Modern Culture - Not So Modern

There's a bit of a loose theme running through this latest instalment and that theme is sequels/prequels, I'll explain more as we go along...

The Sandman was a rare thing - an extraordinary TV series of sheer brilliance. There's not really much else I can say. We binge watched it over three nights and bathed in the sumptuousness and atmosphere it crafted. It was the DC TV series we've all been waiting for - something that pisses on anything the MCU has done for a long time.

Based on the DC/Vertigo comic series The Sandman written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by a host of big name serious comic artists, it was a cult success that eventually became one of DC's best selling comics and mainly to non-comic fans. It was without doubt one of the most ambitious and unique comics of all time. It was also, thanks to the powers of retro-writing is both a sequel to the Sandman comics of a previous generation and a prequel to them. The reason why all the other Sandman comics and appearances happened at all. It also managed to do this in such a slight, almost underhanded way, made it all the more popular with people who didn't read comics.

The series takes the first two story-arcs from the comic and adapts them almost faultlessly, to the point where the three issues where actual DC superheroes appeared weren't missed from the TV series. Oddly enough the episode that stands head and shoulders above the others (and they're all 9/10) is episode 6 (or #8 in the comic) where we are introduced to both Death and Hob Gadling. It is simply one of the most fabulous 45 minutes you will ever spend in front of a TV and for me is probably the best single episode of any show I've seen in the last five years and in my world it takes something special to beat For All Mankind which has at least two, maybe three, 10/10 episodes a season.

I can't recommend this series enough.

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Predator films are hit and miss. Mainly miss to be honest, because it's basically the same idea played over and over again in a different stylee. However, Prey is something different in that it's set 300 years in the past and the aliens are as primitive as we've ever seen them with less tech and a more wild appearance.

It's the story of a feisty teenage Commanche Native American girl who wants to be a hunter but is faces a future of foraging and being the second class citizen of the tribe, that is until she takes it on herself to hunt down whatever's killing buffalo. The thing is the people killing the buffalo are not the people doing the hunting and through her ingenuity and self-taught skills she bests the French hunters and then the big fuck off alien and barely cuts herself in the process.

There's a couple of neon-lit plot devices, that could have been used even better than they were and it romps in at just over 90 minutes and has about as much dialogue in the entire film as Arnie had in the original. That said, it's without doubt the second best Predator film ever made.

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Obviously Better Call Saul is a prequel to Breaking Bad and now we're into the final stretch and things are moving at an incredible pace, almost so fast it feels like an anti-climax. The storyline that has essentially been playing out in the background of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman's origin has concluded and, to be honest, in a quick and efficient way that seemed almost too quickly, given there are another six episodes to come. The epilogue to the Salamancha story is also more like a scalpel cut than anything else with Kim's story coming to an odd, but somehow understandable conclusion.

Kim leaves with five minutes of the second episode left, which they manage to fast forward an indeterminate number of months and give us a quick reminder of the Saul Goodman we first met in Breaking Bad. Except the third episode goes off-piste, as we return to Jimmy's future (black & white) life in Omaha, Nebraska; this time in a full episode focusing on the man who recognised him in the shopping mall from the previous series finale. And what an oddly unfulfilling 50 minutes it turned out to be and probably raises more questions than answers at a point when, to be fair, we know there are four more episodes, two of which will feature the original BB stars yet all the series' stories have concluded, we are in a new chapter of an old life in a short space of time.

The first of those features the famous BB reunion - actually a three minute scene that feels oddly empty and redundant apart from the analogy it throws up with Jimmy's newly re-adopted Omaha hustling life; it also works as a platform for Jimmy's eventual 'sham' defence.

The Better Call Saul story effectively ended with episode 9, the one exception being how he first met up with Jesse Pinkman and Walter White. Ep10 was where Jimmy McGill is now; quickly filling in the blanks from all the teasers at the start of each season. He's the manager of a cinnamon bun shop in Omaha and life is dull and boring and everything Jimmy isn't. With the aid of someone who cropped up in an earlier series who recognises him, he goes into hustling and fraud, making enough money to be reasonably comfortable because he no longer has anything left of his fortune he built during BB. The problem is the tone, feel and pacing; it might be me, but it doesn't feel right although it might be deliberate. The suggestion that Jimmy is just a crook at heart harks back to the earliest episodes, but I'm simply not convinced. 

