The Last of Us (with minor spoilers)

I finally got around to watching The Last of Us, and I really enjoyed it.  At nine episodes it managed to fill out some back stories to greater and lesser successes.  Did we need more Bill?  Sure, why not.  Did we need more Jakarta?  No, not really.

I guess I was left feeling that a really good two hour movie could have been made as well, one that would have outshined a nine-part series and brought home the point that Joel acted selfishly, but also relatably.

That's not hating, just wondering if an already baggy video game needed an equally baggy series to boot.

I'll Settle For OK

I'm officially "into" The Mandalorian.  It definitely has problems -- while I appreciate the Lone Wolf and Cub stuff, a good Spaghetti Western needs a proper foil.

I'm usually quick to dismiss "don't think too hard and it's good" TV or music but given the stress of The Plague, I'll make an exception.

Also, give Amy Sedaris a lightsaber.

Into August

I started watching The Witcher television series this past weekend.  I am not a Henry Cavill fan (the Snyderverse DC movies sent me away screaming in boredom) but credit where it's due -- the TV show ain't bad.  Not excellent, and definitely grasping to be the next Game of Thrones when in fact the source material is incredibly different.  Sure, you've got the swords and the boobs and the ultra-violence, but the genres are not the same.  (IMO, historically informed epic fantasy vs. grim-dark weird fiction.)

I like that the magic in Witcher is very weird and violent and uncontrollable.  And that Geralt talks to his horse.

However, I have no idea how somebody unfamiliar with the video games or books could make heads or tales of what the hell is going on so far.  Even the books can be pretty vague about certain things, intentionally so.

But hey, I've got almost a month of free time with no baseball games to see live and a limited social life due to coronavirus.

(Have I mentioned that I recently watched and reviewed every film made by Werner Herzog?  Because I certainly did!)

U.S. Grant

I took a break from my Werner Herzog quarantine binge to check out the first episode (of three) of Grant (as in, Ulysses S. Grant).

It was excellent.  A genuine American hero who was willfully slimed by the racist twits of Confederate "Lost Cause" ideology.

"Dancing and cocaine"

Trailer for Whitmer Thomas, The Golden One

If you're short on quarantine viewing material, check out comedian Whitmer Thomas' one man show The Golden One.  I don't want to spoil anything, but it's a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on music, failure, death, and broken families.

I could relate to every minute of it.  And I laughed a lot (seriously!).

LOL Apocalypse

1,000 years from now I think all our civilization will be remembered for is Tiger King.

How Are You Spending the Apocalypse, James?

Ugly Delicious season two is even better than the first, which was truly good stuff.

I mean, let's state the obvious -- it's really not about food at all, but family and culture.

"the right amount of muscular and healthy"

Ssireum is Korean traditional wrestling (kind of like sumo, but the dudes aren't nearly as big) and it's having a growth in popularity due to, scientifically speaking, the hottiness of the hotties involved:

"There was a time when ssireum was so popular that the champions became TV stars, like Kang Ho-dong and Lee Man-gi, during the 1980s and 1990s. Although the sport’s heavyweight athletes were its most recognized figures, many were turned off by watching the large men fight each other. Plus, ssireum has long been thought of as a sport that only older folks enjoyed watching - until now.

KBS2’s new show 'The Ecstasy of Ssireum' (translated) began on Nov. 30 and features 16 lightweight athletes who compete against one another to become the show’s final champion. Featuring not only matches between the wrestlers, but interviews with each contestant as well as detailed explanations of each technique used during matches, the show will air its fifth episode this Saturday at 10:35 p.m. The show’s ratings reach only a modest 2.4 percent on average so far, but the comment section of the show’s clips on YouTube is filled with fans supporting the show.

The video that first attracted viewers to the world of ssireum was a clip from Aug. 8, 2018, of the final round of the '15th Haksan National Ssireum Competition' held in Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang. The two wrestlers - Hwang Chan-seob and Kim Won-jin - each had physiques that caught people’s eyes for being the right amount of muscular and healthy, bringing about the heated reaction to the video. The humorous comments were soon made into memes and passed onto other sites and communities."

