Modern Culture - Shock

I could spend the preamble waxing malevolently about how the post-Endgame MCU is fucking up, but as I do that most times now, I thought I'd kick off by saying how much superficial fun Ms Marvel was. I was not the audience it was aimed at but I found it fresh and culturally odd and definitely not the kind of thing I'd expect the majority of WASPish 'Mericans would be watching, even if there's a geek in the fold.

The show's biggest problem was its superficiality. It still feels like it needed to be longer - it needed more character development from the top down, it needed a proper villain, it... just needed more and not because it was sparkling TV but because Kamala Khan is going to be sharing top billing with Brie Larson and the girl from WandaVision in Marvels and I kind of feel I know more about everyone in the MCU, including Korg's sidekick (Mick?). It crammed so much into six 40-odd minute episodes and yet I was left feeling as though they'd forgotten to put an actual story in there. But hey, it was a gamble from the word go and any more might have been problematic for Disney stocks and shares.

The weird thing about it was I went in with low expectations and they never rose throughout the six episodes, but they didn't decline either. It was a bit of fun - more Ant-Man than Infinity War. I had issues with it, but most of those are either existential or to do with the MCU and its need to over bloat itself rather than concentrate on winning formulas in the way they/that worked before. Ms Marvel introduces us to Djinns and reintroduces us to parallel worlds - not necessarily part of the multiverse. It seems to plough through supporting characters with little or no reason - whether it's to highlight the large groups of friends American Muslims have or if the producers wanted to get as many friends and family into the show as possible and on top of all that it was set in an environment unfamiliar to many, had subtitles at times and failed to explain little things that Pakistanis might understand but might go over the heads of anyone else and we know what happens when the bulk of the TV audience have to work when watching a program.

And then there was the post credit scene that miraculously links Ms Marvel to her hero Captain Marvel as the two change positions - Danvers in Khan's bedroom and who knows where in the universe Kamala has gone. This 30 second scene is the prologue to Marvels and it won't have been watched by a lot of people and because of that I could easily spend another 1000 words telling you why I think it's going wrong, but there's an awful lot of people out there who love the MCU and that's what counts.

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After the massive anti-climax of Stranger Things, we needed something new to fill the popcorn watch slot, so we opted for Resident Evil and what a bizarre 8-part series it is. I went in having read a review that essentially said 'leave you brain at the door, get some crisps and sit back' so I expected something cheesy to be honest. The thing is I think the reviewer only watched the first four episodes, wrote the review and then probably hoped people would forget about it very quickly.

The first four episodes are utterly bonkers, especially the parts set in 2036, which is part Mad Max, part The Walking Dead and part Ray Harryhausen. The flashbacks to 2022 and New Racoon City (in South Africa) start off intriguing enough but soon descend into slightly farcical given the ease at which things fuck up so quickly in a place that has its own private army as security. The series two main characters are Jade and Billie (one black, one Asian) 'twin' sisters and their father Albert, who is a real bigwig at the Umbrella Corporation. He's up to something with the girls' blood, while fighting a losing battle against his CEO about having an untested drug put on the market. By this point you're thinking presumably it's the company that's the 'evil' in the title, because they are as shady as fuck and twice as dodgy.

And then it goes off at a 90 degree angle in both timelines and the story kind of grinds to halt midway through episode five and any further revelations are just more markers for what to expect in season two. The story in 2022 really slowed down and had a couple of pointless red herrings thrown in probably to pad the thing out - which it really didn't need - and then the Godzilla-sized mutant crocodile entered to fray, followed closely by clones and zombies and psychopaths and by the end I was begging it to finish.

Everything this gained from the opening 4 episodes - however slightly bonkers they were - is completely lost by the following 4 episodes which are just shit.

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However, the real alternative to Stranger Things came from Paper Girls - a much lower budget affair but no less interesting and intriguing story about time travel and a war that is raging between two relatively ambiguous protagonists with four paper girls caught in the middle - a Jewish lesbian, a confrontational all-American tomboy, a Chinese-American kid and a black girl, who is also the brains of the outfit. They find themselves flung together during a fight between the STF (a rogue agency of time travellers and The Church, who control time).

It's wordy and focuses on the strange world of pre-teen American girls in 1988 and then goes forward to 2019 and then back to 1999 before leaving you literally at a cliffhanger moment that screams series 2! It would have been nice to see some 'ending' or tying up of one subplot, but it was clear from the penultimate episode this was just a set-up for series 2.

Most enjoyable though, if a bit awkward at times, but as it's about awkward teenage girls...

***

Heading towards the season 3 finale of For All Mankind and I have to say that the story, as ever, has been top notch, however it has felt a little too soapy this time around, not always, just at times. The dodgy drama with Gordo's son on the Helios mission to Mars feels unnecessary and there's been just a little too much 'comedy' in it; obviously there's been a fair share of tragedy but the balance seems off - the fight to be the first on Mars is a perfect example. However, everything came to a head in the worst possible ways setting up a season finale  and the news it had been definitely renewed for a fourth season.

It's now 1996, there are two colonies on Mars each helping each other with different things, but the US-Soviet politics still resounds despite having been forced into helping each other out and the politics back on Earth - now with a woman president - is a mixture of good for most people and not so good for others and followers of the show will understand how this issue resounds inside the president - a former NASA astronaut.

The show's creator Ronald Moore - he of the Battlestar Galactica reboot - has said, apparently, that he sees five series, which technically would bring us up to date. The 1996 of here has many things we're only getting used to now; the world of technology in FAM is about 30 years ahead and I find it intriguing to see how the people who write the show expect this alternate Earth to be like by the mid 2010s.

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Would you be surprised to know that I'm not really enamoured by the prospect of either a new Lord of the Rings thing nor a bloody Game of Thrones spin-off. These big fuck off television 'events' don't do it for me and I suspect might not do it for a lot less people than watched the original film series or the HBO adaptation. 

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The Umbrella Academy 'ended' reasonably well and could easily be the last one ever. Whether it will be depends on the success of this one and whether they can get the cast together for another. Oddly enough it was quite a well-focused, slightly mind-bending story that still felt just a teensy bit over long.

It felt good because by the end of it there was a sense of balance, like everything had been restored how it should have been. The ripple in this is Hargreaves who now seems to be king of the world while his adopted children no longer have their superpowers - time has been reset. Or maybe just a good jumping off point?

***

Everything is building up to us watching the last episodes of Better Call Saul, a series I absolutely love but sometimes wonder if I'm just watching it for the episode that reunites the Breaking Bad cast? It's simply brilliant TV that often leaves you wondering why it's brilliant TV.