Category Archives: TV-G[eek]

Boston Legal S1 E3, E4, E5, E6

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“Catch and Release”

“Change of Course”

“An Eye for an Eye”

“Truth Be Told”

I do love this show. It is so well written and acted.

William Shatner may be most well known forever as James T. Kirk, but his best career performances come as Denny Crane. The buffoon-like behavior hiding a deep seeded concern over his health. Arrogant and sarcastic, Shatner’s eyes revealing the truth.

James Spader brings such a complexity to Alan Shore. He is willing to do anything, even step over the lines or morality, to get things done. Many times, his motives are pure. His methods, on the other hand, are anything but. Simplicity, Tara described Alan as split into three people: the Good Alan, the bad Alan and the Naughty Alan. Though it may be too simple for this character, the description does work.

It was sad the way Alan took advantage of Sally, which seemed to be a way for Alan to get Sally to leave him. There is a deep neurosis to Alan and his relationships pay the price. Yet, he is completely loyal to former lovers and women that he respected. He is a contradiction in terms for Alan. It is why I was so happy that, at the end of episode 6, when it appeared that he was going to go and have sex with Dana Delany’s character, a woman he always had desires for, but he turned up in a motel room with Tara instead. Had Alan slept with Delany, the betrayal would have been tough to swallow, especially after he dealt with Delany’s husband’s infidelity. I don’t want Alan to be a hypocrite even if he had many otehr bad traits.

Episodes 3-6 again do not focus as closely on Alan and Denny’s relationship as they could, but there are moments. When Alan came to share their whiskey in Denny’s jail cell after he was charged with contempt of court, they exchanged a wonderful scene where Denny worried about his mental capacities. The whole possible Alzheimer’s Disease arc and how it could destroy the image and legend of “Denny Crane” follows Denny through the entire series.

Alan and Denny are together when Denny lets it slip that Donnie Crane was not his son after all, only for Donny to hear. Freddie Prinze Jr. appeared as the supposed son of Denny Crane, and his devastation in this scene made it all the better.

There are several fun moments of Fourth Wall breaking during the show. In this crop of episodes, my favorite was when Alan Shore said he wanted to be on cable because that was where all the best work was happening. Of course, Boston Legal aired on ABC.

Episode five featured one of Alan’s top line closing arguments. We have not seen too many of those yet in the season, but there will be plenty more to come. This one was just right on the nose for his case that you can tell how the case will go.

Lori is involved more the last few episodes, and they are still teasing a potential relationship between Alan and Lori. Probably one that would be highly toxic.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe S1 E4

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“Spoiler: Stuart Makes a Wallet”

Okay. Episode four is easily my favorite episode of this show so far. It is the first time that I did feel a slight tinge of embarrassment watching it.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe has Stuart in a mental institution with Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler (reprised by Mayim Bialik) as his therapist. The whole time Stuart is in the institution, he was receiving subtle hints that everything was not real.

This is a trope that has been done many times, including, just off the top of my head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but this worked really well. Stuart “put in the work” to make himself sane after finding out that he was married to Denise and they had two kids. He seemed to be living the perfect life.

However, of course the truth was different as Stuart realized when he said that he never has perfect things happen to him.

The four of them turned up in a Matrix-like situation, pulling themselves out of the goo. Yet, it was not done yet, as Stuart opened a tear in the reality and the four of them found themselves in an all-white area with their travel machine.

They ended up in a forest surrounded by a mysterious group of people.

I did enjoy this episode considerably more than any of the other episodes. It did feel like it rushed through the story. I would have liked to see more from this Matrix world, and the ending turned out to be somewhat anticlimactic. Still I really enjoyed this episode and would have liked more of it.

Oh… and I LOVED the Weird Al Yankovic cameo!

Boston Legal S1 E1, E2

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“Head Cases”

“Still Crazy After All These Years”

I have been seeing a ton of clips of Boston Legal on TikTok recently, and it influenced my decision to start a rewatch of Boston Legal. I found it on Hulu and I discovered that there were only five seasons. I really thought there were seven of them. Episodes varied per season as season one only had 17 whereas season 2 had 27 of them.

Watching these first to episodes of the series, it struck me how this cast changed over the years. Some of the characters of the first season were flashes from my memory, such as Lori Colson, Tara Wilson and Sally Heep. These women were replaced as the years moved on. No Shirley Schmidt, though I do think she comes soon in season one.

The appearance of the black Little Orphan Annie was a classic case that I did not think was in the premiere episode. It featured a cameo from the Reverend Al Sharpton as Denny’s “Rabbit out of a hat.”

