Regarding Daredevil, I didn't end up hate watching it but I felt the show could have made much better use of the enormous resources it had at its command. Ultimately, I think nowadays that shows which incorporate inherent violence tend to overcompensate for that violence by going way too far out of their way to prove that there's "No pandering here!!!". Hopefully the franchise will see themself as inoculated and allow The Punisher series to have creative freedom. The all too brief appearance by the character was promising, and provided the same jolt that his first appearance in the earlier series did.
Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld - Six short 15 min episodes that contains two arcs about two side characters from the other animated shows. Glad they got something out of the way from the get go about one of the characters at the beginning of the first episode.
Regarding Daredevil, I didn't end up hate watching it but I felt the show could have made much better use of the enormous resources it had at its command. Ultimately, I think nowadays that shows which incorporate inherent violence tend to overcompensate for that violence by going way too far out of their way to prove that there's "No pandering here!!!". Hopefully the franchise will see themself as inoculated and allow The Punisher series to have creative freedom. The all too brief appearance by the character was promising, and provided the same jolt that his first appearance in the earlier series did.
I feel like it was a pretty decent reintroduction for bringing it all back. Little over-top on the violence, little trope-ish... but considering what they where originally planning(SheHulk style)... not a bad pivot and I hope the next season brings it back into its own.
I finished the new season of Black Mirror. It's a show that's tougher to review since each episode is completely different. Overall, probably an average season. Not too many standout episodes.
I think Episode 1 was the standout. Episode 3 was the weak link.
Episode 1 “Common People” was the most memorable for me. I feel like it’s the one you could easily recommend to someone who hasn’t seen the series yet. The idea was good. The story worked. It had a really bleak ending.
Episode 2 “Béte Noire” as others have said started out well, but the end was bad. Not enough to ruin it, since it was basically the last 5 minutes. Overall enjoyable, but probably a forgettable episode.
Episode 3 “Hotel Reverie” was weak. Way too long for what it was, and a bit unfocused. I thought Issa Rae’s acting was bad. I think at some level it was sort of supposed to be (like when she plays piano), but other times there was a big disconnect between
the classic movie style acting of the old movie, and what the character Brandy was doing. The movie they were making would have been truly terrible
. It also felt like the tech that was central to the episode was designed to serve the various plot points instead of developing a plot around the tech (
For example, the idea that the classic film’s actress retained her own personality instead of just the movie character, and the idea that she’d die if she was taken out.
). And the episode was too unfocused. There’s the tech part and the crisis it creates, at the start of the episode, then you get this love story in the middle, and then it feels like the love story mostly stops as we get to the crisis again to resolve the story. That’s not to say the episode was terrible or not worth watching. But it was easily the worst of the bunch.
Episode 4 “Playthings” was fine. But, I almost completely forgot about it when I was thinking about the episodes. It was pretty predictable and not very original. I think that’s what makes it forgettable.
Once you know the premise, it was obvious that he wanted to use the government computers as soon as he mentioned how powerful they were.
Episode 5 “Eulogy” was probably the second strongest one for me.
Episode 6 “USS Callister - Into Infinite” was decent. I really wasn’t all that excited about revisiting this story. I vaguely remember the original and didn’t think it was a particularly great episode. But, I think it did manage to get you to at least care about the fate of the characters. While I don’t think the tech part of it was particularly strong, I was still drawn into the storyline.
Common People and Eulogy were the best of the batch.
The former
about "enshitification of existance" is bleak, but can totally see it happening. Maybe not on the timescales laid out in the story, but seems almost impssible to avoid given the technology and the people that run these things.
The last
about using technology in a positive way to help us remember and deal with things was a pretty brilliant performance. Paul Giamatti rarely gives bad ones and this wasn't.
I enjoyed Bete Noir though.
Playthings is a throwback to the Netflix interactive film Bandersnatch.
