. And like Mr. Kaplan, I don't actually think Dembe was thinking about what he did in terms of a betrayal.
I'll tell you the real betrayal that Dembe did. He should have owned up to it after the fact. Frankly, it's out of character that he didn't. I'm actually most skeptical about this entire plotline because it's unlike Dembe to have this specific type of secret hanging between him and Red, even if he now works for the FBI. I'm half-convinced something else is going on.
The guy telling Harold somebody was obviously framing him was good to hear. It also means the anonymous blackmailer at the end is the real killer. Of course if Harold isn't a complete dope, he'd know it. For the record, the fact that that conversation was recorded is crazy suspicious. It also tells me the guy who supposedly covered the evidence is the actual murderer and framer. Why I can't say. But Harold would be a dope to not immediately suspect him after that phone call. In fairness to me, Harold might in fact be a dope.
I do not care about the drama between Park and her husband even one little bit. It's weird that the show thinks I should.
I like that Red knew something was wrong because Agnes revealed Liz said good things about him. During the last year of her life she reviled him, so if she said anything definitively good to Agnes it must have been the night she died, and AFTER reading the letter.
But let me tell you something. My biggest anger last season over Liz dying is that she apparently never learned the truth. I never believed she deserved to, but the producers shoved down my throat how important it was to her and her arc. And her dying when she did pissed me off like nothing else. And not because I personally didn't learn the truth myself. I feel better in hindsight to find out she actually DID learn the truth, and we just didn't know or learn it ourselves. It makes me feel a LOT better because Liz WAS the worst character on the show and it's definitely better with her dead and gone. And learning her arc DID actually pay-off, even if we didn't witness it ourselves is the last and biggest loose end about that sociopathic hot mess.
My favorite small moment in the episode was between the guest cast. I liked Sands asking indignantly if the mob boss was threatening her, and him breaking out into a big grin and owning up to it like a man instead of the evasive weasel many fictional mob bosses are when asked that exact question. He owns his bad behavior, and considering what she does for a living, she not only deserves that level of honesty, she also should be able to handle it. Ned Eisenberg has always been a solid character actor (I know him best from Law & Order SVU) so it was fun to watch that scene.
It was a good episode, but I'm concerned where things go from here. It's not outside the realm of possibility a competently written show could go somewhere interesting, or even great, with the Red and Dembe conflict. This however is NOT remotely a competently written show, and has never delivered even once, so I'm nervous instead. ***1/2.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
It's a pretty fast read and the definition of a page-turner. When I reviewed the movie a couple of months ago I noted that I was a little disappointed upon rewatching it. Was I disappointed rereading the novel it was based on?
A little. I remembered some of the problems I had with the book, but they were a lot worse than I remembered. I always hated the little girl Lex, but she was not outside of obnoxious little girl characters at the time. I grew up with Nellie Olsen and had dealt with worse. From a modern lens, Lex is absolutely unacceptable on every level. She's loud, stupid, and a huge hindrance. Because she's a girl. Her brother Tim is knowledgeable, likable, and handy. Because he's a boy. She is extremely problematic. The kids are definitely a step up in the movie.
I also misremembered Genarro and that bums me out a bit. While he isn't as loathsome as he was in the movie (his role of the coward in the film, is that of Ed Regis' in the book, and Regis was omitted from the film, and it's clear the movie combined the two characters) but Genarro is a lot less cool than I remembered. He did survive, and he did do some helpful things, but he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing them.
The end of the book is a lot darker than that of the movie, although as far as we know Grant and Ellie could have been placed in Costa Rican custody after the movie too. Malcolm supposedly dies at the end of this book, but we never see the body, and the sequel The Lost World retconned this.
Malcolm is a lot less annoying in the book simply because he's allowed to explain himself better. I like John Arnold because he's able to push up against the chaos theory arguments. Ultimately, Arnold is wrong, but I like the character because he can argue against what Malcolm is saying far better than Hammond, who is actually a fool. I actually would have liked to have seen Samuel Jackson be allowed to make some of these counterarguments in the film. C'mon, Goldblum versus Sam Jack in loud monologues about moral righteousness? I know this was before Pulp Fiction, and everybody knew Jackson was great at that, but it seems like a missed opportunity considering Arnold's contrary yet logical role in the book.
The version of Hammond in the book is far more sinister than the gentle grandfather in the movie. It could be argued he's the most villainous human present, even more-so than Dennis Nedry. He's stupid and always blames other people for his own mistakes and refuses to accept any responsibility for them. He is also one of the few characters who learns absolutely nothing from what happens to him. The movie version did, so he survived. Because book Hammond is so damn stupid and intractable, he gets eaten by Compies instead.
Nedry is about as gross in the book as he is the movie, except in the book he's portrayed as much younger.
The book doesn't have as many quotable or memorable lines as the movie does, although the bit about scientists being so focused on whether or not they could do a thing, they never thought about whether or not they should, is still there.
Henry Wu dies in the book, and I found his character benign here and relatively well-intentioned. He has sort of gained a reputation as somewhat sinister from the Jurassic World movies and recent spin-offs, but the book version is nowhere near as dark.
Muldoon survives the book. But he never gets to say "Clever girl," and frankly I think that's an unfair trade-off.
