Pop Culture is Dead to Me 5: Some Things and another Thing

It's time to wander through the trichome-lined walls of my brain once again as I open my occasional bag of opinions on current televisual and cinematic wassnames...

Indulge me. Sometimes I simply need to kick back and do something I used to do for a living - speculate about trivial bollocks. It doesn't happen very often - I fancy playing golf more often but I don't do that either - and I wondered if I still had it in me and if I haven't it might be fun to speculate...

Now the Disney/Marvel/Fox 'merger' has been finalised it means the return of certain properties into the MCU or Marvel Cinematic Universe. This means that (Disney) Marvel can now use the X-Men and all related characters and The Fantastic Four and (I believe) most of the related characters; this would include Dr Doom, Galactus, Silver Surfer, but probably not She-Hulk (I don't know why, I might be wrong, I watch so much shit on You Tube).

Historically, the FF were the start of the Marvel Universe, so in an attempt to introduce them into an extant MCU would possibly be a bit of stretch (if you'll pardon the pun); also the X-Men's existing (but soon to be defunct) universe is most definitely not part of the same universe that houses the Avengers; the X-characters are fundamental elements of their reality.

To confuse purists, the MCU has The Inhumans yet the FF was the comic the Inhumans were introduced in and the one I used to associate them with the most. The MCU can use the Peter Parker Spider-Man and related characters, but other characters belong to Sony (Venom, Black Cat, certain villains). The waters are already muddy without really adding to it by introducing new elements that simply can't be... new.

I expect at some point - it might have already been hinted at in Avengers: Endgame (but I haven't seen it so no spoilers) - where all these different realities will merge into one and it won't only change things, it'll allow back stories to be told, new origin films and return any heroes no longer in the films to return, as new-look.

This would have been longer but I wrote it before Captain Marvel came out and I figured several months later I should be as superficial as any good click bait...

There have been some standout TV shows this year, so far, many with a superhero tinge and rammed full of humour done in a way that works. The Umbrella Academy was unknown to me and it didn't do anything I thought it would. It's an exasperating series - without giving any spoilers away - that delivers more than enough to keep you hooked, but leaves just a little too much for a sequel which I'm not sure has been green lit yet. It's bloody awesome, but it leaves you with a shit load of questions.

The Tick opened his wings again and became more grand. The almost theatrical (as in stage) feel to the first series was replaced by something much bigger and bolder. There was the return of familiar jokes and it meandered its way through 10 episodes like a bull on acid in a cushion shop while introducing an entire Tick universe to ogle at. It is brilliantly absurd and I highly recommend it, but you need to see season #1 or #2 will make no sense at all.

Old favourites in our house are having a hard time in many ways; the latest season of The Walking Dead really feels rudderless and could soon become the 21st century's version of V. Remember that? By the time they got to the end, extras had stepped up to play lead characters, the main cast were like rats from a sinking ship. The series needs to die and in many ways so does the franchise. Fear the Walking Dead was better than its parent last season, but that's because it unshackled itself from the angst and got a bit black comedy. There is literally no future for these shows.

Game of Thrones is coming thundering to a conclusion and while I thoroughly enjoyed the later seasons for the spectacle alone. As a fan of the books, I know I'm never going to read them because it isn't going to finish, so this has been fun - after a fashion.
I'm puzzled by it and I don't think there will be resolution. I'm still none the wiser as to the motives of the Ice King or even who he was, really. The mystical side seems to have been underplayed to the point of it being a tedious side story that needed completion. The dragons do not appear to be much of an asset unless it's frying innocents and so many good characters have had their stories curtailed by the need for completion. This final season so far - I have one to watch - seems... convenient, almost an unjust finale. I have no idea what will happen, I don't think I care, I do think Jon Snow (err nerr, Jon Snerr) will go back to the North and that's as far as I'm going with my predictions. It's been too quick, shoddily written and kind of jumped the shark in odd ways.

Lucifer is back and looking far more lavish, with a bigger budget and the same cheap, tackiness I've grown to love about this utterly dreadful series. All ten fell last week on Netflix and reaction is positive. As for resolutions, part of me wants this to be it, even if they could really go for it and do something really weird. I also want someone, at some point, to point out that Lucifer might be the angel of death, but he was once simply an angel and a very important one at that. There's a great scene in the second episode of the new season where Chloe asks him how he could be who he was and he replies, 'It was my job.' The thing that makes Lucifer possibly one of the best crap TV shows for yonks is Tom Ellis; he is simply brilliant and this new series seems to have remembered the charm he had in the very first season, which gave the show its character.

As usual there are a stack of things we haven't got around to watching and things we're finally getting through now it's the summer. I sometimes wonder what my fellow TV nerd friends must think when they learn that I don't watch one of my all time favourite TV series as soon as I can - hey, I haven't seen Captain Marvel or Endgame yet and I'm avoiding most spoilers; I have ideas based on snatched headlines and if I can keep it that way... In many respects, we've embraced the box-set culture and as a result we have everything from Fleabag to last year's second season of Flowers to catch up on. Over the last couple of weeks, we've been working our way through season #9 of Shameless US. It has consistently been one of my favourite series since its second season and I know that it's been renewed for a tenth season. It has become a grower in the US and now has a huge following thanks to syndication.

