Darknet

This show was suggested by Netflix, since I tend to watch just about any horror I can, and I especially like horror anthology shows.

And holy cow, it's probably one of the best - if not the best horror anthology I've seen.

Production values are strong.  The stories are polished.  One of the weaknesses that many of the older horror anthologies have is that they tend to rely on lots of exposition.  This show rarely does anything like that.  Almost everything is shown.

Each episode is usually woven together from a few stories.  Usually the stories connect in some way, sometimes they don't.  The connections aren't obvious either.  They play around with chronology as well.

Performances are generally good.  I haven't noticed anyone that was actually bad.

As I was watching it, I was thinking it would be really great to have a little more crossover between episodes.  Then in the last episode - they do this.  They bring back a bunch of characters from the earlier episodes.

The sense of horror is a little different.  It's an unpredictable show.  Usually there's at least one twist, sometimes more, but I don't know how much material I actually found scary.  Of course, I don't know how much I find anything scary now.

I'm very, very impressed with this show, and I hope it gets picked up for a second season.  As long as they can keep the quality and structure intact.

R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour

I love horror anthology shows.  I really love 'em.  I used to watch Tales from the Darkside, and I remember that my dad didn't have a problem with it.  (He did have a problem with the movie though, because there was some cursing.  It never occurred to me how strange that was.)

     Anyway, I gave R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour a chance, since it was available for free on Netflix.  I figured it would be kind of like Are You Afraid of the Dark?  I had tried revisiting that show, and it really didn't age well.  It was just too lighthearted, too wacky, and not enough material that seemed like it could legitimately creep kids out.  Plus, it was aimed too squarely at kids, while also making kids look like idiots.  That's always a problem.

     I was pleased to find that The Haunting Hour was generally really good.  Really good.  Like any anthology, there are a few misses, but I'm very happy with this show.  Episodes are usually paced well, they involve some fairly creepy stuff.  They don't shy away from bleak endings, and I really love that.

     In addition, the acting quality is actually pretty good.  It's hard to find child actors that aren't annoying.

    To make things better... the budget is good!  It's not spectacular, but the effects work is fairly good, and the direction does a great job of working around effects.

    Notable episodes...
From the first season...

The Perfect Brother - A kid's perfect brother starts breaking down, and is revealed to be a robot.  Then things get weirder.  A dark ending, and I like that they were willing to go that far.

Catching Cold - A jerk of a kid becomes obsessed with locating a specific ice cream truck that carries some spectacular ice cream.  Another dark ending, but he earned it.

Afraid of Clowns - The obligatory clown episode.  An ending I didn't quite anticipate.

The Dead Body - A kid finds a friend willing to stand up to some bullies.  The friend pushes things further than the other kid is willing to go.

From the second season...

Flight - A kid on an airplane is convinced that a lady is the grim reaper.  This episode isn't actually that great, but it plays like a Twilight Zone.  It's much more introspective than I expect from a show aimed at kids.

Sick - A kid is home, sick.  Things get very strange, and it isn't clear if it's just his illness, or if he's actually dealing with a monster in the house.  A surprisingly puzzling episode.

Mascot - Two kids want to get a better mascot for their school, and attempt to fire the existing one.  This is weird, and memorable for the great design of the mascot.  It's also got a really dark ending.

Scarecrow - A rural girl accepts a scarecrow from a weird guy, leading to much weirder things.  This is a very dark story.  By the end, it seems like it could have been adapted from a Stephen King story.

The Return of Lilly D - A continuation of what happens to the evil doll that appeared in the first episodes of this series.  This is really remarkable.  It's rare that an anthology series creates an internal continuity, but they did this well.  There's a recurring character, but what's most interesting is that they made a story that stands by itself, but is also enriched by knowing the first episodes.


     I can't say that the show is always great, but they do an excellent job of making a horror series for kids that doesn't pander.  The show tackles concerns of younger kids very well, while also treating them respectfully.  I'm really happy with this series, and I look forward to watching more episodes.  Hopefully, Netflix will get around to adding the third season soon.

