Tag Archives: podcast

Invincible S3 E1, E2, E3

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I did not finish season two of Invincible. I was not loving the show at that time. It felt to me that the show was just falling back on the blood splatter as the story. It was going too far for my taste. To be fair, I did not see the second half of the season so I do not know what it was like.

I had considered not watching season three either. It kicked off with three episodes dropping and they were longer episodes, so I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to get back into it. I decided that i would give it a chance.

I found these first three episodes of season three pretty good. There was still blood, but it did not feel as over-the-top as the last episodes that I watched.

I am not much of a fan of Mark’s new costume. I preferred the first one, but perhaps the new one will grow on me. The whole Invinci-Boy stuff was funny. Oliver is an interesting hero and kind of plays with Mark’s hypocrisy. His conflict with Cecil was based on basically the same idea, especially with Oliver killing the Mauler Twins.

The conflict between Mark and Cecil was rough and we saw how Cecil came to be with a backstory. I am not sure if any of them are in the right with this. Mark does seem to be overly erratic at times, but Cecil is totally condescending. We’ll see where this goes from here.

I did enjoy the arc of the Guardians over these first three episodes, with the conflict between Mark and Cecil splitting the team in half. I found this Guardians storyline to be a worthy addition to the stories going on.

I also liked the Mark-Eve relationship and how they have started to date. Admittedly, date might be a bit of a relative term, but I do like them together.

After watching the first three episodes, I feel as if I will keep giving the show another episode until I find myself feeling as I did during season two. So far, I would say, so good.

Paradise S1 E4

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“Agent Billy Pace”

Okay, I am officially in.

I may have still been slightly uncertain about this show after the first three episodes, but after the fourth episode, I am all in. I thought this was easily the best episode of this show that I have seen yet, and it was also the one that crushed me.

This episode featured Billy Pace, with a look at his background, and it was tremendously engaging. He had a dark past and the episode played with the uncertainty that he was the reason the president was killed. As it moved on, it became clear that Billy Pace was a bad guy who had found his friend and family with Xavier and his kids. By the end of the episode, I was in love with this character.

And then the show killed him off.

Man, that scene where he is poisoned by Jane on the orders of Sinatra. Then there was a scene with Sinatra and Billy that was just tense and anxious, which is what led to his death. I know I was nervous about Billy the rest of the film at that point and I thought he had made it when he got home. Then, the rugged gets pulled out from under me.

The death of Billy Pace was a kick in the gut. I would not have guessed that his death would have meant anything to me, but it has been awhile since I have felt this upset over a character death.

By the way, the mystery of the surface world is another cool thing and having Billy kill the people doing the investigation was a rough truth that caught me off guard. I am looking forward to seeing how everything ties together.

The music was by Poison this episode… Every Rose Has Its Thorn. Was the band’s name a hint?

I am fully in on this show now, at I guess, the halfway mark. You can watch Paradise on Hulu or Disney +.

Battlestar Galactica S4 E19-E21

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“Daybreak Part One, Two & Three”

As I finished the last write up for Battlestar Galactica S4 E13-18, I had planned on watching the three-part finale as a big movie. I was starting to figure out how long it would take and when I could fit it into my schedule when I realized that I had the time tonight. So I turned to Amazon Prime and continued with the final three episodes of Battlestar Galactica.

I must say I feel as if the show came to an end in quite a lovely way.

The big battle at the Cylon colony was an incredible firefight, and, as I expected, it turned into a “opera house” type situation. I liked the way that resolved itself, putting the people involved in the proper places.

I did find the flashback sections of these episodes to be perhaps more than was needed. It did add some good background to some of the characters, especially Gaius and his father, but some felt superfluous.

The whole Galen Tyrol discovery of Cally’s murder by Tory was shocking , but it was just the way Galen had been portrayed over the series. Hotheaded, angry and reactive, Galen snapped Tory’s neck, which messed up the entire deal between Adama and Cavil. I’m not sure Cavil taking his own life made sense in this situation, but it did bring a resolution to the conflict.

I figured most of the final episode would be falling action, wrapping up the stories and giving us closure for the characters. Laura Roslin’s death was sad and yet beautiful. I was afraid that Adama would do something drastic since he had said that he “couldn’t live without her” earlier this season.

Kara’s return was revealed that she was an angel of some sort, and her just disappearance after a goodbye with Lee was really melancholic. I liked that they did not go into a great detail to explain what was going on with her and this made all the sense in the world.

I am not sure how I feel about the prologue at the end with Head Gaius and Head Six walking around in present day on this new earth. I had guessed that they were in the past of a planet when they arrived, but not sure why these “head” characters were in the present day timeline.

