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Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[5.2/10] So here’s something that may be a problem with Gilmore Girls for yours truly. I am far, far more invested in the familial relationship among the Gilmores than I am in the romantic lives of Lorelai and Rory. And to the extent that I care about the romantic lives of Lorelai and Rory, the only relationship that moves the needle for me is the one between Luke and Lorelai.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Rory and Dean well enough. He’s a sweet kid and they’re cute together. But there’s seven seasons of this show, and presumably they don’t have six more years of teenage bliss. The “I love you” issue is a relatable one for sixteen year olds, and as rocky as the path to get there was, Gilmore Girls earns the moment where Rory musters up the courage to say those three words and the ensuing reconciliation and make out session.
But where do you go from there? There’s plenty of interesting places, but I don’t know how much more mileage you get from Rory and Dean without devolving into cliched love triangles or the usual “we have to go off to college” routine, and I don’t know if their amiable enough but not exactly sock-knocking-off chemistry can sustain that sort of thing the way that Luke and Lorelai’s can.
What’s worse is that my least favorite method of creating conflict in television and film is the drastic misunderstanding, and the show goes for that twice in this episode. The least interesting of them is Paris, who thinks Rory is going on a date with Tristan because Tristan said so, and proceeds to instantly ignore Rory’s pleas to the contrary, threaten to screw her over via the school paper, and turns the mean girls duo against her. There’s legitimate reasons you could use to maintain the frenemy relationship between Rory and Paris, but the “I won’t believe you despite your obvious credibility and now I’m going to try to ruin your life” is one of the worst ones.
The same goes for the initial fireworks between Dean and Rory, where Dean sees Tristan carrying Rory’s books after snatching them away and thinks they’re together. Again, rather than anyone actually talking or believing one another about these things, there’s just more DRAMA, and it’s super-convenient. Rory’s nice moment of telling Dean she loves him papers over some of it (and the same goes for her speech about the troubadour debate, which is cheesy but works), but it’s a weak exercise in artificial and contrived conflict before getting to that moment.
The same goes for the Luke/Lorelai/Max/Rachel drama. Rachel has basically never made sense on the show. I don’t mean that it doesn’t add up that Luke has an old flame he still has feelings for, but there’s been nothing in their interactions that suggest a shorthand or a connection that would make them come back or take a chance on one another or anything like that. So when Rachel leaves, Scott Patterson’s great performance of dismay and quiet resignation almost saves it, but the moment doesn’t land with any real force because the arithmetic of the relationship never quite worked.
Of course, the episode ladles on the “you still have feelings for Luke/Lorelai” business pretty hard here. Luke fixing things at Lorelai’s house, his weenie-wagging standoff with Max, and the whole argument between Max and Lorelai about whether something’s going on between her and Luke are all trite and trope-y as all hell.
Again, the performances save some of it. Lauren Graham does a great job in the middle of the fight with Max, both in terms of trying to deflect and then pretending to be okay but not really be okay afterward. There’s subtleties to her performance and it absolutely makes the difference in an otherwise pretty rote situation.
That comes from a proposal that makes no sense. The episode offers a fig leaf in Max claiming that he teaches books about people who make impulsive choices so that they can live, really live and it’s time for him to do itself, but in reality, this feels really rushed and unbelievable. The follow up scene with all the daisies is a nice gesture (and again, Lauren Graham’s reaction to it truly makes the moment) but I only intermittently care about Lorelai and Max as a couple, and the whole proposal situation feels much more like a “we need something big for the season finale” than something the show actually built up to in any way.
Throw in the fact that the last gasp of the show’s first season has zero scenes with Emily and Richard, and you have what I can only label a disappointment of a capstone to an otherwise great season of television. Gilmore Girls, like any show, has its strengths and weaknesses, and for some reason, in its first season finale, it chooses to foreground the tepid relationships that have never been its most compelling elements, belabors the will-they-won’t-they stuff with Luke and Lorelai in an unsatisfying way, and completely elides the generational themes that really provide the fuel for the show’s greatness. “Love, Daisies and Troubadours” isn’t bad exactly, but it’s a dose of clichés and contrivances in a show that normally transcends them.
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@andrewbloom Thank you, I know these romance plots probably won’t be endgame and is only for their character development (I’m assuming) but it’s so forced and even their emotional turmoil feels forced. They can’t stick with a subplot at all one minute it’s Christopher another it’s Max but actually she confessed to her mom that she might like Luke and then her mom brings another potential suitor to one of their dinners? Make it make sense, this show is already so dear to me but I may drop it if they’re just going to add more romance subplots just so Lorelai can realize her actual feelings for Luke. And don’t get me started of how much of a red flag Dean is.
Shout by Andrew Bloom
VIP97.8/10. First episode of the series I've truly enjoyed and consistently laughed at! Bringing in Selina's daughter, Sue, was a nice way to ground some of the insanity going around. There were fun little touches like Selina making the "it's not all about me" argument in a room full of pictures of her. The run-around with naming a former oil guy to the clean jobs board was the kind of fun horse-trading I enjoy on these sorts of shows. And even the hurricane/new dog subplot did a nice job at being absurd in and of itself and used for a semi-dramatic moment. Plus Gary was in fine form with his "Gary-okee" and again, Sue being around really helped in providing a straight man for the other loony, district-brainwashed characters on the show to bounce off of. (Her describing the White House rep. as having a "police sketch" face was pretty funny.) Overall, the most encouraging episode of the show yet.
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@andrewbloom every time I scroll down on an epsiode of a new show I'm hopeful about and see your name I am filled with reassurance. I have a sherpa for the road ahead.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.4/10] “It was all a dream” is such a cheap cop out ending. The truth is that as soon as major characters started disintegrating, you knew the episode had its fingers crossed somehow. Batman and Superman dying? Maybe. Probably not, but you can buy that as a plausible thing the show might do to let the young heroes inherit the responsibility to protect the planet without standing in the big leaguers’ shadows. Wolf dying? Probably disqualifying, because you always save the pets, but maybe. Maybe it’s a smaller loss to give this invasion stakes. But Artemis dying? With so much unfinished business on the show? Come on.
Still, I thought the answer would be the one that Kid Flash identified -- it wasn’t a disintegration ray but rather a transporter beam, and the young heroes would free their grown counterparts at some point. I didn’t expect to have the whole thing washed away as a Martian Manhunter-fueled training exercise.
It’s a shame because ninety percent of the episode is pretty damn good. There is an alien invasion. Whoever these invaders are, their technology is powerful enough that it can neutralize or sidelines Earth’s greatest heroes. Every time the Young Justice team makes a little headway, the aliens strike back, forcing more and more desperate measures.
Despite the sense that this was going to be a big game of take-backsies somehow, “Failsafe” does a great job of making these events feel truly desperate. Wally’s anger at the loss of Artemis is telling. Aqualad’s sacrifice is noble. Robin’s determination in the face of certain doom is inspiring. The news anchor’s sense of being gobsmacked by all the devastation hits home for people who’ve lived through terrifying world events. The atmosphere here is commendably foreboding and unnerving, and the writers deserve credit for that.
That's why it’s so frustrating that the whole thing is one big cheat. The episode gives the proceedings a little juice as a simulation gone wrong. Even if it wasn’t real, M’gaan’s emotional reaction created some stakes in hindsight given the cheesy danger that dying in the simulation puts you in a coma in the real world. Martian Manhunter diving into the simulation himself and developing amnesia from her strength, and highlighting her as the most powerful mental force yet, has a little juice.
Int otal though it’s a way of erasing and undermining everything we’d seen to that point. The best you can say is that the good guys didn’t know it was a simulation, so we can treat their reactions and responses as real. There’s still merit in those sacrifices and desire to rescue those lost. The resourcefulness and refusal to give up even in the face of overwhelming odds and an unmatchable force speaks to the young heroes’ credit. The twist just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Overall, if you lop off the last few minutes of this one, and simply treat it as an Elseworlds episode or something, you’d have one hell of an episode. As it is, the fake out in the finish knocks this one down several pegs.
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@andrewbloom Exactly how I felt about this episode.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.7/10] Another strong season 2 outing when it comes to character development Beast has been one of the more interesting characters in X-Men so far. His willingness to be a political prisoner, as a means to show that he can play by the rules and have his day in court, showed him fighting the forces of prejudice in different ways than his comrades. But this shows us a different, more personal side of him that I appreciate.
Rather than simply being the enlightened, calm, optimistic force for the good of his fellow man, we learn that below the surface, Hank McCoy has concerns that he may never be able to change the hearts and minds of his countrymen. We see that as gentle and graceful as he is normally, with the right motivation, he can be a brutal berzerker and force of nature. And most importantly, we see that there’s a vulnerabile human being, hurting beneath the blue fur over how he’ll never be able to have a normal life.
All of that makes Beast a much more interesting figure for the series. The idea of him falling in love with a vision-impaired patient he’s treating is a bit cheesy. But I like how it draws out his insecurities over his appearance, his concern that he can never know love with a non-mutant because society would never accept, and his familial worries that being around him puts the people he cares about at risk. That is meaty, challenging stuff, even if I’m not necessarily super invested in his romance with Carly. I am invested in what those feelings mean to Beast.
It speaks to the show's take on prejudice, not just the irrationality of it, but the cruelty of it. Viewers know what a kind, compassionate person Beast is. And yet, Carly’s father is violently incensed at the mere thought of Hank so much as touching his daughter. The way the man changes his tune after Beast saves Carly’s life shows there may be hope for even the most hardened of hearts, but also the difficulties that someone like Beast, who’s visibly a mutant, faces, and the lengths he’d have to go to in order to convince people like that.
I’m also intrigued by the exploration of bigotry that takes place in Wolverine’s corner of the plot. Frankly, I wish we got more of Logan infiltrating the Friends of Humanity than one B-story’s worth of narrative. But still, it’s neat to see him going in there, learning a bit about recruitment and what these bigots say privately that they won’t say publicly.
But I also like the reveal that Creed, the head of the organization, is the son of none other than Sabertooth. The nice thing about the X-Men is that they’re a metaphor for all kinds of prejudice, and don’t have to fit one thing neatly. Creed’s hatred of his father for being different reflects real life individuals who resent their parent’s racial heritage or sexuality and turn violently against it. THe psychology here is a little overblown and facile (Creed frantically yelling “You’re not my father!” while shooting at a hologram is a bit much), but I like the idea of hidden self-loathing and shame that helps motivate the external hate people like Creed exude.
It’s not all good though. We get more of Professor X and Magneto in the Savage Land. This time they get attacked by a frog man for some reason, and have to fight some kind of Hydra-like thing before swimming away. Whatever. The sooner this subplot ends, the better.
Overall though, another superb episode. Candidly, I’ve had my doubts about the show on rewatch, but episodes like these that dig deep into the characters’ psychology, and the psychology of hate, show what it’s capable of when it’s seizing on something resonant like this.
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@andrewbloom See, I took Creed's extreme reaction, and Wolverine's comment about the claws as a hint that Sabertooth was physically abusive to him. That he didn't hate his father because he was a mutant, but that he hated mutants because of his father.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9So let me say up front that I tired of the Gloria storyline quickly. I'm sure that Lila's character on 'Dexter' was an imitation of this, but still, having seen her arc and any number of other "crazy chick" characters on television, I just didn't have much interest here. I get that Tony realizes he's attracted to her because she has the same kind of insanity as his mother, but it just gets hammered a little too hard for my taste. The scene where Tony flips out at her was all kinds of tense and disturbing and well done, and there was a similar intensity in the scene where Gloria drives her home, but I don't know if the perfunctory build of the storyline was worth it just for that scene.
Speaking of intense, the scene with Jackie Jr. and friends holding up the card game had me on the edge of my seat. Jackie Jr. hasn't been the most interesting character on the show, but things do reach a compelling end point where he takes Ralphie's advice and it blows up in his face. Plus, it creates some interesting scenes for Tony and Ralphie where Tony figures out that he can weaken Ralphie by putting the decision of what to do with Jackie Jr. in Ralphie's hands and he'll look bad whether he kills his almost stepson or gives him a pass.
The Carmella stuff, outside of the two intense scenes, provides the best material in the episode, and the comparison to Hilary Clinton was an interesting one. I like the story of her trying to come to terms with where her lifestyle comes from in parallel with Tony, and her conversation with the new priest is an interesting midpoint between Father Phil and the psychiatrist who told her not to accept blood money. I'll be interested to see how she puts "live on the good side" into practice.
As an aside, I thought Tony's scene with Melfi where she tells him he'll never leave Carmella was kind of weird. It wasn't bad exactly, but Melfi is rarely very direct (which I often find frustrating). She may poke or prod Tony in one direction or another, but rarely does any straightforward analysis or offers suggestion. But here, she was very direct, almost uncharacteristically so. Maybe it's her frustrations with her patients boiling over, but I almost wondered if it was a dream.
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I'm sure that Lila's character on 'Dexter' was an imitation of this
Thats exactly what I thought when I first saw Gloria in the series.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP96.5/10. In the distant, far of year of 2008, an ambitious (and ultimately disappointing) game entitled Spore was released. Nicknamed "SimEverything," the game was meant to capture the progress of civilization from single-celled organisms to space-faring intergalactic communities. Part of the idea was to stage the game using that progression, with parts that let your character evolve individually, and eventually form collectives that trade and war with similar neighboring groups on the way to a more united front.