It showed how questionable Alan and Denny’s tactics were at times when they were doing things that were for the “greater good.” I loved how these characters were shades of grey. They are complex and written so amazingly.

Alan Shore debuted on The Practice, as did Denny Crane. Their relationship was not as prevalent in these first two episodes as it would become. The chemistry between James Spader and William Shatner was off the charts. They were better than most couples on TV at the time. These first two episodes did not feature it as much.

Denny’s ongoing inner doubt about his lost of his abilities was highlighted early here and would be a major plot point through to the end of the series.

It was fun to see Elizabeth Mitchell, who I got to know as Juliet from LOST, make an appearance in episode two here. She played one of Alan’s ex-girlfriends who was committed after she tried to kill Alan. Alan helped defend her when she was trying to be released from the asylum. This story extends into episode three.

This David E. Kelley project joined several other Kelley shows that I loved (including Picket Fences, and The Practice).

I am looking forward to watching this 100 episodes moving forward.

Ted Lasso S4 E2

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“Carol of the Bells”

The second episode got Ted out of Kansas City and back to Richmond, and we get to meet some of the weird team members on the female team and the assistant coach Alice Chilton. Chilton was angry about being passed over by Rebecca for the head job, and made comments to her hinting at her being sexist (or not a Feminist). Chilton resigned her position but stuck around for a week to help walk Ted through. Of course, we all knew she was staying as she saw the light that was Ted Lasso.

We spent some time with Beard, who has apparently gone crazy and doesn’t want to hurt Roy. Beard’s excessive hairstyle was outrageous.

Chilton’s comment sent Rebecca into a tailspin, which led to her introspection.

The new locker room for the women was a great scene, and seeing Roy and Keeley flirt as Roy fixed the locker room (which was originally the visiting team locker room) from the tricks Roy was pulling to try and get the edge on the other team.

I enjoyed this episode too. Ted Lasso is awesome and one of the best characters around.

Things are getting set up but I would hope that there will be an overarching story for the season. At this point, it seems like the story is trying to keep the new team afloat.

Apple TV + is the streamer for Ted Lasso.

X-Men ’97 S2

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“Survival of the Fittest”

This finale, like much of the season, had ups and downs.

The battle between the X-Men and X-Force/X-Factor was solid with some great mutant on mutant action. Cable vs. Cyclops and Jean.

Rogue’s whole arc was fascianting.

The final battle with Apocalypse and Celestial Rogue was a little anti-climactic. However, the end with Nightcrawler’s sacrifice was heartbreaking, but felt like it needed something more. It felt as if they almost had me emotionally, but it ended so suddenly that it did not have the impact they wanted.

Apocalypse in his little ball form was silly looking.

One must wonder about Storm’s definition of a light touch.

The ending scenes with Mystique killing and replacing Val Cooper as announcement of President Creed set up next season.

Season two has been enjoyable, but a noticeable step backwards. It seemed to be too rushed and lacked some of the depth of season one. In fact, without season one, season two would probably be considered a great success. As of now, ZI liked season two. It just was not what I hoped for overall.

Rick and Morty S9 E9

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“Salute Your Morts”

Yesterday, I had finished the ninth season of Rick and Morty… or, at least, finished the episodes of the ninth season that were currently available on HBO Max. There were two more episodes from the ninth season that were not yet available on the streamer. Today, the ninth episode was dropped on HBO Max and I watched it.

“Salute Your Morts” started off with Beth and Jerry called to the principal’s office to deal with Summer and Morty, who were doing whatever they wanted at school as disruptive forces. Principal Vagina was going to expel Summer and Morty until Rick portaled into the office and turned Principal Vagina into a giant carrot.

As a way to try and herd in the kids, Rick dropped them off on a different planet at a camp. Unfortunately, the camp they were at had been taken over by the kids, who killed all of the campers.

Meanwhile, with the kids gone, Jerry and Beth found Summer’s drug stash and smoked what was revealed as “Forever High,” where the parents spent the whole time stoned out of their mind. Rick joined in later as well.

I found this very funny and this new episode fit well into the strong season 9 batch of Rick and Morty. While seeing the parents stoned was a fairly regular storyline, seeing Jerry and Beth across the universe with anything possible made this funny.

Next Monday should see the final episode of season 9 released.

Rick and Morty S9 E1-E8

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I started the ninth season of Rick and Morty on HBO Max today and watched the first eight episodes. I discovered that the Rick and Morty show was shown originally on Adult Swim earlier this summer and then it debuted on HBO Max, releasing every episode weekly. I was confused at first as I saw episode 9 and 10 listed on Wikipedia as having been released already, but it was not available yet on HBO Max. I see that the last two episodes will be released over the next two Mondays, so we will finish as we go.

