Category Archives: TV-G[eek]

Gen V s1 e6

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“Jumanji”

Gen V sixth episode was a really great one.

Fallout from last week involving Kate and her mental manipulation of her friends was the main storyline of the show. We got to see a lot of the hidden back stories of Kate as well as the others who wound up inside Kate’s mind.

We saw more involving Golden Boy, including a disturbing realization that Andre and Kate had been having an affair before Golden Boy died.

We saw how Jordan had become Professor Brink’s assistant as she helped stop Golden Boy.

We saw more about Marie and her sister moments after she had accidentally killed her parents.

We saw more about Kate’s background and how she came to be with Dean Shetty.

Oh, and there was a Soldier boy cameo.

But the story of Kate was not the only thing we got tonight. We got Emma and Sam back together and making love.

And we find out that Dean Shetty’s plans were to develop a virus that could kill supes and she wants it contagious.

Whoa.

Gen V has been very compelling and getting better every week. Even week four, which felt like an initial back step for the show, turned out to be better in retrospect.

And with the potential deadly virus being created in the Woods, this could have major impact in the Boys world.

Goosebumps S1 E6

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“Night of the Living Dummy”

Goosebumps on Disney + continues with some excellent episodes as they reached the episode featuring the dummy that gave nightmares to plenty of kids in the 1980s.

We hear the story of Slappy from the mouth of Mr. Bratt, who is of course possessed by the spirit of Harold Biddle. He tells the kids how Harold came into possession of the dummy and how their parents were involved in his death and subsequent removal of Slappy.

Mr. Bratt became more agitated and disgruntled as he told the story, but the kids were hearing it in a different manner than his own POV. He was becoming irritated that the kids did not share his POV of what happened. His reveal at the end of the episode was well done and made me happy. The possession of Bratt and having him pretend as if things were normal had definitely run its course. I’m pleased that the show took this step because a lot of shows would drag that mystery out for several episodes.

As for Slappy, we have certainly seen this concept before. There were living ventriloquist dolls in The Twilight Zone (Caesar and Willie), Batman the Animated Series (Scarface), and The Ventriloquist Dummy (Hugo). Throw in there dolls such as Annabelle and Chucky, these scary dummy/dolls are used quite a bit. Slappy is a great character to introduce younger kids to this trope.

Will the show be able to make this dummy different from the ones that came before? I hope so, and the show has been doing a great job so far.

Loki S2 E3

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“1893”

The third episode of season two of Loki just aired on Disney +, and it was a banger. Loki and Mobius were trying to find Miss Minutes to try and get her to help fix the loom in the TVA. They wound up in 1893 at the Chicago World fair and they found something besides Miss Minutes or Renslayer.

They found Victor Timely.

Victor Timely is a variant of He Who Remains… aka Kang. We saw a clip from this show at the post credit scene of Ant Man: Quantumania.

In this episode, Victor Timely does not have the frightening aura that He Who Remains. Instead, he was a blundering con man. An inventor that would sell his inventions that barely worked, if worked at all, only to have unhappy customers chasing after him.

Loki, Mobius as well as Renslayer and Miss Minutes were in a competition to get to Victor Timely first.

When Sylvie showed up ready to try and kill Victor, and Loki had to protect him. And Sylvie was absolutely brutal.

Miss Minutes’s return gave us a better look at the ‘cartoon clock.’ She showed a lot of jealousy over Renslayer and Victor Timely. Her professing her love for Victor was really creepy too. Tara Strong was great voicing this character.

And Miss Minutes dropped a hint that she knows a big secret about Renslayer that would make her made. What could that be?

This was a great episode that gave us a bunch of focus on out villains of the season. And Victor Timely has been taken to the TVA.

That can’t end well.

The X-Files S1 E9

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“Space”

This is the second episode among the first nine that I felt was average to sub par.

In fact, I would say that this is my least favorite episode so far.

A former NASA astronaut, who was Mulder’s childhood hero, was possessed by an extraterrestrial spirit of some sort. This spirit was base don the ‘face on Mars’ image that occurred around this time.

I don’t think anything worked with this episode. The story was nonsensical and dull. The acting was far below the series’ typical level. The special effects, especially the look of the spirit on the astronaut, were poor.

They made a connection to the Challenger explosion which felt a little slimy or exploitative.

