Author Archives: Doc

Moonlighting S2 E1

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“Brother Can You Spare a Blonde”

The second season of Moonlighting kicked off with David and Maddie sitting on her desk and addressing the viewers. This was a technique they used several times over the years. Breaking the fourth wall was a common occurrence on Moonlighting, and their joke was that the episode was too short so they needed to fill time. That actually may not have been just a joke, knowing how some of the backstage issues caused problems for this show.

This episode was the first of the family members to be introduced of our two lead stars. In this case, Charles Rocket guest starred as a David’s huckster brother Richard, who had found a briefcase full of $100,000 and came to run David’s nose in it.

Of course, more than that happened as the actual owners of the money came looking for Richard and found David instead.

The jealousy between David and Richard was clear and when Richard took a shining to Maddie, well, it made David all the more crazed.

The story of the money is way down the importance of this episode. The story itself was underdeveloped. The most important part was how David and Richard’s relationship was and how that affected David’s relationship with Maddie.

This was never my most favorite episode of the series and I was never much of a fan of Richard Addison.

Picket Fences S1 E1

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“Pilot”

It is strange how things work out.

I am starting a DailyView through the month of November, re-watching one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Picket Fences. I hadn’t considered doing another re-watch at EYG for now, especially since I am doing Moonlighting, The X-Files, and American Horror Story already. However, when I discovered that I could see the entire series of Picket Fences on Hulu, well, that changed my mind.

I was watching The X-Files episode called “Eve” when I thought that it was the episode that was intended to be the X-Files/Picket Fences crossover. I did my research and realized that it was not that episode, which was among the X-Files’ second season.

I own season one of Picket Fences on DVD, but I have not seen the rest of the series since it was on TV back in the 1990s. I loved this show very much so I took a chance and Googled whether or not it was available on any streaming service. Lo and behold, I fund that it was available on Hulu, the same service where I watch Moonlighting, The X-Files and AHS.

I couldn’t believe it. This David E. Kelley show was so quirky and clever, with amazing characters and acting. I decided that, not only would I watch the series on a re-watch, I would make it a DailyView through November. I had been looking for something to do for a goal for November and this works perfectly.

The pilot episode is listed as both episode one and two on Wikipedia, but only episode one on Hulu, so I am not sure how to classify it. For now, I am considering this only episode one.

This kicked off with the murder of a man who was playing the Tin Man in a local play of The Wizard of Oz. It appeared to be a heart attack, but thanks to the overzealous medical examiner Carter Pike, an injection spot was found and it was proven that the Tin Man had died via poison.

Sheriff Jimmy Brock (Tom Skerritt) and Dr. Jill Brock (Kathy Baker) are at the center of the case as they always would be. Their relationship was the heart of the show, good or bad, fighting or happy, their love was everything.

One of my favorite television characters of all-time was everybody’s lawyer, Douglas Wambaugh, played by the irreplaceable Fyvush Finkel. Judge Henry Bone is another character that makes his debut here, played by Ray Walston.

The show featured a good chunk of twists and turns and plenty of courtroom shenanigans. It also focuses heavily on its characters’ moral dilemmas, just like this episode’s one where Jimmy used his wife’s job as a doctor to gain a confession with the use of privileged information. As many Picket Fences cases, it put a strain on the marriage as well as their jobs.

One of the standouts from the the Poltergeist movie was Zelda Rubinstein, who appeared as police dispatcher Ginny Weeden. She fit right in with the rest of the eccentric residents of Rome, Wisconsin.

I am so excited about being able to re-live this multiple Emmy winning series. Without the X-Files re-watch, I would have never gone looking for this series and I would not have found that it was readily available. Fate is amazing sometimes.

X-Files S1 E11

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“Eve”

Interestingly enough, this was another episode of The X-Files that I do not remember ever seeing before. This rewatch has really been a treat with some of these episodes that, if I have seen, I do not recall because “Eve,” the 11th episode of season one, was a taut, tense episode with some great acting and anxiety-filled moments.

As the “Monster-of-the-week” episode, “Eve” features a great acting performance from Harriet Harris, who has been a great character actor for years including work on Desperate Housewives and Marvel’s Werewolf by Night. She plays several roles as a woman who had been involved in a program where a group of men and women, ‘Adams’ and ‘Eves’ were cloned and given extra chromosomes. Unfortunately, it also created a higher level of homicidal tendencies.

The twin actors, Erika and Sabrina Krievins, played Cindy and Teena respectfully and they did a great job as these somewhat creepy children who were discovered to have been continuation of this cloning program by ‘Eve 7’ under the alias of Dr. Sally Kendrick. The girls were raised on different coasts and both of their fathers had been killed by exsanguination.