The last few seasons of Rick and Morty have been lesser than I was used to. They weren’t bad, but there were more episodes that I did not love as much as some of the earlier seasons.

However, I thought that the season nine episodes were just awesome.

The first episode kicked off with the return of Evil Morty, and Morty discovered that Rick was running adventures with Evil Morty. Rick was able to trick Evil Morty into destroying the Omega blueprints in all universes. It set off a war between them and Evil Morty gets arrested by the time police after he tried to time travel.

In “Ricks Days, Seven Nights” Rick went on vacation in a dimension and he wiped his own memory. He does it every year and goes to a planet under the name Ted. Ted decides to stay, and he has to fight against himself trying to get Ted to remember. This was so clever and creative… I loved it.

“Rick Fu Hustle” is next up and while Rick and Morty are trying to keep themselves from having their hearts exploded from a Kung Fu master’s special punch, Jerry is having sex with his robot pool cleaner. Not kidding.

The season seems to have a running storyline where Rick is trying to stop drinking after he has had several bad events, including locking himself out of the lab in the garage. He also lost his always filled flask of vodka from a world of pigs. There was another incident where Rick’s head is decapitated from his body, and the two parts of Rick get into a war with the other. While Rick’s head was separated, he saw how good he felt without the alcohol. Morty had the head and Summer had the body and they tried to reunite.

My least favorite of this season was “MortGully: The Last Rickforest” which saw Rick and Morty on a planet trying to find some special sap from a tree. The tree was alive and called the Warden, who sentenced Rick and Morty to be single celled organisms. The episode was the two of them trying to evolve enough to escape the Warden’s trap. It was funny, but it really went a long way for the joke, which was replayed multiple times.

There was also a wild story with Jerry consuming a bunch of space worms which made him more confident, but caused him to eventually vomit up a massive amount of worms.

I have liked this season more than the previous couple, but there does not seem to be much of a thorough line for the overall story arc. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would like a little more connection.

Two more episodes to go.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #81

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Black Bird

“Pilot”

With our next Sunday Morning Sidewalk show, we dive into the world of Apple TV +. There are so many top quality shows on Apple that you can easily miss something. Black Bird is a good example.

I started the first of six episodes of this limited series this morning.

Jimmy Keene was a drug dealer who gets caught and sent to prison for a ten years sentence. The FBI approached him with an offer for him to switch prisons to get close to another inmate, Larry Hall, who was accused of killing 14 women, in an attempt to find out info about where a body is buried.

This is a true crime story.

The story is also told through flashbacks to before the deaths. We see Greg Kinnear playing Detective Brian Miller, who was investigating some of Larry’s victims. I really liked the flashback scenes, but the interview scene with Greg, Larry and the other cops was strange because I just could not get a grasp on the other cops. They seemed like they were actively trying to help out Larry by trying to convince Brian that Larry was just a serial confessor who was full of crap.

Pau Walter Hauser has some big time sideburns, or as the show says ‘burnsides.’ Hauser’s initial scenes were great, and I feel like he is going to rock this show.

After the pilot episode, I think this one is going to be an awesome entry to the Sunday Morning Sidewalk.

The Muppet Show S2 E9, E10, E11, E12

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Guest Star: Madeline Kahn

Guest Star: George Burns

Guest Star: Dom Deluise

Guest Star: Bernadette Peters

We got a couple of iconic bits during the first episode. Kermit singing “Happy Feet” is one of my favorites of all time. I will start singing this just out of nowhere many times in my life. Then, Gonzo singing the “Wishing Song” which is one of the sadder songs you’ll hear.

Of the guest stars, Bernadette Peters was easily the best. Her song with Robin was so beautiful. Robin was feeling ignored and her song (with the other Muppets) was just amazing and nearly gave me goosebumps. It helps when the guest star is actually a singer with a great voice.

The George Burns episode was fun and they had a running joke, “Gonzo fiddles while George Burns.”

I was not that much of a fan of the Dom Deluise episode, but I did enjoy his song at the end with the Muppets, “We Got Us.”

Kermit and Piggy had a lot of songs in these episodes. Kermit and Piggy sang “I Won’t Dance” on the set of At the Dance. Piggy even went as far during the Dom Deluise episode paying off the audience to cheer for her.

The running joke of the Bernadette Peters episode was other Muppets showing up behind Statler and Waldorf in their box and forcing them to cheer or boo as wanted. Piggy was especially jealous of Miss Mousy, who sang with Kermit.

Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2

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Amazon Prime’s second season of its animated TV show, Batman: Caped Crusader dropped recently and I got to binge it today. I had planned on watching five episodes today and then watch the rest on Sunday, but I just did not want to stop watching once I got into it.

This was fabulous.

The flavor and feel of this show is so much like the Bruce Timm Batman: The Animated Series, but mixed with the violence of the present day, such as Matt Reeves’ The Batman. That makes sense since both of those gentlemen worked on this project.

I can understand if someone did not like this show since the show takes many of the known characters from the Batman universe/rogue’s gallery and give them a different touch. An example is Edward Nygma, known to the Bat-fans as The Riddler. The Riddler was so named because he would “riddle” his victims with bullets. I like most of the new versions. You can compare these differences to those you might see in the Absolute DC universe.

The Joker came into the show this year and spent most of the season in the background doing sneaky stuff. His arrival front and center was downright frightening, especially in episode 9. Watching all of the people dying from laughing was horrific. I was not as fond of the gas turning the people into Solomon Grundy-like creatures. Seeing the people actually die was much worse for me.

The Joker was less crazy as we usually see him portrayed as, and here he is colder, more serial killer-like. I’m not sure it was my favorite version of Joker, but he was a frightening character.

This show is absolutely not afraid to kill of these characters. Season one had the death of Two-Face which was shocking, but this year, we saw Rupert Thorne, The Riddler, Hugo Strange, Hattie Tetch (who was supposedly a version of the Mad Hatter, which I never got) and, of course, countless cops and henchmen. I thought this violence was better used than in, for example, Invincible since it does not focus on the blood splatter.

They took several low-level comic characters that made their way into the show. Carrie Kelley, who appeared in season one, becomes a Robin in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, and she takes on a Grey Ghost-like persona. A villain called Thorn, who I actually had to look up. I had never heard of her before.

They gave us a version of The Spectre, which came from season one with the character of Jim Corrigan (which was the episode with Onomatopoeia). Again, it was not my favorite version of Spectre, but, as a part of this episode, I thought this turned out great. As I said, I think of this like a Elseworld version or an Absolute version.

This was a lot of fun and I just enjoyed every episode. I do think episode 9 was my favorite of the season as I was on the edge of my seat the whole time watching these people die from the Joker Smile-X. I hope there will be more of this series in the future because these are great.

Silo S3 E6

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“The Drive”

This episode felt like it was setting up the bigger things moving forward.

Juliette getting the Algorithm to approve two people to go to the other silo and retrieve the children. Of course, Juliette wants someone to go to plug off the gas. She agrees to resume taking the memory drugs if they can bring the children back.

This whole things feels as if both of them are lying to adjust their own plans.

We spent a chunk of time with the idea that Knox and Shirley would be the people sent to the other silo, but it did not look like they are heading out, which made their entire conversation moot.

We get some good work from Camille this week. She is really our main antagonist and she has shown more depth than one would expect. When she coldly told the Algorithm she had already placed the Vitamin D in the water supply, it was chilling.

The past story with the controlled car uses the time to learn more about Helen and passing the time until they arrived with Senator Rosalind Thurman asking them if they want to save the world.

Again, this feels as if it were all done to set up the rest of the season, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. I hope this will lead to a real banger of a second half of the season.

Rick and Morty Season 8

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I finished season 8 of Rick and Morty this afternoon, leaving me with just the remaining 8 episodes so far of season to watch (I am not sure when new episodes are released on HBO Max. It would be fun to catch up to the current run before it wraps up the season).

I was not as much of a fan of season 8. I found most of season 8 to be average to slightly below average. It wasn’t bad per se, but I just did not think the plan for the season worked as well as previous seasons.

Then, among the first 4-5 episodes, I found a few of them to be in the same vein as season 8… disappointing. It did not make me feel confident about the whole season.

Among those first five, “Summer of All Fears” was one I did not love. It was a Summer-centric episode and, historically, those have not been my favorite. I also was not a huge fan of “The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly” which featured a story with other Ricks, specifically a Wild West version that reminded me of Clint Eastwood from Unforgiven. While I love that movie, this one bugged me. Another trend I am not a fan of is when we follow a character that is not our Rick (and I know that can be convoluted).

However, I did like the Space Beth episode “Valkyrick” a lot. The whole trope of a heist movie spelling out the plan of the heist as we see it on the screen was shown here, but the images on the screen showed the heist falling apart because of too much of a dependence on “Cisco.” I really loved that section of this episode.