I mean, why not?

Watchmen (The TV Series, With Spoilers!)

I tweeted out my feelings regarding the finale of Watchmen and I guess I'll replicate most of them here.

The final episode was good.  Visually, the series has been great all along.  Thematically, working race into the mythos has been rewarding, and the acting has also been good.

But the writing?  Not the dialogue, but specifically the world building and plot structure?  There are just a lot of things that didn't fly with me.

Off the top of my head, Sister Night seems way unmoved by the fact that so many of her fellow police officers were just murdered with frozen squid-creature babies.  While Doctor Trieu is problematic, why do we have to take Veidt's word that she'd not help save the world from war and global warming?  Why does it take until the last episode to remind us that we're supposed to care about Sister Night's three kids?  Why is Looking Glass still a nothingburger of a character?  Why does Laurie seem to not care that much that her dildo model / past boyfriend is being disintegrated?  In a series based on the white terrorism of the Tulsa race riots, why do we so quickly gloss over the inherent racism of a U.S. occupation of Vietnam?

I never watched Lost but I get the feeling if I had, I'd have many of the same feelings.  This show was the product of some amazing brain-storming sessions, no doubt.  There are great ideas here, but also mediocre and problematic ones.  But hey, let's throw everything together and see what sicks, coherency be damned.

In a TV world of endless seasons, and a movie world of endless sequels, you can get away with this but only for so long.  Then you get shit-canned, and all those "interesting" plot threads turn into a heap of unfulfilled pretension, overnight.

The last two episodes move the dial over into "interesting but heavily flawed, and not worthy of a second season" territory for me.  I'm glad I followed through with all nine episodes, because around episode five I honestly wondered whether I could be bothered to even finish watching the series.

Make of that what you will.

Yawn

Four episodes into a nine episode run, and I think I'm done with Watchmen.  Using the Tulsa white supremacy riots of 1921 as a backdrop offered an intriguing start, but it's been downhill since then.

Glancing around at various sci-fi review outlets I see that I'm in a distinct minority.  What they see as a slow and thoughtful reveal of facts just seems pretentious and dull to me.

More bluntly, I just don't like any of these people.  I don't understand what motivates any of them.  (Even as horrible as Rorscach and Ozymandias were in the comic book, you can at least understand why they do what they do.)

And given that we're almost at the halfway mark, it doesn't help that we're still introducing main characters.

Boo.

Watchmen, So Far -- With Spoilers

I'm absolutely flummoxed by the new Watchmen series.

It had an intriguing start, setting up a universe where the effects of the Tulsa white terrorism riots of 1921 would reckon with the events of the Watchmen comic series (1985).  Episode two was kind of dull.  Then episode three brings back a major character from the comic with little to no explanation of what's been going on for the past 35 years, other than that she's an ex-superhero who hates superheroes (or, properly, "vigilantes.")

I don't expect a good series to hold your hand at every turn, but I found myself scratching my head in sympathy for anybody who hasn't recently read the comic.  And no, seeing the Zak Snyder film (2009) only goes so far, because in the TV universe the "canon" ending has occurred, not the Snyder plot change.  (Spoiler: the comic ending saw the US and USSR reconcile, but only after the horrific death of half of New York City, as opposed to Snyder's "Doctor Manhattan is gonna kill us all we must be friends now!")

So I'll watch the rest.  I think.  I don't know.  The latest episode swayed quickly between pretentious and tedious.  It's hard to care about these characters when the whole series so far is premised on the fact that you've "done your homework," so to speak.

That's annoying.

And the big blue dildo thing wasn't clever, it was very stupid.  Silk Specter would have moved on by now.