The global scope of the first few chapters, and the scholarly tone of the prologue and the unnamed narrator giving the reader solid "facts" that may or not be fictionalized b.s. Crichton entirely made up, makes the science of the book seem realistic and credible. Which is not something I often felt about the movie franchise.
The velociraptors are a bit more dangerous and unpredictable in the book than they are in the movies. They also strike me as less intelligent judging by the fact that they ate a baby raptor. Arnold also notes here that before things go sideways that that entire species should have been destroyed. He wasn't right in believing Malcolm's theories were wrong, but he was right about that.
The T-Rex is a far bigger thorn in the book than he wound up being in a movie. He was a constant enemy against Grant and the kids. In fact, the only relatable thing for me about Lex is how much she hated the T-Rex. Both Grant and Tim made excuses that it was a carnivore and just doing what it was supposed to do, but I hated it just as much as Lex did. It didn't have the hero moment in the book against the raptors it did in the movie either so I can't even say it had ANY selling points.
It was a pretty solid book that made a solid movie, but it wasn't actually great and I had problems with it. ****.
Holes by Louis Sachar
I was very surprised how good the book was. It's clearly written for kids but addresses mature things like racism expertly.
I'm not going to lie. Many of the bits of the mystery I guessed correctly ahead of time. But I didn't guess ALL of it. And me being right about a couple of things just made the surprises more credible. A good mystery should not be entirely unpredictable. It needs to be able to hang together properly. And this did.
I like how the bits in the past with Stanley's ancestors and Kate Barlow had to do with his current woes, and what was going on a Camp Green Lake. It all boils down to a big coincidence, which is fine, because after what Stanley and Zero went through, they sort of earned a miracle of a happy ending. I wouldn't want to take it away from them even if Stanley's name being on that briefcase is actually a billion to one shot.
The kids at the camp strike me as shockingly broken people. It's very interesting to thrust Stanley in the middle of them, but their nickname insistence thing is outright weird.
The Warden is shockingly scary villain just based on what she did to Mr. Sir with the poison nail-polish. The Narrator of the story doesn't actually tell us if she got her just desserts and went to prison (preferring us to fill in the "Holes" of the story ourselves) but I think she must have. At least I hope so. She was a piece of work.
I had expected a bit of a more comical story going in and I was impressed at how much things actually emotionally resonated. They printed an excerpt of Stanley's Yelnats' Survival Guide To Camp Green Lake and that was pretty much as jokey as I expected this to be. But I felt this book, particularly the second half, was sincere rather than satirical. I enjoyed it a lot. ****1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Beneath The Surface"
That was good, but I'm questioning why I'm still watching the show. I'm as tired of dinosaurs as the campers are, and feel every inch of their frustration and fear. It never freaking ends, and dinosaurs never shut it off. But that's the premise of the show, so I'm wondering why I'm still here.
Sheesh. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "At Least...."
Sabretooth tiger? This franchise is really reaching.
That primal scream scene was beyond lame. Embarrassing, actually.
Invisible compound? Like I said. The show is reaching.
Didn't like it. *1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Turning Dr. Turner"
Talking robot dinosaurs? Like I said, really reaching.
Man, Yaz is kind of pathetic. What kind of hot mess do you have to be to be rejected by Ben? Yeah, he misread things completely. But that should NOT have been his reaction to her if she was actually coming on to him. Embarrassing.
The inventor of the Brad is a total brat.
Eh. **1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Rude Awakening"
I think it's good they are exploring PTSD, but you can't just pick and choose that specific psychology. Yaz suffering from that so severely here is inconsistent with her jokey and flirty demeanor in the previous episode. What kills me is they could have explored this exact premise with Ben and it would be consistent.
I'm with Yaz in being upset that the kids missed their ride for helping a dinosaur. After all that? Screw the dinosaurs. And screw Darius for always screwing over his friends and always convincing them to do the wrong thing that is against their own self-interest. These dinosaurs shouldn't even exist. They are a literal abomination. Darius wanting to freaking HELP them makes him the most annoying and useless character on the show. I've come to loathe the little creep.
I'm glad trauma is being explored. I am not glad that Darius has still yet to really be called on his crap. This is getting old and he keeps screwing over the group time and again. **1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "The Long Game"
I disagree with many of the conclusions the episode made. Yes, Sammy had little chance if she confronted Kash by herself. But nobody in cartoons like this ever does the obvious. Maybe it's because they're kids, and it's forgivable. But I think this season could have been REALLY short if I were in charge of those kids and not an idiot like Darius.
There are 6 of the kids. Kash is most dangerous when he's giving orders to the robots. If I were in charge of the kids, I'd 6 on 1 bum-rush him and knock him the hell out. Yeah, there were two Brads there at the time. But they had to confront them anyways, along with some uninvited Raptors. Bad guys like Kash can be thumped thoroughly and good if you take them down FAST. (This is also what superheroes needed to be doing to Amazo, Taskmaster, and the Super Adaptoid). They wouldn't need to be playing The Long Game if they had the wits to play the Take 'Em Down Hard And Fast Game. One big problem with my idea is that it would be majorly, majorly violent, and this is a kids show. But still, I don't think Sammy was wrong for wanting to confront and take down Kash when she did. She just needed proper back-up and a quickly put-together plan.