Winnie Cooper of The Wonder Years

     The Wonder Years was aired at the right time for my young tastes.  It started airing around 1987, when I would have been six, and ran for six seasons, meaning that I would have been twelve when it ended.  This is a really good thing for someone who was younger than the main character.  The same way that most high school dramas mostly appeal to middle school students, this would have guided me through my formative years.

     But I never got into the show.  The little bits of exposure that I had to it were awkward.  I don't know if I saw any complete episodes.  I mostly remembered one thing about the show.

     Fred Savage staring kind of blankly as a voiceover talked.  Then a line would be stammered out.

     What bothered me about this was that Kevin - as a character - was just so incredibly awkward, he defied normalcy, which flew in the face of the premise.  As a 6th and 7th grader, I was able to hold conversations with members of the opposite sex.  Kevin was able to have two-sentence exchanges with them, with massive pauses between each line.

     That was the main reason I didn't like the show.  The other reason was Winnie Cooper.

     In the past, my impression of her was that she didn't do anything.  She existed as a long-term love interest for Kevin, but I couldn't recall any personality that she had.


     I've gone back, and I've started watching The Wonder Years on Netflix, from the beginning.  I just finished the first episode of the second season.
      I'll ignore my thoughts on the writing, on the series itself, structure, characters, jokes... this is just about Winnie.

     Winnie is a blank slate for the audience.  She simultaneously exudes braininess, cuteness, beauty, attainability, and in-attainability.  She remains passive throughout most of these episodes, except for the end of this one I just watched, which also marks the first time that she and Kevin had a non-awkward exchange.
      Winnie has a habit of not actually doing much of anything.  She often has a blank expression (pictured above).  The only time she doesn't is when she's interacting with people in the background.

     When I say that Winnie is a blank slate, I mean that she seems to exist as a reflection whatever traits the audience wants to see.  I don't know how I feel about this.  She doesn't have a distinct personality in the show.  She rarely expresses any emotion at all.  I'm wondering how much this changes later on.

Wonder Woman

    I’ve never read a single Wonder Woman comic.  That said, I had no expectations going in.  I knew she had super strength, a lasso, and some bullet-deflecting bracelets.
    This is TERRIBLE TV.
    There are technical issues, and I actually liked seeing those.  The fight sequence at the end doesn’t have all of the effects work done on the lasso, and most of the wirework is still visible.  I actually found that much more endearing, and I felt like that made me appreciate the effort much more.
    Where the episode fails is in making a hero.  Let’s start at the beginning.
    We open the episode on a kid getting an acceptance letter from a college.  He and his family are happy.  Then the kid’s eyes start bleeding.  They call an ambulance.
    Then we go to a city.  Wonder Woman is chasing some guy through the streets.  We hear police reports that suggest that the guy is running at superhuman speeds.  Wonder Woman catches him.  While he’s on the ground, she injects him with something.  Police show up, ask that she hand him over.  She sneers, and complains that if she hands him over, he’ll just lawyer up.  She reluctantly hands him over, pushing the guy across the ground to the police.

    So our introduction to the character indicates that she doesn’t believe in the justice system, she believes in administering justice on her own, and that she’s unfriendly.  (At least, that’s what the sneer communicated to me.)

    Over the course of the story, Wonder Woman goes to a hospital to question the guy that she caught at the beginning of the episode.  She TORTURES HIM.  She actually causes pain for a guy who is already incapacitated in the hospital.  Afterwards, a cop reiterates that she JUST TORTURED INFORMATION OUT OF THE GUY.  Wonder Woman doesn’t see anything wrong with this.
    At the end of the episode, there’s the big finish battle.  She defeats a bunch of musclebound goons.  The action is okay, but not anything too special.  Toward the end of the fight, she reaches a hallway.  She fights one goon as a security guard is firing shots at her.  She deflects bullets with her bracelets.  She defeats the goon, then throws a metal pipe at the security guard… IMPALING HIM AGAINST THE DOOR BEHIND HIM… THROUGH THE NECK!
    She actually throws the metal pipe through his neck!