There were some of the worst scenes, some of the most unintentionally funny scenes in the series history. With this episode following the splendid “Ice,” it really fell down the ladder quickly.

I remember seeing this episode originally and not being a fan then. I disliked this more than I remembered.

Bonus Action Vol. 1 Episode 1

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“A Beginning Most Humble”

After three weeks of Odd Jobs, mini missions to introduce characters, Bonus Action started off strong with all six characters involved.

This episode was used as practice, character moments and getting the group to interact.

These six players brought a ton of quirks and enjoyment from their characters. They all have some really cool concepts and back stories that they play as every bit as important as the actual mission. That is awwsome.

This week gave us the outline of the campaign and explained the MacGuffin.

These six players are funny, creative and should make this series a lot of fun.

Moonlighting S1 E4

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“The Next Murder You Hear”

Boink! Boink! Boink!

Another key moment for David and Maddie… when David used the term ‘boink’ and said that Maddie was repressed or suppressed or on of those S-words. Their outstanding banter made this series what is was.

David and Maddie get involved in a sensational case of the murder of a romance/love spurned talk show DJ that happened live on the air. No clients, but Addison believed solving this case would be a boom for business.

Maddie didn’t want to take the case and David wanted to, which was a reoccurring theme on the show. However, when Maddie started listening to the tapes of his show, she changed her tune.

This episode looked at David’s developing feeling for Maddie and he goes on a binger, talking to anyone who would listen (or wouldn’t) .

The episode ends with the typical all-out Moonlighting fight scene with David and the killer struggling on a neon light sign.

A great episode that looks at the characters more and a story that is less convoluted than normal.

The Fall of the House of Usher E3-8

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I had no intention of finishing this series today. I wanted to spread it out over the next several weeks. However, with the schedule packed with TV shows, movies and comics, and since I was really engaged in it, I just kept watching another episode as I would finish the previous one.

The titles of the series included;

Ep. 3: “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

Ep. 4: “The Black Cat”

Ep. 5: “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Ep. 6: “Goldbug”

Ep. 7: “The Pit and the Pendulum”

Ep. 8: “The Raven”

Because of these titles, I knew which of the Usher kids were doomed that episode. They were all neat adaptations of the short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe, into a new story, a new format.

There were plenty of other stories/poem incorporated into the series as we met Annabel Lee, The Cask of Amontillado was highlighted, Rufus Griswold (who wrote Poe’s scandalous obituary), The Belles (poem), among others.

Some of the allusions to Poe’s work was subtle, some was anything but. Several lines of Poe’s poetry is recited in the episodes, especially lines from Annabel Lee.

Each of the Usher kids’ deaths are fun and earned. They all take form similar to Poe’s works. It’s cool knowing some of these reference. For example, as Roderick sat in the basement staring at the brick wall, I wondered whom was bricked up in the wall. Of course that was coming. As a writer, Poe buried people in walls several times in his career.

To be honest, the finale did feel a little preachy at times. Some of the monologues delivered in the episode spoke of a lot of the political controversies of the day and it did feel somewhat out of place. The message was there without needing to bludgeon the audience over the head with it. I did find that to be a bit unnecessary.

Though, I admit that I laughed with the line about Trump when the mysterious Verna said,  “Like I said to one of my clients, when I’m done, you can stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and it won’t cost you a thing.”

The Fall of the House of Usher was great. I love Edgar Allan Poe and this had him all over the place. Greta acting. Cool kills.

Goosebumps S1 E4 & E5

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Episode 4: “Go Eat Worms”

Episode 5: “Reader Beware”

I am really digging this new Goosebumps series on Disney +. It feels so much more mature and targeted to an older audience than any of the other versions I have seen without losing that youthful appeal that the series intended.

This show has been weaving together an overarching story about Harold Biddle, what happened to him and how the parents of our group of protagonists were involved. It is telling that story while including character moments for all involved. It has been well done so far, with each episode building suspense and curiosity about what happened.

I mentioned it after episode 3, but this show is absolutely giving me Marvel’s The Runaway vibes. The Runaways discovered that their parents were actually supervillains, but I think there is more here than what we have seen so far. It is not that the parents in Goosebumps were involved in the fire that killed Harold Biddle. There is more to it and I believe that involved Mister Slappy.

Episode four was featuring Lucas and the worms he found on Halloween at the Biddle house party. I have to say, of all the actors playing the kids, Will Price, who plays Lucas, looks the oldest. He is only 23 years old, but I would have guessed 32. His older look does distract me more than the others (who are clearly all older than high school).