I mentioned I've come to loathe Darius this season. No sooner had I written that than this kid decides for all the kids they have to stay and the protect the dinosaurs and they can't leave until the job is done. In fact, one of the reasons I felt supportive of Sammy doing what she felt was right, is that all of the kids have been far too deferential to Darius' insipid wants and needs to their own sorrow. If Darius think some righteous payback is a bad idea, that means it's probably actually a good one. The pained look at Yaz's face as he said that made me loathe the stinker even more than I already do.
Ben continues to be the series' most valuable player, and the only one of the kids to get in an actual win by spying on Kash and observing he's got a phone. Do I find Ben's "Nature Boy" shtick obnoxious? Yes. But none of the rest of those dumb kids thought to tail Kash.
If I were Darius, I'd be calling "Dogpile on Kash!" and the season is over. Because Darius is Darius instead, this crap will never end. **1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Mission Critical"
I'm digging this. I've been mentioning what a little turd Darius is. That might be the point of the season. Him having no idea his friends were experiencing nightmares and trauma suggests it's possible he might be about to learn about thoughtfulness and doing what is best for others rather than his own wants and needs. The jury is still out there, and the series could still mess it up, but this was the step in the right direction.
I bet there will be a ton of people upset over how underwhelming the Brads are. Their scanning capabilities are laughable. They always miss their shooting targets unless an actual person is actually aiming them. And they seem to be super easy to destroy. But I actually find that quite realistic. And it's a bit comforting to me too as someone who didn't believe they belonged in the franchise. Jurassic Park may be science fiction, but it's set in the present. And present day robots are startlingly ineffective. Almost every robot currently in service in the world has only a single function, because mankind has not developed the robotics technology to make them capable of more than one thing. The fact that the Brads suck and don't work as they are supposed to isn't a case of the writers making overly incompetent villains. It's a case of them making more realistic present day technology. And I totally approve of that.
The ending of Darius' brother realizing he was alive was pretty cool.
We'll see how things go, but this is the right path forward. ****.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Staying Alive"
Darius isn't a very good liar, but fortunately he doesn't need to be because Kash is both a narcissist and an idiot.
That huge dinosaur was legit scary. Gave me the willies. Took care of the sabretooth tiger though.
Pretty good. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Technical Difficulties"
Not the baby dinos!
Finding out none of the chips worked sort of made the adventure feel pointless, didn't it? Oh well. At least the kids have a way to talk to Darius now.
Pretty good. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Dino-Sitting"
Those baby dinos sure are cute.
Kash is an underwhelming villain simply because he still hasn't figured out that Darius has accomplices. It's pretty obvious when you think about it. ***1/2.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Taking Control"
Oh my God, Bumpy at the end is totally Seymour from Futurama! What a great, sad, and unexpected update.
The action on this show continues to be top-notch. I feel like Fast & Furious Spy Racers' tone is totally outside of that franchise. But the scary dinosaur scenes on this show are pure Jurassic Park even if the Dreamworks Animation dialogue is as clunky as Spy Racers.
And also maybe I should amend that. The dialogue may not be great here, but it's nowhere NEAR as clunky as Spy Racers. ****.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous "Who's The Boss?"
Great ending. Kenji's dad is the Big Bad? That solves quite a few problems. And opens up a ton of new ones. I'm predicting next season is the last. That's a pretty great hook.
The best thing is that him being a villain sort of explains Kenji's pampered and spoiled attitude from the first and second seasons. If he seemed like a spoiled, entitled jerk in the beginning, that's simply how he was raised. I love how perfectly that fits his arc thematically in hindsight.
I also want to give the show a shout-out for being the scariest U.S. kids show in existence. Arguably Doctor Who from the U.K. is scarier. But not every single episode. This show's scares and tension are legit, and pretty consistent episode to episode too.
On the negative side I want to kick the kids for not setting a guard or two on Kash. They are really bad at this.
That was probably the best ending for a season so far. I'll grade the episode accordingly, even if it wasn't actually perfect. *****.
Star Trek: Discovery "All Is Possible"
One thing I think I need to address about the Kurtzman era of the show. And I don't think the current stuff gets enough credit for it. But the way the characters deal with things like grief and conflict are far healthier and more realistic than they were during the Roddenberry and Berman eras. For the Roddenberry era in particular, I think a lot of ideas about psychology on The Next Generation were outright harmful. Star Trek was envisioned to be about conflict resolution. And I think that for much of its tenure, most of the characters resolved their problems the wrong way. The notable exception being Deep Space Nine. But even I don't think the characters there are quite as emotionally healthy and self-aware as the characters on Star Trek: Discovery, and weirdly Star Trek: Picard, which takes place only a couple of decades later.
I was not digging the Starfleet Academy mission, until Adira reveals the Orion kid's dad was a civil rights activist, and stood up for people like the alien guy with the grievance. That put the entire thing in a different perspective, which I like. You can say it's unrealistic that the Orion kid coincidentally has a historic amazing father to give him that kind of credibility. It's unrealistic for us, sure. For Star Trek? Starfleet Academy is supposed to be for the best and brightest. That specific martyr's kid gaining acceptance as a legacy is totally on-brand for it, especially since Starfleet is sort of currently in the business of rehabilitating its tattered image. The Orion grouses that Orions have to do everything twice as good just to be accepted. And that's probably the only reason he's in the Academy to begin with.
