I've talked about The Mandalorian season 2, The Expanse season 5, and Birds of Prey, but of course I watched some other stuff too. Since it's unlikely I'll get any comments either way I'm just going to put it into one entry. There wasn't tons of other stuff because most of December I watched holiday stuff.
WW84: Only after a meme on Twitter told me I could use my regular HBO login to watch HBO Max did I get around to watching this. And...I didn't really like it. The core concept didn't work for me. I mean in superhero movies magic is one thing, but a wishing stone? And Maxwell Lord (basically a cut-rate Donald Trump) wishes to be the stone? That's like that old thing where you get a magic lamp and wish for more wishes. And it's 1984 but no one ever takes a picture of Wonder Woman? Granted they didn't have cell phone cameras, but people had regular cameras and Polaroids. Shouldn't there be at least blurry Bigfoot/Nessie-type pictures? And wouldn't Bruce Wayne and maybe Clark Kent and Arthur Curry remember when Wonder Woman saved the world? And she flies now? (She flies now.) She wishes Steve Trevor to live again and he Quantum Leaps into some other dude? Considering he died in 1917 how is it he could fly a jet in almost no time? And when did Wonder Woman start trying to make things invisible? And why the hell isn't she flying and making shit invisible in BvS or Justice League?
"Cheetah" wound up being pretty lame. The nerdy person who obsesses over the hero and turns on him/her was already done in Batman Forever and Amazing Spider-Man 2. And just because she wore leopard print she turns into a cat woman? Maybe if I had watched it in a theater I would have liked it more by virtue of being a captive audience but watching it at home I just started playing games on my phone and not really giving a shit.
I really liked the first movie but it was more down-to-earth. The scene where she crossed No Man's Land gave me the chills; this just gave me the yawns. I'm wondering if Patty Jenkins isn't like Zack Snyder in that she shouldn't be given too much creative control or she'll make a mess; doesn't give me any hope for her Star Wars movie or a sequel to this.
Becker: This CBS comedy from 1998-2004 was on Pluto TV. I watched a few episodes on the TV Land channel and then saw it On Demand so I watched it from the beginning. The show stars Ted Danson as Dr. John Becker, a real grumpy bulldog who has a small practice in the Bronx. He's basically like Al Bundy if Al hadn't been married with children and a doctor instead of a shoe salesman. Becker's office is managed by a black woman named Margaret (who's basically his boss) and there's a ditzy young assistant named Linda. He frequents a diner that for the first four seasons is run by a woman named Reggie, played by Terry Farrell, who left DS9 before its final season for this. There's also a newsstand run by a blind black guy named Jake and there's an annoying customer named Bob who in the first couple seasons is only a guest star and talks about himself in the third person but by the third season he was promoted to a regular and stopped with the third person thing. Then he left before the start of the sixth (and final) season and some fat Latino dude named Hector was added to pal around with Jake.
I liked the first 3 seasons for the most part. Some of the jokes and setups were predictable but mostly it was fun for Becker's rants and how his attitude would get him in trouble. There were a few "very special episodes" but not too many to bring it down.
One of the things I liked too was unlike a lot of shows of that time they didn't have any of that will they-won't they romance stuff. They really made no attempt to hook up Becker and Reggie. Then in the last few episodes of the 4th season they introduce Chris (played by Nancy Travis, who co-starred in the 3 Men & A Baby/Little Lady movies with Danson) and Reggie suddenly wants to sleep with Becker. She leaves town after sleeping with him and then there's a will they-won't they with Becker and Chris in the fifth season and in the sixth they hook up. Meh.
Fun Facts: Besides Terry Farrell, Star Trek alums LeVar Burton and Leonard Nimoy guest starred in different episodes. Nimoy was also the director of 3 Men & A Baby. His ex-wife in one episode was played by Alice Krige, the Borg Queen in Star Trek First Contact. Cheers alums Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, and Kelsey Grammer guest starred in different episodes, though not as the characters of that show. John Mahoney, who played Frasier's father in that series also shows up in an episode.
Truth Seekers: I hadn't really heard anything about this series before I saw it advertised on Amazon Prime. I watched the first episode and it was pretty fun so I watched the other seven. This is a British series that stars Nick Frost, Simon Pegg's sidekick in Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Paul, etc. He's a cable internet repair guy who also has a little-seen YouTube channel where he hunts ghosts. Then on a call he and his new trainee "Elton John" run into an actual haunting. They encounter more spirits and save a girl who had disappeared back in like 1997. Eventually they stumble into a conspiracy of a cult trying to open some kind of gateway to another world. If you liked Shaun of the Dead or that Dirk Gently show then you'd probably like this.