The Boys -- What I Thunk Of It, With Spoilers

I liked it fine enough, but not nearly as much as a lot of critics and most of my nerdy friends did.  The set-up, via Heroes-As-Narcissistic-Politically-Motivated-Assholes?  Actually not that original, but still a cool idea!  The performances?  Mostly good, except for Karl Urban's inexplicable, terrible attempt at a cockney accent.  (Which I assumed a New Zealander wouldn't struggle with, but then again his dialogue was obviously written by an American high on bad Guy Ritchie movies.  That is, all of them.)

Things I did like?  Starlight's performance as the country-girl who quickly loses all illusions as to what's really going on.  (Apparently the source material is even more brutally rape-y.)  Homelander coming off not just as an arrogant jerk, but a truly psychopathic asshole.  A generally believable scenario where the interests of humanity are co-opted by corporate and government greed.

Things beyond Butcher's terrible lines that I didn't like?  I mean, I didn't hate The Deep's fish-out-of-water stuff (see what I did there?) but tonally, and even acknowledging a need for some comic relief, it felt like a different show.  And while the first half of the seasons sets up some interesting arcs, the second half seemed to want to generate ten new ones as bait for a second season.  (Something a lot of shows do these days, granted.)  And what about that terrorist super, The Captain?  Homelander flies all the way to Syria but doesn't confront the most pressing threat?  And the whole existential crisis of heroes being made, not "touched by God" or what have you?  Very under-cooked, especially with a sympathetic Christian character like Starlight.  And finally, why did Homelander kill the woman he's obviously, deeply, and creepily attached to as a Freudian mother-figure?

At the end of the day sure, I'll watch a second season.  But I'm not exactly dying for more.  I think people got swept up in the obvious excitement of the first few episodes and kind of let their critical guards down for some poor writing in the second half.

Nine Thoughts About Stranger Things 3! With Spoilers!

I thought Stranger Things 3 was pretty close to perfect, and by perfect I mean finding a balance between outright fan service and solid writing which offered both closure and some good prospects for a fourth season.  Some thoughts:

1)  This felt a lot more action-oriented than the previous seasons, and that was OK.  They were juggling a ton of characters and while the first few episodes were slow, the fast pace of everything else felt justified and not at all rushed.

2)  There were plenty of emotional moments, but one that stood out for me was Will tearing down Fort Byers, "putting aside childish things" so to speak as his friends discover girls.  I had many a feel with this scene.

3)  Something I didn't like: while using music well is a powerful technique, they really overdid it here.  Every damn scene doesn't need a cutesie 80s gratuitous musical cue.  A few would have been awesome, but it became tedious and predictable.  (Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher" is from 67, natch.)

4)  I really want Steve to find a nice girl and settle down.  He's earned it.

5)  Robin was great.  Erica was great.  Max felt a little underdeveloped, even though she got plenty of screen-time this season.  She grieves after Billy sacrifices himself but it felt kind of rote.

6)  As good as this season was, part of me kind of wants it to end here -- Hopper dead, the kids growing up and moving on, everyone fully experiencing "the hurt" of the final letter.

7)  I get that part of the show's charm comes in the form of 80's pop-culture references, but Grigori the Russian hit-man was a little too on-the-nose in referencing The Terminator.

8)  Nancy is bad-ass, as always.  The actual NRA is a terrorist organization, but if she started her own gun club I'd join in a heartbeat.

9)  As a life-long nerd myself who used to play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons, you'd think I'd relate to one of the "core" kids the most (Will, Mike, Lucas, Dustin).  But Steve -- saying stupid things, the faded glory, multiple romantic failures, but very occasionally rising to greatness when needed?

Yeah, I'm definitely a Steve.

Chernobyl Was As Good To Watch As It Was Brutal To Watch (Spoilers)

Like most everybody I thought Chernobyl was great, despite many liberties taken.  Its greatest strength was how it moved, almost flawlessly, between "small" and "big" points of view -- the poor bastards inside the plant, the first responders, the local political committee who decides to try and keep it all secret, all the way up through the lead scientists and party bosses.  Hell, even Gorbachev was believable in his shock and frustration.

