Since Breaking Bad went off the air in 2013 there have been plenty of shows that have tried to duplicate its formula. And even some like Amazon's Mad Dogs that I enjoyed almost as much.
I'm not sure any show has tried to duplicate Breaking Bad's formula as closely as Netflix's Ozark. There's a relatively ordinary middle-aged guy who becomes involved with drug dealers, cops, and redneck scumbags. There's a family with a blond wife and two kids (a boy and a girl), though in this case two teenagers. There's often grotesque violence and people being killed in creative ways. There's also purchasing and managing a business (or businesses) to launder dirty money. So there really are most of the elements. Yet it never really worked for me.
The plot is that for years Marty Byrd (Jason Bateman) and his partner have been embezzling and laundering money from a Mexican drug cartel to the tune of $8M. But when the cartel gets wise, they kill Marty's business partner. They would have killed him, except he comes up with a desperate scheme to save his skin: he'll move his family to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and launder the cartel's money during the summer. This is based on a brochure his partner gave to him that day.
First he has to get the $8M back, which requires a lot of maneuvering. His wife Wendy (Laura Linney) gets wind of something being up and goes to a lawyer she's been shtupping for help. The cartel catches up to her and tosses the lawyer out the window of his penthouse. Marty and Wendy agree to a fragile truce for the sake of their children.
Once they get to Missouri they have to find a home and a business to buy. Wendy is in charge of the former and finds a nice house that's under their budget because there's a catch: a dying old man named Buddy lives in the basement. He comes with the house, which is why there's the discount.
Meanwhile Marty tries multiple businesses to persuade them to sell to him: a self-storage place, a bar, and finally a strip club. Eventually he manages to get his foot in the door at a rundown resort. The idea is that he can put in orders for ordinary things like office supplies or food for the resort's diner to things like new carpet or air conditioners and pad the invoices to launder the dirty money.
But of course there are many complications. The first is that a gang of rednecks steal the money Marty and his wife casually left in suitcases in their cheap motel room. Their kids were supposed to watch it, but really, you expect teenagers to sit around a motel room all day and watch suitcases? So Marty has to find the rednecks and talks them down into keeping only $20,000 because the rednecks would surely get caught otherwise.
Another complication is the local strip club owner who knows what Marty is up to because he's doing the same thing! Only he's doing it for the local heroin syndicate that grows poppies (Wicked Witch voice: Poppies! Poppies! Bwahahahahaha!) Marty talks to some strippers and finds out the "owner" of the place is whoever holds a certificate that's like a bearer bond. With the help of a redneck girl he gets that bond and thus ownership of the strip club. Woot!
His next genius idea is to build a church for the preacher who every Sunday has boats gather on the water to preach to them. (What if it storms? Or in winter?) The only hitch is that the heroin syndicate uses hollow hymnals to smuggle their product on the water. Um, sure, that makes sense. The syndicate pressures Marty to cancel the construction of a new church, but the preacher and his wife aren't having it--until one of them ends up dead.
To make some quick cash Marty talks an old lady into investing her savings with him. Then the old woman gets hit by a garbage truck like the next day. When her son wants a lavish funeral, Wendy ends up buying out the funeral home to add that to their empire.
Meanwhile there's a sociopathic gay FBI agent who seduces one of the redneck guys and turns him into an asset, though he kinda sucks at being an informant. This never really pays off since the FBI doesn't really accomplish anything.
There's one whole episode that's a flashback to ten years earlier. I fast-forwarded most of it because it didn't really seem to be adding much.
There were some things that didn't make sense. In the first episode there's a scene with Marty and a babysitter and it seems to imply that he was fucking her, but this is never mentioned again. Especially with his wife's unfaithfulness, shouldn't this have been mentioned? Later, Wendy buys a house that was under construction and stalled for them to use in their scheme but nothing seems to happen to that. Unless they were converting it into the church?
Overall like I said I never really warmed to the show. I probably should have liked it. I mean I liked Breaking Bad
and this was a decent production with good actors. But as I've said
before, sometimes it's better to be first. I guess I wasn't in the mood
for Breaking Bad Lite. It just seemed like a lot of complications for the sake of complications. (2.5/5)
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Monday, February 5, 2018
The Punisher is Marvel's Worst Show on Netflix
They might say otherwise, but I don't think Marvel was really planning a Punisher series when he debuted in season 2 of Daredevil. But people liked Jon Berenthal's take on the character and so a spin-off series was quickly put together.
The problem quickly becomes that in order to come up with a 13-episode season, the producers pad the hell out of the story about a secret death squad in Afghanistan that Frank Castle was part of. And in the end the series is the last thing you want from a Punisher series: BORING. And as I Tweeted, it takes real talent to make a character like the Punisher dull, so kudos Marvel and Disney!
The first episode is actually OK. After escaping from the police in Daredevil, Frank has been hiding out as a construction worked named Pete Castiglione. Some of his coworkers get a plan to knock over a mob poker game, but when one of their gang is hurt they recruit a young worker who tried to befriend Frank. The job goes south and so the coworkers are going to kill the kid until Frank intervenes.
That would be an OK blueprint for an A-Team-type show only with the Punisher. In the next two episodes, though, Frank and a former NSA analyst going by the handle Micro play pointless cat-and-mouse games that could have been averted if Frank had simply picked up the cell phone provided.
Then it gets into this whole boring conspiracy plot. Frank Castle and political intrigue don't really go together well. The good thing about the Punisher in Daredevil was he did what the Punisher does best: go around killing bad guys. It's not necessarily my favorite kind of superhero thing (I don't really think of him as a superhero so much as a simple vigilante) it's what people expect from the character. Having the Punisher sitting around blathering with some computer hacker and later the computer hacker's wife isn't really what I'm hoping for.
Also padding the season there's a plot about a young former solider who goes to support group meetings led by Frank's old buddy, who is pretty much the same as Sam Wilson, minus the wings and plus a fake leg. The kid is spurred on by an NRA nut at the meetings and gets increasingly belligerent until he starts planting bombs in the city. He soon butts heads with Karen Page, the intrepid reporter who used to be Matt Murdoch's secretary on season 1 of Daredevil. This really has nothing to do with the main conspiracy plot. It's mainly an excuse to reintroduce Frank to Karen, not that anything happens with that.
It really takes until about episodes 11-12 before it gets to the over-the-top violence and gore that you come to expect. It really could have been wrapped up in the 12th episode but instead there's a gratuitous 13th episode where Frank and a former brother-in-arms fight on the carousel where Frank's family was killed. Which begged the question: wouldn't they have just shut down that carousel? What parent wants to take their kid to a carousel where three people were brutally murdered? And now you have a nearly as brutal gun-and-fistfight on the same carousel?
Anyway, as far as Marvel's Netflix shows go, Iron Fist is annoying and Jessica Jones was confusing at first, but the Punisher was far worse to me simply because it did a poor job of representing the character.
Honestly I think for a character like the Punisher the serial approach doesn't really work. Subtlety isn't his thing and trying to build up a 13-episode season just leaves too much time to work with. Either shrink the season down to half that or go with the episodic approach. The A-Team approach like that first episode. It would at least not be as boring.
But you probably disagree. Good for you.
The problem quickly becomes that in order to come up with a 13-episode season, the producers pad the hell out of the story about a secret death squad in Afghanistan that Frank Castle was part of. And in the end the series is the last thing you want from a Punisher series: BORING. And as I Tweeted, it takes real talent to make a character like the Punisher dull, so kudos Marvel and Disney!