I like the stuff with Culber and Book. I especially like that Culber acknowledges that he really shouldn't be talking about his past with Book, as it's unprofessional. But the truth is, what was truly unprofessional was the Enterprise bridge crew having therapy sessions with Troi and hanging out with her outside of office hours. Culber acknowledges that it's not ideal to have a therapist you know in your outside life. But there need to be allowances on a starship. I don't necessarily agree with that logic, but it beats the Roddenberry issue, because the conflict is brought up instead of crazily ignored as if it weren't an actual issue. Regardless of whatever nonsense Gene Roddenberry believed, society and how people interact with each other can change. People themselves cannot. And I want a future where I can recognize myself in the characters who have got their crap together and live in a nice Universe. I find the humans on four of the first five Star Trek series far more alien than most of the aliens the producers used as surrogates for other groups of people.
Speaking of which, I like the idea that Bajor, Earth, and Cardassia are all at peace with other. Those alien features on the President's face told me good things had happened between Star Trek: Picard and this, and it's good to learn those specific conflicts were totally squashed. Particularly rewarding as a Deep Space Nine fan.
I like that the Navar President likes Saru. Is she actually into him? I would prefer not, because I think it would be refreshing if the reason she is taken with him is because she senses and appreciates the serenity he gives off. The character was a bit nervous and frayed in the first two seasons. It's sort of cool how he's evolved into The Sage of the ship. And possibly now the Federation.
Where did I stand on the conflict between Navar and the Federation? I thought the Federation's position was unfair. But what got me was that it wasn't just Navar it was unfair to. And Burnham and Saru's solution of setting up a bipartisan council to make the Federation accountable to ALL its members, not just Navar, was great. Navar's demand is not unreasonable under the circumstances. It was a good thing and rejected because other worlds would want it. That meant the idea was actually sound, and the solution was making something like it available for everyone, not just Navar. Now it's not an exception. It's the way they do business going forward.
I hope Mary Wiseman hasn't left the show. Discovery is VERY based around Starfleet Headquarters so I very much hope Tilly is still a series regular. But I think the thing I appreciated about her being offered to teach at the Academy was what the Starfleet guy played by David Cronenberg told her. That specific character, introduced last season, was interesting, because frankly, I never trusted him. He was far too close to the Section 31 drama, and he never seemed to like or warm up to our crew. When he describes here that he and most of Starfleet distrusted the crew of Discovery because they seemed to believe a better future was possible, that made me like him. The specific words he said about that were, "It stung." And frankly, I have never heard that idea or anything like it verbalized that way on the first five Star Trek series. And it makes the characters recognizable, relatable, and yes, human. And that's what Star Trek should be.
Do I blame Gene Roddenberry for failing his ideals about how people in the future should interact with each other and make friends with new species? No. For the most part (and I don't count the first season of Next Gen which was terrible) they were sound for the era they were created in (the 1960's). The reason Star Trek became stagnant and less relevant is because when humanity itself made real-world progress on psychology and bigotry, Star Trek refused to course correct and stuck to Roddenberry's old ideas and opinions, even if they were completely dated. With the possible exception of Garak on Deep Space Nine (who was never actually outed, and in fact placed in an awkward doomed romance with a female character) there was not a single gay character on the first five Star Trek series. And Enterprise ended in 2005. Think about that. As late as 2005, gay people had zero representation in Star Trek. So you can badmouth me for talking smack about Roddenberry's ideals, but that fact means that Kurtzman's course-correcting there with gay and transgender characters in the new stuff means the humans in Star Trek now have full representation. And I think that's a very good thing.
It was a very talky week. But it's Star Trek. Talky episodes are best. ****.
Doctor Who "Flux: Chapter Six: The Vanquishers"
On some level, I'm disappointed, but on another I'm not. While it was not the potential mindscrew the series has always been promising (but never delivering), I felt like it ended the "right" way, although the fob watch in the TARDIS raised questions. Did she get the memories back or not? It's suggested that when she's made whole that was what she's referring to, but that could have just meant her three selves merging. The fob watch in the TARDIS buys back a bit of the satisfaction I felt about believing she regained the memories.
And if she did, the series did it the right way. She gets her answers, fulfilling the arc of the season, but she doesn't share them with us the audience, thereby preserving the hook and mystique of the series.
I found Jericho's death particularly pointless and bittersweet which was kind of the selling point of doing it. Whatever else HE thought about his place in the Universe, HE personally did not believe he went out like a punk. And that soothes it a bit even if I think he's wrong. I get why he thinks that at least.
Speaking of pointless, I thought killing the entire race of dogs was a terrible move, and something Russell T Davies would have done at his worst. The survivor howling is even as unintentionally comical as a LOT of similar Davies stuff during his tenure and Torchwood. My biggest objection is that as far as bad guys go, the Sontarans are comical, and on some level lovable. The whole obsession with chocolate is a case in point. The problem with doing that is I will never view the Sontarans as comical as they used to be ever again. Yeah, it was a bold and dramatic move. That permanently made the long-term health of the show MUCH worse, which is Davies in a nutshell. I'm alarmed to see Chibnall doing that specific thing and embracing that kind of storytelling. It makes me worry about the New Year's special.