Episode five sees Mr. Bratt give Margot a scrapbook he said he found in his house, but it was clearly a set up from Harold Biddle to try and get the kids to help him find what the parents had taken on the night Biddle died. This episode went into more detail with the affair between Colin and Nora as Colin’s wife, Sarah, had returned form Seattle. Sarah feels like a wild card tossed into this mix. She told Nora that she believes what she has been saying, things that got Nora tossed into a mental hospital and drugged by Victoria. This episode dove deep into the mysterious story being told in this series and it was great.

I really have enjoyed watching these Goosebumps episodes so far. The next one drops on Disney + coming Friday, I believe and I will be there to see it.

American Horror Story: Delicate S12 E4

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“Vanishing Twin”

Perhaps I shouldn’t watch AHS: Delicate at breakfast time.

I was thinking that this week’s AHS was lacking… that nothing much happened… and then Anna started to eat the dead raccoon she found last episode. She had wrapped it up like a baby and took it into the basement. Already sus behavior of course.

The show confirmed that Anna was still pregnant, as she suspected, and the doctor speculated that she had lost a twin in something called ‘vanishing twin’ syndrome.

The episode began with a flashback to England and the birth of a baby by the Queen at the time. The black suited women were there and confiscated the baby, which had been called a monster by the queen.

The show couldn’t be more obvious that Anna’s baby is not normal. The correlations to Rosemary’s Baby is getting stronger with every episode.

Oh, and the whole “It’s my body” campaign Anna did to reinvigorate her image was really on the nose.

It feels as if this show needs to start picking the story up a bit soon.

The Fall of the House of Usher E1 & E2

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Episode One: “A Midnight Dreary”

Episode Two: “The Masque of the Red Death”

I started to watch episode one of The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix with the intention of not continuing after the first one. To be honest, with two rewatches (X-Files, Moonlighting) going on right now, along with multiple series (Loki, Gen V, American Horror Story, Goosebumps, Bonus Action) and the October 13, there is not a ton of time for another series. But I do love Edgar Allan Poe and so I wanted to say that I gave this new limited series on Netflix a chance.

After two episodes, I am totally hooked.

I need to find the time to watch the rest of this because it is a masterpiece.

As I mentioned, I love Edgar Allan Poe and there are so many allusions to Poe’s work that it is nearly impossible to keep up with them. I realized about half way through the second episode that they were doing the Masque of the Red Death and that the character named Prospero was even involved. I see now that the episode title is even based on the short story.

The narration of the series is Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) confessing to C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), sitting in his house, drinking a glass of the best whiskey available. Roderick is telling Dupin (who by the way is the main character in Poe’s Murder in the Rue Morgue) about the deaths of his six children over the last two weeks.

There are allusions to Poe’s work everywhere, from The Raven to Annabel Lee to The Black Cat to Gold Bug. It feels like a comic book movie with the Easter eggs they drop for the comic readers in the audience, except this is for those who read Poe. It’s just great.

And it is compelling as can be. I want to know what happened to the six kids. We have seen the end of Prospero at the end of the shocking episode two, but there are five more to go.

Then, there was Mark Hamill. He played Arthur Pym, based on the novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Pym is the Usher family lawyer.

These first two episodes are just so good and I have added this to the crowded EYG schedule.

The X-Files S1 E8

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“Ice”

The X-Files meets John Carpenter’s The Thing.

This was an excellent episode. It was obviously just like The Thing, a mysterious creature (probably from space) that causes the crew of an Arctic station turn on each other and kill everyone. Mulder and Scully are among the investigative group sent in to the station to find out what happened.

There was an interesting cast in this episode including Felicity Huffman, Jeff Kober, Xander Berkeley, and Steve Hytner joined David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. The interaction of the performances created an awesome paranoia. It was never apparent which of the group had been exposed to the worms that were causing the trouble.

One of the major moments of this episode was how Mulder and Scully had their first moment of conflict between them. Scully held a gun on Mulder when she was not sure if he was exposed to the worm. Mulder refused to be tested because he did not trust any of them, and Scully had pulled a gun. In the end, they were able to get past the paranoia and had each other’s back.

This was an excellent episode and quite the step up from the last one.