I like the idea of The Walking Dead taking the same path. For several seasons, we've seen the core group of TWD expand and seek stability. In the beginning, it was all about Rick surviving on his own and finding his family. Eventually, on Hershel's farm and afterward, it became about the group, and finding safety and survival in bigger numbers. This continued with more permanence at the prison, which continued the theme of the group finding temporary safety and trying to protect it from enemies both dead and alive.
Then, with the advent of Alexandria, the show began to pivot a bit. It started to tell a story about building civilization back up again, about creating something sustainable for the foreseeable future, not just until the prison fence collapses. Deanna had her ups and downs as a character, but she was the anchor that held this idea in place, and despite the story of whether or not Rick's battle-scarred compatriots could settle in with the very green and sheltered Alexandrians, the conclusion was the two groups becoming one, and building for the future.
Now, with the idea that Alexandria is a more permanent home, a foothold back to civilization, the reveal that there are other, neighboring groups who are also self-sufficient, who trade and war and have, for lack of a better term, international relations with one another, is an interesting development in the expanding scope of the show and the way it's exploring the way the society is rebuilt after the zombie apocalypse. I don't expect the show to continue this trajectory forever necessarily, and its facility with political ideas has been broad and shallow at best, but it's a worthwhile direction to move after the end of the first major Alexandria chapter of the show in "No Way Out."
The future has been very much on the show's mind since the end of that episode, and the theme continues here, especially with Abraham's story, which was the highlight of "Knots Untie." I've gone back and forth on Abraham as a character. There's a distinctiveness about him, obviously in his look, but also in his demeanor that makes him stand out in a series where it feels like a good percentage of the cast is, by fiat, intended to be little more than bland zombie food. And I'll admit that as tired as I grew of his doublespeak in "Always Accountable," there was something irresistibly enjoyable about his turns of phrase here, whether it be his Bisquick/pancakes metaphor, or his galoshes comment, or simply his standard poetic drawl. Having been raised on a steady diet of Whedon and Tarantino, it suckered me in.
But more than that, what I liked about Abraham's story is that it conveyed his conflict and his decision without either making them too explicit or taking refuge in inscrutability. It's clear that for him, Rosita represents the vagabond, just keep moving and fighting ethos that gave him direction in a directionless world after the reaction and deaths of his family in Season 5's "Self Help." And Sasha represents the idea of putting down roots and trusting that things will be steady for a little while. It's clear that Abraham is nervous about the latter idea, that he's hesitant to make himself vulnerable like that once more, in his colorful conversation with Glen about he and Maggie's child. To have a child is to predict some measure of safety and stability in the near future, and that's clearly an idea that he has trouble with.
But then, still recovering from his PTSD, Abraham nearly strangles one of the men from the neighboring camp, and in a moment of recovery later, the man talks about seeing his wife and children, the people in his life that really matter to him. Somewhat conveniently, Abraham himself is nearly strangled later in the episode, and in artful moment, he hears Sasha's voice in that moment of heightened focus, eventually laughs, and leaves Rosita's necklace behind. His decision is made, and as seen in his little crooked smile at Maggie's sonogram, he's willing to look to the future with a measure of hope again.
What kind of future will that be? That seems to be the question at the heart of "Knots Untie". Negan and the Saviors' outpost seems to run on violence, threats, and intimidation. Gregory and Jesus's camp appears far more docile, but it's run by an obvious creep and seems ill-equipped to defend itself. Alexandria appears to be the pragmatic middle ground, with values of community and kindness du jour, and yet as much as the audience is supposed to recoil at the revelation that Negan is essentially running a protection racket against Gregory's group, our heroes are just as willing to step in and receive the same benefits in exchange for taking out that threat.
It's a move that posits Alexandria's value to the wider world being as fighters and strategizers. Rick points out that their value is themselves, their ability to surivive and the fact that they've made it this long while wandering through the desert, so to speak. In her scenes with the uncomfortably slimy, entitled, self-important Gregory, Maggie uses that as her leverage, and puts up their crew as not only the lesser of two evils, but the best chance Gregory has to keep his people together over the longterm.
The execution of all of this is far from perfect. The dialogue is clunky throughout, the ending conflict feels like a contrived and convenient to throw in some more action and move the plot forward in a less-than-organic fashion, and having a guy named Jesus who's constantly trying to keep the peace and find a better way (replete with Rick's crew telling survivors "we're with Jesus") is on the nose in a way that feels like a bit much even for the fairly blunt stylings of this show. To the same end, Maggie's pronouncements that there will be a cost to going to war makes me think that she and her child are likely casualties meant to show some error or guilt for the rest of the group, and her scenes with Gregory didn't necessarily communicate the power or savvy from her that seemed to be intended.
But again, I like the idea that the show is exploring a wider world beyond the walls of wherever Rick & Co. have holed up for a while this time. I like the idea of different groups out there, with different ideas of how to run their collectives and different strengths and weaknesses being measured against one another and forced to do business. The show's attempted this sort of thing before with The Governor, but that was little more than a rote, separate build to an obvious conflict rather than equal civilizations figuring out how to interact with one another. The Walking Dead could go down that same path again in the lead up to the fight with Negan, but as the series seems to be looking to the future, I hope it spends as much time examining where Rick, and his group, and Alexandria fit into the broader landscape of The New World.
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@andrewbloom Impressed by your long reviews that I stumble upon on a variety of shows. And I mean that in the best way possible, I wish I could write so eloquently!
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.8/10] There’s been a subtle theme of people breaking good on The Boys this season. It’s always been a dark show about people messing up and playing in the dirt in the hopes of keeping others clean. And yet, there’s been throughlines -- about A-Train turning to the good, about MM coming into his own as a leader, in a weird way even about Homelander becoming a better father -- that brought more and more folks into the light.
You can see that in “Assassination Run”, the finale of season 4. Time again, people choose something better, more hopeful, with a more aspirational bent than The Boys’ usual cynicism.
After a season’s worth of struggling with her past and her identity, Annie January starts to reconcile with herself. It’s admittedly strange, albeit on brand for this show, that what pushes her to that point is a sociopathic doppelganger who thinks the worst of her after being inside of her head. Not for nothing, it’s Erin Moriarty’s best performance of the season, as she revels in getting to play the heel for once. And the show’s production team does extraordinary work in putting Starlight and her double on screen together in close quarters.
And yet, what gets Annie out of her funk is a little ambiguous, but seeing a vision of her worst self presents to her, giving her the opportunity to reject it. Beating up someone who looks exactly like you, Captain Kirk-style, can apparently give you some moral clarity. More importantly, though, Annie’s confident enough to know what she wants to fight for, and who she wants to fight for it with. That's enough for her to have a breakthrough and help save the day when it’s needed most.
Kimiko and Frenchie have a bit of a breakthrough too. After participating in all of this and feeling the good vibes through difficult circumstances, they resolve to try to forgive themselves a little bit each day. The idea that there is bravery in that, a chance to grow and move forward, is heartening, especially as they find solace in the comfort they provide to one another.
I’ll admit, I’ve never been a Frenchie/Kimiko shipper. The relationship always felt a little too brother/sister to me, and beyond that, a little troubling given the state that Frenchie found and nurtured Kimiko in. But I can't deny that they’re sweet together, and with a first kiss on tippy toes, sweetness isn’t bad amid all the darkness.
Hughie aims to cut through that darkness. If there’s something in The Boys that is aspirational, that speaks to human resilience and decency, it’s his pitch to his friends and allies. The cynical view is that too often, superhero flicks tell us implicitly that violence is the solution, and that the answer to terrible danger and vicious threats is to punch them in the mouth, preferably with a superpowered fist.
Hughie proposes something radical, albeit ironically in line with the philosophy of Professor X. He suggests that forgiveness is courageous, something he learned from his dad and extended to his mom. He’s seen the way his friends’ lives have become fucked up from them becoming monsters to fight monsters. He doesn’t want that anymore, for him or them.
So when Victoria Neuman wants out, when she realizes this is a constant cycle of mutually assured destruction that only ratchets up to become worse and worse, when she sends out an olive branch to The Boys, Hughie urges them to take it. They trust but verify, in MM’s words. But they are open to truth and reconciliation, to charting a different course than the brutal and bloodstained one that the cold war between Supes and those afraid of subjugation at their hands have been pursuing since The Boys began. So when Neuman walks in, daughter in tow, ready to give peace a chance, even after all they’ve been through, our heroes, super and otherwise, are ready to accept her and find another way.
And Billy Butcher comes to tear it, and her, completely apart.
When I wrote about the evil grin Billy Butcher let loose in “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son”, I compared it to the same one Tony Soprano gives in a late season episode of The Sopranos. Without giving anything away, if there’s a consistent theme in that show, it’s about people having opportunity after opportunity to make a turn for the better, to shed the damage and dirt they’re all mired in, and for time and time again, for generational inertia or institutional entropy or just plain selfishness to drag them back in the muck.
That's what I think of when I think of Billy Butcher here. God help him, for all that he’s been going through, he’s tried to keep a hold of his better self. He’s held onto the memory of Becca as the manifestation of his better angels. He’s set aside decimating all Supes because it would hurt one that he loves. He’s tried to protect his surrogate little brother, asking Hughie to carry on his wishes, even if he can't be there. He even offers an apology, albeit a vicarious one, to The Boys that he’s asked so much of. For as blackened as Billy Butcher’s soul has become, he’s held onto enough of the light to stay afloat.
And he’s done it for Ryan. God help him, he loves the kid. When Grace wants to push him or force him or cajole him, Billy gets her to ease off. He wants to convince the young lad, show him where he’s safe, rather than trap him in the same kind of cage where Homelander was made into a monster. This is a caring, empathetic side of Billy, the side that we’ve only seen come out rarely. And when he thinks he’s on his deathbed, when the easiest thing to do is try to tell a kid what’s what, he responds with compassion and kindness.
And it isn’t enough.
It’s not Billy’s fault. Everyone’s understandable here. Grace loves Ryan no less but she knows the stakes and takes a direct approach that just ends up scaring the poor kid. Ryan doesn’t know his own strength and rightfully fears being made into a lab rat or a weapon and doesn’t want a parent who fears him. And Billy knows the stakes too, but tries everything to reach the kid as a father, not a captor, and as a loved one.
And it still fails. Grace still dies for it, at Ryan’s hands. After everything, Ryan still goes back to Homelander.
That's it. The glass is shattered. The thing that held Billy Butcher back from the darkness is gone. He tried. He tried with everything in him when the easiest thing in the world was to give in. And it still wasn’t enough. As with Tony, there is tragedy in that, in someone succumbing to their worst impulses, and losing the good parts of them in the process. Especially when death and destruction follows in their wake.
All the good work comes to naught. The Supres get what they want. Homelander is unhinged and losing control. He outs Vicky. He scares off Ryan and seems to be threatening him. His proceeding based on impulse rather than plans results in him having to come up with a quickfire hitlist to keep people in line. And despite all his screw-ups, he comes out on top.
It’s the part I have the most mixed feelings about. There’s something to the idea that this was a part of Sage’s plan, albeit with a few bumps in the road. Her engineering the situation so that even Homelander’s predictable vanity leads things to where she wants them is a touch too perfect. But there’s something to be said for the idea of Homelander trying to lead, resulting in nothing but disasters only for the smart people in the room to ultimately prop him up and put him in power anyway.
That said, the political commentary is even more on the nose than usual. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it’s good to call a spade a spade, and especially in an election year, pointing out the oppressive tendencies that are the echoes of real life events makes some sense. On the other, at some point it starts to feel like set dressing and bluntness in lieu of actual incisive social commentary.
Still, there’s something to be said about the total loss. Homelander gets what he wants, and immediately uses the power to sic his superpowered thugs on the “undesirables” just like he always hoped. The Deep doesn’t care about actual respect or intelligence, just strong-arming people into offering it out of fear. The duly elected representatives are gone, and in their place is a puppet of malign forces. The good guys either get locked up or barely escape. For all the good, for all the hope, the forces of evil win out here.
Maybe you need evil to fight evil. For all the restraint and decency Hughie, Annie, M.M., Frenchie, Kimiko, Vicky, and more have shown, it leads them to being captured, coopted, killed, or sent on the run. The closing notes The Boys leaves us with in its fourth season (aside from a Soldier Boy tease) is one where the high-minded and hopeful crash into a wall of indifferent cruelty, exemplified by the man who used to be their leader.
Maybe Billy Butcher did die in that hospital bed, or at least the last decent part of him did. He tried to hold onto that part, for Becca, and for Ryan. But Becca is dead. Ryan is a killer who’d rather go back to his father. And little brother stand-in Hughie is now just standing in the way.
In his place is a tentacle monster with no pretense or remorse, ready to rip Supes in two without so much as a please or thank you. The closing image of “Assassination Run” is Butcher unleashed, gazing in the rearview mirror at his dark avatar, with no more compunction about trying to be good. After so much nudging our heroes toward the light, The Boys ends with the battle lost, the villains in power, and the sandpaper soul of Billy Butcher turned to brutality and maybe even genocide once again.
