We're still a week away from the finale of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law and what was a fantastic opening gambit has quickly descended into something I'm trying hard to ignore. I'm a late bloomer in the 'I hate MCU TV' brigade... No, really. I'm far less critical of it than I am the movies and a couple of my friends positively feel let down by the output of the TV franchise. I didn't like Moon Knight but most of the other live action series have been enjoyable space filler and you might recall I was positively buzzing about Shulkie when she first appeared, but... it's just so facile and trite and I know trite seems like an inappropriate description given how 'original' the premise appears to be but despite the fresh 'feel', the fourth wall breaking and the metacomedy aspects, by the time we got half way through the series it just felt overplayed, unoriginal and just a little silly... and not in a good way.
In the space of a few weeks my liking for this show has evaporated completely and while I'm aware this is predominantly a comedy even the [slightly] sinister 'government lab' trying to extract some blood from Jen no longer feels like it has anything to do with this series and more to do with helping set up an apparent World War Hulk 'film'? I mean, why else has Bruce left Earth again if it's not to simply get him off planet allowing Marvel to bring him back after Phase 4 (is it 4 or are we now in 5?) and possibly a new story arc.
I like the Hulk; it's a longstanding thing, but I gave up reading the book in 2002. I have problems with the idea of Red Hulks, sons of Hulk, armies of Hulks... I kind of struggled with the idea of She Hulk and still to this day feel it was more a copyright necessity than through any artistic merit, but I'm not going to get bogged down with Marvel minutiae because there's other woeful TV out there waiting to be reviewed.
That said, the 'therapy' episode with Tim Roth camping it up as Emile Blonsky (who is obviously up to something, but not necessarily nefarious) trying to get super powered misfits to understand their position in life was entertaining and kind of explains the basic premise of the series, which in case you need it explaining is about a woman trying to come to terms with the changes in her life. The main problem with the comedy is it isn't very funny and the problem with the drama is there isn't enough. I'm also beginning to wonder if the Netflix Daredevil series' belonged to another variant MCU because DD's much-heralded appearance featured the yellow and red costume he never wore in his own shows and his ability to be considerably more 'superheroic' than the aforementioned shows. This goes hand-in-hand with Kingpin's appearance in the Hawkeye series, seeming to be less influential but considerably more [physically] powerful.
In the penultimate episode (of what I thought was a 13, but is in fact a 9-part series), everything goes Hulk Smash in the final scenes and it stops being a comedy. This was counterbalanced by the knowledge that Matt Murdock shagged Jen Walters. This show has a 5/10 rating on IMDB - I wonder if Marvel/Disney care?
***
The Bear is a clever, sometimes brilliant, 8 part Hulu/Disney+ series I touched on briefly last time out. It stars the sublime Jeremy Allen White as a top Michelin starred chef who gives it all up to run the family sandwich shop driven into the ground by his addict (and deceased) brother with (no) help from his cousin Richie. It is fantastic TV.
It is between 19* and 45 minutes an episode. It is relentless, noisy, brash and in your face, probably very much like how a busy kitchen is like at peak service. It has masterfully teased most of the stories of the main characters out without ever feeling it was being used as a set up and because White's Carmine seems like an extension of his Lip character from Shameless (US) and as the show is set in Chicago (where Shameless was set) there are lots of elements of Paul Abbott's brilliant show flirting and skirting around the edges. It's great TV with excellent characters and some absolute wankers; I've heard it's getting a second season, I expect that will be different and the same.
* The focus of that 19 minute episode might sound like I'm annexing it with She-Hulk as theft masquerading as TV, but the point of the 19 minute episode (18 mins and 40odd seconds to be precise) is that it was taken in one shot. It is one continuous scene with no breaks and it starts off fractious and ends up volcanic - you experience the tension and the stress being ratcheted up in real time culminating in a scene you'll have been expecting since episode 2. It is mind-blowingly good TV and felt like it was an hour and not less than 20 minutes. The wife said, 'you don't really want it to be more than half an hour, it's so in your face!'
I'd like to think we got the jump of the press with this one because now many of the broadsheets and websites are heralding this as breakout, brilliant TV and are trumpeting the skills of JAW; a fact we knew all about, long ago.
