Category Archives: HBO Max

Creature Commandos S2 E4

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“Chasing Squirrels”

The fourth episode of Creature Commandos on MAX is uneven and I’m not sure how I feel about it. The mixture of the silly comedy and horrible tragedy felt at odds with each other and I am not sure how I feel about it.

The section about Weasel’s backstory was tragic and sad. Seeing eight children being killed in a fire is something that you do not expect to see in an animation. I did think that this backstory really presented us with the story that humanized the Weasel character.

I’m not sure how I felt about the Frankenstein part of this episode. The comedy surrounding Frankenstein did not hit well for me. The whole Frankenstein-Rick Flagg interaction did not work for me either.

Perhaps the dichotomy of the two storylines was what didn’t work for me. I did find the Weasel part of the story to be very compelling, but the humor of Frankenstein felt like it took away from the overall story. I am not someone who believes that you can’t have humor in a tragic story, but this felt too over the top for me.

Still love The Bride though. She is great. I have a much more positive feeling toward Weasel.

Creature Commandos S1 E3

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“Cheers to the Tin Man”

The third episode of Creature Commandos focused on G.I. Robot, taking us back to World War II where he was programed to kill Nazis and fought beside Sgt. Rock.

We also saw the acts of fate that led G.I. Robot to wind up with Task Force M. Sean Gunn voiced G.I. Robot and he does a great job giving the single-minded robot some serious complexities.

Complexities and just a whole bunch of violence. Blood splattering violence.

Circe looked really tough for a bit… and then got brought down hard… I mean HARD…by Weasel and Doctor Phosphorus. So hard that Rick Flagg even grimaced, leading The Bride to say, “You wanted monsters, you got monsters.”

Oooft

The animation is great and I love the voice cast. I just hope it does not just become a big violent excuse to smear blood all over the place. I need more than just that. I already have Invincible for that.

Creature Commandos

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“The Collywobbles”

“The Tourmaline Necklace”

The DCU is officially underway!

James Gunn’s DCU kicked off with an animated series on MAX based on one of the strangest properties in the DC Comics, The Creature Commandos.

That is a bizarre choice to kick off the DC Studios, aka the DCU. Still, DC animation has always been a strength and perhaps this will play into that well.

These two episodes, which both dropped on MAX were fine. They may not have been as awesome as I thought it could have been, but with a bunch of basically unfamiliar characters, the show was entertaining.

I think my favorite character so far is The Bride, and so I did think more of episode two, which looked at her history and her back story with Frankenstein (voiced by David Harbour). Of course, the backstory does twist the Bride of Frankenstein movie around a bit and it does take some chances with the story.

The feel of this was more like Invincible than it was any of the other DC animated projects. That may be about the blood, violence and sex (this is not a show for the kids). I thought that Invincible became too needy with the blood and went over the top with it. X-Men ’97 had some blood too, but I thought that was a much better use of it than Invincible. I may not have too many people agree with me, but I felt as if the blood in Invincible goes too far. Creature Commandos is not too bad, but feels as if it would be more like Invincible with blood.

Of course, at some point, G.I. Robot must kill some Nazis.

It did have a definite Suicide Squad feel to it, but I do think this has a lot of potential. The episodes were short, but packed quite a bit into them. I think the show has room to grow and I do believe that James Gunn is going to bring the goods.

The Penguin S1 E8

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“A Great or Little Thing”

What a gut punch.

The Penguin has been a spectacular crime show from the beginning. It has never felt like a comic book show to me, despite being set in Gotham with The Penguin as the protagonist.

Francis was going to have Oz killed because she knew what he had done to his brothers. The whole scene at the jazz club with Francis and Oz and Sofia was crushing. Deirdre O’Connell was sensational as the grieving mother unleashing an inner hatred she had pushed down for years.

The whole final showdown between Oz and Sofia was awesome, and it was very satisfying seeing Sofia returned to Arkham.

The hardest scene for me was watching Oz strangle Victor to death because Oz believed that having someone close to him would be weakness. The darkness inside Oz has truly transformed him into a monster, a true Batman villain, which is why the Bat-signal at the end was so appropriate. Shocking end for someone who had been so loyal to Oz.

This is my final time that I can say that Colin Farrell is absolutely amazing in this role. I can hardly believe that he is actually this character. It looks nothing like him. It is a tremendous performance that really is more than just the makeup.

Colin Farrell and Deirdre O’Connell deserves Emmy Awards and so does Cristin Milioti. Seriously brilliance among the cast.

The Penguin S1 E7

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“Top Hat”

The penultimate episode of The Penguin gave us some holy crap moments once again.