I feel that the show really took a huge step in storytelling by making these girls the ones who had killed their fathers, using their advanced intelligence to figure out how to do it. They also “just knew” that the other had existed. They also poisoned Eve 7, who had kidnapped them, as well as attempting to poison Mulder and Scully.

The Krievin twins did a great job being these cold-blooded killers. They certainly worked very well as the trope of creepy kids that we see often in horror films.

“Eve” is an excellent episode of The X-Files and I am so glad that I got a chance to see it either again or for the first time. I wonder how many episodes of season one will be like this?

Trailers from Geek Buddies

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I was watching the Geek Buddies on YouTube today, which is a podcast with John Rocha, Michael Vogel and Shannon McClung. During their weekly show, they typically talk about new trailers and so I figured I could add the trailers to this post.

Lisa Frankenstein

This looks kind of funny. It could be a fantastic film or a complete nightmare. Kathryn Newton leads the film.

Fargo Season 5

It has been awhile since I watched a season of Fargo. This trailer looks to have the oddball charm and bizarre feel of the best of this anthology series. By Nov. 21, Loki, Goosebumps will be done, maybe I’ll give this one a looksee.

Maestro Trailer 2

This is the Netflix movie, directed by Bradley Cooper, featuring the story of the relationship between icon Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.

You should definitely give The Geek Buddies a try if you have not watched it before. John, Michael and Shannon have chemistry all over the place and they are always funny. They give some excellent opinions on geek culture and are always engaging.

It Lives Inside

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I missed this horror movie when it was in the theaters, and I have not rented it on Vudu while the price was high. I found out that this movie, It Lives Inside, had dropped the price on Vudu down to a more realistic amount and so I rented it this weekend. I am certainly glad that I did not spend 19.99 to rent this one.

I found this movie to be pretty boring for much of the runtime. The third act wasn’t too bad, but, in my mind, this movie could have been more scary had they spent less time showing us this monster.

According to IMDB, “Sam (Megan Suri), an Indian-American teen, lives in an idyllic suburb with her conservative mother (Neeru Bajwa) and her assimilated father (Vik Sahay). Sam’s cultural insecurities grow due to her estranged friend, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), who mysteriously carries around an empty mason jar all the time. In a moment of anger, Sam breaks Tamira’s jar and unleashes an ancient Indian demonic force that kidnaps Tamira. Sam searches for Tamira, following the trail of a young man who performed a deadly ritual, until the demonic entity starts targeting her, murdering her boyfriend and shattering her reality with terrifying visions. Sam must band together with her parents and a sympathetic teacher (Betty Gabriel) to save Tamira and put an end to the terror of the demon.“

Megan Suri does a good job as the lead protagonist. She is an interesting actor and does not seem that she fits as the lead.

I like the idea that the monster was more specific to the culture of Indian-America, but much of the story was fairly typical. Nothing about this stands out in the horror genre.

It Lives Inside is not the worst movie of the year by far, but it is not a great one either. I’m glad I waited to see it.

2.3 stars

Five Nights at Freddy’s

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The brand new video game adaptation was released this week. It is called Five Nights at Freddy’s. I originally was planning to go to the theater to see this, but I discovered that it is also streaming day and date on Peacock so I decided to save myself some gas, make it a weekend lounging at home, and watch it on the streaming service.

I’m glad I did not drive down to the Quad Cities to watch this because it was not that enjoyable.

I have no background with the video game, but, for me, there was a better version of this released a few years ago starring Nicolas Cage that was called Willy’s Wonderland. It is not a literal adaptation, but the idea is very close.

Five Night’s at Freddy’s starred Josh Hutcherson (from Hunger Games fame) as Mike, a troubled man struggling to overcome a haunting memory from his youth and take care of his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio). As part of a way to move forward, Mike is hired by Steve raglan (Matthew Lillard) as a security guard for a closed down restaurant that had been popular in the 1980s. His job, just keep people out.

Desperate to discover the truth of his younger brother, Mike found that the animatronics from the restaurant where more than what they seemed.

Overall, the story in this movie was messy, did not have enough moments that paid off for what it as asking us to watch and included a bizarre ending that felt out of place.

Hutcherson’s character did not give us the required emotional depth for us to really connect to him. I never believed in this character’s arc and found him to be disposable. Hutcherson did not elevate this role with his performance.

The movie featured a lot of dull moments with the monstrous animatronics really being regulated in the film. There were a few fun horror moments, but nowhere near as creative or enjoyable as it should have been.

The film added a character named Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) who was absolutely terrible and the film utterly wasted Mary Stuart Masterson in a throwaway ‘evil aunt’ character that was completely unnecessary and one-dimensional.

I have seen comments on how this could be used to introduce kids to horror. To that I would say that there are considerably smarter movies and TV shows that would do that better than this.