Brassic isn't clever and is often brilliant. It wants to be a slapstick version of This Is England and essentially that is what Joe Gilgun's lead character Vinnie is morphing into; his skinhead persona in Shane Meadows' masterworks. It also owes a lot to Shameless and is probably made really good by the occasional appearances of Dominic West as Vinnie's pot smoking psychiatrist. But it is fun and likeable and you don't need a degree to understand it.
The penultimate episode of the latest series is an incredible heart-wrenching story giving proper souls to our main protagonists, even if it actually makes little or no sense when put under scrutiny and the series finale is really a set up for season five and the gang's confrontation with the Madonna brothers (two more characters that unbelievably appear to carry some weight in the vaguely criminal world everyone exists in). I kind of hope season five will be the last one, but that's because some series go on far longer than they should.
One stand out feature of season four is the extensive use of Tommo, the gang's rather sexually ambiguous weirdo. Played by Ryan Sampson, who has appeared in numerous TV UK shows since his debut in Wire in the Blood in 2003 (a series I've always thought should be the name of the sequel to The Thing but obviously isn't...) and perhaps the show's writers and producers realised they had a real treat on their hands, especially as other main cast members have all drifted into the background to a certain degree, especially Damien Molony's Dylan, who has almost become peripheral to the entire series.
***
We're heading into the final stages of season one of the longest titled series of all time, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and while it has proved to be better than I anticipated, it's still largely struggling to have engaging characters that you care about. Episode six was full on battle episode with twists and turns and absolutely no feeling of peril or actual bother about any of them. It feels like stories by numbers and that is terribly outdated in the 21st century.
***
The Old Man is quite extraordinary. We've just started it - watched the first episode - and we're hooked already. Jeff Bridges plays - presumably - an ex-black ops agent for the US govt. who has been 'on the run' for 40 years avoiding his former 'keepers' and trying to have a wife and a family. When we join the action, his wife has died, his daughter is a voice on the telephone and Bridges looks and acts like he's the most paranoid person in the world. Then, of course, you realise they really are out to get him. They've known where he is for a while and now they want him back - whether it's to answer for the questionable things he did or as some kind of US bargaining chip with a high powered Afghani war lord we don't know. All we do know is that semi-retired Assistant Director of the FBI - John Lithgow - has been brought out of retirement to oversee the capture of Bridges and the two of them have a long history, to the point where Lithgow makes Bridges an offer, which unfortunately isn't taken up, leaving us in a proper cat and mouse situation (although who is the cat and who is the mouse has yet to be decided).
The main problem for Bridges character is he's in his 70s, he has old men's problems and the world has moved so fast around him he's not really on the same wavelength as the Powers That Be. This is part of the intrigue, because he isn't a 21st century boy, he's relying on skills that are no longer relied on.
However, by episode two you start to realise that this isn't just a by-the-numbers spies out of retirement gig; our two main protagonists have form and much of that form wants to remain hidden. Bridges' Chase is linked to the wrong Afghani warlord, who now wants his revenge for something Chase did 40 years ago and he wants it so bad he's cashing in all his lucky US govt chips. However, this isn't just an old geezers revenge story; it's clear that the FBI were involved in something the CIA usually specialises in and Chase - an ex FBI agent - went rogue to fight on the side of the Mujahedeen and managed to not only escape Afghanistan but hide himself and his Afghani wife away for 35 years. Oh and is Chase now suffering from dementia?
***
Brad Pitt's Bullet Train felt like a substandard Matthew Vaughn attempt at making a Quentin Tarrantino film badly. The wife liked it, but I found it all a bit too OTT, a little too contrived and very annoying in places.
***
Did something we've so far resisted and watched one of those Star Wars spin-offs - Andor. Fell asleep during it so many times I didn't understand what I was watching by the end; not going there again.
***
House of the Dragon has jumped 10 years in time and sadly that means we've lost some of the cast to different actors. It is relentlessly miserable TV and has more dislikeable characters than its parent show. The change in cast felt a little jarring and it needed certain scenes just so you realised who these 'new' people were. The story has also moved on and allegiances have changed and schemes are still being hatched. The problem I now have is unlike the LOTR spin-off I'd started to like all the characters and now I have to re-like them with new actors and that hasn't happened; I really liked Milly Allcock, I'm not sure about Emma Darcy. The jump feels like it's gone too far.