Flashback to when Oz was young, before his brothers died. We see what happened to them. Unbelievably, Oz locked them in a tunnel as the rain was coming in, and they drown. Oz does not actually murder them, but he does leave them to die, and all because he was jealous of the attention that his mother gave to them.

Sofia has taken Oz’s mother captive. His mother is as brutally vicious with her words as ever, although her oncoming dementia messes things up as well. Sofia feels sympathy for the woman, you can see, but her desire for revenge on Oz may be winning out.

Maroni arrives to kill Oz, but Oz and his crew stage a rebellion. Maroni ends up dying of a heart attack, making Oz mad that he couldn’t be the one to kill him. Oz plugs the dead body with several bullets after.

Sofia sends a bomb into the meeting with Oz. Oz thought it was his mother dead in the back of the car and uncovers the bomb. He takes off and climbs down the same tunnel where his brothers had drown. Oz left everyone who had his back to fend for themselves as the car exploded. Above all else, Oz is out to survive, screw anyone else.

Except for his mother, of course. I can’t see his mother making it through next week’s finale, but stranger things have happened, I guess. We are gearing up for the big Oz vs. Sofia showdown in next week’s finale. The Penguin has been exceptional crime TV so far.

The Penguin S1 E6

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“Gold Summit”

The Penguin has been a top notch crime show since it debuted last month on Max. Episode six continued that trend of solid work.

Colin Farrell is doing some of his best work of his career as Oz Cobb, the lowlife manipulator who is behind so much of the problems on the Gotham streets. He is pushing his new drug Bliss, even after people who were selling it wound up being killed.

The vengeance of Sofia Gigante is in full effect. The scenes of Sofia with Penguin’s girlfriend Eve Karlo were tense and you never know what was going to be the result of the face off. I really thought that Eve was not going to make it out of the scene alive.

Oz’s monologue to all of the other criminals at the end of the episode was also very suspenseful. It was obvious that Oz is someone who can talk people into doing things, even if it may be BS.

Victor had a tough episode as he killed Squid, who was trying to strong arm him into getting him in with the drug trade. You could see how the effects of his choices were weighing on Victor.

This may not have been as great as the previous few episodes, but it was still very entertaining.

The Penguin S1 E4, E5

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“Cent’anni”

“Homecoming”

Episode four was my favorite episode of the series so far. We saw the backstory of Sofia, how she was taken to Arkham and the horrors that were unleashed on her there.

Legit, some of the scene at Arkham were horrendous… electric shock treatments… to someone who was innocent of the charge of being “The Hangman.” Sent there by her very own father’s manipulations. Her whole family, except her brother, turned on her, keeping her in the asylum for ten years.

It really made Sofia relatable… someone the audience could root for… before she went totally crazy. Sofia gassed her entire family (except the one little girl). She tortured Johnny Viti. When he swore to help her, she brought him to a meeting and promptly shot him in the head when he tried to disagree with her.

Sofia then told the members of the meeting that she was setting up a new family. That the Falcone family was dead and that she was taking the name Gigante. She found Salvatore Maroni, who escaped from prison after one of Oz’s men tried to assassinate him. She formed an alliance with him with the intention of killing Oz and running the new family in the right way.

Cristin Milioti is absolutely brilliant. She had so many scenes that illuminated the power of her performance as she was developing into a massive villain right before our eyes… and one that we were cheering for.

Victor was assigned to protect Oz’s mother Francis. Oz was worried because he was not having quite the successes that he was hoping for, and he sent Victor to protect his mother. Deirdre O’Connell is great in this episode as Penguin’s mother. She has some great scenes with Victor and a tour de force scene with Oz later in the episode. The performance of a woman slowly succumbing to dementia is truly powerful and sad at the same time.

The Penguin’s disposal of Nadia and her son in a blaze of flame was shocking and showed how horrible Oz was too. He may be the protagonist, but he is not a hero.

The Penguin S1 E3

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“Bliss”

I have been behind on The Penguin’s latest episode because of the Dodgers-Padres series, which has been must see for me. Sunday night’s next episode of The Penguin will also have to be viewed at a different time because the Dodgers start the NLCS vs. the Mets.

It is nice to have HBO Max so that I can catch up on The Penguin whenever my schedule allows it. Because this is an excellent series.

This episode gave us more details and background with Victor as he questioned whether or not he should be sticking with Oz. “Bliss” does a great job with relationships, specifically with Oz-Victor, Victor and his father, and Oz-Sofia. All the while, Oz and Sofia are showing off the new designer drug they are ready to be pushing- Bliss. Apparently, Sofia Falcone let us know that this is a drug that they had used at Arkham, which makes me wonder if that is tied to one of the known Batman baddies from there.

