Pop Culture is Dead To Me 2: The Flying Killer

So here's the irony. You start a blog by pointing out how this kind of blog is the least viewed kind of blog I do and two weeks later it's the 3rd single most viewed blog I've ever written on Farky Nell (this blog). I don't know if the timing was good or if the TV I talked about just happened to be topical enough to be largely patronised, but I decided to do it again, to prove to myself the last one was a fluke.

In this month's thrilling instalment I'll be wittering on about The Walking Dead, Lucifer, The Gifted (and a quick return to the Inhumans), Mr Robot, Star Trek: Discovery among others and having a bit of speculation involving things I haven't seen yet or have yet to be released. This is a spoiler warning. There will be talk about things you might not have seen yet (but in most cases you're probably ahead of me).

[SPOILER WARNING]

Four weeks into the new season of The Walking Dead and I'm quite pleased to see they've revisited a 'style' that worked for me. Back at the start of season five or six (I lose track), the producers spent about six episodes played out in real time about how they funnelled an army of walkers away from their settlement. It was tense, dangerous and illustrated how scary the dead could still be. I have no idea of knowing, but I get the impression that this new season might be played out entirely as one real time 'war' between Rick's gang of altruists and Negan and his Negans. And honestly, how good would that be if the entire 16 episode season was centred around one or two days and the consequences of it?

I expect what we'll get is eight episodes of this, ending in some kind of massive defeat for Rick's team - my guess would be the death of Judith and the majority of the Alexandrians - it seems to be the least defended in case of a retaliation and some of the characters there don't exist in the comics. I also think Enid will off Hilltop's self-appointed ruler and that Gabriel will be the one who does Negan more damage than we could ever imagine. But this is all speculation and the fact there's speculation again suggests to me that TWD might be rediscovering its mojo by keeping it simple.

Possibly the biggest shock on TV in 2017 will be the one 'shit' and two 'fucking's in Star Trek: Discovery. I know I've been about the only person who has been surprised by it and while it felt unnatural and forced, it also felt right... Last time out I was less than complimentary of ST:D and because I was wrong I got two packets of Galaxy Cake Bars as a present!

At the end of the two-part pilot, I felt a little underwhelmed; slightly peeved and the ST fan boy inside me I never knew existed was seething about how everything was far too... advanced. I said to the wife that we'd give it a couple more goes and if it was rubbish it would go the way of every ST series since the Next Generation, it would be ignored. By the end of episode three I was absolutely blown away. It's like some dark and slightly sinister half-sister to ST:NG and half the characters are greyer than a school kid's trousers. There are some moments worthy of the best ST cringeworthy scenes, but there are also Machiavellian plots, psychotic captains, and Klingon tits. It's not Star Trek for your kids, that's for sure. It might turn out to be just style over substance, but it's quickly moved up my list of must view stuff.

The TV series that has vied for top spot for the last couple of years has been Lucifer (always challenging Shameless but never quite beating it) and the last time we did this the new series hadn't started and I was expressing concerns about Tom Welling being added to the cast. For those of you not familiar with Welling, he was the last TV Clark Kent/Superman and Animal from the Muppets is a better, more emotive, actor.

The last series saw the final four episodes dropped and added to this one; whatever the reason it hasn't made this series feel any less Scooby Doo like. There was a point when I seriously considered Lucifer to be the best fun 'fantasy' TV show out there because it was so rubbish. Every week you would tune in for 'lame crime of the week' but you'd really be there to see how the real story progressed; even if the real story only got two out of the 42 minutes. Most people work out the killer before he or she speaks (it's usually the first person Lucifer and Chloe talk to) and that usually takes a back seat while Tom Ellis pontificates around the set like some extremely camp music hall thespian and us clued in viewers wait for whatever new revelation is going to be uncovered. Those four held-back episodes have been distributed among the opening seven (notable by the absence of Tom Wooden, I mean, Welling).

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a great series, but something needs to happen to advance the story a little. It is not popular because of its crap procedural dramas, equally it might not be because of the actual Lucifer/angel/God business, it might be purely down to the way Ellis chews the set up every time he's there; but I can see it losing its way if it doesn't find one.