Overall, I was satisfied with the conclusion of the show. It was a fantastic sci-fi show with a lot of faith built into it. I did like how it presented us with the conclusions for the characters, even if some of them were not very happy (Adama, Lee etc.) There may be a question or two that the finale opens that may not make a lot of sense (giving up technology is one…), but there is nothing that ruins the show for me.

What If…? S3 E4

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“What If Howard the Duck Got Hitched”

Tell us this is the final season without saying it is the final season.

What If gives us a Howard the Duck/Darcy episode. They’re married and she gave birth to an egg.

What?

What If took one of the worst episodes from season one and gave it a sequel and made it one of the strangest, weirdest episodes of the entire run.

What If, the comic book, would have issues that were really bizarre because they could do anything they wanted, and this is a perfect example of that.

I do love Howard the Duck and I would be all for a Howard the Duck series, live action or animated. This did feel a bit much.

There were a bunch of surprising cameos from the people chasing after this egg including Zeus, Thanos and the Black Order, Nick Fury and Agent Coulson, Dark Elves, the Grandmaster …all in pursuit of this egg.

I will say that I found this to be too silly at times and that a lot of the humor did not work for me, and I am a person whose Marvel’s humor almost always works. This might be an episode that I like more on second watch, but for now, this episode was down my list.

E2 What If Agatha Went to Hollywood?

E3 What If The Red Guardian stopped The Winter Soldier

E1 What If the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?

E4 What If Howard the Duck Got Hitched?

Shrinking S2 E10

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“Changing Patterns”

Okay, so perhaps this is not the season finale after all.

I really thought that this was the season finale. But when I pulled up the show on Apple TV +, I saw episode 11 listed for next Wednesday. So I guess this is not the final episode of the season. I do not know how many there are.

That does not bother me much because Shrinking is consistently one of the best written and entertaining shows on TV.

I had been wondering where this show was going as it seemed like most of the storylines were wrapped up over the last couple of episodes, but there were a couple that came raging back into the forefront.

In particular, the whole Louis/Alice friendship came back hard and heavy this week. Alice found out that Jimmy had told Louis to not see Alice again and that crushed her. Apparently, there are more legs to this as Alice told her father that he ruined another birthday.

Oh yeah, it was Alice’s 18 birthday. She was a little unfair in this situation in my opinion. I mean, Jimmy did find her a car just like his wife. Sure he can be blind in a lot of ways, but to say that he ruined the birthday felt a touch harsh.

There are some great development with all of the other characters too. Paul, Liz, Derek, Julie, and Gaby had solid arcs within this episode, but they all paled in comparison to the birthday escapades.

I wonder how many more episodes the season has for us?

The Greatest American Hero S2 E6

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“The Beast in the Black”

I haven’t watched an episode of The Greatest American Hero is quite awhile. There were a couple reasons why. One, I have been watching a bunch of shows over the last couple of months and the schedule has been tight. But the real reason was the previous GAH episode I watched was probably my least favorite of the series so far and it kind of stunted me on the show.

However, watching season two, episode six reignited my love of the show. This episode, entitled “The Beast in the Black” was one of the best ones of the series so far.

Ralph recruits his students to come to an old house, scheduled for demolition, with the understanding that whatever they were able to salvage from the location would be theirs to sell. Ralph discovered a hidden safe and he and Maxwell went to the house before the kids to see if they could get into the safe, using the suit.

Ralph was seeing strange things, such as a fireplace that had a fire in it that Maxwell could not see. Turned out that the house was haunted by a wayward spirit and Maxwell had a bronze chandelier dropped on his head, killing him. At this point, the spirit, a woman, entered Maxwell’s body and possessed him.

This was a lot of fun and some of the special effects were funky. For the early 1980s on TV, this was very well done. Ralph had to go through a 4th dimension guarded by the Beast in the Black, in order to save Maxwell.

This was unlike any other Greatest American Hero episode we had seen before and I really found this to be creative and enjoyable. I thought this was excellent.

The Detective Daniel Prophet Podcast Episode 6

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The finale.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6s2cE162Q1RAcQP0gEKAvL?si=2vyBNFPuSg6ExesZc49Z_g

==================================================================

I am very proud of this podcast. I came up with the idea for my squad, which was the Actor’s Guild, after taking a class on Podcasts in the Classroom as a license renewal credit. I wrote up a script, and assigned roles to the different students. I have not listed their names online just to be safe, but I am very pleased with their efforts.

Setting the story of the podcast in Dalton Hill really helped make the podcast feel important to me. Dalton Hill is one of the books that I wroted, based on a short story that I wrote in college. I love the character of Lincoln Phillips and I was excited to include him in this podcast. I was also excited when the young student who voiced Lincoln joined the project. He was very talented and he leant a lot of credibility to the project for the rest of the Actor’s Guild.

