We have all – or all of us that care – watched the final titanic season of Stranger Things. We have all filled the internet with our opinions on it. It’s flaws are well known. I am not here to complain of the bloated cast, the wheel-spinning plot, the scenes that go on for the… Read More Stranger Things – The Greatest Troll of All Time
Apropos of nothing, I had the theme song to Tiny Toons stuck in my head one afternoon this summer. I sang it, my wife sang it, we knew it, we remembered it. We are old. Back in the 1980’s one of the three networks had three hours of Looney Tunes Cartoons on every Saturday morning,… Read More Tiny Toons and Animaniacs: Exploitation vs. Creativity
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. Oscar Wilde As of this writing, “Doomcock” is trending on Twitter. This is occurring because there is a self-titled “supervillain who critiques popular culture” under the name of Dicktor Van Doomcock. He has… Read More Star Trek, Doomcock, And Fandom Shenanigans
If you watch Breaking Bad on Netflix, you will not notice that the show’s final season was bifurcated. But if you watched it at the time, you had to wait almost an entire year between the first and second half of that season. The first half ends with Hank Schrader discovering that Walter White is… Read More One’s Self I Sing – Breaking Bad and Freedom
Playing as much CK2 as I do, I took notice of this Netflix show when it first popped up. I love the Early Medieval Period as the Wild West of Europe, when kingdoms were new and ambition was the way forward. When I first tried to watch it, I was turned off by the low… Read More Quick Review: The Last Kingdom
An Essay in the form of series. Part 1 and Part 2, and a footnote. The question is, can fanfiction – sub-writings in a fictional universe, by fans – become Canon, i.e. officially a part of the story? I myself would err on the side of “no, not really”, without making a categorical claim on… Read More John C. Wright on the Canon of Fiction
Unless the story is already told… Holt McCallany makes a strong point: most TV is writer/producer-driven. You gotta grind out the script, then grind out the shoot. Rehearsal is a minimum and re-shoots are not a thing. How then, to square this with my disappointment with the new season, which felt exactly like a selection… Read More TV is Contrary to Good Storytelling
TV tropes are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they exist because they work: they create a kind of structural shorthand that writers can use to keep producing content reliably. On the other hand, used at the wrong time, or in the wrong show, they can smother any unique voices or angles. I believe… Read More Quick Review: Mindhunter Season 2
Cue all the “At least this series is finished” snark. Set in an epic world where magic exists but only women can use it, “The Wheel of Time” follows Moiraine, a member of the shadowy and influential all-female organization called the “Aes Sedai,” as she embarks on a dangerous journey with five young men and… Read More The Wheel of Time comes to Amazon
I had no idea HBO was even doing this, and my instinct is to scrunch up my nose at it. I like the original graphic novel and found the film merely okay (among other things, they didn’t do the Comedian right). It was a provocative examination of super-hero tropes at the time, but I don’t… Read More ‘Watchmen’ Pilot is a Thing. Saints Preserve Us.
Content Blues 