I love Thirteen empowering the 19th Century British guy and basically telling him everything he had waited his entire life to hear.
Vinder's revenge on the Grand Serpent was pretty great, simply because it wasn't lethally horrible, and thus actually sanctioned by the Doctor. That meant I was allowed to approve of it too.
Is Kate in the New Year's special? If not this really IS the last time she'll see this Regeneration again.
Do I wish that was mindblowing? Sort of. But it is also totally in-character for the Chibnall era to not going absolutely nuts and sidetracked with flashy nonsense. Regardless of whether or not the story actually blew my mind (it didn't) it was still at least told in the manner it SHOULD have been told. And it's perhaps the first finale I can remember that did that. That's not nothing. ****.
Hawkeye "Partners, Am I Right?"
Oh, man, I suspect I'm gonna court a little trouble with this review. Because I didn't like the ending. I liked (and loved) everything else. But I was unimpressed with the ending. And when you hear my reasoning you'll probably think "Oh, Matt is just complaining for the sake of complaining again and simply likes to hear / read his own voice / prose." And I don't have too much vanity to admit that's what a lot of my negative reviews actually boil down to, but I hope you'll indulge my disliking the ending here, because this review isn't actually a negative one. I thought the rest of the episode was great. But when Yelena showed up, I cringed. Because the story isn't about her, and I don't want it to turn into that, and it inevitably will.
And fanboys who love that surprise twist will be pissed at me for not digging it, because it was totally properly set up at the end of the Black Widow movie, and it would be weird if she didn't actually pop up here. And I know that, but because the rest of the series wasn't really about or dealing with the Black Widow tag, I feel like this bit of Marvel synergy is less properly set-up, and more tacked on. And I shouldn't feel that way, especially since a large part of Clint's arc on the series is about his guilt over his responsibility over Natasha's death. Yelena should fit in thematically like a glove. But because they did the cliched "surprise twist", she doesn't. I'm not saying Yelena doesn't belong on this show. She clearly does. I just don't like her showing up out of nowhere and turning the series in all about her. That's not fair to the solid Clint arc, that I'm already having a hard time processing and forgiving.
Also, Maya's grudge is real, Yelena's is fake. So they shouldn't be teaming up as the melodrama in their arcs with Clint is totally unequal. Maybe that's the point, and Yelena will come around eventually and team up with Clint. But, man, that's unnecessarily messy, and this kind of messiness is the precise reason I was not on-board with Clint killing Maya's sweet father. This is not the sort of issue that should be confused for the viewer. And speaking as a viewer, my feelings are very conflicted and confused.
Did I mention the rest of the episode was great? I'll tell you what confusion I liked and appreciated feeling: When Jack is goofily dancing around Kate's mother and sweeping her off her feet. Kate actually LIKES him in that moment, even after everything else because she's never seen her mother that happy and charmed, even with her father. I thought it was an interesting choice that Kate didn't feel resentment or jealousy over that. She kind of likes him now, and now feels regret and guilt that he's the target of the investigation. If he's as guilty as she thinks he is, she'll be forced to take away the person who has made her mother happier than she has ever seen her. THAT is the specific right kind of character conflict I like seeing. None of this Clint feeling bad for doing an unforgivable thing and the show being crazy enough to ask me to forgive it anyways.
For the record, it's equally likely Mrs. Bishop herself is dirty and actually calling the shots. Also that Jack is really an innocent patsy. That would be totally on-brand for this franchise.
I love the Larp party. It's the little things about dealing with real people that the MCU gets that no other superhero franchise does. Frankly, the MCU is NOT my favorite superhero franchise. That's the DC Animated Universe. But only Kevin Feige would have a scene where the Larp woman is reluctant to give up the bag carrying the trick arrows because it was a gift from her wife, and it means something to her. Clint didn't think to bring a bag? It's the little realities of how real people would react to superheroes which is why I value the MCU so much. I also love that they can't simply make new trick arrows. Tony Stark ain't here. They have to retrieve the ones that were left behind. That is another thing that puts a level of reality in this show that Arrow lacks. It's really cool.
I enjoyed Kate's Christmas dinner with Clint, and them getting to know each other. And I'm appreciating more and more what a wonderful and amazing wife and partner Laura Barton actually is. It doesn't excuse Clint's actions as Ronin. But I sort of get how a person would go totally nuts if they lost that and believed it was gone forever.
Clint confronting the dude in the car was a well-written scene, especially him throwing away the gun in the distance. If Clint were a bigger hardass, he would have stolen it. But he's not gonna make it easy for the guy to retrieve it either.
And you'll notice very little of that review was actually negative. But it's the negative thing that will piss people off because Yelena is the crowdpleasing moment, and the part of the episode everyone else but me will unreservedly love. But be gentle with me, readers. I really wish I didn't feel uncomfortable with that last scene. ***1/2.
Spidey And His Amazing Friends "Web Beard's Treasure / Washed Away"
Web Beard's Treasure:
The name "Web Beard" is a little on the nose, don't you think?
Eh. **1/2.