“The Last Temptation of Jerry” was another of the first episodes that I thought was really funny, if not sacrilege. the whole Easter bit with the rampaging Easter Bunny was really funny and co-opting the Tim Allen Santa Clause plot was great too.

Episode five, “Cryo Mort a Rickver,” was another that did not impress me, though I found it better than the previous episodes that I thought were lacking.

Then, things turned around for the show, and the rest of the season felt like big hits.

I liked how Space Beth and Beth turned themselves into little girls who were anything but sweet. I liked the episode where Jerry gets lost on the road thanks to another Jerry. It was cool to see Morty’s son Junior make a return, which I think I called back when Junior was originally created.

The finale with Rick trying to purge the memories of his wife Diane from his mind so he could be more emotionally open was a very good episode. I loved the ending where Rick pretended to have killed “Memory Rick” and “Memory Diane” but instead set them up in a memory storage device. The finale was difficult to follow at times, but there is no doubt that it was a strong finish.

Then, episode seven was one of my favorite episodes of the series. “Ricker than Fiction” saw Rick and Morty watching the latest movie from one of their favorite franchises, “Maximum Velocitree,” but they responded with anger and vitriol. The dialogue was great as they were clearly mocking those people online who claim things like a certain movie “ruined my childhood” or some idiotic statement like that. They went to Warner Brothers to complain and came across James Gunn (yes, voiced by James Gunn himself).

They got into an argument with James Gunn and Rick decided to fix the next script to make it better. Rick designed a machine called the Movie-Lizer which can create a movie if given a script. It also allows the user of the machine to change the script easily. This is obviously a commentary on AI and its intrusiveness in the movie industry. Rick and Morty get sucked inside the Movie-Lizer and find themselves in the story, which they have to try to fix before it is too late. This is such a meta episode, but it is also remarkably funny and clever.

I loved the guest star voice of James Gunn who ran across Zack Snyder, who was also an actual voice for this episode. This unbelievably meta and hilarious encounter made me respect Zack Snyder way more. He was really funny and was allowing the script to give him crap.

The second half of the season was considerably more consistent and engaging than the beginning and “Ricker Than Fiction” is probably in my top 10 of all time.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe S1 E3

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“Spoiler: Bert is Magic”

Okay, this week’s guest stars from The Big Bang Theory is Melissa Rauch as Bernadette and Wil Wheaton as Wil Wheaton. Again, this is one of the main features of this show.

There is really no story here. The group, Stuart, Bert, Denise and Barry have arrived in a universe where magic is real. However, their transport machine is not working, requiring magic. Luckily, somehow, Bert is now able to do magic.

Bernadette turned out to be a demon, who has had her magic powers taken from her, and she suckered Stuart into giving her his blood so she could break the spell.

Wil Wheaton arrived to punish Stuart and Bert had a magic fireball fight.

Oh, and Bert turned Barry into a penguin because Barry had left when a mob was preparing to burn Bert at the stake.

Strangely, I watched a podcast about the show afterward hosted by Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day that talked in depth about this TV program that does not have any depth whatsoever.

After the group escaped from the gigantic Bernadette at the last possible second, we see Stuart wind up in a new universe where Stuart is in an asylum.

This feels so rushed every episode as the show is just waiting to see what characters from The Big Band Theory show up and in what format. Stuart in an insane asylum could be the episode that changes the focus of this show.

Ted Lasso S4 E1

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“Home”

There may not be a more engaging or positive character on TV than Ted Lasso. I remember when I first started watching the show, I wanted to be more like Ted Lasso in my own classroom.

I was doubtful when I heard that Apple TV was bringing the show Ted Lasso back for a fourth season after a finale of season three that felt complete. Was this worth bringing back or would this just tarnish my memories of the awesomeness of the previous three years?

I watched the first episode on Apple TV tonight and I have to say that I am intrigued. Despite the show feeling at times like a documentary for Kansas City, we placed these characters that we loved square back on the screen and they shone as they always did.

Ted himself is just amazing, making the best out of whatever is around him. He is still teaching lessons and providing the most down-home sayings and quotes. Jason Sudeikis slipped right back into the character of Ted Lasso without missing a beat.

Placing Rebecca, Keeley and Higgins as the fish-out-of-water this time was a nice change as they were attempting to recruit Ted to coach the new Richmond female football squad. While they did spend too much time filming on location around Kansas City, the easy chemistry of these characters came through one again.

I am 100% going to watch this show, as I spent a good chunk of the premiere laughing, but I am not sure yet if this is something that I would have chosen to do. I am still unsure if this will live up to what has come before. Still, I was entertained by this first episode and hope springs eternal.