Speaking of something needing to happen... I'm just about at the end of my patience with the majority of Marvel's TV output. I'm looking forward to the new series of SHIELD because I think Phil Coulson is a great character, but there have been times when I've felt the series needed something more than just an association to the Marvel Universe. Agents of SHIELD is like a John Le Carre novel compared to The Inhumans' small press comic strip. It is not that often when something you want to like gets dropped after just one episode, but the pilot of The Inhumans was so bad you would have struggled to believe it wasn't produced by some cosplayers with a $500 budget.

Agents of SHIELD introduced the Inhumans as a 'new' conceptual menace, because Marvel doesn't own the film rights to the X-Men and nothing has worked quite as well for Marvel than mutants versus humans, so instead of trying to sort something out with the mercenary 20th Century Fox, Marvel tried to create a new 'mutant' menace by bigging up the characters that were first introduced back in the mid 1960s (who were, originally, of Kree origin, which should tie in with the Marvel films but doesn't). The entire story arc involving the Inhumans in SHIELD was pretty awful and what was originally being touted as a major feature film, soon became a major TV series, which eventually became an eight-part mini-series, which eventually got cancelled before it was launched because, as a friend of mine in Hollywood told me, 'It had already become the laughing stock of Hollywood'.

We gave up on the Inhumans after the pilot because, quite frankly, I've seen more interesting things growing on old dog shit.

We didn't give up on The Gifted quite so fast. We gave it seven episodes before finally deciding that despite having an interesting cast and being a Mutant Underground X-Men tie-in it was actually a load of dull, boring and thoroughly uninspiring shite. It's probably me, but how do some of the scriptwriters on these shows get work? The Gifted's problem is nothing happens, everyone in it suffers from melodrama, the two main actors are essentially redundant and it just feels half-arsed. Perhaps this is the way superhero TV is going, if it is then it belongs to another me.

The fact there's 13 episodes in the new Punisher series fills me with dread... I might give it a miss.

We finally caught up on all of Mr Robot season two just as season three was starting. I dunno if it was suffering from second album syndrome but ... WTF? The first series had a madness; a crazy feel to it; season two was very much after the parade; a bit like Moonlighting after Willis & Shepherd finally copped off with each other. I got through the entire season thinking 'something is going to happen' and nothing did and then it ended on a cliffhanger that could easily have taken place ten seconds after the cliffhanger at the end of season one...

I still haven't gotten around to watching the new Twin Peaks.

Stranger Things 2 was considerably better than season 1 or was it? It certainly had more money thrown at it and it moved along at a pace unlike the first series; but ultimately did it achieve anything; did it further the story; was it any good?

On hindsight it kind of reminded me of a lukewarm bland wank, which, to my knowledge, is something I've never knowingly experienced, but imagine being simply perfunctory and could have been so much better with a bit of passion, vinegar strokes and some obligatory 1980s unnecessary nudity. I expect I will enjoy series 3 when it's on and then retrospectively tear it to pieces like I've done with the first two.

I'm saving the current series of Shameless for when the rest of TV has a winter break; looking at William H Macy's naked arse once a year is all I need to confirm it's the best thing on TV.

Yet again I'm struggling to think of a film we've watched since the last one of these that I'd recommend to anyone I like. I'm sure there has been, but for the last few Saturdays we've been doing something a bit retro and watching old classics. A few weeks back we watched The Thing, followed the next week by Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and then Harryhausen's Mysterious Island (which was so much worse than I remembered) and we have Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Old Dark House, Network, Trafic (The Tati classic), a bunch of other Carpenter films from the 80s and 90s and if I can persuade the wife to watch a Mexican film about a tentacled alien sex monster living in someone's house, then The Untamed is on my list. Obviously I'm looking forward to Thor 3 with almost zero expectation, now that I'm losing the will to live with comics films/TV. Oh and we watched The Limehouse Golem the other day and that's two fucking hours I'm never going to get back (even if Bill Nighy was excellent).

Meanwhile in the UK... I thoroughly love Only Connect. From the Barda-esque (Jack Kirby joke there for my comics friends) VC-M to wanting the twats who say 'Hor-Ned' to die from horrible itching diseases. The problem with Only Connect is it's a quiz show...