The first episode is actually OK. After escaping from the police in Daredevil, Frank has been hiding out as a construction worked named Pete Castiglione. Some of his coworkers get a plan to knock over a mob poker game, but when one of their gang is hurt they recruit a young worker who tried to befriend Frank. The job goes south and so the coworkers are going to kill the kid until Frank intervenes.
That would be an OK blueprint for an A-Team-type show only with the Punisher. In the next two episodes, though, Frank and a former NSA analyst going by the handle Micro play pointless cat-and-mouse games that could have been averted if Frank had simply picked up the cell phone provided.
Then it gets into this whole boring conspiracy plot. Frank Castle and political intrigue don't really go together well. The good thing about the Punisher in Daredevil was he did what the Punisher does best: go around killing bad guys. It's not necessarily my favorite kind of superhero thing (I don't really think of him as a superhero so much as a simple vigilante) it's what people expect from the character. Having the Punisher sitting around blathering with some computer hacker and later the computer hacker's wife isn't really what I'm hoping for.
Also padding the season there's a plot about a young former solider who goes to support group meetings led by Frank's old buddy, who is pretty much the same as Sam Wilson, minus the wings and plus a fake leg. The kid is spurred on by an NRA nut at the meetings and gets increasingly belligerent until he starts planting bombs in the city. He soon butts heads with Karen Page, the intrepid reporter who used to be Matt Murdoch's secretary on season 1 of Daredevil. This really has nothing to do with the main conspiracy plot. It's mainly an excuse to reintroduce Frank to Karen, not that anything happens with that.
It really takes until about episodes 11-12 before it gets to the over-the-top violence and gore that you come to expect. It really could have been wrapped up in the 12th episode but instead there's a gratuitous 13th episode where Frank and a former brother-in-arms fight on the carousel where Frank's family was killed. Which begged the question: wouldn't they have just shut down that carousel? What parent wants to take their kid to a carousel where three people were brutally murdered? And now you have a nearly as brutal gun-and-fistfight on the same carousel?
Anyway, as far as Marvel's Netflix shows go, Iron Fist is annoying and Jessica Jones was confusing at first, but the Punisher was far worse to me simply because it did a poor job of representing the character.
Honestly I think for a character like the Punisher the serial approach doesn't really work. Subtlety isn't his thing and trying to build up a 13-episode season just leaves too much time to work with. Either shrink the season down to half that or go with the episodic approach. The A-Team approach like that first episode. It would at least not be as boring.
But you probably disagree. Good for you.
Friday, February 2, 2018
Even Comedies Need Conflict
For a few months I've been reading EM Foner's Union Station series. I bought the first book or two and then I've been borrowing one per month on my Kindle. Last month I read the ninth book, Guest Night on Union Station. It was a really bland entry in the series.
The main problem is shared by some of the other books in the series: nothing significant really happens. There's just some bland, mildly amusing stuff and then it ends after about 200 pages. In this case there were a couple of spots where there was a potential for something to happen and the author quickly snuffed it out.
The series focuses on Kelly McAllister, an ambassador for EarthCENT, the diplomatic arm of Earth's governments. Kelly is assigned to the titular Union Station that's managed by highly-advanced artificial lifeforms known as Stryx who maintain peace across the galaxy. When the series starts, Kelly is alone and in her early 30s or so but as the series progresses she gains a husband, a daughter, and then a son and at the point I'm up to she's over 50.
Anyway, one thing in this ninth book is Kelly's parents are going to visit from Earth. Her mother hints that her father might have dementia or something like that. Ooh, that could be interesting, right? Kelly might have to deal with some serious issues, right? Um, no. Her parents have a couple of brief conversations and then just leave. It's implied that maybe her father isn't really all that senile but just pretending after a fashion.
Later Kelly's daughter pisses off a visiting alien. The alien hunts her down at work and when she's alone confronts her and uses mental powers to abduct her. Oh no, Kelly's daughter's in mortal danger, right? Um, no. Her daughter is rescued by the Stryx basically a page later with pretty much no effort whatsoever. So that too fizzles out without anything of consequence happening.
And I suppose people could say, Well these comedies. They don't need drama. But even comedies have to have conflict! Conflict is what builds events to an eventual payoff in some fashion. The most basic example is that every joke needs a setup before there can be a punchline. I mean if you just shout, "Orange you glad I didn't say banana?!" you might get laughs but only because you sound like a lunatic. You need the whole "Knock, knock" setup first for it to make sense.
You can see examples of this in pretty much every comedic movie ever. Take something as simple as Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore. We introduce the core concept of the guy who wants to play hockey but sucks at it and yet he has a mean golf swing. Then we introduce the ticking clock of his grandma losing her house unless he raises some money. Which he tries to do by playing in golf tournaments. Then we introduce conflict with his rival, tour pro Shooter McGavin. It sets up the conflict between them as Shooter gets increasingly jealous of Happy's success and popularity. And then it escalates as Shooter pays a guy to rile Happy to the point he gets into a fistfight with Bob Barker. There's the "all is lost" moment as Happy's grandma's house is sold--to Shooter. The payoff then is a winner-take-all tournament between Happy and Shooter. This has its own escalating conflict as they vie for the lead. And then its own final payoff on the last hole, where Happy has to make an improbable shot.
That movie is about 90 minutes long, but it'd be about 9 minutes if it were written like an EM Foner book. Happy's grandma would face foreclosure but it'd somehow get paid off in the next scene. The End. That's fun, right? Or Happy and Shooter would come into conflict...but Shooter gets thrown off the tour a scene later. Yay?
So yeah, even comedies need conflict to escalate the plot and built to the climax. Unless you're just going to have 90 minutes of three stooges throwing pies at each other. I guess you can go that route, but it doesn't make for much of a story.
The main problem is shared by some of the other books in the series: nothing significant really happens. There's just some bland, mildly amusing stuff and then it ends after about 200 pages. In this case there were a couple of spots where there was a potential for something to happen and the author quickly snuffed it out.
The series focuses on Kelly McAllister, an ambassador for EarthCENT, the diplomatic arm of Earth's governments. Kelly is assigned to the titular Union Station that's managed by highly-advanced artificial lifeforms known as Stryx who maintain peace across the galaxy. When the series starts, Kelly is alone and in her early 30s or so but as the series progresses she gains a husband, a daughter, and then a son and at the point I'm up to she's over 50.
Anyway, one thing in this ninth book is Kelly's parents are going to visit from Earth. Her mother hints that her father might have dementia or something like that. Ooh, that could be interesting, right? Kelly might have to deal with some serious issues, right? Um, no. Her parents have a couple of brief conversations and then just leave. It's implied that maybe her father isn't really all that senile but just pretending after a fashion.
Later Kelly's daughter pisses off a visiting alien. The alien hunts her down at work and when she's alone confronts her and uses mental powers to abduct her. Oh no, Kelly's daughter's in mortal danger, right? Um, no. Her daughter is rescued by the Stryx basically a page later with pretty much no effort whatsoever. So that too fizzles out without anything of consequence happening.
And I suppose people could say, Well these comedies. They don't need drama. But even comedies have to have conflict! Conflict is what builds events to an eventual payoff in some fashion. The most basic example is that every joke needs a setup before there can be a punchline. I mean if you just shout, "Orange you glad I didn't say banana?!" you might get laughs but only because you sound like a lunatic. You need the whole "Knock, knock" setup first for it to make sense.