I was disappointed at Five Night’s at Freddy’s as I hoped that this would be more than what it was. Watch Willy’s Wonderland instead.

2.4 stars

Goosebumps S1 E7

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“Phantom of the Auditorium”

The next episode of Goosebumps arrived on Disney + this Friday and it is a major moment. I will say that there were parts of this episode that I found to be sillier than we have had before, but I did still enjoy watching it.

In this episode, we find out where Mr. Bratt has been. He shows up to the kids who have been trapped in the house. They had just found out that Bratt had been possessed by Harold and now they were meeting the ‘real’ Bratt.

The episode was spent with the kids trying to find a way out of the house and several of the moments felt too comedic at time. The fact that Bratt was able to retake his original body when he was feeling pain and the kids kept punching him to make him switch. It felt a little odd to me.

I did enjoy Nora’s standing up for herself and getting out of the asylum. The parents story was more interesting to me in this episode than the kids.

Gen V S1 E7

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“Sick”

Episode 7 of Gen V made some massive shifts in the story that I did not see coming.

We found out last week that Dean Indira Shetty had been ordering Doctor Edison Cardosa of the Woods to create this virus that kills supes and she wanted it to be contagious. They revealed this episode (or at I think it was this episode. I don’t remember this before..) that Shetty’s husband and daughter in the plane crash that Homelander caused.

However, the virus storyline took a twist when Cate got involved. The show made us think that Shetty was manipulating Cate once again, but when the others arrived at Shetty’s house, she forced Shetty to tell the truth and then slit her own throat. Cate prevented Marie from saving her.

Earlier, Marie had gone to see Victoria Neuman, making a cameo from The Boys, and she revealed everything about the virus. Neuman told Marie that she would handle it. That meant that she contacted Cardosa, had him bring the virus, and then exploded his head as she did to many others on The Boys.

I do not know if that virus storyline will be picked up again in The Boys since Victoria left with it, but it feels as if it is over on Gen V.

This is the penultimate episode of the season with next week’s finale coming. But with the virus seemingly done, Shetty dead… what is left? Is it a showdown with Cate? Maybe it is the increasingly agitated Sam, who is started to embrace the philosophy of Homelander.

This has been a solid first season and a great addition to the universe of The Boys.

Loki S2 E4

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“Heart of the TVA”

Holy F-ing crap!

Episode 4 of Loki is one of the best episodes of Marvel TV ever.

This was so beautifully created and laid out. The fact that there were several examples of ouroboros as OB and Victor Timely geek out over each other and we see whom pruned Loki from episode 1.

And those were the minor parts.

I was literally shouting at the screen several times. I felt like a YouTube reactor as I watched the show. I usually do not do that, but I was fully engaged in this story.

One moment that shocked me was the arrival of Renslayer and Miss Minutes in the cell with Dox and her team, who had been imprisoned at the TVA, and they got crushed in the box that we saw Brad in earlier in the season. I was literally yelling, “no, no, no.”

Then ending of this episode with Victor trying to head out to fix the Loom and he got spaghettified… absolutely shocking. Never thought it.

The scene with Loki and Sylvie in “Pie Land” is brilliantly written. “Hope is Hard.”

There were so many shots that were so beautiful. The direction of this episode was just spectacular. It was the same director from episode one, and he did an amazing job.

I had a empty feeling in my gut at the end of this episode. I was speechless and breathless.

I loved this episode and I love this series…so much.

Apostle (2018)

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The October 13 of 13

So The October 13, the watch of thirteen horror/Halloween/thriller movies that I had not written a review for on the site, comes to an end with the final listed film, the Netflix film called Apostle starring Dan Stevens.

According to IMDB, “The year is 1905. Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens) travels to a remote island to rescue his sister after she’s kidnapped by a mysterious religious cult demanding a ransom for her safe return. It soon becomes clear that the cult will regret the day it baited this man, as he digs deeper and deeper into the secrets and lies upon which the commune is built“

The first feeling, vibe, I got from this film was that it reminded me of The Wicker Man. This turned even more brutal and certainly avoided the hammy clichés of the Nicolas Cage’s movie.

This started really slow. In fact, almost an hour in, I was not finding much to enjoy in Apostle. Dan Stevens is always solid and his performance was basically what was keeping me with the film.

When things picked up, there was some horrific scenes involving a father and his daughter that were shocking and disturbing. It was at this point that I found myself more invested than I had been at any point prior to this.

The third act of this film was brutal and bloody, with some horrific imagery that pushed the story into a new level. However, I am not sure that I enjoyed the resolution of this film.

This wrapped up The October 13 with a bit of a downer. Apostle had some ups, but I’m not sure there are enough ups to recommend it.