In a season batch of episodes that played at aspirations toward kindness, forgiveness, and growth, only to let them all crumple under the weight of cruelty and loss once more, this may be The Boys darkest ending and bleakest ending season yet.
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@andrewbloom finally, someone who actually has a grasp of storytelling and story arcs. That not every arc has to be contained in one season, nor every answer given in the first five minutes of the first episode.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.1/10] This was my least favorite entry in Tales of the Empire. How did Barriss Offee die? Well, she was randomly stabbed in a big metaphor-laden cave...I guess.
To be more charitable, she dies trying to stall an Inquisitor long enough for an innocent family trying to escape the Empire’s collection of force-sensitive children to get away. That part’s all good. The idea that she broke away from the Inquisitors and managed to become a healer and source of solace and protection on a distant world is cool. But this is an ending that left me unsatisfied with ehr story.
Again, I get it. The cave is a big metaphor! Bariss gives ominous warnings about fear having taken over for Lynn! Lytnn runs in more focused on random attacks and anger than on sense! Even though Bariss gets killed, she offers forgiveness and a warning that it’s not too late to change! I get it, it's just not done particularly artfully. The metaphor is heavy-handed, and Bariss doesn't feel like a real person; instead just a sermon delivery system.
The episode is not without its charms. The fight where Barriss simply dodges all of Lyn’s attacks is pretty cool, and I like the idea of Barriss having become a sort of monk in exile, helping those who come to her and sparing as many as she can. This is just an ignoble end that doesn't amount to much. Maybe we get some sort of redemption for Lyn down the line (I don’t know when this short is supposed to take place relative to Obi-Wan, but considering I’d forgotten who Lyn was when this little arc started, I can't say I’m super invested in that.
The hint that Barriss might still be in contact with Ahsoka (or maybe Cere Junda?) is a tantalizing one. I half expected us to get some kind of teaser at the end with Ahsoka receiving that family of fugitives. But instead, we get something that has spiritualism but not really substance. It’s a fine enough but disappointing end to what’s otherwise been a great set of vignettes.
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@andrewbloom you could think of it as Barris knew it was Lynn who was coming and was tired of running/fighting. She wanted a way out and if she could do it by changing the mind of one inquisitor than she was going to take it and go out with respect. That’s if she’s actually dead of course.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.9/10] So I’m going to level with you here. I love Star Wars when it’s spiritual. I love Star Wars when it’s personal. I love Star Wars when it’s focused on epochal and individual events that reverberate over the course of generations. I love Star Wars when it asks big questions about what we are and what we choose to be.
But heaven help me, I also love Star Wars when it’s full of badass lightsaber fights.
There’s a lot of important events in “night”, the fifth episode of The Acolyte. We find out the identity of Mae’s master. Major characters die. There’s a big switcheroo. Mae and Osha communicate to one another for the first time in the series.
But the part I’m still buzzing on is the kickass fights we get throughout.
Suffice it to say, I know showing bad guys as uber-competent and cool can be problematic, but holy hell, watching Darth Dentum just casually slice and dice his way through the Jedi collective sent to subdue his pupil is awing. I don’t know if it’s quite to Vader hallway fight levels. But still, the way he short-circuits opponents’ lightsabers, the way he uses his vambrace and helmet to block fearsome attacks, the way he uses the Force to skewer two Jedi at the same time, is all badass as hell. Sometimes, villains need to be fearsome, and the quasi-Sith here fits the bill with the hack and slash routine alone.
But his isn’t the only fight with juice here! I love the stand-off between Mae and Jecki. It is not focused on lightsabers, but doesn’t lose any of the intensity. Mae’s resourcefulness matched with Jedcki’s determination to conduct the arrest in honor of her Order makes for a pitched battle between them. The way each uses their environment, and each has a more physical confrontation than the weapons-based combat outside works to add balance and variety to the pugilism in the episode.
Then, we get a standoff between Sol and the darksider. And while the other fights can thrive on craft and coolness alone,this one comes with more character and meaning. This is Osha’s master versus Mae’s master, a battle between the angel on one twin’s shoulder and the devil on the other’s. The standoff in the tree-lined clearing (cleared a little more with the bad guy’s blade) comes with the weight of a conflict between two philosophies. There’s still plenty of coolness in the choreography, with the Sith in particular having a certain balletic grace matched with a wilder style, but there’s also a deeper meaning to the fight.
Part of that comes from the bad guy getting his helmet slashed to reveal it’s Qimir behind the mask. I generally like that. As I mentioned in the last episode, it’s kind of close to the “Darth Jar Jar” theory the internet got hyped up for a while. The reveal that the seeming clown is secretly a machiavellian antagonist has power on its own, and the twist that Mae’s ostensible ally and confidante was also her master comes with a certain impact.
Manny Jacinto does a good job in the role. His line read of the purple prose at the end isn’t great, but as someone who knows him mainly as Jason Mandoza from The Good Place, he is unexpectedly convincing as a steady state badass feigning goofiness to catch his foes off-guard. The way he taunts and throws barbs at Sol in particular lands with a certain sting, and Jacinto sells it like gangbusters.
There’s also the fact that he freakin’ kills people, and not just the Star Wars equivalent of nameless redshirts! We’ve spent time with Yord and Jecki. We have a sense of who they are, and reason to care about them. So as much as it sucks to lose them (or at least lose Jecki, who gets a pre-mortem compliment from Qimir for her courage), the Jedi’s nemesis cutting them down is bracing and meaningful in a way that mowing down randos wouldn’t be. It adds to the list of people that Sol has to avenge.
Only, vengeance is not the Jedi way! What I love about Qimir’s attacks on Sol is that, true to the themes his character embodies, he uses the Jedi’s rules and precepts against them! His goal is to win, sure, but also to try to prove that the Jedi are hypocrites, that their rules are a limitation, and that when push comes to shove, they’ll break them anyway. So he baits Sol by holding Mae hostage and then tweaks him for attacking while his back is turned. He provokes an anger in the stoic Jedi Master that requires Osha to have to stop him from killing. He uses an unarmed state to check how committed Sol is to his principles given the blood on Qimir’s hands.
That is interesting! Frankly, it’s more of a Star Trek sort of thing than a Star Wars one. What do you do when the bad guy isn’t just testing your prowess in battle or the capabilities of your technology, but probing the fault lines of your moral code. I love that sort of thing.
I particularly appreciate Qimir’s pitch -- I just want to be left alone and be free to practice my ways and pass them down. It’s an interesting thought experiment for tolerance. Have the Jedi forged enemies like Qimir with an overly restrictive view of the Force, who may possess it, and how they may use it? Or are those kinds of structures necessary because people like Qimir would wield such powers recklessly and dangerously in ways that leave piles of dead bodies in their wake? In line with “Destiny”, there aren’t easy answers to those questions, and I like that.
Hell, the most powerful exchange in the episode comes when the good guys challenge Qimir for killing a young padawan, and the Sith responds with, “He brought her here.” Who do you blame the death on: the callous killer who claims he must slay anyone who knows his identity so he can practice his ways without being hunted down, or the ostensible noble master who nevertheless brings a veritable child into battle? Or do you blame both? Again, the moral gray area stuff is superb.
I like that split perspective in the confrontation between Mae and Osha as well. Both think the other has been brainwashed. Osha sees the person who killed her family, who always had a mean streak, taken under the tutelage of a false master. Mae sees someone who abandoned her family, who was compelled to give up the love and connection that the Coven represents, and wants to forgive and embrace her anyway. The dialogue is a little blunt, but true to that description, it hits hard.
The other material here is solid, if more mixed. The show set it up in the last episode, so I can't complain too hard, but Osha neutralizing Qimir, even temporarily, with the giant bugs plays as a little convenient in terms of holding off a powerful Sith. The pacing and editing here is a little off, with scenes that cut off at odd times, and several moments where the cinematography/score made me think we were about to let the credits roll, and instead things just kept on going. And the whole switcheroo seems a bit implausible, even if I’m still willing to go.
But this episode makes me think of Revenge of the Sith. Anakin famously declares, “From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!” And it’s amusing, because it’s such a blunt and artless announcement of his perspective. But “Night” is that pronouncement taken seriously! Without defending the Sith exactly, the writers examine why someone might see the Jedi that way, even if they’re the bad guy. It brings a depth to the light/dark duality we haven't really seen on the screen before, and I am here for it.
Or I would be, if I weren’t too busy being distracted by the badass lightsaber fights.
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@andrewbloom best episode so far and great review, thanks!
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[6.9/10] This was pretty easily my least favorite episode of The Acolyte so far, and a big part of my complaints is that the dialogue is painfully clunky here. This is Star Wars, so not every line has to be the most poetic or natural thing you’ve ever heard. But the conversations in this episode feel so stilted and declaratory. You have characters outright announcing their emotional states in a jarring way. The actors do their best to make up for it, and some of them manage to inject some emotion and feeling into otherwise tin-eared lines. (The actress who plays Jecki does a particularly good job of this.) But when the words being exchanged by the characters feel so awkward and obvious, and it’s a dialogue-heavy episode, you’re going to have problems.
The production design and location scouting helps make up for some of it though! My goodness, Khofar looks lovely. It’s easy to shoot lush verdant landscapes and wow the audience. But the art direction team also does a lovely job of making the planet seem like a deep, interwoven jungle that's alive and treacherous. (For those of you who’ve played Fallen Order it feels true to the Wookiee environment on Kashyyyk in that game.) Plus, Master Kalnacca’s camp seems incredibly cozy, with shades of the freakin’ Ewok films of all things. Even as the narrative presentation falters a little bit, this is a nice place to spend half an hour in, which helps.
That said, it’s not just the dialogue that suffers here; it’s the character choices. Mae and Osha’s reactions to one another seem sudden and jarring, to the point that I wondered if both were feints at first. I get that Oshi being alive would be a big deal for Mae, but all of a sudden she’s ready to give up her entire quest and turn herself into the Jedi and give up her master? It’s not inconceivable as a character choice, but I think you need more build to that notion to make it meaningful. Here I almost thought she was just messing with Qimir. All we;’ve gotten from Mae so far is this firm resolve and determination to complete her mission, so to turn on a dime like that feels implausible.
The same goes for Oshi asking the annoying prig Yord to kill her sister if she has to. I get the idea that Osha thinks she’s incapable of doing it and wants to make sure someone can handle it. But again, the conversation is awkwardly written, and going from “I can't hurt my sister” to “I want to make sure someone else can” feels like a big leap.
I do like that we get the awkward dynamic of Osha being on a Jedi mission as a civilian. Her status as an ex-Jedi with her former crew pays some dividends, and her budding friendship with Jecki is especially endearing. The theme of different cultures’ reactions to death and loss is a potent one. And on a pure fun level, Basil the tracker is a memorable design and addition.
That said, I’m less up on the partnership between Mae and Qimir. Not to belabor the point, but it’s where the dialogue is at its worst and most emotionally expository, which doesn’t help. But it also feels like the writers are tiptoeing around something in a graceless way that makes their interactions seem off. (Speculative spoilers:I’m sticking with my prediction that Mae’s master is one of her moms, but my backup guess is that it’s actually Qimir, and the show’s trying to pull a legit Darth Jar Jar by taking a jokey character and turning him into a secret menace. There’s at least something more going on with him, I think, and I’m not entirely sure what.)
Otherwise, I do appreciate that the awkward relationship between Osha and Sol continues. In a way, Sol is using her, while catching heat from his superiors. But he also doesn’t want Mae hurt. His intentions are good, even if his methods are questionable, which is a compelling way to write a parental figure.
Plus hey, halfway through the series, it’s about time we got a little more from our dark side force-wielder. So even if it’s just a tease, seeing Mae’s master show up, compel Osha as an adult much as the Jedi did when she was a kid, and then casually flick away Sol’s forces, gives the baddie a formidable introduction.
Overall, this is still the lowlight of the season to date, especially given the tepid lines that pervade it, but there’s some promise for things to come.
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You totally nailed it, and articulated everything I felt about the episode. The dialogue was just so unnatural and the characterizations downright weird. Definitely the worst episode so far.
I love dual saber wielding alien padawans. All two of them.
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Three if you include Ventress.
How do you have a fire in space…?
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You also don’t have the force and pod racers
"Boxing Daria" is this show at its best. I loved the episode's structure, that has the refrigerator box trigger Daria's troubling memory from childhood, and uses the rest of the episode to have her slowly piecing together and reacting to what happened.
Season 5 has been, in large part, about Daria recognizing her own faults, stepping outside her own, often unyielding perspective, broadening her horizons, and showing a great deal of personal growth. This episode was the perfect capstone to that, with her concern over being a burden on her parents, and her hurt that even they see her as a misfit, turning into a recognition that her parents understand her better than they let on, and appreciate and love her for who she is, and that, in turn, makes Daria appreciate how lucky she really is to be raised by these people she's so apt to resist.