You can see examples of this in pretty much every comedic movie ever. Take something as simple as Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore. We introduce the core concept of the guy who wants to play hockey but sucks at it and yet he has a mean golf swing. Then we introduce the ticking clock of his grandma losing her house unless he raises some money. Which he tries to do by playing in golf tournaments. Then we introduce conflict with his rival, tour pro Shooter McGavin. It sets up the conflict between them as Shooter gets increasingly jealous of Happy's success and popularity. And then it escalates as Shooter pays a guy to rile Happy to the point he gets into a fistfight with Bob Barker. There's the "all is lost" moment as Happy's grandma's house is sold--to Shooter. The payoff then is a winner-take-all tournament between Happy and Shooter. This has its own escalating conflict as they vie for the lead. And then its own final payoff on the last hole, where Happy has to make an improbable shot.
That movie is about 90 minutes long, but it'd be about 9 minutes if it were written like an EM Foner book. Happy's grandma would face foreclosure but it'd somehow get paid off in the next scene. The End. That's fun, right? Or Happy and Shooter would come into conflict...but Shooter gets thrown off the tour a scene later. Yay?
So yeah, even comedies need conflict to escalate the plot and built to the climax. Unless you're just going to have 90 minutes of three stooges throwing pies at each other. I guess you can go that route, but it doesn't make for much of a story.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Writers & Other Virtual Sadists
Monday I talked about Black Mirror, including the episode last season where a programmer creates his own Star Trek-ish ship and fills it with versions of his coworkers he can torment. To a lesser extent, writers do this too. Some more than others. You can even order T-shirts or mugs or stuff saying things like, "You Are Dangerously Close to Being Killed Off in My Novel."
Or something like this:
I guess it's kind of funny. I pretty much outgrew that stuff in junior high. I mean I tried it once or twice, but it didn't really bring me any joy or anything. It felt pretty hollow. It reminds me of when I was reading Michael Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and during the early days of WWII the comic book writer and artist have their superhero take on the Nazis and yet it's never really satisfying because in the end reality doesn't change.
That really is something that should have been addressed in the episode. Even for sadists the fun of torturing small animals wears out, which is why they usually seek bigger game. Not that writers who do this are sadists...necessarily. Though I suppose if you routinely do it then you might be.
I don't write people in to kill them or torture them anymore, but sometimes I like to put little Easter Eggs in. I think in one Scarlet Knight story I had a law firm called Pagel, Offutt, and Leon or something like that. Or sometimes if I need to come up with names I'll borrow them from sports people or authors or TV shows. Like one recent story I used combinations of names from Mystery Science Theater 3000 because I was watching it quite a bit recently. But that's not really the same thing.
So do you use real people in your stories? (Bonus points if you've put me in a story!)
Or something like this:
I guess it's kind of funny. I pretty much outgrew that stuff in junior high. I mean I tried it once or twice, but it didn't really bring me any joy or anything. It felt pretty hollow. It reminds me of when I was reading Michael Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and during the early days of WWII the comic book writer and artist have their superhero take on the Nazis and yet it's never really satisfying because in the end reality doesn't change.
That really is something that should have been addressed in the episode. Even for sadists the fun of torturing small animals wears out, which is why they usually seek bigger game. Not that writers who do this are sadists...necessarily. Though I suppose if you routinely do it then you might be.
I don't write people in to kill them or torture them anymore, but sometimes I like to put little Easter Eggs in. I think in one Scarlet Knight story I had a law firm called Pagel, Offutt, and Leon or something like that. Or sometimes if I need to come up with names I'll borrow them from sports people or authors or TV shows. Like one recent story I used combinations of names from Mystery Science Theater 3000 because I was watching it quite a bit recently. But that's not really the same thing.
So do you use real people in your stories? (Bonus points if you've put me in a story!)
Monday, January 29, 2018
Black Mirror Season 4 Is...So-So
I binged the first three seasons of the Netflix series Black Mirror last year and wrote a lengthy review that of course no one cared about. But this will at least be a lot less stuff for people to not care about!
USS Callister: This was the much-ballyhooed Star Trek-inspired episode. I remember when the first images of this were posted people thought it a little odd for a show like Black Mirror to do a Trek parody. And soon you realize that this isn't a Trek parody so much as a hatchet job on Trek and gamer culture.
Basically there's this VR game called Infinity (which ironically was a gaming platform operated by Disney that incorporated its cartoon properties, Marvel, and Star Wars, but not Star Trek) and the co-creator of the game has his own special version that he programs to be a simulation of the old Star Trek-like series Space Fleet. Except we soon realize that all the characters in the game are people he works with and like one of the asshole omnipotent aliens on a Trek episode like Q or that one where Kirk kisses Uhura, he mostly uses it to demean and denigrate his coworkers. Unfortunately it's all PG-rated so he can't do anything more than basic kissing. Which is weird they didn't go there.
The twist is the creations all know they're not real. He's apparently "cloned" them with DNA taken from coffee cups or a lollipop in one case. I'm not sure if that's a real thing or not. Most of them have gotten used to being playthings, but the latest addition wants to fight back and rallies the others.
As much as I liked parts of the episode it was really hard to watch. It seemed like the basic premise was that gamers (and Trek fans) are repressed, anti-social assholes who can't get laid. Which really is just playing into the worst stereotypes. I mean all they needed was for the guy to live in his mom's basement and they'd have the complete package of nerdy fan/gamer stereotypes.
At the same time, the crew outwitting an omnipotent alien was the plot of several Trek episodes so I guess in that way you can call it a parody. (2/5)
(Fun Fact: The episode stars Jesse Plemmons, who was in the last season of Breaking Bad as Todd and at the end an anonymous gamer is voiced by Aaron Paul, who starred in that show.)
Arkangel: A woman's daughter briefly goes missing and so she jumps at the chance to get an implant installed in her daughter that lets her monitor her daughter at all times and even see through her eyes and blur out things she doesn't want the girl to see. That's pretty awesome for a few years, but as the girl gets older, it starts to become problematic to have Mom watching all the time. So she puts the monitor away.
But when the kid is 15 she starts making some bad life choices: sneaking out with a guy, fucking the guy, getting knocked up, and doing a line of coke. The mom starts monitoring again and sees her daughter's sins and starts interfering with the kid's life.
This wasn't all that great. It felt like a Lifetime movie only more high-tech. I guess there was supposed to be something of the Greek tragedy in wanting to protect the daughter from disappearing and in the end driving her away. That's probably why they referenced Oedipus in the girl's English class: his father of course tried to avoid his fate and wound up being killed by his son, who then married and fucked his own mother. At least this didn't go that far. (2/5)
(Fun Fact: This episode was directed by Jodie Foster, who made waves by saying that superhero movies are ruining cinema. If this is the alternative...no thanks.)
Crocodile: It's kind of like I Know What You Did Last Summer, only without the Gorton's Fisherman guy, but about the same body count.
Years ago a woman and her grungy boyfriend hit a hiker and throw the body into the ocean. In the present, the woman has a new husband, child, andterrible haircut successful career. She goes off to a conference and is surprised in her hotel by her old boyfriend. He's sobered up and wants to confess anonymously to the widow of the person they hit. But the woman doesn't want him to so she kills him and disposes of the body.
Outside the window a man is hit by a self-driving pizza delivery vehicle. An insurance investigator uses a special device to read people's memories to get a better picture of the accident, which is important since the cameras in the area were conveniently defaced and the one on the vehicle was out. (So how was it driving? By radar?) She unfortunately does her job too well and tracks down the murderess, who tries to bluff her way through the memory probe, but of course ends up blowing it and then has to kill the investigator. It loses some points for using that horror movie cliche of the investigator's car not starting at a crucial moment. And then the murderess kills investigator's family, including a baby.