There's also a puzzling scene in a phone booth, of which there are a few, but this is quickly explained in the penultimate episode which turns the focus of the conclusion towards Kim Wexler and the dull, boring and insignificant life she's living in Florida. Her dull, boring and insignificant life is suddenly thrown into turmoil as (we discover six years has passed since she walked out on) Saul gets in touch with her and sets things into motion that you kind of know are going to end badly for all concerned. Kim does the right thing, maybe for all the wrong reasons, and then discovers it might have been a sacrifice made entirely fruitlessly as no one is alive that can corroborate her story of the last six seasons. There is also another glimpse of Jesse, this time meeting Kim for the first and only time and asking her what Saul Goodman is like as a lawyer.

The episode ends with Jimmy's Omaha cover blown wide open and sets up the final ever episode which, unsurprisingly, is called ... Saul Gone.

That final episode, which completes a sprawling story, was by no means a classic but it did finally prove me right about one thing, Jimmy is not a bad man. Basically, in typical Saul Goodman fashion, complete with gold lame suit (in black & white), Jimmy, who had painstakingly wasted the time of the huge legal team prosecuting him by plea bargaining only to backtrack in court and level with the judge. At one point he'd managed to whittle two life sentences and 190 years down to 7 years in a minimum security prison - for being involved in everything from drug trafficking, the murders of FBI agents and a host of other crimes - but when it became clear that the love of his life might now be implicated and ruined because of it, he essentially gave her his Kevlar vest and took the full force of the law on the chin and pretty much got the sentence he'd originally been promised.

However, Jimmy gets something of an unexpected happier ending than you'd expect because Saul Goodman is a hero among the criminal underworld and he's treated like a god while serving his sentence; he has the protection of the entire prison population and he also gets a visit from Kim and the series end almost the same way it began with the two of them sharing a cigarette. 

For anyone who only watched BCS - the final episode, in many ways, makes little sense because most of the references are from another television series - Breaking Bad - and anyone who watched that series and hasn't watched this one might want to check this out - maybe the last half dozen episodes - because these are as much Breaking Bad epilogues and the conclusion of Saul Goodman's story.

It was an undeniably brilliant TV series probably only spoiled by niggly little things probably caused by the passage of time and Bob Odenkirk's health (ironically when the series started it was Jonathan Banks who was causing the concern mainly because of his age).

However, it leaves yet another gap vacated by a classic TV show.

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I Am Groot is a series of very short CGI animated films featuring everyone's favourite tree - when he was a sapling - it is aimed at pre-school children but has one or two LOL moments - especially in the second episode. Other than a cameo by a CGI Rocket there ain't much to comment on.

Obviously Groot is a sequel to Groot who tried to enslave the world back in 1961 in an old issue of Tales to Astonish...

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Resident Alien is back for the second half of its season and ... er... um... There could be people reading this who remember past lamented SyFy series such as Warehouse 13 and Eureka, series which started with so much promise and seemed to end up being written by people who didn't really understand what the viewers wanted or even how to write a script. Great stories were ruined by poor plotting, dodgy characters and a lot of shark jumping and guess what? Resident Alien has reached that point after less than two seasons, at least the others fell apart after three or four.

The main problem with Resident Alien is once you look past alien Harry's quirkiness and the surreal mind of the sheriff, there isn't much else in it that makes you want to give a shit. Alan Tudyk is still quite brilliant - at times - but there's far too much fucking about with his assumed character's past and his own changes, which have seen him go from a shapeshifting alien to someone who can do all manner of things without the aid of any of his magic balls. It really does feel as though it's being made up on an episode by episode basis. 

Almost as problematic are the myriad of subplots that have been woven - obviously to pad out the series because of its new elongated length - that are either as dull as ditch water or not really interesting. They've attempted to turn this into an ensemble dramedy and it's failing all over the shop. Let's see if I can list the subplots: the Mayor and his wife, their kid and his Muslim friend, the government agency tracking Harry and the other government agency that appears to be working outside of the law, an invasion by another alien race, the imminent destruction of Earth by Harry's race, the battle to give Darcy a story line, how they can incorporate Asta into the series when she offers as much to the series as a beaver staring at a photograph of trees and why is there even an estranged daughter/adoptee story line? Especially when no one gives a shit anyhow. Oh yeah, the human Harry's wife, daughter, criminal activity, murder of the town's doctor, deputy Liv's constant and numerous struggles with her boss to her fascination with alien hunters, and then there are others that aren't part of the storyline, but are all written like it's part of a rich tapestry of weirdness going on, but what it is is a collection of actors with variable abilities wading through the mire in search of a direction.