Washed Away:
I liked Gobby's "What a world!" when he falls into the water. There has always been a lot of Margaret Mitchell in this version's design and performance.
Cool. ***.
Episode Overall: ***.
Young Justice: Phantoms "Nomed Esire!"
Oh, my God! I loved that. Imperfect, and I do have gripes, but really not enough to really damage my opinion.
My biggest complaint about every Greg Weisman show since Gargoyles is that Weisman is essentially a one-trick pony. Once you've seen The Gathering, Weisman has shown you exactly how the magic trick works. For me? That means it never works again, especially because Weisman never varies the way he performs it. And this season with its expositiony fights and torpid drama is easy for me to bash for that reason.
Until we get to the Zatanna arc. Now? I'm receptive to those magic tricks. They are expected. I may understand the mechanics of them, and how they work, but the magical world and characters makes them fun again. I want to believe in them again, even knowing they're fake. You actually can't out-Puck Puck. But only a magical story and character like Klarion can come close.
I really love and appreciate Savage's narration over the course of the arc. It is a criminally underused form of storytelling to unload that big of an information dump upon the viewer all at once via a Narrator. It should happen more often than it does. And I think Season 4 is a great place for it to happen. I personally already felt the show was stale, but most fans did not. This keeps things fresh, and it's still early enough in the life-span of a series like this (at least if we ignore the first cancelation) for it to feel refreshing in how soon we got to this big-picture stuff. Savage as the father of Atlantis is great. Explaining logically why Atlanteans have the ability to breath underwater is even better.
I like that the Child believes Klarion sucks at his job. Bold opinion: He does, Especially when she puts it like that. There is possibly no bigger fan of Order in the DC Universe than Vandal Savage, so Klarion tying himself to that specific fascist is beyond puzzling and counterproductive to the goal of Chaos. Yeah, as Klarion has noted, he's created a fiasco here and there, but nothing bigger than Savage would ever let him, which is why the Child's calm glee at his failures felt so good. Because as dangerous and evil as she is, she's also right.
I thought the Etrigan rhymes sucked. The wick line told me they were present, but they were TOO clever. They were focused on rhyming complicated words instead of an audible pentameter and pleasing rhythm. There is such a thing as making a rhyme too complex for its own good. Because it no longer actually sounds like a rhyme. The too-clever dialogue was one of Weisman's few already known well-worn tricks that I didn't actually appreciate here.
I also really didn't dig the stuff with either M'Gann or Gar. In fairness to Gar, it's just one emo scene, but I think Weisman and Vietti actually think the M'Gann stuff with her sister is clever. It's not. It's the one intolerable thing in the episode, and the reason something this otherwise dynamite will not actually be receiving a perfect grade. On some level the idea of M'Gann calling her sister on forcing a catharsis, her sister asking if it's working, and then them breaking out in laugher is clever. In practice, on the screen, it's cringe. It's TOO clever, and not remotely believable. If realism in this franchise is the dealbreaker (and it supposedly is), the characters talking like sitcom writers instead of grieving people is an actual fault. So there.
Is Savage Nabu's father or Zatarra's? Either would be interesting, but Zatarra would add a personal stake to Zatanna that I would love to see. I really hope that although he was addressing Nabu about the crisis, he was addressing Zatarra as the son.
Savage relocating all his friends and resources off of Earth says he doesn't take any chances. Although if the Child is as bad as I think she is, nowhere in the galaxy will actually be safe for him. He made a mockery of the Lords of Chaos with that Klarion "alliance". I would be shocked if they were just willing to drop it once Earth was in ruins. As Angelus once said about Buffy treating him like a human being: "That's not the kind of thing you just forgive."
Weisman has license from me to pulls quarters from behind my ear for these four episodes. As of now, I've got the goofy party-magic grin on my face again. Been awhile. Shucks. ****1/2.
Teen Titans Go! "A Holiday Story"
Holiday Mafia? Okay.
It was sort of a nonsense episode but I laughed at Santa torturing the Groundhog with shadow puppets. That was actually clever.
The rest of the episode? Not so much. **1/2.
The Flash "Armageddon: Part Four"
Not gonna lie. MOSTLY great. Of course, it being this show there were several moments of embarrassing cringe. I wish they existed in a worse episode. Because they greatly weakened this one.
Damian Darhk is right that Thawne's plan is evil genius, heavy on the evil. It's just a pure sociopathic idea of a fundamentally disturbed person. I love that once Damian learns Nora is alive in the proper timeline, even knowing he dies to save her, he wants that timeline back. As far as Arrow Season Four went, Damian Dahrk was one of the biggest bastards ever in the Arrowverse. From DC's Legend Of Tomorrow, on? Darhk is a lovable goofball. I can tell you it's the second way that Neal McDonough plays him best.
Speaking of Legends, it's clear Constantine is still a factor in The Arrowverse even if the damn character embargo means we can't ever actually see him. Have I mentioned I hate DC lately? Because I do.
The thing that took me out of everything and made me want to puke was the love story between Chester and Allegra. I could not have written a worse scene if I tried to. Ryan Choi is nonsensically breaking down in tears for God's sake, which is also another reminder that strong acting has never really been this franchise's selling point. And he just call Chester "his boy"? To a white and Hispanic character? And the writers thought that was okay? Man, I really wish this had occurred in a worse episode. Or crazy thought, I wish it hadn't occurred at all.