Most people I know who have discerning taste in TV have constantly recommended Peaky Blinders and I'm sure it's the best thing since multiple orgasms but I know a lot of people from Birmingham and I struggle to take any of them seriously and a cowing nutritious pot noodle.

Big fan of Simon Reeve. We play the "How many times will he say 'Bloody Hell' in a series?" all the time and I won with 6 for his three-part journey across Russia.

Sue Perkins's trip down the Ganges wasn't a patch on her Dan-Dare-tastic trip to see the Mekon.

Struggling to think of anything else we watch that is good or bad enough to mention; so it's probably time to end this nonsense.

Next Time: It'll soon be Christmas and that means falling asleep during Dr Who, wondering why the BBC even bothers now and probably NOT me taking the time to discuss ITV's new format. you know the one... based on the USA's idea of having FIVE advert breaks in an hour instead of four, the last one being just before the last fucking 30 seconds and credits. Honestly, TV executives are just complete cunts.

A Pointless and Critical Analysis of The Walking Dead’s World and Why It Makes Little Sense

**Twelve months ago today I wrote a blog based partly around the concept of zombies and why they resonate with the living as proper scary monsters. Rereading that blog today I had a strong urge to do something utterly trivial with the same concept...

I give you the closest I have got to being a real geeky nerd for a long time mixed with the miserable git many of you know and love...

The Walking Dead started as a cult comic book and eventually became a massive TV hit, spawning a companion series and propelling Robert Kirkman, the ‘creator’ of the series into Spielbergian realms of fame and opportunity.

As any die-hard fan of the comic or TV show will tell you, it’s never really been about the zombies (a word that is NEVER used in the series), it’s been about the survivors. TWD is a bleak dystopian drama that shows how low humans will go to survive and has become more of an analogy of how some people believe humanity would perceive a post-apocalyptic world.

The problem is, while I have been a fan of the show since it began, it is hard work and during season 6, which started brilliantly and ended like some many other TV series now, as more of an introduction to what will happen in the next series, I started to think about the three or so years that Rick Grimes and his glum posse of survivors have been lurching around the locality of southern USA and while I’m no expert, I began to pick holes in the entire concept – not of a zombie apocalypse, but of what sensible humans would do in the event of one.

The genius of TWD’s set-up is there has never been any explanation about the plague, nor has there been anyone ‘official’ in it – no government, no radio broadcasts, nothing official. Therefore as a viewer we have no idea what the percentage of survivors is and while the world might be readjusting to it in some cities, in and around Atlanta, Georgia and in Virginia it’s the Wild West with flesh eating Indians and psychotic cowboys.

I mean, if you had half a brain you’d sit down and look at your situation and make some plans, which would be reassessed once you realise that it’s you versus everything. The problem is, while TWD has never been clear about the actual amount of time that has passed since Rick woke up in a hospital room (which itself was suggested to be about two weeks after everything went to Romero-land in a hand basket) and the point at the end of season 6 where one of his team faces certain death at the end of a militarised baseball bat, we have to presume that a minimum of three years has elapsed. Filming schedules means we rarely see a Georgia winter, but we have seen autumn leaves a number of times, so let’s presume Rick, Michonne, Carol, Darryl and all the others have been on the road for three years...

1. Food

TWD is set in and around some of the hottest and most humid areas of the USA. Research tells that almost everything that is organic in origin will begin to rot within a relatively small period of time. During the hotter months the humidity is so high that bread can go mouldy inside 36 hours and, more importantly, dry goods, even well packaged, succumb to the moisture in the air considerably quicker than in more temperate or drier regions. That means when we see a cast member munching a cracker or a biscuit they have found in a glove compartment or ignored in a deserted store, it should be soft, mouldy and inedible.
I have a friend who has lived in that area all his life, I asked him about food longevity and he confirmed things go off quickly. “Packets of chocolate chip cookies have gone stale within two days of opening them, hell, even Hostess Twinkies go off.” 