But in a darkly comic twist, she forgot one witness: the guinea pig the investigator's husband bought only days before! I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling guinea pig!
Most of it was pretty boring and predictable, but that twist at the end was pretty good. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: A song featured in the episode "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" has been used in several previous Black Mirror episodes. I think by now it's kind of a running joke.)
Hang the DJ: This was sort of a retread of the prior season's "San Jupinero," in that it's a love story taking place in a virtual world. Though like The Matrix they don't know it's a virtual world--for a while. The idea is there's this dating service called "the system" (because I guess we couldn't be bothered with coming up with a fake name like "Infinity") that is supposed to be 99.8% effective in hooking people up.
The hitch is that it doesn't find your ideal match right away. You have to go through numerous dates first so it can figure out who your ideal mate is. It reminded me of this book I read, Date Night on Union Station, where the main character is steered by an AI dating service into a few bad dates before it hooks her up with the right one.
In this case Frank and Amy meet and are told they only have 12 hours the first time. They don't have sex but have a good time. Then they each get stuck in longer-term relationships that end up sucking. Eventually they're brought back together but when Frank looks at the timer and Amy doesn't, he's punished by having it wind down from 5 years to only 20 hours. And then he has to pine for months while she goes on one short relationship after another.
In the end what they find out is the whole thing is a test. Those who rebel against the system are the true perfect matches. And then it turns out that the whole thing was really just a computer simulation that then tells the real Frank and Amy to hook up.
It was decent, but not as good as "San Jupinero." I mean that episode I was so worried they might not end up together that I was on the edge of my seat just begging my TV for a happy ending. This time...not so much. I guess sometime's it's better to be first. (3/5)
Metalhead: I was hoping for a biopic on the annoying late 80s GI JOE villain, but this is a lot more like Terminator Salvation. A bunch of evil robots ("dogs") have taken over with humans scurrying around, trying to avoid them. A woman and two men go to a warehouse for...reasons and run afoul of a dog. It kills the two men while the woman is chased by the dog and even treed for a short time before the dog runs out of battery power.
This is the shortest episode of the season at just 40 minutes. Maybe because there's really not much to it. Robot chases woman, woman kills robot, robot tags her with trackers as it dies, woman kills herself. The End. We never really learn anything about whether the "dogs" are rogue AI like Skynet or aliens or what. But at the end we find out they went to the warehouse for...teddy bears. Um, yeah, that sounds like it was worth 3 lives. I think they could have just stuffed a bag full of straw or something and given it to the kid they wanted to comfort. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: This whole episode was done in a kind of sepia tone for...reasons.)
Black Museum: In Nevada a British girl stops at a place called the "Black Museum" that's not a museum on African-American culture. It's a museum full of weird stuff run by this guy who specialized in bizarre neurotechnology. So he shows the girl some exhibits and tells her about some things.
One is a headset that transmits impulses from one person's brain to another's body. So a doctor uses it to feel the pain of patients to get a better idea of their disease. But after someone dies on him, he turns into a weird sado-masochist who gets off on the pain. Until he goes too far and puts himself in a coma.
Then there's a stuffed monkey that inside which is the mind of a comatose woman. The woman met a guy some years back but after they had a kid together, she got hit by a car and went comatose. But eventually the owner of the museum comes up with a way to put her mind in her lover's body. They'd essentially be sharing a brain. But she can only observe, she can't control anything; she's just a passenger. Which is awesome...for a while. But eventually they get sick of each other. And so they put her into a monkey that can only say two things: "Monkey Loves You" and "Monkey Needs a Hug." But at least she can see their kid...for a while. Until like Puff the Magic Dragon he outgrows the toy and she ends up in the museum.
Finally there's a hologram of a murderer who was electrocuted a while ago. At the time of his execution he agreed to have his mind recorded. And then the guy is placed in the museum where people can have fun electrocuting a murderer. At least until his family raises a stink and people stop going--except weirdos.
And then comes the big reveal: the girl isn't British at all. She's the murderer's daughter! She puts the museum owner in the hologram's brain and then kills them both and burns down the museum--though she takes the monkey with her. Sweet. That was an unexpected twist, but mostly I think this one just got too dark and weird. I mean sure it's Black Mirror, but when it starts getting into all this S&M stuff, it's kinda gross. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: One of the props in the museum is the device the guy uses in "USS Callister" to make his virtualplayers slaves. In the monkey segment, the guy at one point reads a comic book version of the episode "15 Million Merits." It's too bad Vincent Price died a long time ago or he would have been perfect for the ghoulish museum owner.)
This was an OK season but not as good as Season 3 in my opinion. Not that my opinion matters. I'm sure it's already been renewed for Season 5. But at least this season they didn't have any of those fucking eye implants. If you read my previous review you'd know what that means.
USS Callister: This was the much-ballyhooed Star Trek-inspired episode. I remember when the first images of this were posted people thought it a little odd for a show like Black Mirror to do a Trek parody. And soon you realize that this isn't a Trek parody so much as a hatchet job on Trek and gamer culture.
Basically there's this VR game called Infinity (which ironically was a gaming platform operated by Disney that incorporated its cartoon properties, Marvel, and Star Wars, but not Star Trek) and the co-creator of the game has his own special version that he programs to be a simulation of the old Star Trek-like series Space Fleet. Except we soon realize that all the characters in the game are people he works with and like one of the asshole omnipotent aliens on a Trek episode like Q or that one where Kirk kisses Uhura, he mostly uses it to demean and denigrate his coworkers. Unfortunately it's all PG-rated so he can't do anything more than basic kissing. Which is weird they didn't go there.
The twist is the creations all know they're not real. He's apparently "cloned" them with DNA taken from coffee cups or a lollipop in one case. I'm not sure if that's a real thing or not. Most of them have gotten used to being playthings, but the latest addition wants to fight back and rallies the others.
As much as I liked parts of the episode it was really hard to watch. It seemed like the basic premise was that gamers (and Trek fans) are repressed, anti-social assholes who can't get laid. Which really is just playing into the worst stereotypes. I mean all they needed was for the guy to live in his mom's basement and they'd have the complete package of nerdy fan/gamer stereotypes.
At the same time, the crew outwitting an omnipotent alien was the plot of several Trek episodes so I guess in that way you can call it a parody. (2/5)
(Fun Fact: The episode stars Jesse Plemmons, who was in the last season of Breaking Bad as Todd and at the end an anonymous gamer is voiced by Aaron Paul, who starred in that show.)
Arkangel: A woman's daughter briefly goes missing and so she jumps at the chance to get an implant installed in her daughter that lets her monitor her daughter at all times and even see through her eyes and blur out things she doesn't want the girl to see. That's pretty awesome for a few years, but as the girl gets older, it starts to become problematic to have Mom watching all the time. So she puts the monitor away.
But when the kid is 15 she starts making some bad life choices: sneaking out with a guy, fucking the guy, getting knocked up, and doing a line of coke. The mom starts monitoring again and sees her daughter's sins and starts interfering with the kid's life.
This wasn't all that great. It felt like a Lifetime movie only more high-tech. I guess there was supposed to be something of the Greek tragedy in wanting to protect the daughter from disappearing and in the end driving her away. That's probably why they referenced Oedipus in the girl's English class: his father of course tried to avoid his fate and wound up being killed by his son, who then married and fucked his own mother. At least this didn't go that far. (2/5)
(Fun Fact: This episode was directed by Jodie Foster, who made waves by saying that superhero movies are ruining cinema. If this is the alternative...no thanks.)