Speaking of bastards, Despero qualifies. Cecile is right that he's not a hero.
Parts of that, specifically the stuff with Thawn, Barry, and Damian, were pure gold. Other stuff, like the dopey background shipping stuff was some of the most inept writing I've ever seen in this franchise. Too bad. ****.
The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo: Game Edition "Shahadi Wright Joseph / Madison Reyes"
Honestly, I love the rare weeks where this specific show gives me a lot to talk about. This is happily one of those weeks.
Apparently it's all girl contestants in the first half of the season, all boys in the second. That's weird.
Cookie's bit with the arts and craft cookies would have been funnier if he had made a donut for variety. Although it's not as good as a cookie.
The mom choose a Muppet parrot as a parting gift. Unlike the rest of the swag the moms and dads always take, I doubt she'll be allowed to keep it.
Elmo loves puppets. Who knew?
I love Grover as the Mona Lisa. His Wubba Wubba pose is cute too.
Dippy the Hippy from Late Night With Conan O'Brien woulda been able to make a bong out of the toilet paper rolls, water bottle, and ball of yard. Any three items. It's a gift.
I noticed Don Music in the studio audience! One of my favorite characters as a kid has been unbanned! Bang Bang Bang!
Let me be blunt: That first challenge was the worst challenge the show has ever come up with. I know everything on the show is staged and fixed, but the idea of a timed painting competition is antithetical to art. And Elmo declaring it a tie because there is no wrong way to make a piece of art show why it's also antithetical to a challenge too.
Despite that, that was an entertaining week. ****.
'
The Blacklist "Dr. Roberta Sand, Ph.D."
Interesting way for Red to choose a therapist.
I am not loving the stuff between Red and Dembe simply because I think both of them are wrong. And it would be easier for me if I could pick a side. But I think if Dembe gave the letter to Liz after promising he wouldn't, that's not cool. On the other hand I think Red is a bit paranoid and crazy to believe that did harm to Liz. There is no way to know if Liz would have survived that night. But Red DID. And apparently he might not have if she hadn't read the letter. I get that Red valued Liz more than himself. Can he possibly understand Dembe didn't feel the same way? That he thought it would be best for Red himself if Liz knew the truth so she wouldn't kill him? That he didn't betray Red for Liz's sake, but for Red's own good?
I'll tell you what I do like. I like that Red is talking to Sands and explicitly saying he fears his anger about the situation and losing control. Things might have been better for everyone if he had done the same thing during the ordeal with Mr. Kaplan. Red makes mistakes when he isn't thinking clearly. And his thinking is most muddled when he perceives a betrayal by a friend. And like Mr. Kaplan, I don't actually think Dembe was thinking about what he did in terms of a betrayal.
I'll tell you the real betrayal that Dembe did. He should have owned up to it after the fact. Frankly, it's out of character that he didn't. I'm actually most skeptical about this entire plotline because it's unlike Dembe to have this specific type of secret hanging between him and Red, even if he now works for the FBI. I'm half-convinced something else is going on.
The guy telling Harold somebody was obviously framing him was good to hear. It also means the anonymous blackmailer at the end is the real killer. Of course if Harold isn't a complete dope, he'd know it. For the record, the fact that that conversation was recorded is crazy suspicious. It also tells me the guy who supposedly covered the evidence is the actual murderer and framer. Why I can't say. But Harold would be a dope to not immediately suspect him after that phone call. In fairness to me, Harold might in fact be a dope.
I do not care about the drama between Park and her husband even one little bit. It's weird that the show thinks I should.
I like that Red knew something was wrong because Agnes revealed Liz said good things about him. During the last year of her life she reviled him, so if she said anything definitively good to Agnes it must have been the night she died, and AFTER reading the letter.
But let me tell you something. My biggest anger last season over Liz dying is that she apparently never learned the truth. I never believed she deserved to, but the producers shoved down my throat how important it was to her and her arc. And her dying when she did pissed me off like nothing else. And not because I personally didn't learn the truth myself. I feel better in hindsight to find out she actually DID learn the truth, and we just didn't know or learn it ourselves. It makes me feel a LOT better because Liz WAS the worst character on the show and it's definitely better with her dead and gone. And learning her arc DID actually pay-off, even if we didn't witness it ourselves is the last and biggest loose end about that sociopathic hot mess.
My favorite small moment in the episode was between the guest cast. I liked Sands asking indignantly if the mob boss was threatening her, and him breaking out into a big grin and owning up to it like a man instead of the evasive weasel many fictional mob bosses are when asked that exact question. He owns his bad behavior, and considering what she does for a living, she not only deserves that level of honesty, she also should be able to handle it. Ned Eisenberg has always been a solid character actor (I know him best from Law & Order SVU) so it was fun to watch that scene.
It was a good episode, but I'm concerned where things go from here. It's not outside the realm of possibility a competently written show could go somewhere interesting, or even great, with the Red and Dembe conflict. This however is NOT remotely a competently written show, and has never delivered even once, so I'm nervous instead. ***1/2.
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
It's a pretty fast read and the definition of a page-turner. When I reviewed the movie a couple of months ago I noted that I was a little disappointed upon rewatching it. Was I disappointed rereading the novel it was based on?