Much of this show has centered on Daria's misfit status, and closing out its regular season with one last 3,000 foot view of how Daria feels about being an outsider, how its shaped who she is and who she's always been, was a wonderful way to approach the end of the series. As strong and distinct and interesting as Daria is, her greatest flaw is myopia (figuratively, though she probably has literal myopia as well). Being able to look at herself a little more clearly through her parents' eyes, and with their respect, take a step toward being more social like leading a freshman tour, was a wonderful bit of symbolism to show the potential for growth and change in Daria without taking the character away from the sarcastic non-joiner we've come to know and love.
There were also a lot of wonderful little grace notes to help tie up the series here, from a call back to the ink blot test from the series's premier, to Daria telling Jane she's the person that Daria trusts most in the world, to Quinn saving Daria's box. Even the deft way the show handles how a child remembers their parents' fights, or depicts how the uber-popular Quinn was once just an energetic toddler feels well-observed and trenchant. There's a heart and complexity to the best episodes of this series, and "Boxing Daria" had both in spades, from a complicated look at the conflicted feelings an outcast like Daria feels, to the strong bonds of friendship and family she's built despite that. I'm still looking forward to "Is It Fall Yet", but "Boxing Daria" is a strong a note for this series to go out on as any.
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Agree with everything you said here. It was a really well written and constructed series finale, something very rare in television thanks to abrupt cancellations or just shows outstaying their welcome.
6.9/10. This is a pretty stock story. I was rolling my eyes at Jet from the minute he swung down from the trees as a cutrate Peter Pan with his collection of Lost Boys. There's a fairly hackneyed arc for Sokka where Katara and Aang make fun of him for "trusting his instincts" and leading them into trouble, then of course it's his instincts that save the day when the two of them get hoodwinked by Jet. It's done well enough, even if the bits with Jet flirting with Katara while plays Cassandra about how bad a dude Jet is and no one will believe him feels especially hacky.
Still, the backgrounds and setting of the episode was particularly gorgeous, with the fall colors and vibrant reds contrasting nicely with Aang's robes and Jet's autumn-hued clothing. Their fight up in the trees was a pretty cool setpiece as well, though again the stuttering animation takes some of the oopmh out of it. And I have to admit, I bought into the fake out at the end, and was ready to applaud the show for having the moxie to show the bad guys winning. Still, Sokka managing to Xander it up and find an unorthodox solution by following his instincts, Zeppo-style, is a nice bit of redemption for him despite the stock nature of the conflict.
My only other complaint is that there's something very interesting about the idea of a young adult who's lost his parents due to the Fire Nation's brutality, and is willing to inflict the same level of brutality on the Fire Nation, civilians and all to get his revenge and protect his band of brothers. Instead, the entire focus for Jet is on his ability to smoothtalk and manipulate others, eventually painting him as a fairly one-note villain. There's some thematic depth to the idea behind the character that the episode barely scratches the surface of.
Overall, this one feels like something of a placeholder episode, meant to give a little more depth to Sokka but ending up giving him a stock arc with a pretty obvious trajectory. But it's not without it's charms and it has some quality design work, so it's close to passing grade.
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Couldn't have said it better.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.1/10] The pacing and structure for *Homeland*s season finales has been kind of wonky since at least Season 3. “America First” is half-climax and half-denouement, and that leaves it feeling a bit jumbled tonally. It is difficult, at best, to have the culmination of all the fireworks and plotting and threats that have bubbled up over the course of a season sewed together with the quiet aftermath and scenes of people putting the pieces back together. It leaves the finale of one of the show’s best seasons feeling like Frankenstein’s monster.
And yet, taken apart, each half of the episode is solid, if not exactly an achievement. The attempt on President Keane’s life, and Carrie and Quinn saving the day, would have worked better as its own thing, and expends a number of conveniences to get the characters separated and put back together right when the show needs it, but it has its moments.
For one thing, it’s nice to see Carrie taking charge a bit. One of the show’s recurring bits is Carrie as the last sane woman, and seeing her make her way to the President, figure out the plot (with some unexpected help from Dar Adal), and keep the President Elect safe from her would-be assassins is a minor thrill. The threat of the rogue ops team trying to blow up her car and then hunt her down verges on the unbelievable, but makes for a few nice set pieces at least.
And, oh yeah, Quinn is dead. It’s a moment that feels like it should have more impact than it does. It’s nice that he goes out with a heroic sacrifice, saving not only the leader of the free world but the woman he loves amid a torrent of gunfire. The fact that making it through that blockade means they’re suddenly safe, and the entire idea of pegging the assassination on him are a bit farfetched, but there’s the kernel of a good idea there.
Quinn goes down fighting, and when he believes he’s empty and worthless and only good at killing, he dies putting his life on the line for something bigger than himself. The tone of the moment is somewhat weird, as the show doesn’t get too impressionistic or too realistic, but it tries to follow up on the sense that Quinn has been out of sorts and trying to protect Carrie throughout the season, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice in that regard here.
The problem is that Quinn has been near-death so many times in this show, from his pirate king escapade last season, to his miraculous survival of the attempt on his life at the cabin this season, that it’s hard to gin up too much investment in his actual death here. “America First” doesn’t dwell on it, and I appreciate its commitment to not overdoing the moment, but you can only turn a character into a death-defying superman so many times, or fake out his demise so many times, before when you actually pull the trigger (so to speak) it doesn’t mean what it might have.
We then get to “six weeks later,” which conjures up troubling recollections to Brody magically beating his drug addiction through the power of a “three weeks later” mini-montage. Still, the passage of time puts some distance between the climax of the season and the inevitable end-of-the-line reflection, which at least softens the sort of disjointed feeling of it all.
The good guys have won! Brett O’Keefe still has his show, but he’s talking about how he’s let his fans down by letting Keane get inaugurated. Dar Adal and his cronies are in jail! Saul is the head of the CIA, or at least someone big enough to have a seat at the table when the heads of the intelligence community are gathered! Carrie is going to get Frannie back, and she’s getting a job in the White House! All is well! Conspiracy scuttled! Bad guys vanquished! Heroes victorious!
This being Homeland it is, of course, not that simple. I like the poetry of that “what hell hath I wrought?” ending to the season, where Saul is arrested, Carrie is used by the people in power, and things don’t look so sunny on the other side of Keane’s inauguration. There’s something uncomfortable in Dar’s ominous-yet-warm statement to Saul that what he did was unforgivable, but that he’s not sure he was wrong to do it. It feels like the show is trying to tie into Trump-related concerns of the real world that are an uneasy fit for Homeland’s fictional, if occasionally ripped-from-the-headlines one.
Still, I like the law of unintended consequences coming into play here. Dar and O’Keefe’s efforts stemmed from a mistrust of Keane, a sense that she would set back their projects and their way of life. Now, that feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no doubt that Keane would have enacted reforms, but it is clear that the attempt on her life hardened her, made her into someone that would have heads roll throughout the intelligence agencies, who would reauthorize the patriot act rather than limit it, that would make mistrustful of anything that isn’t under his auspices.
As disquieting as that is to see, it’s entirely understandable. When your own deep state makes an attempt on your life, it’s not crazy to be mistrustful of anyone even remotely affiliated with them. When your enemies, who turn out to be mortal enemies, subvert the rule of law to run you out as a duly elected leader, it’s not a crazy move to subvert it yourself in order to ensure they’re not able to do the same thing again. There’s a troubling subtext from Dar’s comments and Keane’s own worries to Saul that there is something fundamentally unsound about Keane that makes her prone to this, or not up to the mantle of being President, but the show take an interesting tack in showing how Dar and O’Keefe’s plan changed the course of Keane’s presidency, but not in the way they imagined.
It’s not in the way Carrie imagined either. The iconography at the end of the episode, of Carrie looking off into the distance and seeing the capital, is a direct parallel to the famous image of Brody doing the same thing. The implication, at least as I read it, is that just as the first major arc of Homeland centered on the blowback and problems from the war on terror sparked by undeniable tragedy, so too does Carrie look upon a government in Washington that is poised to start the same cycle over again, the same recriminations and power-consolidating executive that helped to create an environment where Brody would be born. Carrie had hoped to avoid all this, to prevent Dar from perpetuating that cycle, and yet despite her best efforts, it’s all back where it began, even if it took a different road to get there.
But Carrie doesn’t just mourn the lost opportunity for reform. She mourns her friend. As Mrs. Bloom noted, Carrie discovering Quinn’s collection of picture hidden in a book is a nice callback to how she uncovered his former family life in the first place. The book itself, Great Expectations, is a symbolic choice, one that tells the story of a young man who idolized a young woman, and who went through hell in pursuing someone who would not, and arguably could not, love him back. The stack of pictures is a little cliché, but still, the moment where Carrie finds the photo of herself amid Quinn’s treasured snapshot memories is still affecting, a sign of intimacy that she was one of the few things in his life that mattered, that made him more than a heartless killing machine.
Season 6 was still one of Homeland’s best, one with an impressively unified story that relied on fewer wild twists or conveniences than most, and which offered better and more potent commentary on today’s political climate despite not quite tracking with the real world in its fictional leaders. “America First” isn’t the softest landing for an otherwise quality stretch of episode, with the divided structure and languid pace giving the entire efforts a less-than-cohesive sensibility, but it ties together a certain fatalism that has been with the show from the beginning.
There are good people, even good people who do bad things. There are well-intentioned people, in government and in the intelligence services, who mean to change things and defend their country. But sometimes the confluence of those intentions leads us inexorably back to the same place, sinking to the level of those we oppose, stamping out our enemies without process or justice, and starting the cycle anew, birthing more Brodys and Quinns to fight and die in the struggle. Carrie is a survivor and a witness, and all her talent, all her effort, all her sacrifice to make things better or different may be for naught. That’s not fun, but its potent, and so is Season 6 of Homeland.
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Thank you Andrew, that was beautifully written, and an exceptionally insightful analysis of the finale. I couldn’t agree more with you about all the arguments you make: in particular, those you make regarding Quinn’s death, and the disquieting “what Hell hath we wrought?” feeling in the aftermath of saving the PE and clearing the path for her inauguration.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[7.8/10] I appreciate the choice to conflate something as geopolitically momentous as the end of The Troubles with something as personally momentous as the act of leaving your childhood behind. The choice to vote yes on the titular agreement is juxtaposed with the choice to accept adulthood, and the inevitable changes that come with it. Granda Joe lays it out -- it’s easy to be afraid that it could all be for naught, but it’s tougher, in some ways, to imagine there could be something better, even if it’s scary.
The finale does some of those full-circle things that help mark that this is a big closing event for a show. We open with a montage of the major developments, big and small, that have taken place over the course of the series. The whole thing ends in a big dance party and celebration that includes most every character of note boogieing down together in one big brouhaha. They dust off the Cranberries again and show most of the cast making their choice on the ballot before venturing into that big wide world and with it, the future. The show does a good job of marking the milestone, for the series and for the lives of its characters, that this represents.
And I like that for all Erin’s literary aspirations -- devolving from Hamlet to a “Shakespeare Simplified” book to a teen magazine -- these experiences genuinely did give her a voice that helps her to articulate not only her own perspective on growing up, but on her country’s perspective on emerging from ages of sectarian violence into a new period of peace. The hints that this show is, more or less, what Erin was talking about when she said she’d write this down “someday” are a little too cute, but I like that idea as the capstone to her growth and her arc over the course of the show.
The side stories we get along the way are good too. Sister Michael is my favorite character in the show, so pretty much anything they did with her was going to meet with my approval (including her chalking up Jenny Joyce’s song as another “atrocity” that the troubles has visited upon them). That said, I really like where they went. More than anyone, Sister Michael seems perpetually disgruntled about her job and this school. But when the bishop is ready to reassign her, she looks wistfully about the place that’s been her calling for the last several years, affirms that she appreciates her work and feels as though she makes a difference, and ultimately succeeds in her fight to stay. Watching her fight for the thing she seemed to disdain, because deep down she appreciates it, is softly moving.
I also appreciated the fight between Erin and Michelle over how the agreement would free her brother, who killed a man amid The Troubles, from prison, and whether or not that’s a good thing. (Did we know that before now? Feels like a line that got tossed off semi-joking in season 1 that’s being played straight now.) The show wrings good comedy from their tiff, with Clare’s inadvertent game of phone tag being the funniest bit in the episode. But it also pays off the dispute nicely, with both acknowledging the shades of gray, the lack of clarity in resolving what’s good and what’s bad, and in line with the broader ideas of this episode, connecting their own uncertainty over how to reckon with such things personally with the people of Ireland’s difficulty in doing the same.
Connecting it to dueling parties between Erin/Orla on the one hand, and Jenny Joyce on the other, makes for some good set pieces. The fact that Erin has to share her party with Orla, share her theme of literary heroes with Orla’s of monkeys, and share the parish hall with a first communion, adds to her parade of amusing indignities. By contrast, Jenny’s party is appropriately tricked out, replete with a famed singer from Derry. The big shindig gives the show a chance to go a bit wild. And the imagery of Clare blacking out Jenny’s party to bring it to the rest of the Derry Girls on foot is a nice way to give everyone a win.
(As an aside, I don’t know if it was covid or scheduling commitments, but Nicola Coughlan was apart from the rest of the cast for a lot of this episode. It’s not a hindrance to the episode necessarily, but it’s a little conspicuous in a series finale.)
