TV Shows I Watched and Maybe You Should Too, Or Maybe You Already Did...

Last Friday I talked about movies I watched since the last time I did an entry on movies I watched.  And I also watched some TV shows and decided to spin them into their own entry because the movie one was getting a bit long.  So here we go:

Strange New Worlds:  It was entertaining, but doesn't really live up to the title.  Other than one episode where an old flame of Pike's takes him to a planet where they sacrifice a child to keep their planet running, they didn't really go to any strange new worlds.  In fact about half the series they don't go to any "worlds" at all!  The one where the doctor's kid puts everyone into a story was cute and so was the one where they're on shore leave and Spock swaps bodies with T'Pring--even though Vulcans gender swapping is kind of pointless.  Una and La'an playing "Enterprise Bingo" seemed like a bit from Lower Decks but it was pretty funny.  The one where they go to rescue a crashed Starfleet ship felt like a ripoff of the Alien/Predator franchises only with Gorn as the xenomorphs.  I was disappointed they killed off Hemmer the engineer after only 9 episodes, probably so they can bring in Scotty next season.  Predictably with a prequel series, my bone to pick is using so many of the Original Series Enterprise crew in this.  Spock was in the original pilot so that's OK, but then you have Chapel and Uhura and probably Scotty now and they've already cast someone as James T Kirk so we'll probably see him again; you start to wonder why they don't just go ahead and do a rebooted Original Series.  The "cliffhanger" about Una seems like what they did with Bashir on DS9 over 20 years ago. (3/5)

The Boys, Season 3:  I liked that they finally got this more to where the comics started, where the Boys would take "Compound V" to get superpowers for a short time to fight bad supes.  The first two seasons they made the V like a steroid for supes so it was really hard for the Boys to fight the Supes.  But with the "temporary V," we can finally get some cool fights.  This season introduces "Soldier Boy," who's basically a combination of Captain America and Bucky--if they were dicks.  Soldier Boy is strong and has a shield, but then he's captured by the Soviets in 1984 and experimented on.  After the Boys rescue him, they join forces to try to take down Homelander, the psychotic Superman-type guy who's taking control of the Vought company that runs the supes.  I liked a lot of this better than the previous seasons, but it's marred by some immaturity that I suppose is going to happen when you have Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as your executive producers.  Remember when all those people were talking about Ant-Man crawling up Thanos's ass to kill him?  The writers of this series seemed to take that as a challenge and said "hold my beer" as they have a shrinking supe crawl into some guy's dick to get him off--and then he accidentally goes back to normal size, killing the guy.  In my entry on the docuseries Slugfest I mentioned a costume party in Vermont that inspired the first unofficial Marvel/DC crossover.  The Boys has something similar, only the costume party is of course an orgy of supes.  If they toned down some of that immature, needless gross stuff, it'd be a better series. (2.5/5)

Only Murders in the Building (Season 1):  I probably should have watched the first season earlier because I've always liked Steve Martin.  He's pretty much a Renaissance Man as he's an actor, comedian, writer, director, and musician.  In this series he teams up with his Three Amigos co-star Martin Short and they team up with Selena Gomez as bumbling amateur detectives who make their own true crime podcast after there's a murder in their apartment building in New York.  There are twists and turns and red herrings and it's mostly pretty fun.  What's odd is the first scene of season 1 is actually the setup for season 2, not part of the crime they investigate in season 1. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Ordinarily I wouldn't knock a character having an English bulldog, but Martin Short's character doesn't seem like the English bulldog type.  French bulldog would be more appropriate.  Or a poodle or something snooty like that.) 

Only Murders in the Building (Season 2):   The second season, like a lot of sequels, doesn't really live up to the original.  Selena Gomez is framed for the murder of Bunny, the former head of the co-op in the building.  But she doesn't go to jail so she's still free to try to find the real killer with Steve Martin and Martin Short.  There are other subplots like a lesbian artist who wants to glom onto Selena Gomez for attention and the secret origin of Martin Short's son--as if anyone cares.  And the secret origin of Steve Martin's dad and Steve Martin's daughter.  The killer from last season, the deaf son of Nathan Lane, and Amy Schumer all show up (the latter playing herself) for an episode or two without actually contributing much to the plot.  One episode there's a blackout and this whole B or C-plot about two gay guys hooking up and all that comes from it is one guy bumps the killer's shoulder so Selena Gomez can identify him; did we need this whole romantic subplot just for that?  Like a lot of sequels it throws more stuff at you but can't really replicate the magic of the first season.  I can see why Steve Martin said he was going to retire after this series because it does seem like Selena Gomez carries most of the load, but I suppose at 77 and with almost 60 years in the biz, Steve Martin deserves to be able to retire if he wants. Going back through it, it seemed like Selena Gomez could have solved all this on her own without the two old guys.  As for the ultimate solution, I'm not sure it really holds water if you work through it backwards.  Anyway, though it's not as good as the first season, it's still pretty watchable if you want a cozier-type mystery. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The setup for Season 3 has Paul Rudd playing a famous actor who dies on stage in a play produced by Martin Short and co-starring Steve Marin.  So maybe they should change it to Only Murders Near the Building?  Or Only Murders Involving People Who Live In the Building?  Fun Speculation:  Was Selena Gomez pregnant when they filmed the first couple of episodes?  It looked like she was kind of fat and they were trying to cover it Voyager-style by having her wear jackets and sweaters and bulky stuff like that.)