Goosebumps S1 E2 & E3

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E2: “The Haunted Mask”

E3: “The Cuckoo Clock of Doom”

I have really started to like this new series on Disney +.

After watching the first episode, I found it okay and planned on watching another episode to see how I feel then. After watching episodes two and three, I am in on the new Goosebumps series 100%.

I really like how the series keeps returning to the Halloween party at the Biddle house to see POV of a different kid and how three of our core group had an interaction with something magical, whether it be the camera that takes pics of future events, the mask, or the cuckoo clock of doom.

The end of episode two was a huge shock as James exploded into a green blob when struck accidentally by a pool ball. I literally held my hands out and exclaimed WTF when that happened. I did not expect that little twist to occur. That exploding James tease at the end of episode 2 led into episode three and one of the funniest episodes so far.

I also like how the kids’ parents are clearly hiding secrets and trying to forget about something. It is giving me vibes like Marvel Comics’ The Runaways, who found out their parents were all super villains. I don’t expect anything like that, but they definitely have some kind of secret they are keeping.

Then, when Mr. Bratt (who is possessed by Harold Biddle) threw a fit at the end of the episode when the remaining faux James brought him the empty case, he was clearly setting up for the arrival of Mister Slappy, the iconic ventriloquist doll from the Goosebumps past. I can’t wait for him to arrive.

There are two more Goosebumps episodes available on Disney + and then new episodes will continue to air weekly starting Friday. I want to get E4 & E5 done before the next one comes out.

Moonlighting S1 E3

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“Read the Mind…See the Movie”

Dave and Maddie investigate a psychic who they believe are selling secrets of a company that they have a security contract with to another businessman.

The story is, once again, very convoluted in the best possible Moonlighting way. As with all of the best Moonlighting episodes, the case is just an excuse to have interactions between the main leads. In this episodes, David and Maddie end up in their underwear on the roof of the psychic’s house and have to jump off into a pool of water to escape. It is an iconic scene that was replayed multiple times over the years with this episode.

As always, even though David appeared to be a blowhard, he has a sweetness, a caring for Maddie. Of course he hides his feelings behind bluster… hence the hook of the show.

There was quite a bit of action in this episode and you could really see the stuntmen that replaced Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis. It was TV in the 1980s, I mean.

Goosebumps S1 E1

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“Say Cheese and Die!”

While I was on Hulu today, I came across this first episode in a new TV series based around the classic R.L. Stein book series, Goosebumps. I actually found it also on Disney + later in the day with five episodes dropped at the same time.

Watching the first episode on Hulu, it felt a little more mature of a story than other versions of Goosebumps.

According to IMDB, “A group of five high schoolers who unleash supernatural forces upon their town and must all work together thanks to and in spite of their friendships, rivalries, and pasts with each other in order to save it, learning much about their own parents’ teenage secrets in the process.“

Justin Long plays Nathan Bratt, the new owner of a local house with the reputation for being haunted. Zach Morris is Isaiah, one of the high schoolers who was involved. He was a quarterback who found a camera that could tell the future.

This does not seem to be an anthology series as it appears that the story continues through the episodes available on Disney +.

This was reasonably fun and I will give it a try as it goes on.

Gen V S1 E5

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“Welcome to the Monster Club”

Last week’s Gen V had an ending that really detracted from that episode and left me feeling, for the first time, that perhaps this was not as great of a series as it seemed. However, with this week’s offering, I feel as if the negatives were all negated and changed my opinion of the end of last week’s show.

The show goes into the world of mental powers as Marie, Andre, Jordan and Emma had been mindwiped and the reason it was such a sudden cut,

The show then played with our own perception as we believed that this was connected to Rufus, who we met last week, using his mental powers to try an rape Marie (which led to her exploding his penis). However, the twist that it was not Rufus, but instead was Kate who did the mindwiping, betraying her friends.

Why Kate why? She is a fascinating character whose backstory is clearly at issue with her. She has a background of abuse and being manipulated and Dean Indira Shetty is using her and her powers, including by manipulating the mind of Golden Boy to keep forgetting his brother.

Emma had been mindwiped to forget about Sam completely, which, when he came back, threw him off. He went to hide out and have delusions about fighting puppets and ripping them apart. Of course, they were not actual puppets and it was an awesome way to make a incredibly brutal scene in a less than R rated manner.

As I said, this was a big step back towards where this show started off and really did help to redeem last week’s seeming misstep (that wasn’t).