While I liked it and hope there's a season 2 (there's sort of a cookie scene in the last episode to set one up) the naming a character after a real person (or a real person's stage name) always bugs me. It's been done to death. The other thing I didn't like was it's only about a half-hour. When I started watching I just assumed it was in that 45-60 minute range so when it ended after about 30 minutes I was like WTF?! Unlike some shows I would have liked it to be longer.
Fun Facts: Simon Pegg is also in this show as Nick Frost's boss with the cable internet company. The cookie scene at the end involves him and sort of gives his secret origin. Malcolm McDowell of A Clockwork Orange, Star Trek Generations, the Halloween reboots, etc plays Nick Frost's dad who gets brainwashed by the evil cult.
Stargirl: This was originally on the failed DC Universe streaming service but then was moved to the CW. While it has the higher production values like other DC Universe shows it really does fit in with the CW shows because it focuses on a teenage girl who finds a magic staff and becomes a superhero. Then she recruits some other kids at her school to become Wildcat and Hourman. The full season was 13 episodes, but I would have much preferred 8--if not fewer.
A lot of the story just didn't make sense to me. In the beginning the Injustice Society kills the Justice Society of America, including Starman, who was the original owner of the magic staff. So now the bad guys have killed the good guys they'll take over the world, right? Um, no. Instead they go run some town in the middle of fucking Nebraska to play house. Why? I mean if you have the power to kill all the superheroes on this Earth, why wouldn't you just go take over the world? Who's gonna stop you? And why did they leave all the JSA shit there? I mean everything except the staff was just sitting around the former JSA headquarters; wouldn't the bad guys at least take them as trophies? And why was a perky blonde girl being shunned so she had to sit with the losers, who of course were not unattractive either? Most of it just didn't really make a lot of sense to me. And while I liked Joel McHale in The Soup, Community, and even a Rifftrax, I can't buy him as a superhero unless he was voicing an animated character.
Swamp Thing: Speaking of failed DC Universe shows on the CW. I watched the first episode of this and it was OK. Most of it is from the perspective of a woman named Abby who works for the CDC who returns to her hometown in Louisiana to study a mysterious outbreak. So it's like halfway through the episode before we even meet Alec Holland, the dude who becomes Swamp Thing and actually longer to find out his name. Holland is a disgraced scientist working for some rich guy. Together he and Abby find out someone has been dumping something in the swamp. And then Holland is nearly blown up and lands in the swamp and becomes Swamp Thing.
I kept forgetting to watch the other episodes so it really made almost no impression on me. Watching a couple other episodes they focus mostly on Abby, probably because Swamp Thing is expensive. It's kind of lame when you hardly show the titular character of the show.
Swamp Thing is one of those characters DC keeps trying to make happen in comics and on TV and stuff but he never really is going to get beyond B-list status--at best. This show was cancelled before the second episode on DC Universe aired but I don't know if they plan on reviving it on the CW or not. I don't really care.
Deathstroke: Knights and Dragons: This was a 2019 animated movie that's in two parts on the CW Seed app and also on HBO Max. It's kind of a rebooted Deathstroke story. It was R-rated so there was some violence and gore and sex. In the first part Deathstroke has a wife and kid but an old rival cuts the kid's throat, though the kid survives. His wife divorces him and puts the kid in military school. Like 10 years later the kid turns out to have psychic powers and is recruited by the old rival and an Asian girl who turns out to be Deathstroke's bastard daughter. It was OK. I mentioned in one entry that Deathstroke is one of the characters DC could do a live action movie about and this kind of proves the point. I wouldn't do this story per se, but the character is versatile and deserves more than a cookie scene at the end of Justice League.
Constantine: City of Demons: Like Swamp Thing, Constantine is another character they keep trying to make happen. There was that dumb Keanu Reeves movie. The TV series on NBC. Appearances on Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow and whatever else. Numerous iterations of a solo comic and Justice League Dark and whatever else. Like the Deathstroke movie this was a 2018 animated movie on the CW Seed app, though it's not there anymore; it is on HBO Max. It stars Matt Ryan, who played Constantine on the NBC series and I think those other shows too. An old friend's daughter is possessed by a demon and so he goes to LA to find a way to save her. Like the Deathstroke movie this was also R-rated so there's some nasty demon shit and death and some sexiness. I'm not a big Constantine fan but it was OK. There are a couple of sad twists at the end.
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