The Orville: New Horizons:  Like how Strange New Worlds doesn't really go to strange new worlds, The Orville: New Horizons doesn't really have much new to it.  Instead it mostly references previous episodes.  The first episode was really confusing because it seems to take place after the battle with the Kaylon that was about halfway through the second season.  So did the rest of that season not happen then?  Because the battle at the end of season 2 was an alternate timeline so the ship shouldn't have been damaged, right?  It didn't make sense to me.  Mostly it seems like a mulligan after apparently they realized something I said in my review of the second season, which was they didn't really do anything with Isaac after he betrayed the crew.  I've talked about a couple of other episodes I didn't really care for in other entries.  There are two episodes that follow up on the first season(?) episode where Bortus's child is forced to become male; the second episode features a cameo by Dolly Parton with really weird fake eyebrows.  Another episode follows up on a Krill spy who becomes a Trump-like president--and mother of a child made with the captain.  The final episode brings back a character from an episode that ripped off Black Mirror where everyone is rated by other people constantly and your rating determines your place in society.  That episode was probably the best of the season as it features Isaac and the doctor getting married, something that could provide fodder in a fourth season.  

While there are fewer episodes obviously ripped off from Star Trek, there are still a couple, like one where they find a good Kaylon who was in a wrecked ship--just like Hugh the Borg in ST: TNG.  The emotion chip thing was more like Data/Lore though.  The episode where the dumbass pilot is thrown back in time to 2015 was largely like Star Trek IV.  Maybe it's me, but it seemed Seth MacFarlane largely sidelined himself and other characters like the engineer and security officer don't really get much opportunity to take center stage--the closest for the latter two is an episode where they're fucking each other and the engineer is repeatedly injured but that's just a comic B or C plot.  Overall most of my previous complaints are still applicable and for those who claim it's more "fun" than Trek should actually watch this and Strange New Worlds, Seasons 2-4 of Discovery, Lower Decks, and Prodigy.  There is room for more than one space opera franchise on streaming, but that doesn't mean this has to be one of them. (2.5/5)

Lego Star Wars Summer Vacation Special:  Again the producers of the Lego Star Wars universe upstage JJ Abrams/Rian Johnson when dealing with the sequel universe.  Why?  Because they actually give a shit about the characters, in this case mostly Finn, making him the focal point.  He, Poe, Rey, Rose, Chewie, and the droids board a luxury liner with holographic Lando as host.  Finn wants everyone to spend time together because they're about to go their separate ways, but as often happens on vacations, people wind up doing different things.  There are three stories then from Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Leia Organa.  The Vader story is pretty silly but features a cameo by "Weird Al" Yankovic.  While I liked the live action series of Obi-Wan Kenobi, if that series had featured him singing and dancing at Jabba's palace to help a Rebel agent, I wouldn't have been mad.  And the Leia story again helps add depth to Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren, that the sequel trilogy never bothered with.  Even if you hated the sequel movies--or maybe especially if you did--this is fun watching to show what might have been if they hadn't rushed things and actually had a decent plan and developed characters.  It is sad when your multi-billion dollar movies are being shown up by what's supposed to be a kid's show. (4/5)

Timon & Pumbaa:  I watched a few episodes of this 1995 series on Disney+ with my stuffed Pumbaas and they want to disavow its existence.  The very first episode comes up with a content warning about cultural insensitivity.  And then it's just really loud, dumb, and bad.  One episode segment was almost like Misery with Timon as Kathy Bates and Pumbaa as James Caan.  When Pumbaa gets a tummy ache, Timon vows to cure him at any cost!  Even when Pumbaa is feeling better on his own, Timon guilts him into taking more "cures" that do more harm than good so Timon can feel like the hero.  So basically Timon is abusive both physically and emotionally to Pumbaa.  The only decent part of an episode was a music video to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" where Pumbaa keeps seeing scary lions that turn out to be nothing--and then Simba.  They probably should have stuck more with that and less awful shtick.  I think maybe they wanted more of a Ren & Stimpy vibe, but it doesn't really work.  (1/5) (Fun Fact:  My Pumbaa says he did this series strictly for the paycheck.)