Crocodile: It's kind of like I Know What You Did Last Summer, only without the Gorton's Fisherman guy, but about the same body count.
Years ago a woman and her grungy boyfriend hit a hiker and throw the body into the ocean. In the present, the woman has a new husband, child, and
Outside the window a man is hit by a self-driving pizza delivery vehicle. An insurance investigator uses a special device to read people's memories to get a better picture of the accident, which is important since the cameras in the area were conveniently defaced and the one on the vehicle was out. (So how was it driving? By radar?) She unfortunately does her job too well and tracks down the murderess, who tries to bluff her way through the memory probe, but of course ends up blowing it and then has to kill the investigator. It loses some points for using that horror movie cliche of the investigator's car not starting at a crucial moment. And then the murderess kills investigator's family, including a baby.
But in a darkly comic twist, she forgot one witness: the guinea pig the investigator's husband bought only days before! I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling guinea pig!
Most of it was pretty boring and predictable, but that twist at the end was pretty good. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: A song featured in the episode "Anyone Who Knows What Love Is" has been used in several previous Black Mirror episodes. I think by now it's kind of a running joke.)
Hang the DJ: This was sort of a retread of the prior season's "San Jupinero," in that it's a love story taking place in a virtual world. Though like The Matrix they don't know it's a virtual world--for a while. The idea is there's this dating service called "the system" (because I guess we couldn't be bothered with coming up with a fake name like "Infinity") that is supposed to be 99.8% effective in hooking people up.
The hitch is that it doesn't find your ideal match right away. You have to go through numerous dates first so it can figure out who your ideal mate is. It reminded me of this book I read, Date Night on Union Station, where the main character is steered by an AI dating service into a few bad dates before it hooks her up with the right one.
In this case Frank and Amy meet and are told they only have 12 hours the first time. They don't have sex but have a good time. Then they each get stuck in longer-term relationships that end up sucking. Eventually they're brought back together but when Frank looks at the timer and Amy doesn't, he's punished by having it wind down from 5 years to only 20 hours. And then he has to pine for months while she goes on one short relationship after another.
In the end what they find out is the whole thing is a test. Those who rebel against the system are the true perfect matches. And then it turns out that the whole thing was really just a computer simulation that then tells the real Frank and Amy to hook up.
It was decent, but not as good as "San Jupinero." I mean that episode I was so worried they might not end up together that I was on the edge of my seat just begging my TV for a happy ending. This time...not so much. I guess sometime's it's better to be first. (3/5)
Metalhead: I was hoping for a biopic on the annoying late 80s GI JOE villain, but this is a lot more like Terminator Salvation. A bunch of evil robots ("dogs") have taken over with humans scurrying around, trying to avoid them. A woman and two men go to a warehouse for...reasons and run afoul of a dog. It kills the two men while the woman is chased by the dog and even treed for a short time before the dog runs out of battery power.
This is the shortest episode of the season at just 40 minutes. Maybe because there's really not much to it. Robot chases woman, woman kills robot, robot tags her with trackers as it dies, woman kills herself. The End. We never really learn anything about whether the "dogs" are rogue AI like Skynet or aliens or what. But at the end we find out they went to the warehouse for...teddy bears. Um, yeah, that sounds like it was worth 3 lives. I think they could have just stuffed a bag full of straw or something and given it to the kid they wanted to comfort. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: This whole episode was done in a kind of sepia tone for...reasons.)
Black Museum: In Nevada a British girl stops at a place called the "Black Museum" that's not a museum on African-American culture. It's a museum full of weird stuff run by this guy who specialized in bizarre neurotechnology. So he shows the girl some exhibits and tells her about some things.
One is a headset that transmits impulses from one person's brain to another's body. So a doctor uses it to feel the pain of patients to get a better idea of their disease. But after someone dies on him, he turns into a weird sado-masochist who gets off on the pain. Until he goes too far and puts himself in a coma.
Then there's a stuffed monkey that inside which is the mind of a comatose woman. The woman met a guy some years back but after they had a kid together, she got hit by a car and went comatose. But eventually the owner of the museum comes up with a way to put her mind in her lover's body. They'd essentially be sharing a brain. But she can only observe, she can't control anything; she's just a passenger. Which is awesome...for a while. But eventually they get sick of each other. And so they put her into a monkey that can only say two things: "Monkey Loves You" and "Monkey Needs a Hug." But at least she can see their kid...for a while. Until like Puff the Magic Dragon he outgrows the toy and she ends up in the museum.
Finally there's a hologram of a murderer who was electrocuted a while ago. At the time of his execution he agreed to have his mind recorded. And then the guy is placed in the museum where people can have fun electrocuting a murderer. At least until his family raises a stink and people stop going--except weirdos.
And then comes the big reveal: the girl isn't British at all. She's the murderer's daughter! She puts the museum owner in the hologram's brain and then kills them both and burns down the museum--though she takes the monkey with her. Sweet. That was an unexpected twist, but mostly I think this one just got too dark and weird. I mean sure it's Black Mirror, but when it starts getting into all this S&M stuff, it's kinda gross. (2.5/5)
(Fun Fact: One of the props in the museum is the device the guy uses in "USS Callister" to make his virtual
This was an OK season but not as good as Season 3 in my opinion. Not that my opinion matters. I'm sure it's already been renewed for Season 5. But at least this season they didn't have any of those fucking eye implants. If you read my previous review you'd know what that means.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Truth in Advertising
Something I've noticed in a few commercials recently is kind of a self-deprecating message. For instance, Sprint began running those ads with the former "Can you hear me now?" guy from Verizon to deliver the message: our quality is only 1% less than Verizon. Which is a nice way of saying, we're just a little shittier but a lot cheaper!
I've seen one lately for XFinity that promises "a new culture focused on customer service." Which is kind of saying, We sucked at customer service before, but now we're going to try giving a fuck! Oh, hey, what a concept!
My favorite one though is for a Minnesota health insurance company that I see on the Pluto TV app while watching MST3K and Rifftrax. (As an aside, they used to have local ads from all over the country on that app: car commercials from California, a debt attorney from Arkansas, a state senator from New Jersey, a jeweler in Boca Raton, and some I'm not sure where they're from. It was awesome, but lately they just show national ads.) Anyway, in this ad a woman is blowing leaves with a leaf blower and shouts, "Finding health insurance blows! But at least with [whatever] the search blows less! [shrug]" So yes we admit this is going to suck, but at least with our service it won't be so terrible. Dentists could probably use the same approach: this is going to hurt, but at least here it will hurt less!
I have to admit I kinda like that approach. I mean everyone else is saying they're the best, so if you admit that maybe you're not the best at least I can feel you're being honest with me. Maybe Chevy should say, "We know our cars aren't as good as Lexus or Audi, but they're cheaper!" Or Busch beer could say, "Our beer tastes like dog piss but you get a lot more of it for the money!" [Perfect if you're a high school or college kid looking to supply a house party!]
Maybe I should try that: My books aren't as good as Stephen King's, but they're a lot cheaper! They aren't as good as Harry Potter but they aren't as long! [shrugs]
I've seen one lately for XFinity that promises "a new culture focused on customer service." Which is kind of saying, We sucked at customer service before, but now we're going to try giving a fuck! Oh, hey, what a concept!