I actually had to look away during the animal culling scenes but again, it was incredibly effective to move from "big picture" strategy and planning down to the level of the grunts who had to do the very awful, very shitty actual work of cleaning and razing.  (The dudes running out to shovel up blocks of deadly irradiated graphite seemed to have easier jobs in comparison.)

And so maybe the conclusion was all a little too cut and dried.  Legasov never had a "final confession" moment, and maybe a bit more ambiguity would have served the show well.

As for Russia wanting to make their own "correct" version, it's hard to imagine them doing a better job at showing so much sacrifice on the part of technicians and soldiers who did their jobs knowing they could die horribly.  The whole point of the series is that bureaucrats lie -- it's their job, after all -- and poor bastards, including children, die.

I'd like to think that message comes across in any language.

How I Roll

Never had sex dreams or riding freakin' dragon re: Game of Thrones.

But radiation burn dreams and Chernobyl? No problemo, says my brain!

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) June 10, 2019

Time To Move On With Our Lives

Gay of Thrones, S8E6 (final)

So, the final episode of Game of Thrones was, in my Highly Scientific and Maesterly opinion, O.K.  Just fine.  Just enough.

It's been seven years people.  The idea that we could get the "perfect" G.R.R. Martin ending if only we went another ten episodes / two years is just preposterous.  The HBO writers did a reasonable job with spotty material from an author who is excellent at character and world building, but water-tight plot development and resolution not so much.

The end.

(Would have liked to see Gendry at least take a seat on his own throne at Storm's End.  Or a surprise Nymeria appearance.  But here's me not bitching about it on the internet.)

Since Nobody Asked Me (Game of Thrones Spoilers!)

I was fine with the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones going full 9/11-Auschwitz-The Day After via Targaryen meltdown.  It was clunky though, and it feels like the show-runners have basically gotten lazier as they approach the end.  (My free advice to Daenarys -- attack the damn city at night when you can't be targeted.)

A lot of internet criticism runs along the lines of "While the direction / spectacle is excellently done, the writing falls flat."  And I'd pretty much agree.  I find myself just kind of wanting this thing to end, unfulfilled prophecies be damned.

This is hardly the stuff of high-praise, but suffice it to say this was a series that matched Martin's strengths -- amazing characters and world building, with an audacious willingness to sacrifice heroes when called for.

Consistently solid story-telling with consequences that matter, beyond the random death of major characters?  Not so much!

Game of Thrones Is Almost Ovah! (Spoilers!)

I'm on the record as believing that the HBO writers are generally better story-tellers than George Martin but word to The Mother, this final season is really trying my patience.

I have read the books, and I think Martin's strengths are character creation and world building.  And up until recently I was pretty content to let two TV "pros" take the raw materials and turn them into good TV product via cutting the fat and actually making things happen.  (Lest we forget, the last two novels so far have been so fucking slow, with Daenarys basically "trapped" in the East for no good reason other than Martin doesn't know what to do wither her.)

I think the worst crimes though are setting up things for payoffs that never come.  As much as I love Arya's character, it seems like she pretty much proved there were much easier, much better ways to deal with he Night King rather than losing huge swathes of your armies.  (Will Bran even appear in the last two episodes?)

But maybe I was wrong.  Maybe there just wasn't enough time to sufficiently send off each of the main characters in the ways they deserved, and the HBO team was willing to settle for very safe, dishwater endings that don't really solve any of the larger, more historical mysteries of the show.

And damn if Missandei wasn't pretty much thrown away, and Brienne will probably be sitting out the battle of King's Landing.

Borderline Meh

So, #GameofThrones -- was a bag of Doritos and a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

Definite fat / sugar rush / high, but beyond the facade kind of a poorly written episode w/ unsatisfying ending.

— James of Thrones (@wetcasements) April 30, 2019

Just Thinking Out Loud

very strong #GameofThrones episode 2 but damn, you'd think the incest thing would bother Daenarys just a bit more than having a challenge to her queenhood...

— James of Thrones (@wetcasements) April 22, 2019