The other bits we get here are all solid. Gerry bristling at having to house cousin Eamonn, who’s in no hurry to get his roof fixed and is ready to take advantage of the Quinns’ kindness, is worth a laugh. Granda Joe puzzling over what the agreement actually means, and the family’s reactions, are worth a few laughs. And my favorite part of the episode may actually be the opening, with Orla’s free-spirited, musical wandering through the town, which comes with a great energy and carefree air that signifies the spirit of hope amid uncertain possibilities “The Agreement” represents.
The thought that lingers with me is Joe’s prophecy to his granddaughter, that one day she’ll tell these tales to her kids like they’re ghost stories. I didn’t grow up amid the end of The Troubles, but I’m old enough to know what he means, to feel like your childhood took place in a different world, one you can describe and explain, but never truly account for to someone who wasn’t there before so much changed. This finale isn’t perfect, but it and Derry Girls as a whole, is the best way to capture a few of those ghosts, share them with people who might appreciate them, and conjure those days again. It did it all with great humor, an incredible sense of place, and a poignancy that remained until the final moments of the show.
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Nicola (Clare) was also filming Bridgerton and there were some scheduling conflicts, which is why she was away.
[2.8/10] Woof. After having such a rough time with the first season of the show, I blanched a bit at the suggestion that the second season was a step down. “How much further could it go off the rails?” I wondered. How could it conceivably recede from the already paltry levels it had already hit. Well, there’s my answer -- ninety minutes of television that is 90% shlock.
But, as I always try to do when talking about something I don’t particularly care for, let’s start out talking about what’s good about this one. Full disclosure, the opening scene with the senile old room service guy doddering around while Cooper lays bleeding on the floor initially annoyed the hell out of me. The scene drags and drags and is almost excruciating in its duration. But I take that to be the point, and somewhere around the second time the guy returned just to give a thumbs up, it elicited a chuckle for the sheer rake gag-esque audacity of the scene, so that’s something.
We also get the who, if not necessarily the why, of the central mystery of the show. Cooper lays out the details of what he’s pieced together, and the episode reveals, or at least seems to reveal, that Bob, the guy from Cooper’s dream and Mrs. Palmer’s vision, beat up Ronette and seemingly killed Laura. Some of the scene veers into cheese, as nearly everything here does, but the quick, spliced together clips of that grisly final scene are legitimately chilling, and add a level of fright and severity that the show has had trouble establishing outside of myna bird mimics thus far.
There’s also some nice material involving Ed and Nadine. I’ll admit, I’ve come around on this portion of Twin Peaks, which I initially found bothersome. Ed offers a sad and exaggerated but believable tale. He and Norma were longtime sweethearts; he thought Norma ran off with Hank (where presumably there’s more to the story), and Nadine was there for him in a time of need. Ed was impulsive and distraught and married her, but she was so happy and so gracious and so devoted to him (never even blaming him for accidentally shooting out her eye) that he didn’t have the heart to leave her. It’s a little melodramatic, but it’s a good performance from Ed, and the look of wistfulness in Norma’s mind when she sees the husband and wife together adds another layer of pathos to the whole thing.
That said, the theme for this episode seems to be two-fold: 1. Baffling transformation and 2. Doing a collection of really stupid stuff.
The latter assessment may sound harsh, but I don’t know how else to explain some of what seems to be trying to pass for comedy or texture throughout this episode. While the senile room service guy has a certain anti-humor charm to it, the similar attempts at weird or wooly humor are painfully bad. The numerous, extended shots of Deputy Andy’s odd little walk and wobble were dumb as all get out. Leland breaking into a little jig and Ben and Jerry following him was a baffling effort at charm. And the “hospital food is terrible” recurring gags are the hackiest kind of easy crap. I think the show means to be funny here, but it never quite makes it above moronic.
And that’s not the only place where “Giant” be with you makes no sense (in a bad, rather than merely surreal, way). When Ben chases Audrey around the bed, why in the world doesn’t he recognize his daughter’s voice, or the other features besides her face? The whole bit is creepy (which is, in fairness, what I think Lynch & Frost were going for) but it feels like a cheap way to avoid the reckoning the show set up in the prior episode.
That’s not the only nonsensical parent-child scene in the episode. Major Briggs tells his son Bobby about a dream he had where they embraced as family in a wonderful house some time in the future. It’s meant to play as some kind of reconciliation or corner-turning moment for the pair, but it plays as ridiculous as all get out. Much of that can be pinned on the horrible acting from Bobby Briggs, who seems be trying to communicate being sincerely touched, but mugs and renders the reaction implausible.
Then there’s the strange transformations in the episode. Leland Palmer’s hair turns white after he returns from strangling Jacques Renault. So...there’s that. But he’s also happy now, singing songs and passing out during them. I’ll admit, there’s something funny about Ray Wise playing so chipper (and it’s a nice change from his awful cry-dancing routine), but it’s so exaggerated and over the top that it’s hard to take anything from it beyond mild bemusement.
The same cannot be said for Donna’s transformation here, as she seems to be attempting to step into Laura’s persona. Between taking Laura’s glasses, her meals on wheels route, and toying with Bobby, we get an entire change in her personality without the slightest hint as to why or how. Maybe the glasses are cursed or the ghost of Laura is possessing her or some crap like that? It’s weak sauce from Lara Flynn Boyle, and a direction for the character that feels entirely unmotivated.
Oh yeah, and then there’s a soothsaying giant. While this struck me as odd, it’s of a piece with the “people who seem like they’re from an old circus’s freak show give Cooper vaguely-worded prophecy” shtick from the first season. It didn’t do much for me (and certainly didn’t feel as formally audacious as Cooper’s first dream), but it didn’t really bother me either.
In total though, “May the Giant Be With You” may be a new low for Twin Peaks, which had already been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while by this point. Plodding pacing, more awful dialogue and acting (with Pete joining Bobby as a particularly bad offender on that score), dumb attempts at comedy, and nonsensical character choices. This was a slog, but hey, at least we have Alfred back to voice my thoughts on the ridiculous of this all in-universe. Yeesh.
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@andrewbloom honestly, cool review. i've read quite a few of yours over the past years (almost a decade, sheesh) on this app. i just think it'd be nicer if you didn't present your opinion as fact. but since this review is so old, this might be different now. don't know.
I think they made an error in dialogue, Barris is telling the Fourth Sister that they are still alive but there is only one man, so I think originally creators wanted severall Jedi there but ultimately they decided that there will only be one, and they forgot to rerecord the dialogue. Idk it's so weird that they left that mistake in.
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@dbmen no mistake here and no cut story either. "The Jedi", as the character is known, is non-binary so would be referred to by they and them.
It's hard to know how much leeway to give a sitcom when it comes to things that would be horrifying in real life but can seem merely goofy in the context of a television show. In real life, Robin would be justified in never speaking to either Ted or Barney ever again after they turn her hopes, her personality, her very life into a class. The show attempts to sweep that under the rug by having Ted frame it as a use for all the Robin knowledge he'd generated when they were dating, and that it's the hardest he'd ever seen barney work to keep a girl. It doubles down by having Barney apologize and attempt to explain himself. But it still feels a little strange for Robin to forgive the both of them so quickly for such a gross violation, even if the show bends over backwards to make the argument that it was well-meaning.
On the other hand, there are demands of a sitcom, chiefly that things be more-or-less reset to the status quo by the end of the episode. Even in a comedy as continuity-heavy and intertextual as How I Met Your Mother, there's a certain inertia of the familiar, where outside of the season finale or Big Event context, the basic dynamic of the group has to stay the same. With that in mind, I can, more or less, make my peace with it. It helps that beneath the inherent creepiness of the whole thing, Ted's class is pretty damn funny, from the brick joke with the Flatiron Building, to Barney being a less-than-model student, to the list of items that can distract Robin when she's mad. Marshall's barrel B-story is pretty slight by comparison, but as usual Jason Segel makes the most of it.
All-in-all, the laughs are there for the most part, even if some of the humor is broad. It's just a question of whether you can separate how horrific something like "Robin 101" would be in the real world from the silly tone it has in the heightened reality of HIMYM.
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@andrewbloom I've watched the show a few times and every time I watch it, I build some new opinions on things that happen in the show. I completely agree that it is a gross violation, and that it would be truly acceptable to not forgive Barney. But I've come to understand why it makes sense for Robin to forgive Barney. We have already established what Barney is like and Robin has still chosen to be with him. Now that doesn't mean that she accepts everything he does, but I think she is okay with some boundaries being broken, if she can get through to Barney. She knows and we know that Barney can change his behavior and learn, so she gives him that extra wriggleroom in the relationship to learn.
It's still a over the top sitcom moment, but I believe there is a rational part to it, unlike some plotlines in further episodes.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[8.5/10] Scores of great Star Trek feature our heroes taking a stand. Woven into the ethos of the series is the sense of a crossroads where those steeped in the ways of the Federation must choose whether to follow protocol and do what’s expected, or to make the tough call and do what they truly believe in, what’s right. Those choices often intersect with complicated notions of tolerance and what right we have to interfere, but just as often they result in the crew of the Enterprise rising to the occasion and choosing a bold solution.
And yet, my favorite episodes are sometimes the ones where the characters come tantalizingly close to that sort of choice, only to relent in the end. There’s a certain type of tragedy in it, a sense of being a little more true-to-life where sometimes even our ideals and our connections aren’t enough to push us to upset the apple cart. The Sopranos would make a cottage industry out of the idea -- showing its characters wandering out to the edge of a major change, only to repeatedly back down at the precipice.
I think it’s why an episode like “Half a Life” feels so affecting. We meet Timicin, a scientist from a nearby planet, Kaelon II, on the verge of astronomical collapse. Despite being isolationists, the Kaelon have sought the Federation’s help to avert the potentially disastrous effects of a nearby decaying star, and Timicin is their top scientist. Along the way, he strikes up an unexpected romance with none other than Lwaxana Troi. But both his work, and his new love, are threatened by a cultural ritual, where every Kaelon who reaches the age of sixty commits suicide to make way for the next generation.
The episode is an interrogation of that idea, taking seriously the notions of euthanasia, of care for the elderly, of the rights of seniors to choose how to live their lives. But it’s also about the balance between rituals and traditions on the one hand, and self-determination and change on the other. And, like all great Star Trek episodes, it’s also about the impact of these lofty ideas on the flesh and blood human beings forced to confront them.
Unusually for The Next Generation, that comes down almost entirely to the episode’s guest stars, who both give fantastic performances. The first is the inimitable David Ogden Stiers, whom you probably know as Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast or Major Winchester from MASH. He is completely outstanding as Timicin here, a soft-spoken man of science, devoted to his world and his people, forced to confront the fault lines between his loyalty to them and his personal willingness to embrace new ideas and new experiences.
Stiers carries himself with a quiet woundedness, as someone who knows and accepts that his time is coming to an end, and yet inwardly laments that his life’s work hangs in the balance. His inner conflict between someone who doesn’t want to form new connections given his numbered days, and who cannot resist this enchanting new presence in his life, is sweet and sad. And the force and conviction within him, that emerges when he’s pulled at from opposite sides, show the sleeping giant within, made all the more impactful by the contrast with his normal reserved demeanor. In this hour, Stiers marks himself as one of TNG’s absolute finest guest performers.
But the second is Majel Barrett as Lwaxana Troi. I’ve written before about how, despite her negative reputation in the fandom, I grew up enjoying Lwaxana episodes. She brings a different tone and perspective to the series than the sturdy Starfleet officers, and that usually pays off, even if her man-crazy goofiness rarely does. Still, somehow it works here! Barrett and Stiers have outstanding chemistry together. There’s something about her as the boisterous charmer, and him as the quiet but charmed one, that really clicks. Make no mistake, the Lwaxana/Timicin connection smacks of the same insta-love nonsense that other shows devolve into, but the duo have such an instant rapport and lived-in dynamic that it’s easy to buy their nigh-instantaneous attachment to one another.
That’s a good thing, because the episode is founded on it. We need to buy that Lwaxana would be so attached to Timicin that she would be distraught to the point of anger and tears that he’s going to die. And we need to buy that Timicin would be attached enough to Lwaxana to potentially take a stand against his own people and their time-honored cultural practices at her behest. That is a tall order for any TV show to pull off in forty-four minutes, but by god, between impromptu engineering picnics, solace offered in Ten Forward, and bedside arguments on tradition vs. freedom, you buy it.
To be frank, it’s refreshing to see the romantic lives of older people depicted at all, let alone with such sensitivity and charm. “Half a Life” centers the experience of those later in life, facing down the prospect of aging, slowing down, relying on their children, and mortality. But it also focuses on their vibrancy, their ability to still live rich meaningful lives, have new experiences, and forge new connections. It’s not a perspective we see much of in mainstream television today, and it’s nice to see it vindicated here.
Much of the heavy-lifting on that front comes from Barrett as Troi. As entertaining as I find Lwaxana in her “Auntie Mame” mode, as fans of The Original Series she’s also capable of being a talented dramatic actress when the script calls for it. Her argument with Timicin over the rights and responsibilities of seniors, her intimate confession to her daughter about her emotions around aging, the simple looks she exchanges with her new but important paramour, sell the gravity and humanity of the big ideas at play. After multiple episodes where Lwaxana is an outsized comic relief character, it’s a welcome development to see TNG showing her as a more three-dimensional person like this.