My favorite one though is for a Minnesota health insurance company that I see on the Pluto TV app while watching MST3K and Rifftrax. (As an aside, they used to have local ads from all over the country on that app: car commercials from California, a debt attorney from Arkansas, a state senator from New Jersey, a jeweler in Boca Raton, and some I'm not sure where they're from. It was awesome, but lately they just show national ads.) Anyway, in this ad a woman is blowing leaves with a leaf blower and shouts, "Finding health insurance blows! But at least with [whatever] the search blows less! [shrug]" So yes we admit this is going to suck, but at least with our service it won't be so terrible. Dentists could probably use the same approach: this is going to hurt, but at least here it will hurt less!
I have to admit I kinda like that approach. I mean everyone else is saying they're the best, so if you admit that maybe you're not the best at least I can feel you're being honest with me. Maybe Chevy should say, "We know our cars aren't as good as Lexus or Audi, but they're cheaper!" Or Busch beer could say, "Our beer tastes like dog piss but you get a lot more of it for the money!" [Perfect if you're a high school or college kid looking to supply a house party!]
Maybe I should try that: My books aren't as good as Stephen King's, but they're a lot cheaper! They aren't as good as Harry Potter but they aren't as long! [shrugs]
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Scratch Your Game of Thrones Itch With The Last Kingdom
It was revealed a few months ago that Game of Thrones wouldn't return to the airwaves until 2019. And a new book might appear by...2029? 2525? Who knows. So if you've watched the show and read the books you might be looking for something else.
The Last Kingdom on Netflix is based on a series of books by British historical fiction author Bernard Cornwell. In a way it's a sequel to his great "Warlord Trilogy" that tried to bring the Arthurian legend to 5th Century England. In those stories Arthur and the Britons were being attacked by the raiding Saxons. This takes place about 400 years later when the Saxons have displaced the Britons and are now beset by the "Danes" who we referred to as Vikings.
Like the books the show starts off slow with a lengthy prequel. Osbert is a kid in the northern England territory of Bebbanburg, second in line to ruling there. After his older brother dies, he becomes the heir apparent and his father renames him Uhtred because whoever runs the place has to be named Uhtred. But then Danes raid the place and take Uhtred captive while his uncle takes over Bebbanburg.
Uhtred is taken by the Dane Ragnar and raised as one of them. That is until he's grown and some other Danes kill Ragnar and Uhtred and his lady friend Brida end up going to Wessex in southern England. Wessex is ruled by the sickly Alfred (Cornwell suggests he suffered from IBS, which isn't surprising considering the conditions) who is a pious Christian and dreams of uniting all of England.
Uhtred becomes one of Alfred's men and they defeat some Danes. This earns Uhtred some land and a bride who is good looking but owes a large sum to the church. Uhtred and his bride eventually fall in love and things seem to be doing well...until the Danes launch a sneak attack.
The show is largely slow and talky until the last few episodes of the first season. Then it finally picks up some steam. Alfred, Uhtred, and a handful of others are driven into the marshes while the Danes occupy Wessex. Uhtred helps to disrupt a Danish force while Alfred summons every able-bodied Englishman to fight back.
The finale of season 1 gives us a really great look at the "shield wall" combat Cornwell describes in these books and the Warlord Trilogy ones. Basically each side forms lines of men who use their shields to help protect the row in front of them. The first row squats down and the second row holds their shields over the first row's heads and the third row does the same for them. The idea is to protect them from arrows and such. When the other side does the same, the lines end up pushing against each other, stabbing through the shields to try to form holes. The first one to give way is likely to be routed.
In this case one of the Danes holds up the head of a woman Uhtred fell in love with who was not his wife and in a frenzy he breaks a hole in the enemy line. The show cheats us a little in having him knocked out so it doesn't have to go through the entirety of the battle. I mean that would be really expensive!
Season 2 starts out with Uhtred going north to free a slave who a priest believes will be a king. At first the slave-turned-king is a good guy but he gets some bad advice and thinks Uhtred is trying to take power, so he does the only rational thing: he sells Uhtred into slavery! Uhtred and one of his lieutenants are forced to row, row, row a boat with a bunch of other guys. It pretty much breaks him, for a time.
The season ends with Alfred's grown daughter being kidnapped by Danes who want to ransom her for basically all of Wessex's money. But the daughter and one of her captors have fallen in love and try to enlist Uhtred's help to rescue her.
Each season essentially covers two of the books. At this point there are 10 books. In the next season it's likely that Alfred will die because that's what seems to happen in the books. I've read the first three of them and they were OK, though I think Cornwell largely recycles the Warlord books with Uhtred's background pretty much as the narrator Derfel in those books and Alfred similar to Arthur, only Arthur didn't suffer from IBS and was a pagan--until he converted for the sake of political alliances. Like Derfel, Uhtred is an unrepentant pagan, a great warrior, and a pig-headed asshole.
Really if he weren't such a pig-headed asshole he could have become one of Alfred's top confidantes. Instead because he refuses to convert to Christianity and play politics he remains outside the royal court. As it is their relationship is more like Commissioner Gordon and Batman where they respect each other but Gordon doesn't really like needing Batman any more than Alfred likes needing Uhtred's sword.
This series is fairly grounded in reality so unlike GOT you don't have dragons or zombies. Someone does rise from the dead, but it's just a trick. There's less nudity and not really any incest. Near the end of Season 2 Alfred's daughter's new husband treats her basically like Sansa Stark when she was married to Ramsey Bolton. I guess if those are the things you really like about GOT then this won't quite satisfy your itch until 2019.
But for me after the first few episodes I started warming to the characters and getting more into it. At some point maybe I should go read the rest of the books to see what lies ahead for Uhtred.
Incidentally, I don't really recognize anyone on this show from anything else, but the guy who plays Uhtred looks like if you crossed Kip Harrington and Colin Farrell. Maybe that was intentional.
The Last Kingdom on Netflix is based on a series of books by British historical fiction author Bernard Cornwell. In a way it's a sequel to his great "Warlord Trilogy" that tried to bring the Arthurian legend to 5th Century England. In those stories Arthur and the Britons were being attacked by the raiding Saxons. This takes place about 400 years later when the Saxons have displaced the Britons and are now beset by the "Danes" who we referred to as Vikings.
Like the books the show starts off slow with a lengthy prequel. Osbert is a kid in the northern England territory of Bebbanburg, second in line to ruling there. After his older brother dies, he becomes the heir apparent and his father renames him Uhtred because whoever runs the place has to be named Uhtred. But then Danes raid the place and take Uhtred captive while his uncle takes over Bebbanburg.
Uhtred is taken by the Dane Ragnar and raised as one of them. That is until he's grown and some other Danes kill Ragnar and Uhtred and his lady friend Brida end up going to Wessex in southern England. Wessex is ruled by the sickly Alfred (Cornwell suggests he suffered from IBS, which isn't surprising considering the conditions) who is a pious Christian and dreams of uniting all of England.
Uhtred becomes one of Alfred's men and they defeat some Danes. This earns Uhtred some land and a bride who is good looking but owes a large sum to the church. Uhtred and his bride eventually fall in love and things seem to be doing well...until the Danes launch a sneak attack.
The show is largely slow and talky until the last few episodes of the first season. Then it finally picks up some steam. Alfred, Uhtred, and a handful of others are driven into the marshes while the Danes occupy Wessex. Uhtred helps to disrupt a Danish force while Alfred summons every able-bodied Englishman to fight back.