Moonlighting S1 E7

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“The Murder’s in the Mail”

I was not remembering this episode at first… and then I realized that this was the episode with the following, absolutely brilliant dialogue:

David: We’re looking for a man with a mole on his nose.

Maitre’D: Mole on his nose?

Maddie: A mole on his nose!

Maitre’D: What kind of clothes?

Maddie: (to David) What kind of clothes…?

David: (to Maitre’D) What kind of clothes do you suppose?

Maitre’D: What kind of clothes do I suppose would be worn by a man with a mole on his nose? Who knows?

David: Did I happen to mention, did I bother to disclose, this man that we’re seeking with a mole on his nose?

I’m not sure of his clothes or anything else except he’s Chinese, a big clue by itself.

Maddie: How do you do that?

David: You got to read a lot of Dr. Seuss.

Maitre’D: I’m sorry to say, I’m sad to report, I haven’t seen anyone at all of that sort.

Not a man who’s Chinese with a mole on his nose with some kind of clothes that you can’t suppose.

SO…get away from this door and get out of this place

Or I’ll have to hurt you…put my foot in your face.

David: Oh..!

Maddie: Time to go!

David: Time to go! *hasty exit*

This whole Dr. Seuss bit was so fantastic that it is one of the most iconic scene of the show. I’ve seen some bloopers of this scene that were hilarious as well.

This episode included a car chase scene with Maddie behind the wheel while David tried to give her instructions on where to turn and what to do. This was very funny and worked well.

The story was messy as always. Once again, the story is always the secondary aspect of Moonlighting, although this plot was a bit more involved than some of David and Maddie’s cases. And this was another example of David and Maddie stumbling into a case without a client. It happens quite a few times.

This was the final episode of season one of Moonlighting, which was a midseason series. It was a solid one ending with a food fight and including a Bruce Willis Three Stooges sound effect.

Bonus Action Vol.1 Episode 2

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“Pit Stop in Star-Top”

Week two of the Bonus Action Dungeons & Dragons adventure from the pReview’d crew was the shortest episode yet, but felt like the heaviest.

This was a sensational episode all based in character and backstory.

It started with some really goofy action from the crew, especially with Todd, Bric and Bar’b. And it had to do with food, of course.

However, when they were talking with one of the survivors who had gone after the MacGuffin that our new group is after, suddenly, Victor’s back story was front and center.

And it was heartbreaking. It was powerful. Adam Lash was amazing. He had been straight-faced with Victor for most of the time and we found out why. A great back story with Victor and his father brought Victor into conflict with his teammates as well as Alistair (via rock communicator).

It was tense and uncomfortable. And fantastic.

It brought some true drama into the campaign of goofiness and gave the comedy characters a chance to be more than just fun.

Congrats to Adam on the creation of a truly compelling character that doesn’t seem to fit, but he has an arc for the ages.

Totally Killer

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“Time travel! … What? I see this as an absolute win.” – Bruce Banner, Avengers: Endgame.

Time travel movies are crazy. And they all have rules that change. Back to the Future. Avengers Endgame. LOST. 12 Monkeys. Dozens more.

You can add another time travel movie to the list with the film Totally Killer, which is available on Prime. And it is a total hoot.

This was a really fun and inventive movie with a lot of humor and creativity. Does the time travel rules get broken? Oh yeah. Are there a few weird plot points that do not make sense? Sure. Did they leave a dangling plot or two? Yes. But I had an absolute blast watching it and was totally engaged all the way through.

According to IMDB, “When the infamous ‘Sweet Sixteen Killer’ returns 35 years after his first murder spree to claim another victim, 17-year-old Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) accidentally travels back in time to 1987, determined to stop the killer before he can start.“

Kiernan Shipka was great as out protagonist who was desperately running around in the past trying to use the information that she knew in order to prevent the three killings and to change the future that she left.

The film wisely alluded to several of the time travel movies, comparing what was going on to the situation they were in. Every time Jamie made an allusion to a movie, she was like the audience, who must have been thinking the same thing.

The final showdown with the killer was not the best moment of the film, but it did not detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. I have said this before, but when a film is funny, it gets extra grace when dealing with storyline. This movie was funny.

Some of the best jokes were about the 1980s and how people kept doing things that she thought, in her 2023 mindset, was just crazy or dangerous. There was a scene with the red rubber dodgeballs that I literally screamed out about. Our generation knew what it was like to be hit in the face with those red dodgeballs and get past it. That does not happen in today’s schools.

This film knows that it is silly and slight, and it plays into it big time. By doing so, they have given us a spectacularly good time in a film that is like Back to the Future combined with Scream combined with Happy Death Day. I loved this.

4.5 stars