It’s also bold of “Half a Life” to spend a full act with her and Timicin debating the merits of self-imposed euthanasia and the pros and cons of following tradition and how new experiences and new people can change your perspective. (Lwaxana’s parable about Betazoid wigs is an all-timer.) It would be easy for the show to say, “Mandatory death for anyone who reaches sixty is absurd,” and have the characters draw a moral line in the sand over an archaic practice. (And to be fair, many good Star Trek episodes have followed that approach.) But this episode doesn’t make the practice feel like a straw man. Instead, it justifies Timicin’s acceptance of it for cultural, practical, and personal reasons, even if it’s hard for the audience to swallow. And it also justifies why he’s willing to break from that tradition after his time on the Enterprise.
For one thing, he’s figured out the answer, or at least a possible answer, to his life’s work, but he needs more time to complete. He’s still vigorous and sharp and believes that his imperiled planet would be in worse straits if somebody else has to pick up where he left off. And most of all, he’s met someone who’s renewed his zest for life, given him a reason to mourn the potentially happy years ahead that would be lost rather than just consider the “Resolution” fulfilling his duty to his children. It’s enough to make him ask Captain Picard for asylum.
But then “Half a Life” starts stacking considerations on the other side. He’d be shunned and excommunicated by the people and home he loves so much if he chooses to buck tradition. They’ll reject his research even if it would save their lives. His stand would sow greater distrust for outsiders in the Kaelon. Most of all, it would make his daughter (played by the future Ensign Ro!) ashamed of him, potentially staining his family legacy and estranging him from his child in a way that causes him great pain.
The dilemma does so many of those great Star Trek things. It raises potent philosophical questions about how to ethically balance intergenerational needs. It zeroes in on political issues on how to manage a society. It grapples with diplomatic issues on how one culture should deal with the practices of another. It delves into the personal, making space for both Lwaxana’s and Timicin’s emotions throughout all of this. And there’s nuance to the exploration of each.
In the end, however, Timicin decides that he cannot maintain his one-man revolution, spurred by Lwaxana’s passion though he may be. He decides to go through with his culturally-mandated suicide, for the good of his people, to not disrupt a society that he believes needs stability as it faces down this challenge. Lwaxana is understandably devastated, but accepts his decision, even going down to the planet to witness it as a loved one, hand-in-hand with her doomed partner, a beautiful display of cultural acceptance and tragic but genuine affection.
At the risk of projecting too much from outside the text, it’s worth remembering that Barrett was months away from losing her real life husband, Gene Roddenberry, when this episode aired. There’s a truth to Lwaxana’s reactions and responses here, of having to see loved ones pass, of a fear of “dying before you die”, of being forced to reconcile someone you love having to go, that are piercing. I don’t know if the “First Lady of Star Trek” was channeling real life events when imbuing Mrs. Troi with such force and pathos here, but there’s a resonance to them nonetheless.
The beauty of “Half a Life” is that her love persists, even when it’s painfully limited in time and space, even when the object of her affection does something she deeply disagrees with. Timicin tells her that he cannot disrupt his people’s society just to be happy, that he loves her deeply, and that’s so close to make him want to overturn the tables in the temple, but not quite enough, by that much. We understand him. We understand why. And it just makes the whole thing feel more devastating yet moving.
It is not easy to age. It is not easy to choose centuries of cultural programming and expectations over newfound personal epiphanies. It is not easy to turn down the unexpected but invigorating chance for love in favor of the ultimate sacrifice. But the greatest of stories come from the hardest of choices, even and especially when the decision made denies the characters, and the audience, what they want. There is no grand speech or vital gesture that can save the day in “Half a Life” -- only the acceptance that there are some things so big that no one can change them, and that despite them, we go on loving to the end.
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@andrewbloom Coming back to this episode after 5 years, i appreciate the moral complexity more, and the relationship between Timicin and Lwaxana, and the subject of suicide.
Do you think Timicin was right to go back?
what if...? marvel did panderverse
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@asinis do you people NEVER stop crying? We get it, you hate women and POC. Stop trying to participate in society when you don't like it.
[4.4/10] Thank goodness for Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Cooper. That’s about all I can say for the second episode of Twin Peaks. There is such a joie de vivre, a wide-eyed, confident heap of quirk to the character and the performance, that his presence instantly elevates every scene he’s in. From the Batman-like introduction in this episode, to his meticulous evaluation of coffee, pie, and various other breakfast foods, to his ability to sniff out that the Sherriff is seeing Ms. Packard, there’s the sense that Cooper is certainly eccentric, but also scrupulous and good at what he does because of it. It doesn’t hurt that MacLachlan can make Lynch and Frost’s dialogue sound believable in a way that no one else in the cast can.
The only other character in the episode who offers anything of note is Audrey. There’s parts of that I find unpleasant, because her role seems to be to titillate as much as she’s meant to be a legitimate character. But the other side of the coin is that there is an intrigue and an unassuming pathos that cuts through the way she’s uncomfortably cast as a teenager oozing sexuality.
That comes through in her apple cart-upsetting ways. Like everything in Twin Peaks, it’s absurdly over the top, but the scene in which she pulls her pencils out of the cup she just bored into, just to see what happens when the coffee spills everywhere, represents the way in which she is something of a wildcard, willing to stir the pot for the sake of stirring the pot.
But as much as it seems like adolescent nihilism, or causing trouble for trouble’s sake, there’s also the sense that it’s a cry for attention. It’s trite to have the wealthy parents with kids who make problems because they feel neglected, but it’s at least an interesting tack to take in the scene where her dad confronts her for scaring off the Swedish investors with the news of Laura’s death. It’s all a little silly, but unlike most of the characters in Twin Peaks (Dale Cooper excepted) she at least has a presence about her that makes her stand out in a show full of thinly-drawn, stereotypical characters. (It may help that she typically doesn’t have to spit out too much of the series’s abysmal dialogue.)
And no one in the show is more of a flat, stereotypical character than Leo, the abusive husband of Shelley. But before we get into that, let’s tease out the ridiculous, lumpy, love-dodecahedron that the show has going with its teen cast members at the moment. It starts with Leo, who’s married to Shelley, who’s seeing Bobby on the side, who was also dating Laura, who was having a dalliance with James (and possibly two other guys), who is not romantically involved with Donna, who is officially dating Mike. If that weren’t enough, there is Naomi (the eye patch-wearing nut obsessed with drapes), who’s married to Ed, who’s secretly seeing Norma, who’s married to a man in jail. And just to make sure there’s enough tangled romantic webs to really make things convoluted, the Sherriff is seeing Mrs. Packard, who is flirting with Pete, who is married to Catherine, who is schtuping Audrey’s dad. Phwew. Suffice it to say, this is a show where you need a diagram to keep up with all the romantic connections, and it’s utterly, utterly ridiculous.
Anyway, we get Leo’s homecoming with Shelley, where he is viciously jealous (over unfamiliar branded cigarettes in his ashtray) and willing to beat her with soap in a sock over a missing, blood-stained shirt. I’m willing to cut some slack to a show made in 1990, but I can’t help but wince at something as serious as spousal abuse being depicted in such a cartoonish, Halmark Channel-esque fashion.
Rest-assured, there’s plenty more crap where that came from, as we dig deep into a budding relationship between expressionless James and Donna. There’s the grain of something solid there, with the idea that grief provokes strong emotional states in people that sometimes forges unexpected connections, but there’s next to no chemistry between the pair.It doesn’t help that James has all the ability to emote of a particularly dull Rock, or that Donna is saddled with the cringiest of bad dialogue. Her little monologue about this all seeming like a wonderful dream, but also a nightmare, is a noble attempt to capture the confused feelings that emerge around grief and comfort, but it’s written with all the nuance and eloquence of an episode of G.I. Joe.
That level of depth and subtlety carries on in the scene that Donna shares with Laura’s mom. As if the over-the-top acting the mom had already shown weren’t enough, we get some poorly-done special effects to superimpose Laura’s face on Donna’s to signify that the mom is delirious or out of it in her grief and grasping in vain for her daughter. The frantic screaming when she sees a random dude peeking from behind the couch is too much too, and it’s hard not to laugh when the show at least seems to be going for sincere, grief-stricken emotion.
The thrust of the episode seems to be a dichotomy of Laura as someone who was an upstanding young student on the one hand – dating the captain of the football team, volunteering at meals on wheels, and tutoring Audrey’s mentally-challenged older brother, and a doomed ingénue on the other, two-timing her boyfriend, doing cocaine, and getting lost in dark forests with mysterious people. But it’s a rote sense of duality, the usual Madonna/whore complex without any wrinkles in the early going beyond mystery thrown on top of mystery in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it’ll all be going somewhere.
That’s the best I can hope for this rewatch of Twin Peaks, that eventually all this over-exaggerated camp and baroque plotting turns into something decent beyond its status as an intermittent showcase for Kyle MacLachlan. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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@andrewbloom ah we're finally finding our differences. I totally understand your criticisms, I've heard them before (some of them I've even identified with). I'll just quote my review of Inland Empire so that you understand where I stand wrt Lynch.
Mark Fisher (R.I.P.) wrote that Inland Empire "often seems like a series of dream sequences floating free of any grounding reality, a dream without a dreamer [in which] no frame is secure... to see Lynch's worlds captured on digital video makes for a bizarre short-circuiting: as if we are witnessing a direct feed from the unconscious." (The Weird and the Eerie [2017]). I first saw this in the Australian summer of '07/'08, late at night on SBS. I would have been 16 at the time, and as such had never seen anything like it before. I was sheltered from anything too subversive in my quiet suburban cul de sac. I thought it was the weirdest thing I'd ever watched and didn't even know if it was supposed to mean anything. Later when I found out the director's name was David Lynch I must admit that I steered clear of his other works... for years I was hung up on needing to "get it". Then I moved into my first "art" sharehouse in 2015 and my new housemates were obsessed with Twin Peaks. A piece of advice with regards to Lynch that was given to me by one of the housemates was (paraphrased), "It is important to keep in mind that Lynch tends to value the emotional expression in his work over anything else. It would do well for you to focus on how you're feeling and not whether you're following what plot there may or may not be." This helped me not just with appreciating Lynch's creations but also many other films and forms of art. With Inland Empire in particular, upon revisitation, I let it wash over me and savoured the little things. The closeups that I cringed at as a teenager now mesmerise me. Where I couldn't understand why certain cuts were being made before, now I can see their emotional value. Also, because I've seen so much of Lynch's other work, I can understand the hyperlinks in Inland Empire to Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. They're not just references, but in some places microcosms of those films themselves.
History will look kindly on David Lynch.
Most relevant is what my housemate was saying about Lynch as I was being introduced to Twin Peaks. Every single other aspect of film, cinematography, sound and set design, writing, storytelling, casting and overall production is subject and behelden to... emotion. Everything good about Lynch is a byproduct of his raw emotional output. Because this is so hard to actually quantify and talk about, it's easy to take potshots at his works. I had to actually block out everything tangible going on and constantly check in with myself, "how am i right now?". This meant I could actually approach Lynchian works from their base, pure emotion. This breakthrough lead to me being able to revisit Inland Empire and not just tolerate, but enjoy it... and exhalt about Twin Peaks :).
Peggy always seemed to me a good avenger, hopefully they include her in the live action as a wink or something...
And to see natasha fighting uff....
I like the resemblance between Steve and Peggy,
It was a fun episode.
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@ifhyzzaykg they did, in Doctor Strange 2, it was pretty cool
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[6.5/10] I love the concept of the Morlocks. The idea that there are mutants who don’t have the passing privileges that the mainline heroes do (give or take Beast), and so feel compelled to live in the shadows is a rich one. But “Captive Hearts” doesn’t do much with it.
The idea that Kalisto just wanted Cyclops to be her mate to produce an heir and help leads the Morlocks is stupid, generic villain stuff. The Morocks themselves are pretty dull in terms of their powers and most are devoid of personality. Leech trying to return the favor of Cyclops’ help by taking away his constant eye blasts for a little bit is a nice touch. But everyone else is generic muscle, generic goop monster, or a generic “power of suggestion” lady.
That last baddie, a woman who can use her psychic powers to make people think they’re her daughter, or covered in scorpions, or whatever might have a cool power if it was used for anything interesting. But she ends up being more of a plot device than a person.
The only big takeaway here is the love triangle between Wolverine,Jean, and Cyclops. Wolverine harboring forbidden affections for Jean, but still rescuing Cyclops because it’s the right thing to do, adds some depth to the character. The same goes for Cyclops, who remains a bit of a dull stiff, but who is made more sympathetic in the way he’s tormented by trying to live up to Professor X’s expectations for the X-Men.
When the psychic lady uses her powers of suggestion to make Wolverine try to kill Cyclops, his preexisting bitterness at Scott makes him an easy mark. But when she tries to do the same to get Logan to turn on Jean, he can't do it, a sign of the depth of his feelings. It’s about the only important thing to come out of this one. (Other than it being the source of the famous “Wolverine looks at photograph” meme!)