The finale of season 1 gives us a really great look at the "shield wall" combat Cornwell describes in these books and the Warlord Trilogy ones. Basically each side forms lines of men who use their shields to help protect the row in front of them. The first row squats down and the second row holds their shields over the first row's heads and the third row does the same for them. The idea is to protect them from arrows and such. When the other side does the same, the lines end up pushing against each other, stabbing through the shields to try to form holes. The first one to give way is likely to be routed.
In this case one of the Danes holds up the head of a woman Uhtred fell in love with who was not his wife and in a frenzy he breaks a hole in the enemy line. The show cheats us a little in having him knocked out so it doesn't have to go through the entirety of the battle. I mean that would be really expensive!
Season 2 starts out with Uhtred going north to free a slave who a priest believes will be a king. At first the slave-turned-king is a good guy but he gets some bad advice and thinks Uhtred is trying to take power, so he does the only rational thing: he sells Uhtred into slavery! Uhtred and one of his lieutenants are forced to row, row, row a boat with a bunch of other guys. It pretty much breaks him, for a time.
The season ends with Alfred's grown daughter being kidnapped by Danes who want to ransom her for basically all of Wessex's money. But the daughter and one of her captors have fallen in love and try to enlist Uhtred's help to rescue her.
Each season essentially covers two of the books. At this point there are 10 books. In the next season it's likely that Alfred will die because that's what seems to happen in the books. I've read the first three of them and they were OK, though I think Cornwell largely recycles the Warlord books with Uhtred's background pretty much as the narrator Derfel in those books and Alfred similar to Arthur, only Arthur didn't suffer from IBS and was a pagan--until he converted for the sake of political alliances. Like Derfel, Uhtred is an unrepentant pagan, a great warrior, and a pig-headed asshole.
Really if he weren't such a pig-headed asshole he could have become one of Alfred's top confidantes. Instead because he refuses to convert to Christianity and play politics he remains outside the royal court. As it is their relationship is more like Commissioner Gordon and Batman where they respect each other but Gordon doesn't really like needing Batman any more than Alfred likes needing Uhtred's sword.
This series is fairly grounded in reality so unlike GOT you don't have dragons or zombies. Someone does rise from the dead, but it's just a trick. There's less nudity and not really any incest. Near the end of Season 2 Alfred's daughter's new husband treats her basically like Sansa Stark when she was married to Ramsey Bolton. I guess if those are the things you really like about GOT then this won't quite satisfy your itch until 2019.
But for me after the first few episodes I started warming to the characters and getting more into it. At some point maybe I should go read the rest of the books to see what lies ahead for Uhtred.
Incidentally, I don't really recognize anyone on this show from anything else, but the guy who plays Uhtred looks like if you crossed Kip Harrington and Colin Farrell. Maybe that was intentional.
Monday, January 22, 2018
For Indie Authors, Amazon Giveaways Are Finally Better Than Goodreads
I talked twice about how much Amazon's book giveaway system sucks compared to Goodreads. Well now Goodreads has decided to milk publishers with exorbitant fees just to list a giveaway. In true corporate style they wrote a press release that tries to make it sound like paying $119 to list your giveaway is a good thing compared to NOTHING, which is what you paid before. It reminds me of this company I worked for about 18 years ago when they changed health insurers and the insurance rep came in and tried to pitch us on why paying more for insurance was a good thing. And yeah people were not having it. Not that it mattered since 99% of us at that company were out of a job there within 12 months.
The justification for this change is they're making minor tweaks like it automatically puts giveaways on someone's To Read shelf. Which for me is actually motivation to not enter giveaways because I don't need 100 books on my To Read shelf that I'm not really planning to read unless I win a copy for free. And it'll send emails to the winners 2 months later to nag them about reviewing the book. That's nice but why do I have to pay $119 for that shit when right now I'm paying $0? I mean really? REALLY? I'm sure on some writer's group somewhere there's a dipshit trying to paint this as a good thing or a necessary thing.
Really Goodreads giveaways have just priced themselves beyond the reach of small authors like me. I mean for my last giveaway I sold plenty of books (for me) but enough to justify paying $119 just to list the fucking giveaway on their precious site? No. 119 times no.
And so now Amazon's shitty giveaway service actually becomes the cheaper option because you can still (presumably) list the giveaway for free. All you have to do is buy the copies. Which it still pisses me off I can't use my Amazon Prime shipping on it. But still, paying an extra $6 per copy is better than paying $119, wouldn't you say? And I can handle sending announcements myself, Goodreads. I don't need to pay you $119 to do it.
Or I suppose you could use Rafflecopter or something like that. Or just do the whole thing on your blog or newsletter.
Since Amazon owns Goodreads I kinda wonder if Amazon was pissed not enough people were using their giveaways service and decided to make Goodreads commit corporate seppuku to drive people to Amazon. Maybe I'm crediting them with being too smart--and too evil. Or not.
I suppose the big publishers can go on using Goodreads, though I'd imagine even they would start reducing the number of books they put up for giveaways. They're not made of money either. It's just a fucking stupid thing all the way around.
Speaking of giveaways, enter to win a copy of the new Eric Filler book Papa's New Bag for six more days.
The justification for this change is they're making minor tweaks like it automatically puts giveaways on someone's To Read shelf. Which for me is actually motivation to not enter giveaways because I don't need 100 books on my To Read shelf that I'm not really planning to read unless I win a copy for free. And it'll send emails to the winners 2 months later to nag them about reviewing the book. That's nice but why do I have to pay $119 for that shit when right now I'm paying $0? I mean really? REALLY? I'm sure on some writer's group somewhere there's a dipshit trying to paint this as a good thing or a necessary thing.
Really Goodreads giveaways have just priced themselves beyond the reach of small authors like me. I mean for my last giveaway I sold plenty of books (for me) but enough to justify paying $119 just to list the fucking giveaway on their precious site? No. 119 times no.
And so now Amazon's shitty giveaway service actually becomes the cheaper option because you can still (presumably) list the giveaway for free. All you have to do is buy the copies. Which it still pisses me off I can't use my Amazon Prime shipping on it. But still, paying an extra $6 per copy is better than paying $119, wouldn't you say? And I can handle sending announcements myself, Goodreads. I don't need to pay you $119 to do it.
Or I suppose you could use Rafflecopter or something like that. Or just do the whole thing on your blog or newsletter.
Since Amazon owns Goodreads I kinda wonder if Amazon was pissed not enough people were using their giveaways service and decided to make Goodreads commit corporate seppuku to drive people to Amazon. Maybe I'm crediting them with being too smart--and too evil. Or not.
I suppose the big publishers can go on using Goodreads, though I'd imagine even they would start reducing the number of books they put up for giveaways. They're not made of money either. It's just a fucking stupid thing all the way around.
Speaking of giveaways, enter to win a copy of the new Eric Filler book Papa's New Bag for six more days.
Friday, January 19, 2018
Beating the Author to the Punch
Since Monday I talked about nasty reviews and misconceptions, here's a nasty review I wrote for On Basilisk Station by David Weber:
I'm sure the author would have a reason for why they didn't think to use the lance weapon earlier in the battle. But shouldn't it have been mentioned? Like one of the flunkies could have said: why don't we use the lance? And she could have said: we're not close enough yet. Or whatever bullshit reason. But you go on and on and lose 1/3 of your ship and crew and then expect me to think she's clever for thinking of something I thought of a long time ago? It's like if two guys are kung-fu fighting and then one guy suddenly realizes he has a gun and shoots the other. Why the fuck didn't you realize that from the start? It's so stupid!