This ninth series has felt like it's time to stop and the first cracks in the cast are showing. Every season, the character Lip has pretty much had the best stories; he has been one of the most likeable rogues TV has ever created and in the US version he sticks around and as a result he has really become the central character - flawed, brutally human, alcoholic at 20 and an absolute pillar of decency and he's driven this latest season. It has been good to see the two youngest finally get interesting stories, far more enjoyable has been Liam's travails than his whiny sister Debby. But the main reason for the decline has been the two main reasons for its success. Fiona and Frank Gallagher played by Emmy Rossum and William H Macy have dominated this show from the start, but as the years have gone on, the devilishly brilliant Chicago Frank Gallagher has slowly been morphing into his UK equivalent. He has had more and more outlandish stories in a series that seemed to only have one every year - one slightly inexplicable unlikely event - but now has him lurching from one comedy set-up to another. He has had his moments this year, oddly enough mainly with his daughter Fiona, two actors who are rarely seen in the same scene for the last few years. The best line in the series for years was when he told her at the bar, "The difference between us is simple, I'm a happy drunk, you're a mean drunk. You're just looking for a fight." As he watched his daughter finally descend down the path he chose many years before.

However, all of this is just a preamble...

I watched the 13th (of 15) episode of a new TV show on Saturday and for the following fifteen minutes or so I considered that it was possibly my favourite show on at the moment. It shouldn't be; in many ways it's slightly more ludicrous than the Umbrella Academy; it's definitely not The Tick, even if it out-weirds the Tick by a country mile; it is something of an enigma, especially for me and I think it might be one of the best things to hit the screens for a long time. It has problems, but I don't know if they are problems or just part of the journey...

I'm not a fan of DC TV series. I don't watch Gotham. I'm not into Arrow or Flash. I stopped watching DC-related shows with Smallville. Nothing I saw from the few episodes I've watched held any interest. So when Titans came along I simply ignored it and probably would anything else that came along. DC TV for me = meh.

You ever get that feeling? It's happened with music and books; where I've judged it by its cover or title or simply because... When I saw that DC was releasing a Doom Patrol series my initial reaction was meh. But when it was released, I was quick to get hold of it. I'd had a feeling that it was probably going to use the Grant Morrison template rather than the Arnold Drake one and while I'd never read an issue of that, despite being right in the middle of my comics period, the idea of it being weirder than average appealed to me.

Before I continue; people who watch Titans will have been introduced to the Doom Patrol in the fourth episode of that series. Forget that ever happened because this is not the group of individuals who appeared in that (and I can't understand why they did it that way and then changed it so much unless it's another Doom Patrol and this one exists in a reality where Titans don't...).

Doom Patrol loosely is:
Cliff Steele's brain encased in a robotic body. Cliff Steele was a boorish NASCAR driver and minor celebrity. He's voiced by Brendan Frazer, who, in the flashback scenes he's in is looking fat and oafish. Robotman is loud, tactless, bombastic and a little bit mad. His story is dealt with in an very interesting way, partly involving a rat gaining revenge.
Rita Farr - former B list Hollywood actress who was a bitch of a bitch is like the team's Margot Leadbetter. During the filming of a blockbuster, an accident means she has no control over her body and can simply turn into a puddle of ... well, her. She now has a degree of control, but is haunted by her past. She is Elastic Girl.
Larry Trainor is a closeted gay test pilot who has an accident that should have killed him but he walks away badly disfigured and connected to a negative energy being. Larry is also riddled with guilt about his own past and having to accept that the energy being is actually part of him.
Crazy Jane has 64 multiple personalities and it seems that every single one of them has a superpower, although that isn't clear and we've only seen a few on the surface. She's a blindingly brilliant character played by an actress who takes on each personality extremely well. Jane is possibly very, very powerful.

Then there's Dr Niles Caulder, their mentor - of sorts - and reason all of them were together. Caulder is really a man of mystery who appears to have several sides and has as many enemies as friends. He plays a big part in the series but is only in it for a few episodes because he's abducted by...
Mr Nobody is the chief antagonist, a devious, scheming manipulator with a fragmented body and mind who is also extremely powerful. He has been pulling the strings, in more ways than one, since the opening episode.
He was also the reason that a character who isn't on the Doom Patrol roster in comics was brought in (or was he?). Cyborg, from the Justice League feels like the only character that has been shoehorned into this series. From his debut in episode #2 to his complete ineffectiveness throughout the series, despite putting himself up as some paragon of virtue, may well have been a manipulation by Mr Nobody - but I think he's unwanted extras.

There are other characters: Willoughby Kipling - a chaos magician; Cyborg's dad Silas Stone, who has been made deliberately obtuse and potentially nasty, Flex Mentallo, the original Doom Patrol, The Bureau of Normalcy, Danny the Street, a donkey that vomits other dimensions, King Ezekiel of the cockroaches (literally), Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, the Beardhunter and enough weirdness to make you know with all your heart you aint in Kansas no more.

It is just totally wrong for a superhero series. It's definitely 18 rated in places; deals with issues you would never expect to see and it's hammed up to the eyeballs, yet it's quite brilliant. By the time you get to the 13th episode you will have become hooked or given up. My wife gave it one episode and decided it wasn't for her. I was almost ready to join her after the second because Cyborg was such a jarringly wrong presence (which might be key to why Mr Nobody doesn't want him there), but I stuck with it and it just got under my skin. It's like no other superhero series I know; especially one where the baddie essentially ignores the fourth wall.

Long may it stick around if it's as odd as it has been.

Anything else wasn't worth mentioning or I haven't seen it.