The other thread of note is Storm grappling with her claustrophobia. I like the idea of her pushing through it for the good of the team, but there’s no real emotional and psychical breakthrough here. She’s tortured by her phobia and then she...just isn't’. There’s no sign of her finding a way to overcome it, which feels odd.
Overall, this is a low light of the season, but at least introduces some interesting comments, like the Morlocks themselves or the feelings between Jean/Wolverine/Cyclops that can be fleshed out more down the line.
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@andrewbloom Thanks for summing everything up. this episode didn't live up to the standard set in the previous four.
[9.8/10] What an episode! I am a sucker for bottle episodes, high concept episodes, and deep dives into character, and this was all three at once. The idea of FitzSimmons being stuck together in a union of their two minds, where they’re forced to confront their histories and their pain and their connection is nigh-brilliant.
I like the jaunts we make to the past. Seeing Li’l Simmons, with her biology aspirations and box of nightmares was very cute. Seeing FitzSimmons connect in college, laying the groundwork for their partnership and eventual romance made for an interesting beginning. And seeing the two of them signing up for Coulson’s field team gave us an important chapter in their history and was revealing as well.
But I also really like the device as a way to bring Fitz up to speed on everything that happened while he was sleeping. It’s a nice way to deposit the aftermath of the season 5 finale without belaboring it. It gives us Simmons’ and the rest of the team’s reactions without being maudlin, and it gives Fitz the opportunity to realize the full implications of what’s happened: his death, Coulson’s death, his wedding, etc., and have it be emotionally overwhelming and mind-bending, as it should be.
There’s also some cool conceptual material. The whole playground of the mind is done well with neat turns from the rest of the cast in flashbacks and key moments. And the fact that we get to see the dark doppelgangers of both Fitz and Simmons to represent the pain they’ve caused one another is a nice touch too.
I like where the episode lands, with the pair of them realizing that each is the cause, or at least, a cause, of one another’s pain, but that despite that, each is always striving for, and working to save the other. There’s a lot of hashing out of the pair’s history, both from what we’ve seen during the run of the show, and what happened before, and I always appreciate when a series that’s run for a while takes its past seriously. Prior events are brought up not just as set dressing, but as an important part of Fitz and Simmons emotional journey together. Their eventual reaffirmation is fueled by that, and it makes it stronger.
It’s also just a damn funny episode! Fitz having to deal with seven-year-old Simmons, or “Leopold” and the Wraith ending up making out, or “you’re so English” are all very funny setups and lines. The closing “you kind of stepped on my moment there” line with Quake and Mac was the perfect kind of Whedon-y schtick (no surprise coming from Buffyverse alum D.J. Doyle), and Quake’s sort of shrug and acceptance of the latest insane adventure was just as perfect.
Plus, we even get Enoch making a big moral choice to save his friend! (I’m slowly realizing that the Enoch/Fitz relationship is not far removed from the Michael/Eleanor relationship on The Good Place).
Overall, this is that annual outing from AoS where they pull out all the stops, focus on some of the show’s best characters, and deliver something with boldness, creativity, humor, and depth. It’s a real treat, and it's nice to see the show still going for broke this late into its run.
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@andrewbloom I agree 100%. I also love these episodes and they tend to be the most memorable ones. For me this is easily, in mny ways, the absolute best episode of the whole show. Sadly traditional episodic television is getting suffocated by these short 6-10 episode (streaming) shows that offer only a moments worth of excitement and very little to actually get you truly invested in any characters at all (many would work much better as movies). They are so short that I doubt that even the actors and crew get deeply invested in them - or at least that is what the writing, acting and directing often looks like these days... This is a truly great episode and easily earns a place among my top favorite episodes ever.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[5.0/10] Far be it from me to cast aspersions on what is, by acclimation, one of the best episode of Star Trek ever produced. Far be it from me to turn my nose up at something penned by the great (if prickly) Harlan Ellison. Far be it from me to offer no quarter to the crown jewel of this show’s first season. But call me a Philistine, because “City on the Edge of Forever” did nothing for me.
It’s not a bad episode exactly. There’s no blatantly wrong turns (so to speak) or outrageous missteps. It’s just not especially compelling, and doesn’t achieve what it sets out to do.
First and foremost, the central conflict of “Forever” falls flat because the central relationship it hinges on falls flat. There is a compelling, ethically complex issue in the decision of whether to allow an innocent person to die in order to defeat the Nazis and, by extension, allow all of humanity’s accomplishments from the 1930s to the 23rd century to occur. There’s even a tragic irony in the individual who must perish being the one who envisions a day when mankind ends war and hunger and want. Keeler imagines a world she will never get to see.
But rather than anchoring “Forever” on the difficulty of that choice, the conflict between utilitarian morality versus proscriptions on allowing harm to come to innocent people, Star Trek anchors it in the romance between Kirk and Keeler, and there’s just nothing there. I can appreciate that the episode is trying to ground the abstract and headily moral question at play in the personal, but the romance isn’t as successful or developed enough for that to work.
Maybe the relationship between Kirk and Keeler would have more oomph if it didn’t take place in little more than a week. Maybe it would have been better if William Shatner and guest star Joan Collins could manage to have more chemistry in forty minutes than Collins and DeForest Kelley do in five. Maybe it’d be easier to invest in if Kirk didn’t fall in love with someone every third episode.
Or maybe it’s just changing mores about how love is depicted in the 1960s versus how it’s depicted in the 2010s. Kirk’s gazes at Keeler seem more like creepy leers than admiration. Keeler’s preternatural ability to sense that Kirk is a great man feels, at best, convenient, and at worst, pernicious in the “some men just have greatness in them” themes the show has trafficked in previously.
Whatever the reason, the cornerstone of this episode, the thing that’s supposed to make us feel the pain and pathos of its ending, is Kirk’s emotional arc through his attachment to Keeler, and when that fails, everything built on it fails too. In this sort of depiction, I don’t feel the connection; I don’t feel the romance; and I don’t feel the loss of anything when it’s ended, even in tragic terms. That essentially sinks everything else “Forever” is trying to accomplish.
That’s unfortunate, because there is, as I often find with Star Trek, a great deal I like about the episode in conception, if not in its execution. Again, the moral dilemma of whether to sacrifice one blameless life for a better future is an inherently compelling one (and one picked up by Futurama, a series that I always knew was indebted to Trek, but where I did not realize the extent of the influence). Kirk and Spock, as usual, make for an amusing odd couple. And as weird as the premise is, it fits the sci-fi flair of the series.
Also, for better and worse, “Forever” doesn’t really feel like other episodes of Star Trek. This isn’t the first time our heroes have gone back in time, or confronted difficult moral choices, or had to make due without their usual tools and technology. But there’s a different tone here, one that seems more grounded and even melancholy despite the genre trappings. It could just be the depression-era setting, but there’s a certain mood throughout the episode that distinguishes “Forever” from its predecessors.
And as silly as it is, I kind of love the Guardian of Forever. There’s just something so essentially sci-fi about a giant stony circle that speaks in a booming, stilted voice and emits, smoke, light, and black-and-white historical footage. (To that end, it’s also clear to anyone who’s read/played Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream that he enjoys this type of thing.) This giant alien thing that can send our heroes across time is appropriately and enjoyably out there.
The impetus for the whole episode, on the other hand, is less so. Dr. McCoy accidentally injecting himself with some future substance that makes him paranoid and crazy is a weird story-motivator. Kelley is up to the challenge, with his frantic declarations of “killers” and “assassins” seeming appropriately unhinged, but it’s a thin and (given the turbulence-related cause of it) convenient excuse for Kirk and Spock to have to chase him through time.
Still, there’s a certain amount of charm to the pair landing in 1930s New York City and trying to fit in and save Bones (and the future) at the same time. Kirk using reverse psychology on Spock to build a computer is amusing, particularly in Nimoy’s restrained but clearly affronted reactions. The Sesame Street-like environs have a well-worn allure. And again, the premise of the episode is, at worst, solid.
But the whole thing just comes down to Kirk and Keeler, and that’s not enough to sustain “Forever.” It’s hard, to say the least, to be invested in Kirk mourning this woman he barely knew for a week, where we’ve seen far more googly eyes being made than any real depth to their relationship. Binding a fantastical story with the personal loss of a star-crossed romance can add a human dimension to an otherwise outsized tale, but if you make that romance the centerpiece of your story, and it falters rather than flourishes, it can take the entire story down with it. “Forever” has its merits, but by centering the episode around Kirk and Keeler, it’s as doomed as she is.
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@andrewbloom Just came across this review. I largely agree; I've always thought that this episode was over-rated.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[8.6/10] I didn’t really anticipate this episode turning into such an affecting mediation on sacrifice, atheism, and faith. That’s probably more than most people expect when diving into an episode about a bunch of superheroes fighting an ersatz Cthulhu, but shame on me for underestimating what this show and its creative team are capable of.
For one thing, they don’t shortchange us on the “fighting the Old Ones” action. “The Terror Beyond pt. 2” introduces some of the DCAU’s most striking and creative visual designs ever. From the hand-screamers that call to mind Pan’s Labyrinth to the grotesque sea creatures invading Atlantis, to the domineering skull-squid himself, the episode does a stellar job at making everyone and everything in Ichthultu’s realm seem off and more than a little disturbing.
But I also appreciated how this episode expanded the show’s history and cosmology. We don’t get a whole lot of insight as to what Aquaman and Dr. Fate’s original plan was, but it basically comes down to sacrificing Grundy using the power of Aquaman’s trident in order to close the gates that the “Old Ones” a group of malevolent “extradimensional beings” use to antagonize our world.
The wrinkles to that are two-fold. First, Aquaman’s trident isn’t just the latest in a line of cool weapons wielded by Justice League allies. It’s an implement used by Poisedon himself to ward off Ichthultu thousands of years ago, absorbing and exhausting all the ambient magic to do, causing Atlantis to sink to the bottom of the sea. And Thanagar isn’t just another lost alien world. It’s a planet where Hawkgirl’s people used to worship the Eldritch Abomination, and even make human (er, hawk-human) sacrifices to him in exchange for his favor centuries ago. That explains the need for Aquaman to be a part of the ceremony and why Hawkgirl’s mace and knowledge of Thanagarian “prayers” turned out to be useful for and against Doctor Fate.
That backstory leads to some pretty cool and meaningful developments down the line. When Arthur Curry stands down an army of the Old One’s aquatic menaces, it’s more than just another random superpowered fracas. It’s him trying to follow in the footsteps of his forebears and protect his kingdom against an invasion with a longstanding antecedent.
And when Hawkgirl faces the Elder God, she’s doing more than just subduing the villain of the week. Instead, she’s expelling and excising the devil’s bargain her people made with his monster, rejecting the authority of any higher power over her in the process.
That’s also what makes this episode as a whole more than just the latest smash-fest. There’s a lot of spiritual questioning at the heart of this one. When questioned, Wonder Woman affirms that calling out to Hera really does feel like it gives her strength. Grundy, despite his mere rudimentary understanding of what’s happening, is on the quest for his immortal soul and seeks the comforts of the afterlife. And Shayera is an atheist, one who affirmatively rejects the comforts of faith given what it cost her people long ago.
But these notions collide with one another. Grundy becomes a strangely sympathetic character. Despite Superman questioning whether Grundy has the mental wherewithal to consent to what Fate and Quaman want to do with him, he ultimately becomes the key to destroying the Elder God. Instead of being sacrificed, he basically sacrifices himself, arguably earning his soul back through deed, rather than by fiat.
Hawkgirl takes action as well, rejecting this malevolent force despite its boasts that its bargain with the Thanagarians was fair. There’s something symbolic about her finishing the job, permanently throwing off the shackles of this would-be deity and what he extracts and expects of his “children”.
Despite that, in the end, she helps bury Grundy, does so according to human customs and, most notably, tells Grundy that he and his soul will be reunited in the afterlife, despite her beliefs to the contrary. The show seems to come down on the side of faith, or at least on the notion that it can be useful, a comfort in dark times, regardless of whether you’re a believer, or a doubter, or somewhere in between. That’s remarkably profound for a show where a bunch of mulit-colored strongmen stop a squid demon’s portal by wedging a giant rock into it.
But that’s par for the course for Justice League in this period, a show that knows how to balance its fantastical adventures with deeper examinations of what makes its characters, and our world, keep ticking. I hope that Hawkgirl gets some peace out of that world, and that there’s something waiting for Grundy on the other side of it.
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@andrewbloom It's a good episode, but it's dumb that Grundy and Hawkgirl beat CTHULHU.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[5.0/10] It’s nice to know that, whatever Twin Peaks’s other failings, it’s still good at being creepy. Mrs. Bloom noted that the final image of the episode, with Cooper’s former partner having set some random dead man up in Truman’s office with a chessboard, feels very much like a proto-version of something from Dexter. (For the love of god, let’s not use the word “tableau.”) Like most things in the show, it’s a bit cheesy, but it’s still a haunting thing to have our heroes walk in on.