The way I felt reading this was similar to reading a police procedural that has far too much procedure in it, like one of Ed McBain's books. And like that, there weren't any characters I cared about. Honor Harrington is basically a Mary Sue, her only flaw being that she can't do highly advanced math in her head. The others are all cardboard; when several of them die I couldn't have cared less.
Like I said it was too heavy on procedure and also backstory. When Honor's ship is trying to chase down an enemy ship at about 80% into the book, the author decides that's the perfect time for a lengthy lecture on the history of interstellar travel. Between that the strategy meetings, and then gratuitous musing about those strategy meetings, it pretty much sucks all the drama from the book. As well, if the author had mentioned Honor's "soprano" one more time I'd have wanted to contact the Sopranos. The reader isn't an idiot; you don't have to mention the same detail fifteen times for them to get it.
And the final battle, I'm sitting there for page after page after page thinking, "Why don't they use that lance thing from the training exercise at the start of the book?" Finally, after the ship is just about blown to pieces and a third of the crew is dead, Mary Sue Harrington says, "Hey, let's use the lance thing!" Bravo!
I definitely won't be reading the rest of the series.
That is all.
I'm sure the author would have a reason for why they didn't think to use the lance weapon earlier in the battle. But shouldn't it have been mentioned? Like one of the flunkies could have said: why don't we use the lance? And she could have said: we're not close enough yet. Or whatever bullshit reason. But you go on and on and lose 1/3 of your ship and crew and then expect me to think she's clever for thinking of something I thought of a long time ago? It's like if two guys are kung-fu fighting and then one guy suddenly realizes he has a gun and shoots the other. Why the fuck didn't you realize that from the start? It's so stupid!
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Making The Orville Better in Season 2
Fox's The Orville wrapped up its season last month. Some people like this show and some people (Nigel Mitchell and Chris Dilloway) loathe it. I think it's OK but it has room for improvement.
What I think mostly--and I'm sure I'm not alone--is that going into season 2 they need to decide what kind of show they want to be. The first season was mostly a laid back off-brand version of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Some people find that comforting for nostalgia reasons and others loathe it as unoriginal. And then there are those (critics, mostly) who mistake this for an attempt at a "parody" or "spoof" of ST TNG. The reason they misunderstand this is because the show stars Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, American Dad, and Ted. And naturally he brings some of that smartass humor to the show. But that shouldn't be construed as a parody or a spoof. MacFarlane recusing himself from the show would be a good step to solve that problem. I think a more minor step in the right direction is getting rid of the helmsman guy played by Scott Grimes, who also does voice work on American Dad. Besides being comic relief his character really has no depth or purpose. So you ditch him (maybe let him make a heroic sacrifice like Alan Tudyk in Serenity) and that takes away the comic relief, allowing the show to get a bit more serious. And then critics might not be misrepresenting it as much as parody or a spoof.
The next thing you need to do is invest in your characters. I think one of the better episodes was when the doctor and Isaac the android were stranded on a remote planet. We learned more about the doctor and her unconventional (by our standards) family and Isaac learned not to resent human kids as much. They need to do more of that to build the characters.
Another thing I hope they do is ditch the "will they/won't they" bullshit between the captain and first officer. This isn't Friends or Saved By the Bell for fuck's sake! These are supposed to be professional people. But if you still want the romance they can do what I did in the second book of my Rebirth series called The Savior: turn that duo into a trio! In the first book of that series the captain and a young ensign were stranded on a planet together and they got a little bit of a thing going. Though once they got a new ship they put it on ice, though the ensign was still pining for the captain. Then in the second book a new helmsman comes on board who's an old flame of the captain from when they served together years ago. So then it became kind of a love triangle, though not all sides were necessarily touching each other. It'd be super easy to do this even without killing the helmsman (see above) because they moved the navigator guy to chief engineer, which means you have a vacancy on the bridge. So instead of just using random fill-ins you bring in an old flame of the captain or first officer and then you've got a love triangle. One that probably won't end like mine where the helmsman died heroically during an epic space battle.
Those are some things I think can help the show. Some originality in the stories would be nice too. I mean the last 4 episodes or so especially weren't all that great. There was one where they went to a planet like 21st Century Earth where everything is run by a system of likes that's almost identical to a Black Mirror episode. Then there was the one where the security girl faces all these fears and finds herself alone on the ship that was pretty much a mix of a couple of ST TNG episodes. The season finale was kind of blah where the first officer becomes a "god" to people on a planet. They already did the anti-religious thing in an earlier episode and then having Isaac stay on the planet was like the crappy ST TNG two-parter "Time's Arrow." So they need to find some new ideas that also help to build their characters. Then some of the haters might stop hating. Or probably not.
What I think mostly--and I'm sure I'm not alone--is that going into season 2 they need to decide what kind of show they want to be. The first season was mostly a laid back off-brand version of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Some people find that comforting for nostalgia reasons and others loathe it as unoriginal. And then there are those (critics, mostly) who mistake this for an attempt at a "parody" or "spoof" of ST TNG. The reason they misunderstand this is because the show stars Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, American Dad, and Ted. And naturally he brings some of that smartass humor to the show. But that shouldn't be construed as a parody or a spoof. MacFarlane recusing himself from the show would be a good step to solve that problem. I think a more minor step in the right direction is getting rid of the helmsman guy played by Scott Grimes, who also does voice work on American Dad. Besides being comic relief his character really has no depth or purpose. So you ditch him (maybe let him make a heroic sacrifice like Alan Tudyk in Serenity) and that takes away the comic relief, allowing the show to get a bit more serious. And then critics might not be misrepresenting it as much as parody or a spoof.
The next thing you need to do is invest in your characters. I think one of the better episodes was when the doctor and Isaac the android were stranded on a remote planet. We learned more about the doctor and her unconventional (by our standards) family and Isaac learned not to resent human kids as much. They need to do more of that to build the characters.
Another thing I hope they do is ditch the "will they/won't they" bullshit between the captain and first officer. This isn't Friends or Saved By the Bell for fuck's sake! These are supposed to be professional people. But if you still want the romance they can do what I did in the second book of my Rebirth series called The Savior: turn that duo into a trio! In the first book of that series the captain and a young ensign were stranded on a planet together and they got a little bit of a thing going. Though once they got a new ship they put it on ice, though the ensign was still pining for the captain. Then in the second book a new helmsman comes on board who's an old flame of the captain from when they served together years ago. So then it became kind of a love triangle, though not all sides were necessarily touching each other. It'd be super easy to do this even without killing the helmsman (see above) because they moved the navigator guy to chief engineer, which means you have a vacancy on the bridge. So instead of just using random fill-ins you bring in an old flame of the captain or first officer and then you've got a love triangle. One that probably won't end like mine where the helmsman died heroically during an epic space battle.
Those are some things I think can help the show. Some originality in the stories would be nice too. I mean the last 4 episodes or so especially weren't all that great. There was one where they went to a planet like 21st Century Earth where everything is run by a system of likes that's almost identical to a Black Mirror episode. Then there was the one where the security girl faces all these fears and finds herself alone on the ship that was pretty much a mix of a couple of ST TNG episodes. The season finale was kind of blah where the first officer becomes a "god" to people on a planet. They already did the anti-religious thing in an earlier episode and then having Isaac stay on the planet was like the crappy ST TNG two-parter "Time's Arrow." So they need to find some new ideas that also help to build their characters. Then some of the haters might stop hating. Or probably not.
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