Again, this does not feel like a comic book movie. This is a crime story featuring a character that is known to comic fans as one of Batman’s rogue gallery. As I say every week, the performance of Colin Farrell as Oz is breath-taking. It goes far beyond just the physical transformation he undergoes. His pain from Victor’s desire to depart wounded Oz to the core. Farrell played that out brilliantly.

Victor’s choice at the end leaves little to no wiggle room (no pun intended). It is sad for the young kid.

The Penguin is excellent and we will see where this goes next.

The Penguin S1 E2

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“Inside Man”

Boy, Oz is just a big time manipulator. He thinks on his feet better than anyone. He is so close to being revealed, but he just talks someone out of it by making them believe something else.

I am sure that I will never do one of these reviews without commenting on the unbelievable make up job Colin Farrell has. There is just no way that you could identify him as the actor playing Penguin if you did not already know. It is astounding.

I thought that Victor might actually be done when Penguin had him in the grave in the ground with the other two bodies. Penguin was teaching him a lesson, but was it just simply a cruelness in Oz?

This show looks great and it is a dramatic and tension-filled crime story of a manipulator who has goals beyond what some believe is possible.

Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) is fabulous and borderline crazy. Okay, maybe not borderline.

I thought this was coming out on Thursdays, but, instead, it is out on Sunday nights. That works well for me. The Penguin is on HBO Max.

The Penguin S1 E1

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“After Hours”

The new crime series on HBO Max is a spin-off from The Batman with one of the most amazing transformations in TV history.

There is no way that Colin Farrell is playing this character. But he does it. It is truly unbelievable.

Oswald Cobblepot is aka as Penguin. He starts off the episode by shooting and killing Alberto Falcone, who was going to take over the business from his dead father Carmine. And when Oz killed him, he had to spend much of the episode trying to survive and avoid being revealed as the killer.

Sofia Falcone arrived to cause trouble as well.

I liked this show. It would not be considered a comic book show, even though Penguin is a Batman villain. This show will be fascinating to see without the Batman.

The Jinx Part Two S2 E6

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Season finale

“It Takes a Village”

After Bob Durst was convicted in California, but before he could appeal, Bob Durst died.

It seemed as if Bob Durst was still evading justice, right up to the end.

Because he died before he could appeal, the conviction would be negated. It is a California law.

This led to Kathie’s family, The McCormacks, deciding to sue Bob’s estate for wrongful death. So we get to hear more from Debrah, Bob’s wife.

We also hear from Bob’s siblings, and they were some kind of rotten. I just found them to be such a group of monsters, to varying degrees.

There was no final, surprising confession at the end of season two as there was in season one. Instead, they make it appear that Debrah really won in the long run. She has fought the McCormacks the entire time, and still is doing so. With some legal machinations with a trust, most of Bob’s money is salted away. Debrah refused interviews. She said that everything was worth it.

And the Durst family had never once offered any help or assistance to the McCormacks.

Sounds as if Bob wasn’t the only horrific person in this story. Perhaps he is the sole murderer.

These two seasons of The Jinx is one of my all-time favorite documentary series that I have watched. Andrew Jarecki does a tremendous job of both of these seasons.

The Jinx Part Two s2 E5

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“Mostly the Truth”

It’s Bob’s turn to testify.

He had to testify because they had stipulated the fact that Bob had written the cadaver note and Bob had to explain that for the jury. Because he had to explain that fact that he wound up admitted to, Bob was able to be cross-examined by the prosecutor John Lewin.

Lewin planned on showing the jury that Bob was a liar… perhaps even pathological. Lewin picked his testimony apart. Bob had told a story of how he would play Uno and throw the frisbee with his mom, brother and father. Lewin pointed out that Uno was created in 1971 and frisbees were created in 1958 and Bob’s mom died in 1950. This showed clearly that those ‘memories’ were not true.

Nine days of cross-examination. Whoa.

Lewin got Bob to admit that he had lied about some things during his testimony and that if he had killed Susan, he would lie about it.

Those words are shocking.

The trial started really strong for Bob and it took a major downswing.

When they played the “Killed them all, of course” clip from the first Jinx show, it was an amazing moment. Bob said that he had said that he muttered the words “They will all think that I” ahead of those five words. However, they did not let that stand.

Another amazing moment was when Bob, who was saying things that he would lie about, said that he would lie about where Kathie was buried. The prosecutor jumped on that phrasing immediately and it sounded terrible.

The verdict came in: Guilty. Durst was not there at the time because he had been exposed to Covid.

Shockingly, since Bob was not there, someone had to tell him that he had been convicted. But none of his own lawyers did it. They left town imediately.

It was Bob’s current wife, Debbie’s lawyer who told him.

And that feels like the next piece of the story.

The Jinx Part Two S2 E4

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“The Unluckiest Man in the World”

The trial had been going Bob Durst’s way at first.