    There are lesser problems.  There’s an effort made to put a feminist edge on the character, which makes sense.  She spends some time during a meeting complaining about how busty they made an action figure of her.  She acknowledges that she is well-endowed, but complains about it regardless.
    This would be okay… except that there are two issues.  First, her subordinate points out that she approved the design.  She denies this.  This is sloppy writing.  It’s a he-said she-said argument, but I’m inclined to believe that she would have approved the design before it went into production.  It’s her company.  The other problem is that they establish earlier in the episode that Wonder Woman exists to be merchandised.  She funds her crime fighting through her merchandising.  Come on.

    These are complaints I have about male heroes as well.  I don’t think a show that focused on Rorschach could work, since he’s too brutal, and I can’t agree with his actions.

Orange is the New Black... I'm sorry, it's just not as good as everyone says

     If you read my writing, you know that I'm not a confrontational writer.  When I say I don't like something, I hedge my writing carefully, and hopefully I don't make anyone who disagrees with me angry.

      But I have some real problems with Orange is the New Black.  I think I just finished the 11th episode of the first season.  My wife likes the show more than I do, and has gotten sucked into the cliffhanger aspects of the stories.  I probably could have quit after one episode.

      I've got lots of problems with the show, but probably because it has the potential to be very good.  There are some great elements to the stories.  The writing sparkles.  It's a tour-de-force.

1.  The show is overwritten.  Most of the characters are just way too witty.  I have this problem with a lot of TV and movies, but mostly with modern ones.  Wit is a tricky thing.  I find it really annoying when everything being said is one clever remark after another.  Most people are not that clever, and it seems unbelievable to have characters like that.  There are exceptions to this rule.  (I watched The Big Lebowski last night, and that's an example of how to do it right - by creating a heightened reality, it allows all of the characters to be fantastic.)

2.  The characters are inconsistent.  This has been a weird issue for me, but the writers seem to think they're writing multifaceted characters, when they actually are just adjusting the personalities to fit.  The primary example of this has been Crazy Eyes, who started off as a creepy stalker, adjusted to be a literary and well-in-control inmate, to having a nice moment with Chapman during this last episode.

3.  While I can't speak to how these people would be on the outside, or even to the specific pressures of being inside, I have a hard time believing that people would behave in certain ways.  Starting with the first couple episodes, Red starving Chapman for "insulting" her food.  The authorities know, but choose not to interfere.  There's a big difference between Red penalizing Chapman by forcing her to skip one meal, and refusing to feed her for several meals.  This is something that the institution would take issue with.

4.  I'm not a doctor, obviously, but I believe that the death of an inmate from an overdose compared to the body from a suicide by hanging would result in different corpses.  The show covered this up pretty well, but it still made some annoyed groans from me.

5.  Chapman, as a protagonist, is really not a likable character.  It's not her fluid sexuality, either.  It's that she spends so much time in the series talking about how these people aren't bad, how it's just a matter of a bad choice catching up, etc.  Then she proceeds to make bad choice after bad choice.  Her making the decision to go back to Alex is just bizarre.  She seems to do it out of a desire to get even with Healy for putting her in SHU.  And I can just imagine that once she gets out of prison, she would realize that it was a terrible decision, then she'd defend that bad choice by saying something like "you weren't there!"

Some thoughts on Game of Thrones

Back when the show started airing, I watched just about all of the first season.  I found it mildly enjoyable, but the quality seemed to vary.  Some of the stories were interesting, others were dull, some were confusing.

I decided that I really had to watch the show with subtitles.

So I finally got around to that.  I've watched the first two seasons with subtitles, and I'm a little past halfway on the third season.

First, the story is indulgent.  I had this feeling during the later stretches of Battlestar Galactica as well.  The story is just a juggling act.  A lot of the characters are introduced only for the sake of having people to kill off.  The truly important characters are shuffled around, and won't get killed off until there's an appropriate moment.

Second, the overall story feels predictable to me.  During the first couple episodes, as the general story was taking shape, I realized that the eventual king was obvious.  There are two stories taking place further away from all of the backstabbing and other political and military developments.  Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen.  Both of these have longer term stories that don't directly intersect with the other stories.  This means that they are effectively safe - they have an opportunity to develop, consolidate their power, and eventually take over.