Recent episodes have tried valiantly to equal dramatic events in GOT but they were so... subtle, I almost missed them. This show suffers from two major things - poor lighting and far too much mumbling. Mumble TV has been in the news a lot in the last few years, but in HotD it seems to be rife and gives the need to constantly rewind because neither of us had a clue what was said. As far as the intrigue goes, it's up there with its big sister show for twists and turns - something the LotR show could really do with and by the end of episode 6 much of what you expected to happen is finally happening, it's just the kids have a habit of throwing a spanner in the works and these Valyrian children all hate each other with the same passion as their parents. What is transpiring might have been largely predicted with close scrutiny of previous episodes, but it's still been much more fun getting to where we are than most of the last five series of Game of Thrones, which always felt like a TV version of the ultimate prick tease; which failed to deliver when required to actually not tease any more.
***
The second season finale of [the much despised] Resident Alien kind of jumped the shark with an episode that seemed a little from out of left field with snippets of interviews interjected throughout of peoples experiences of aliens or abductions.
In case anyone cares; Harry decides to stay on Earth and save it from the Greys. The agent of the Greys takes a job as deputy at Patience PD, while Harry gives himself up to the army to meet and enlist the help of Linda Hamilton's shallow and facile general. Some things are quite excellent, like when Darcy discovers Harry's secret and other things like they've been welded onto the plot over the last two weeks - the mayor's sleepwalking was always going to be ... alien in nature.
I may tune in for season 3 just to see if Asta's arse can get any bigger.
***
Guess what's back for the last time? Yes, the original Walking Dead enters its final furlong as AMC attempts to wring the last life out of this brain-fogging and banal zombie series. Nothing really gets you going any more; there isn't really a story that's compelling and all the best actors have left. It is 2022's V but with more money and less lizards...
The two-part season 'opener'/'closer' is about the beginning of the downfall of the Commonwealth, an oddly, dysfunctional conglomerate of people that we know live life like there's no zombie apocalypse, have a class system that is deeply offensive and, as with many things in this series, never explains how a settlement of thousands of people manage to have many of the luxuries of pre-apocalypse times. Who is growing all the food? Who is making all the clothes? Who is manufacturing all the stuff they need from repairing faulty stuff to creating things like bullets, fuel and all that funky armour the Commonwealth deck their police force out in.
I think my main problem with all the zombie/dead series since its inception is the fact that once organised how do they survive? I did a blog once that suggested a series focusing on farming successes or failures or the quest for the perfect location to set up home (on a hill, near a water source, with its own generator or solar/wind powered energy) wouldn't really make interesting TV, but given that the alternative has failed repeatedly for five years to produce interesting TV, maybe it was a direction to go in?
***
Before I get onto my favourite bugbear, I would like to take a moment to remember my old chum Roger Balfour, who died at the end of September. I met Roger when I wasn't really into comics (I'd fallen out of love with them for the first time) and he was all over them like a rash. His exuberance and love for the medium was always like an insurmountable wave that you rode rather than fought against and he embraced superheroes on TV and in film like a long lost family member and seemed to simply be happy to be alive while these things were actually happening.
He will be missed, even though I don't think I'd seen him in the flesh in the last 20 years and ironically, the last thing he went to the cinema to see was the latest Thor film; he loved the God of Thunder. I hope they've got a really good cinema wherever his wondrous soul ends up...
Anyhoo... I want to chuck an idea at you regarding the last film review I did. Thor: Love & Thunder is a really awful film in many ways. Scratch the surface and it's simply a mess and unbelievably facile and superficial; it makes you wonder how and why Marvel allowed it to be released in that form.
It's like there's some disgruntled employees who feel the same way because within a week or so of the film starting its streaming life, two or three 'deleted' scenes have surfaced that suggests the story must have been going in a completely different and far more logical direction and paints Russell Crowe's Zeus as a benevolent but flawed god who is gracious, humble and an addition to the MCU. So why the hell did they completely go the other way with that horrendous and pointless OmniCity segment?
Had Thor, Jane and co arrived in Olympus, possibly had a run in with Hercules and eventually left with Zeus's thunderbolt and his blessing a lot of the bad feeling about this film might never have happened. Also much of what they were trying to achieve could still have been done and in a completely plausible way. If you get the chance, go on You Tube and search the Love and Thunder deleted scenes and see for yourself.
Next time: conclusions of series and we cast our gaze into the abyss that's likely to be TV this autumn.
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