Then came Emily Altman.

Emily and her husband Stewart were long time friends with Bob. When the prosecution put Emily on the witness stand, they were able to get her to place Bob in Los Angeles at the time of the murder of Susan Berman. That was something that had never happened before.

Because of that, Bob admitted to writing the “Cadaver note.”

I’m not kidding.

This is absolutely nuts.

Bob had sent years denying that he wrote that note, the one sent to the police alerting them to the death of Susan. The one with the misspelling of “Beverly” with an “E”. Now, he has changed his story and claimed that he had walked in and found the body and sent the anonymous note to police to avoid his own suspicion.

This changed the entire feel of the trial.

Emily had not intended on making thing bad for Bob. In fact, the show speculated that she may have thought she was trying to help him.

This episode ended with the shocking reveal that Bob had decided to testify on his own behalf. We get that next episode. Can’t wait!

Boy did this one take a turn. I love how the producers of the mini-series used Bob’s correspondence with friends and others to score the program. Bob’s voice was the key to the first season, and this second season uses his voice just as well. When Bob said that Emily was so stupid, it was an amazing moment.

The Jinx Part Two S2 E3

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“Saving My Tears Until It’s Official”

The third episode of the next season of The Jinx tonight has a focus in on the trial of Bob Durst for the murder of Susan Berman.

The show gave us specific moments from the actual trial in Los Angeles. We heard from several of the witnesses as well as Bob’s reactions on the phone with his wife Debbie. There are a bunch of talking head interviews through the episode with other people from Susan’s life.

Bob Durst was wheeled into the courtroom, with a neck brace. Was this for optics? Was Bob truly in such a bad shape.

During the trial, they came across a tape recording of a conversation between Susan and a reporter named Albert Goldman. It was very creepy how Susan would ask Albert about things that could have happened to Bob’s wife Kathie. Susan was trying to come up with the most reasonable answer to what happened to Kathie so she could distract the media to what could have happened.

The prosecutor did not use that tape because it made Susan to be unlikable and they did not want the jury to think the victim was a bad person.

Nick Chavin, one of Bob’s friends and a friend of Susan, was a surprise, mystery witness in the trial. It did not seem to go very well.

The first part of this trial also does not seem to be going very well. At least, from what we have seen at this point.

The Jinx Part Two S2 E1, E2

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“Why are You Still Here?”

“Friendships Die Hard”

I never expected that there would be more for The Jinx. I loved that docuseries when it originally aired on HBO, but it felt like it was one and done. When I discovered that there was a part two that had already started, I was excited to see this story continue. I rewatched the first season of The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst in preparation. With that done (and still as shockingly engaging as it was the first time), I was able to watch the first two episodes of the second season.

While there has not been anything quite as shocking as “killed them all, of course” to this point, the story of Bob Durst continues to be riveting, to the point of being spellbinding.

One of the early highlights of episode one of season two was the scene where Kathie’s family, the prosecutors and investigators and others viewed the streaming of the final episode of The Jinx at Andrew Jarecki’s home. Their reactions to some of the other scenes were fascinating, but the moment where Bob gives his accidental bathroom confession was surreal. The gasps and the stunned silence gave way to a buzz through the room of excitement and anticipatory expectations. There was a palatable relief for so many of these people.

The first episode included the fallout from the airing of The Jinx, including Bob’s decision to go on the run after the fifth episode. Bob is both one step ahead of everyone and foolishly naive at the same time. Bob’s biggest problem seems to be his desire to talk to anyone about anything. Doing the interview with Jarecki in the first season felt like a self-destructive decision, but that did not stop Bob. Why does he make that choice? We hear Bob admit in season two that doing the Jarecki interview was a huge mistake.

The second episode focused on Bob’s friends and confidants that Bob may have confessed to or those people who may have helped him at some point during this adventure. In particular, was Nick “Chinga” Chavin, who was about as close to Bob as you could get. The thing was that he was also very close with Susan Berman, and that loyalty was a theme of this episode. Chavin’s belief in becoming famous as a singer in a “country porn” band with songs such as “Cum Stains on My Pillow (Where Your Sweet Head Used to Be)” continues to be an unbelievable feature of this overall story.

Another shocking person here is Susie Giordano, who we see Bob state that he wished he had married. She and Bob are apparently in love, to the chagrin of Bob’s wife, Debbie. You can’t make this stuff up. No one would believe it.

I love these first tow episodes, even if it does not really provide us any further specifics of the case that we need to know. It is all setting up what is to come with the Bob Durst trial, I can only assume.

I have caught up to where the season is currently for releases. Each new episodes (the four remaining) will be arriving on Max on Sundays and I will be anxious to see the next installment.