But much more chilling than that is the scene with Shelly and Leo. I’ve been cold on the two of them as a pair of the numerous weak links, but the scene with the two of them was one of the scariest and best in the show. The hum and creep of the power coming on and off, while the music unnervingly stops and starts, creates a frightening mood from the get go. The cinematography -- slow shots of light bulbs and empty furniture -- lend to that scary atmosphere as well. And the smiling face of Leo, with his party hat and cake-covered face, is the best use of the character there’s been yet.
Here’s the other thing I really appreciated about this episode. When Twin Peaks is bad, most of the time it’s just kind of dull, but the stuff that’s bad here is appropriately loony or pulpy that I can at least laugh at it and be entertained by it.
The peak of that is Nadine’s storyline. It actually led to somewhere for once! For one thing, seeing her go all predatory on Mike was its own kind of creepy, but also speaks to the persistence of teenage Nadine that likely helped her in wooing Ed. Even beyond the backstory that Ed gave of the two of them early in the season, that sort of “won’t take no for an answer” perseverance helps the two of them make sense as a couple back in the day.
And her super-strength actually came in handy! I don’t particularly care about Ed and Norma. The forbidden love angle has been weak from the start and their rekindling didn’t do much for me either. (Though is the first time we’ve ever seen the two kiss?) By the same token, Hank being magically behind Ed after he says goodbye to Norma was silly as all get out. But I laughed my head off at Nadine bursting in and using her superpowers to knock Hank around the house. It’s cartoony as hell, but it was fun in a bent sort of way, and I could at least enjoy the ridiculousness of it.
Were that the same could be said for the continuing lame adventures of Deputy Andy and Dick Trelane. Their little escapade to the orphanage drags out this go-nowhere storyline of whether Little Nicky really is a demonspawn even further. Though at least Dick has the smarts to know to get out while they can and read the stolen file in the car.
Also, James’s story continues to be the absolute pits. The cut-rate Kim Bassinger femme fatale angle with Mrs. Marsh is dull, and whether it’s the actor who plays James (who actually smiles here!) or the garbage-level dialogue, the lines exchanged between them about James’s survivor’s guilt over what happened with Laura and Maddy goes over like a lead balloon. The twist with Mrs. Marsh making out with her “brother” could be a Game of Thrones-like twist, but I suspect it’s part of some black widow scheme to have James kill Mr. Marsh so the two of them can inherit the estate and be together. Feh.
But we get some decent material from Major Briggs. While the radioactive symbol floating through the galaxy and then turning into flames was goofier than the Disney character, the way that the normally stoic Briggs was clearly shaken by his experience gave his recounting force. It’s more mumbo jumbo in terms of dialogue, but Briggs sells it, and his struggle between what’s classified and transcendent, better than it has any right to be sold.
We also get a pretty darn good Cooper caper. The sting gone awry with Norma’s prospective father-in-law is a nice setpiece. The hostage exhange gives Cooper some more nobility. It’s a fitting end(?) for Jean Renalt, who is at least able to assess the situation with clear eyes. And we even get Denise/Dennis using her cross-dressing ways (and Cooper’s quick thinking) to save the day! The scene where she shows up dressed as a waitress from the Double R packing a pistol is, again, broad action movie stuff, but it works with the vibe of the show in a fun way.
Were that the same could be said for Ben Horne and Catherine Martell. Ben’s going nuts and having a Civil War obsession was kind of amusing as a change at first, but now it’s quickly run its course. And I don’t know if anyone was really clamoring for him and Ben to start being romantic with one another again. Similarly, Audrey is mired in this story which is dragged down, naturally, by the inclusion of Bobby who is, as usual, focused on himself and trying to turn this association into a money making scheme, while putting the moves on his latest attempted conquest. Basically anything going on at the Great Northern that doesn’t involve Coop is skippable.
Otherwise this is an episode that you can pretty well divide into the third. There’s the material that’s legitimately good and entertaining, like the Sherrif’s sting operation and the creepy Leo scene. There’s the stuff that is corny but so off the wall that you can’t help from at least appreciating it ironically like the Nadine material. And then there’s the stuff that’s just nigh-unwatchable Drek, like James’s adventures in Dynasty and Ben’s insane playroom, where the only pleasures to derive are from the abject terribleness of the dialogue. Still, that’s better than a lot of Twin Peaks episodes can muster, so I’ll take it.
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@andrewbloom Your spoiler tags seem broken in this one
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP98.7/10.
Here's what I loved about this episode. We finally got to see The Chancellor become The Emperor (It's never been clear to me whether the show has outright acknowledged this or merely hinted at it.) There's a risk in a show like Clone Wars where, with so many characters wielding lightsabers and using force powers, you might dilute the specialness of the biggest players on the scene, and the specialness of the franchise's primary heroes and antagonists. But Clone Wars firmly avoids that with Palpatine here.
There is a pure and overwhelming display of power from Palpatine here. The way he neutralizes Maul's death squad guard while barely moving a muscle, the way he effortlessly tosses his opponents around the room, and the way he seems firmly in control even while fighting both Maul and Savage at the same time really drives home what a powerful force-wielder Palpatine is. There's also a cruelty to him here that is striking even knowing where the character goes to in the franchise's future. Much credit goes to Ian Abercrombie (who, passed away prior to this episode airing) for imbuing such menace into his delivery. The way that Palpatine declares, "you have been replaced" and "you are no longer my apprentice" to Maul is simultaneously fiendish and gutwrenching, particularly as he unleashes the Sith lightning on his former protege.
The best lightsaber battles in Star Wars have meaning behind the action, and this fit that ideal to a tee. The otherwise unflappable Maul being clearly shaken by his master's reappearance; Palpatine's initial impressed tone that quickly curdles into disdain, and the death of Savage (which adds even further stakes to this battle) all make those visual and auditory elements that already serve to heighten the tension into something undergirded by story and character. There's something disturbing, even haunting, about Maul having to say goodbye to his brother and being at the mercy of Palpatine once more.
As Obi Wan points out, Maul didn't choose this life, and while he's done terrible things, he's also seen many terrible things and had many terrible things done to him as well. It's too much to call him innocent, but he is as much a victim of Palpatine as any, and here he's once again beaten by his abuser. That's unexpectedly powerful stuff from a show whose last quartet of episodes devolved into goofy kiddie fare.
The Obi Wan half of the episode was still good, but not quite as good. As with Obi Wan's prior adventures in and around Mandalore, it's nice to see Obi Wan seeming a little more like Anakin here -- going behind the council's back and acting alone in order to help the woman he loves. I certainly wouldn't want the two characters to become clones of one another, but it continues to give an added dimension to a character who could otherwise easily fall into being a monolithic wise old monk. There's humanity beneath Obi Wan's staid exterior, and that's always nice to see.
But I didn't really like how Satine was used here. I don't mind the character dying (well, actually, I do, because I really enjoyed her as a character, but I understand the narrative necessity of this sort of thing). The problem is that whereas in prior episodes, Satine was a full-fledged character with her own goals and distinct personality, here she was mostly just a prop for Obi Wan, something to motivate him and impact his journey. Sure, that can be said for many secondary/tertiary characters on television (and it's arguably as true for Savage here, though he at least gets to be more active in the proceedings), but the villain killing the woman the hero loves in a way that only serves to motivate the hero is a tired trope and something of an ignominious end for one of the more interesting recurring characters. The show also seemed to underplay Obi Wan's reaction to her death, which you can sort of chalk up to his Jedi detachment, but still felt off. I didn't need him to scream or cry, but he seemed mostly unfazed, even quipping, shortly after Maul kills Satine, in a way that blunted the impact the death was supposed to have.
The rest of the episode, featuring the return of Satine's nephew to help her contact the Jedi, Obi Wan's first unsuccessful attempt to rescue Satine, and his later collaboration with Bo Katan to get back to the Jedi and possibly mount a Republic Invasion, had some solid action and excitement with clear goals and well-directed combat to keep the thrill-quotient up. The reveal that Katan is Satine's sister is a little contrived for my tastes, but there's interesting places for the show to go with it.
Overall, this is a landmark episode of Clone Wars that, in many ways, feels like a culmination of much of what the show has built over the past five seasons, and even the unrealized potential of The Phantom Menace. It's built on so much of what we already know about the characters from their prior televised and cinematic adventure, and the convergence of all of these elements (give or take the Katan reveal) feels organic to previously established character motivations, while still advancing the ball and giving the series further room to grow. That's no small feat, and even if elements like Satine's death feel kind of cheap, overall this arc represents the best sustained run of quality from Clone Wars in the series history, and a high water mark in terms of capitalizing on the groundwork previously laid by the show.
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@andrewbloom I'm watching it for the first time now :). Hence the reply to your very-old message. It's fresh in my mind!
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP98.7/10.
Here's what I loved about this episode. We finally got to see The Chancellor become The Emperor (It's never been clear to me whether the show has outright acknowledged this or merely hinted at it.) There's a risk in a show like Clone Wars where, with so many characters wielding lightsabers and using force powers, you might dilute the specialness of the biggest players on the scene, and the specialness of the franchise's primary heroes and antagonists. But Clone Wars firmly avoids that with Palpatine here.
There is a pure and overwhelming display of power from Palpatine here. The way he neutralizes Maul's death squad guard while barely moving a muscle, the way he effortlessly tosses his opponents around the room, and the way he seems firmly in control even while fighting both Maul and Savage at the same time really drives home what a powerful force-wielder Palpatine is. There's also a cruelty to him here that is striking even knowing where the character goes to in the franchise's future. Much credit goes to Ian Abercrombie (who, passed away prior to this episode airing) for imbuing such menace into his delivery. The way that Palpatine declares, "you have been replaced" and "you are no longer my apprentice" to Maul is simultaneously fiendish and gutwrenching, particularly as he unleashes the Sith lightning on his former protege.
The best lightsaber battles in Star Wars have meaning behind the action, and this fit that ideal to a tee. The otherwise unflappable Maul being clearly shaken by his master's reappearance; Palpatine's initial impressed tone that quickly curdles into disdain, and the death of Savage (which adds even further stakes to this battle) all make those visual and auditory elements that already serve to heighten the tension into something undergirded by story and character. There's something disturbing, even haunting, about Maul having to say goodbye to his brother and being at the mercy of Palpatine once more.
As Obi Wan points out, Maul didn't choose this life, and while he's done terrible things, he's also seen many terrible things and had many terrible things done to him as well. It's too much to call him innocent, but he is as much a victim of Palpatine as any, and here he's once again beaten by his abuser. That's unexpectedly powerful stuff from a show whose last quartet of episodes devolved into goofy kiddie fare.
The Obi Wan half of the episode was still good, but not quite as good. As with Obi Wan's prior adventures in and around Mandalore, it's nice to see Obi Wan seeming a little more like Anakin here -- going behind the council's back and acting alone in order to help the woman he loves. I certainly wouldn't want the two characters to become clones of one another, but it continues to give an added dimension to a character who could otherwise easily fall into being a monolithic wise old monk. There's humanity beneath Obi Wan's staid exterior, and that's always nice to see.
But I didn't really like how Satine was used here. I don't mind the character dying (well, actually, I do, because I really enjoyed her as a character, but I understand the narrative necessity of this sort of thing). The problem is that whereas in prior episodes, Satine was a full-fledged character with her own goals and distinct personality, here she was mostly just a prop for Obi Wan, something to motivate him and impact his journey. Sure, that can be said for many secondary/tertiary characters on television (and it's arguably as true for Savage here, though he at least gets to be more active in the proceedings), but the villain killing the woman the hero loves in a way that only serves to motivate the hero is a tired trope and something of an ignominious end for one of the more interesting recurring characters. The show also seemed to underplay Obi Wan's reaction to her death, which you can sort of chalk up to his Jedi detachment, but still felt off. I didn't need him to scream or cry, but he seemed mostly unfazed, even quipping, shortly after Maul kills Satine, in a way that blunted the impact the death was supposed to have.
The rest of the episode, featuring the return of Satine's nephew to help her contact the Jedi, Obi Wan's first unsuccessful attempt to rescue Satine, and his later collaboration with Bo Katan to get back to the Jedi and possibly mount a Republic Invasion, had some solid action and excitement with clear goals and well-directed combat to keep the thrill-quotient up. The reveal that Katan is Satine's sister is a little contrived for my tastes, but there's interesting places for the show to go with it.
Overall, this is a landmark episode of Clone Wars that, in many ways, feels like a culmination of much of what the show has built over the past five seasons, and even the unrealized potential of The Phantom Menace. It's built on so much of what we already know about the characters from their prior televised and cinematic adventure, and the convergence of all of these elements (give or take the Katan reveal) feels organic to previously established character motivations, while still advancing the ball and giving the series further room to grow. That's no small feat, and even if elements like Satine's death feel kind of cheap, overall this arc represents the best sustained run of quality from Clone Wars in the series history, and a high water mark in terms of capitalizing on the groundwork previously laid by the show.
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@andrewbloom "(It's never been clear to me whether the show has outright acknowledged this or merely hinted at it.)" - right at the end of Season 5 episode 1 – 'Revival' - there's an openly evil and menacing Palpatine!
2024-01-01T00:00:00Z2024-12-31T23:59:59Z