Don't get me wrong, I like it, like I like inexplicable things wot I like, but it's really just a load of shit. 

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Speaking of shit - the best worst acted program in TV land came to a possible/probable conclusion. Motherland: Fort Salem and its story of an alternative US history, which is protected by witches in a world where magic exists.

It's primarily about three new witches and their journey from new recruits to seasoned veterans leading the fightback against a right wing anti-witch US militia force and some of the acting in it is beyond appalling, but the actual story and the weird and wonderful directions it has gone is fantastic, proving that acting and special effects are not the only thing you need to make some things work.

That said, the penultimate episode was arguably one of the worst ever because clearly it's intended to be the lull before the storm, but it bordered on schmaltz overload with extra thick creamy icing, so in lieu of that I went into the final episode expecting deaths and tragedies and an almost happy ending for some of our main protagonists, what I got was... none of the above, almost...

It was choc-a-bloc full of lovey-dovey endings and honestly, the series story was wrapped up so quickly and so anti-climatically and was padded out with conclusions that spending the last two minutes setting up a fourth season with a non-sensical cliffhanger seemed both counter-productive and a bit silly. Literally from the first episode of the third season, the soldiers and heroes of Fort Salem have been fighting the Vice-President who is part of the Camarilla - an ancient right wing anti-witch group - it has been fraught and complex yet it was concluded in exactly the most logical way inside 10 minutes, leaving a further 30 minutes of [see the start of this paragraph].

I'm really quite disappointed because from a story point of view Motherland has been very well crafted, but with the final last few episodes it didn't so much jump the shark as turn it over, stroke its belly and then give it a damned good rogering. It really felt like they had five good episodes and needed to extend it to nine, so they wandered down some alleys and hurtled down others and I don't think the writers really knew what they were doing, because everything felt a bit meh in the end, a bit too contrived and amateurish - a bit like the acting.

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Wow! The For All Mankind finale was everything I expected it to be and a whole lot more. In three short years this series has become by far and away the best ongoing drama on telly; it is everything realistic sci-fi can offer. 

The final part of the Mars Odyssey delivered in a number of ways and ended with an ironic twist and another tragedy on which the next series will be based around, for sure. It was also the culmination of three of the main women's storylines, one is left hanging in the balance and the last one, through a series of judgement calls will probably end up as the head of NASA in a way that tied up an ongoing plot device extremely well. But that's what this series does, it tells fantastic stories of fictional heroism that goes above and beyond in an almost soap opera-like framework and does it in such a way you feel every bit of jeopardy, because you have a vested interest in the main characters and people will die.

The finale saw the culmination of the gay President story - with no apparent resolution - and Margot's past finally catching up with her. It saw the triumphant return of Molly Cobb, who seemed almost abandoned after the second episode when she was fired (by Margot) and it highlighted Karen's journey from frustrated wife of astronaut to head of an independent space agency only for it all to end in this reality's 9/11 moment. Aleida's obsession with the truth backfires in many ways, but ends up being the thing that will take her from the young Mexican savant taken under Margot's wing in series one to probably being head of NASA in the next series. It was the end for four of the main reasons for watching the show, or is it?

The final scene leaps 7 years into the future - to 2005 and a new back drop for the show's primary female character - but is it a happy ending for her? I think not, but whether we've seen the last of her we will have to wait and see.

However, the thought did cross my mind that For All Mankind might even end up us as a prequel to Battlestar Galactica. I mean, they were written by the same person and mankind is conquering the stars in this series and were trying to find their way home from them in the other. Could AI be the next big space race leap for season 4?

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A word of warning. Do not, under any circumstances, watch the Jamie Foxx vehicle Day Shift. It makes a pile of shit look appetising, good company and worth a cuddle...

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That brings us nicely to the latest in the meat-product-production-line that is Marvel/Disney. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law ... except that isn't on until tomorrow, I won't see it until Friday and it can kick off the next Pop Culture blog...