Personally, I only noticed Snow fitting in this role.  I hadn't considered that Daenerys would also "win" until my wife mentioned that it was her theory.

This isn't a spoiler; it's only an observation, based on the structure that has been used.

There's some fun to be had, but I find that most of the characters are a little flat.  Littlefinger always lies about everything.  Joffery is a petulant little evil bastard.  And so forth.
Tyrion is enjoyable, partly because of the performance, but also because he seems to be one of the most engaged, moral characters.  He tries to keep things from falling apart, and he avoids hurting people he doesn't have to.

I'm surprised that the show has been that successful.  I usually feel like there's a risk when a show doesn't lend itself to rewatching episodes.  Maybe there'd be a certain reward to rewatching the whole series after it's over, but in the meantime... I don't see why anyone would want to revisit any particular episode.

Pinkie Pie is getting annoying.

Over the first two seasons of My Little Pony, I really liked Pinkie Pie.
At some point, I realized that her enthusiasm actually reminded me of someone that I didn't particularly like.
There are people who throw so much enthusiasm into any relationship they have, and at first, it feels great.  You feel like you've met someone who is really interested in you.  Then you find out that they put this much - or more - enthusiasm into every person they meet.
At that point, I lose all interest in talking to them.  If you can't tell how much they actually like the person they talk to, they're effectively lying.

Anyway, I was able to look past this problem with Pinkie Pie.
During the third season, I felt a little more on-the-fence about her actions.  I liked Too Many Pinkie Pies.

But during this fourth season... I really don't like her much anymore.  She's moved from being excitable and helpful to mostly just being a straight-up annoyance.  Her excitement isn't appropriate or harmless now, it actually seems like it would be a real pain to deal with.  The majority of her lines are difficult to understand, because she screams them.

She moved from being a flawed character to being a flaw.


I also feel that Rainbow Dash has gotten more two-dimensional.  We get her throwing the word "awesome" around.  It's a shame, since I really liked her Wonderbolts Academy episode.

The music has been a really mixed blessing.  The third season had some songs I liked.  The fourth season seemed like more of an effort to make the show sound a little more Disney.  The first two seasons still had much stronger music.

Big Bang Theory... I love and hate you.

I've watched almost every episode of Big Bang Theory.  I think I may have missed one or two, but it's not the kind of show where missing an episode makes a big difference.

There are lots of complaints out there about the pseudo-nerd culture they exhibit.

I agree with this.  I like seeing reference to cultural touchstones that I already enjoy - although I think the show has had a strange fascination with DC characters.

The problem with this is that there isn't much substance to these points.  They're fleeting, and they're often used as an excuse to give Penny an opportunity to make fun of the others for being interested in these things.

I'm okay with that.  I don't like it that much, but I can deal with it.

This last episode bothered me a little more.
The problem was that no one was nice to anyone else.  The best it got was the passive response of Leonard.  Everyone expressed contempt for one another, which hurts my feelings for the show.

I know there's a lot of thought about Seinfeld being a bunch of terrible people in the city.  Except they're not.  They don't hate each other.  Their humor is rarely ever based on the personal attacks that come with Big Bang Theory.

Honestly, I can't tell why I watch Big Bang Theory.  Maybe once an episode or so, there will be a moment or two that I like, but in the meantime, it seems mean-spirited.

Portlandia

I remember hearing a segment on NPR about Portlandia back when it first started.  It sounded interesting, but it seemed more like something that I would have a hard time appreciating.
     I've started watching the show on Netflix.  I'm about halfway through the second season.

     I really like it.  It's a fascinating sense of humor.

     What stands out to me is how peculiar the format is.  It would be easy to just describe it as a sketch comedy show, but it's a bit bigger than that.  There are a wide number of recurring characters.  But it isn't just about developing characters over a period of episodes.  It's the universe that the show inhabits.
     I find myself compelled to Portlandia.  There's a greater sense of personality to everything in the show.  We get a feel for neighborhoods, coffee shops, skate parks, businesses.  Everything feels like it fits together.

     Partly because of this show, I think I would enjoy living in Portland.  Plus, I really love having overcast weather.