A little. I remembered some of the problems I had with the book, but they were a lot worse than I remembered. I always hated the little girl Lex, but she was not outside of obnoxious little girl characters at the time. I grew up with Nellie Olsen and had dealt with worse. From a modern lens, Lex is absolutely unacceptable on every level. She's loud, stupid, and a huge hindrance. Because she's a girl. Her brother Tim is knowledgeable, likable, and handy. Because he's a boy. She is extremely problematic. The kids are definitely a step up in the movie.
I also misremembered Genarro and that bums me out a bit. While he isn't as loathsome as he was in the movie (his role of the coward in the film, is that of Ed Regis' in the book, and Regis was omitted from the film, and it's clear the movie combined the two characters) but Genarro is a lot less cool than I remembered. He did survive, and he did do some helpful things, but he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing them.
The end of the book is a lot darker than that of the movie, although as far as we know Grant and Ellie could have been placed in Costa Rican custody after the movie too. Malcolm supposedly dies at the end of this book, but we never see the body, and the sequel The Lost World retconned this.
Malcolm is a lot less annoying in the book simply because he's allowed to explain himself better. I like John Arnold because he's able to push up against the chaos theory arguments. Ultimately, Arnold is wrong, but I like the character because he can argue against what Malcolm is saying far better than Hammond, who is actually a fool. I actually would have liked to have seen Samuel Jackson be allowed to make some of these counterarguments in the film. C'mon, Goldblum versus Sam Jack in loud monologues about moral righteousness? I know this was before Pulp Fiction, and everybody knew Jackson was great at that, but it seems like a missed opportunity considering Arnold's contrary yet logical role in the book.
The version of Hammond in the book is far more sinister than the gentle grandfather in the movie. It could be argued he's the most villainous human present, even more-so than Dennis Nedry. He's stupid and always blames other people for his own mistakes and refuses to accept any responsibility for them. He is also one of the few characters who learns absolutely nothing from what happens to him. The movie version did, so he survived. Because book Hammond is so damn stupid and intractable, he gets eaten by Compies instead.
Nedry is about as gross in the book as he is the movie, except in the book he's portrayed as much younger.
The book doesn't have as many quotable or memorable lines as the movie does, although the bit about scientists being so focused on whether or not they could do a thing, they never thought about whether or not they should, is still there.
Henry Wu dies in the book, and I found his character benign here and relatively well-intentioned. He has sort of gained a reputation as somewhat sinister from the Jurassic World movies and recent spin-offs, but the book version is nowhere near as dark.
Muldoon survives the book. But he never gets to say "Clever girl," and frankly I think that's an unfair trade-off.
The global scope of the first few chapters, and the scholarly tone of the prologue and the unnamed narrator giving the reader solid "facts" that may or not be fictionalized b.s. Crichton entirely made up, makes the science of the book seem realistic and credible. Which is not something I often felt about the movie franchise.
The velociraptors are a bit more dangerous and unpredictable in the book than they are in the movies. They also strike me as less intelligent judging by the fact that they ate a baby raptor. Arnold also notes here that before things go sideways that that entire species should have been destroyed. He wasn't right in believing Malcolm's theories were wrong, but he was right about that.
The T-Rex is a far bigger thorn in the book than he wound up being in a movie. He was a constant enemy against Grant and the kids. In fact, the only relatable thing for me about Lex is how much she hated the T-Rex. Both Grant and Tim made excuses that it was a carnivore and just doing what it was supposed to do, but I hated it just as much as Lex did. It didn't have the hero moment in the book against the raptors it did in the movie either so I can't even say it had ANY selling points.
It was a pretty solid book that made a solid movie, but it wasn't actually great and I had problems with it. ****.
Holes by Louis Sachar
I was very surprised how good the book was. It's clearly written for kids but addresses mature things like racism expertly.
I'm not going to lie. Many of the bits of the mystery I guessed correctly ahead of time. But I didn't guess ALL of it. And me being right about a couple of things just made the surprises more credible. A good mystery should not be entirely unpredictable. It needs to be able to hang together properly. And this did.
I like how the bits in the past with Stanley's ancestors and Kate Barlow had to do with his current woes, and what was going on a Camp Green Lake. It all boils down to a big coincidence, which is fine, because after what Stanley and Zero went through, they sort of earned a miracle of a happy ending. I wouldn't want to take it away from them even if Stanley's name being on that briefcase is actually a billion to one shot.
The kids at the camp strike me as shockingly broken people. It's very interesting to thrust Stanley in the middle of them, but their nickname insistence thing is outright weird.
The Warden is shockingly scary villain just based on what she did to Mr. Sir with the poison nail-polish. The Narrator of the story doesn't actually tell us if she got her just desserts and went to prison (preferring us to fill in the "Holes" of the story ourselves) but I think she must have. At least I hope so. She was a piece of work.
I had expected a bit of a more comical story going in and I was impressed at how much things actually emotionally resonated. They printed an excerpt of Stanley's Yelnats' Survival Guide To Camp Green Lake and that was pretty much as jokey as I expected this to be. But I felt this book, particularly the second half, was sincere rather than satirical. I enjoyed it a lot. ****1/2.