2. Water

It would be very stupid to drink any water, especially if the series is now three years since the Walker Apocalypse. Stream and river water would highly likely be contaminated, either by a number of pollutants or simply dead bodies. Bottled water, especially in areas where it will be heated, cooled, heated and cooled repeatedly runs the risk of whoever drinking it getting Legionnaire’s Disease. Most health bodies do not recommend drinking bottled water that has had the seal broken or is more than three years passed its sell by date. Water can go off just as easily as milk and therefore the safest things to drink would be alcoholic. Unless you have a way of filtering rain water or want to boil everything.

3. Vegetation/wildlife

Apparently in Georgia and surrounding states nothing grows or overgrows. Admittedly the constraints of budget and where they have to film dictate certain factual inaccuracies, but botanists, scientists and expert gardeners will tell you that inside one year, left unchecked, most vegetation will begin to encroach and take over anything man-made. After three years everywhere should resemble unkempt fields and meadows, roads would be covered, anywhere where vegetation exists in abundance would be overgrown.
Wildlife is portrayed as being eaten by man and walker. There are no deer anywhere; no domestic cats, in fact except for a couple of horses, some wild boar and some dogs, TWD world is almost devoid of any kind of life – no fish, no amphibians, no birds... Some of these are explainable, but generally animals outnumber people by a ridiculous amount and the USA has bears, coyotes, wolves, wildcats, mountain lions... Do I need to continue this list? Sheep can go feral if left away from humans for long enough... Why don't animals succumb to the same virus as humans? How come we haven't got flocks of zombified buffalo or armadillos?

4. Decay

Georgia isn’t a dry state like California is (where FTWD is based) and the point about humidity made regarding food is also prevalent with the general infrastructure and the Walkers. A book a friend has recently read by an undertaker points out that the human body decomposes almost 50% faster in hot and humid environments; it’s one of the reasons that funerals are fast and done quickly in hot countries.
Now, even if the walkers rate of decomposition was much slower by virtue of the virus, within three years the original first year walkers would have rotted from constantly getting wet from rain (as was witnessed early on in the series when they found a dead guy in a well), being frozen and defrosted constantly every winter, any of the elements from thunderstorms to high winds – dead humans would be as liable to erosion as everything else. Bones would become brittle and shatter; teeth would fall out, fingers drop off, clothes would rot – the smell alone would be horrendous, which leads us nicely to...

5. Climate/Environment – these states down south also have winters (as hinted at a couple of times) and sometimes temperatures can drop well below freezing for long periods and snow and ice storms are frequent throughout the winter months. The average lowest temperature during the winter is a reasonably nippy -4c, which would freeze the walkers – they generate no heat because they are dead and are effectively the same ambient temperature as any non-living object. This means they would snap or break if they attempt to move while frozen; could shatter if they fall and generally would be considerably easier to deal with if they were frozen to the road or a tree. Eventually the environment would become a far more dangerous adversary to the Walkers than any band of psycho humans.You have to ask yourself why the survivors haven’t broken into a library, looked up self-sufficiency; tried to find where the nuclear bunkers are, the survivalists, the people who installed generators, solar panels, independent water supplies – such as a well or an unpolluted mountain stream? Why haven’t they moved into the mountains where not only is the water safer, but the distribution of walking dead will be considerably less and much easier to deal with. Plus they have natural defences – high up, good vantage point against not just the dead but the nutters who still live. Why haven’t they given themselves an advantage? Considering the people ‘in charge’ are in charge, no one has come up with a plan to avoid the walkers; no common sense is being applied when you consider it is very clear that the real enemy in the series is now each other rather than the slow and usually easily dispatched dead. 

Obviously, a TV series about a bunch of self-sufficient mountain dwellers, safe in their beds with good solid defences against the rest of the world would probably make very dull TV. Just look at spin-off series Fear and its lifeless characters, dull plots and a post-apocalyptic world full of wankers – the creators of all of this must think the rational people will be the first to succumb to the bite of a zombie (probably due to our general disbelief) and the only people left will be the idiots who are too stupid to end up being bitten by anything. The underlying theme in both TWD series is the stupidity of people, it’s not really about surviving because it’s a TV series not real life.

So ask yourself this – if there was a zombie apocalypse tomorrow, would you make the same decisions as Rick and his mates or would you look for somewhere safe, well-stocked and presumably a place where, in this world, even Bear Grylls would forget about if a zombie was trying to bite his ear off?