I think what we accomplished here was awesome considering no one here was a professional and that we really only had around a half and hour a week to do it. I did use time outside the squad time to record some of the staff members who joined in on the podcast. I want to thank everyone who took their time to record something with me. You helped make this awesome.

I know the listeners are limited, but that does not limit my enthusiasm for this project or for what we were able to accomplish. I have an idea for a second podcast, though I do not know the status for squads next year at school. I hope that we can continue with this moving forward.

A huge thank you to those 8th grade students who contributed to the podcast, who will be moving on to high school next year. You all should be proud of what you helped do.

The X-Files S5 E5

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“The Post-Modern Prometheus”

We have come to an episode of the X-Files that would be one of my top ten episodes of the series. After watching it again tonight, I have an even greater appreciation for “The Post-Modern Prometheus” than I had when I first saw it.

Mulder and Scully came to a town where a woman claimed to have been impregnated by a monster in her home, without her consent. The woman, who seemed more intent on making the Jerry Springer Show, stated that her 18-year old son Izzy was conceived in the same manner.

Turned out that Izzy was the writer of a comic book that followed the adventures of the Great Mutato, a local legend and the Great Mutato fit the description of the supposed attacker/rapist.

Shot in a beautiful black and white, this episode took the story of Frankenstein and turned it about to fit into an episode of the X-Files. Much of the stylistic choices of the episode fit right into the type of old fashion horror movies, like Frankenstein. The episode was striking with its mood, creating a fantasy style and a surreal element of the tale.

Music of Cher was used throughout the episode, including a majestic version of “Walking in Memphis” at the very end. There was a reference made to Cher’s movie, Mask, where Cher played the mother of a disfigured boy, something to which the Great Mutato could relate.

I read that some people believe that this episode takes place outside of X-Files continuity since the episode begins and ends as if it was a story in a comic book. This is an interesting idea that does make sense with what was provided. It allowed the creators a freedom to be able to bring a different style of mood to this episode.

Over-the-top actor John O’Hurley, known as J Peterman from Seinfeld, played the “mad scientist” Francis Pollidori. His style of acting fit perfectly in this fantastical story.

This is one of the best X-Files episodes of the entire series, and it was epic to get a chance to see it once again. It is a beautifully constructed and filmed fairy tale that is a love letter to the Universal Monsters from the 1930s/1940s.

The Detective Daniel Prophet Podcast

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Welcome. This is the first ever EYG Podcast. I am a teacher at a middle school and we do a weekly squad. My squad was the Actor’s Guild and we would do some improv and acting exercises.

Then I took a class for license renewal that dealt with podcasts in the classroom, and i was inspired. I decided that the Actor’s Guild could do a podcast. I would write up a ficitonal “true crime” type story and we would record it.

I set the podcast in my ficitonal setting of Dalton hill, which is one of the books that I have written. We then spent our time in squads working on recording these scenes.

I am very please with how it came out. A goal was to get this on Spotify, and I am proud to announce that epiosode one is live on Spotify.

We are not professionals and a lot of the voices are kids, so there are some stumbles and some errors, but I am overall very pleased. If we had more time allotted to the recording, we could have really done a fabulous job.

There will be six episodes of this podcast, entitled “The Detetcive Daniel Prophet Podcast” being released over the next few months. I am very proud of these kids and I am proud of the podcast, warts and all.

Here it is…

Bodkin S1 E1

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“One True Mystery”

“People will listen to it?“

This was the question throughout the entire first episode of Bodkin, a series from Netflix featuring Will Forte as a podcaster and Siobhán Cullen as an investigative journalist whose editor insisted on her accompanying Forte on his podcast to get her out of the way.

IMDB says, “A group of podcasters set out to investigate the mysterious disappearance of three strangers in an idyllic Irish town. But when they start to pull the strings, they find a story much bigger and stranger than they could have imagined.”

Bodkin is a dark comedy/thriller dealing with the disappearance of some people in the small Irish town of Bodkin. By the end of the first episode, I was intrigued enough to continue with this.

I definitely liked the actors. Both Siobhán Cullen and Will Forte were great and Robyn Cara as Forte’s investigator on his podcast was good too. The Irish people of the town were very quirky and mysterious.

I did not find anything downright funny, but oddball worked as a descriptor. The curiosity of what exactly was going on when Cullen’s character Dove was struck by a car was definitely interesting.

With some open spots on the schedule for TV shows, I think the seven-episode series on Netflix will work nicely.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst S1 E5

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“Family Values”

Episode five goes into more of the Durst family drama, including the apparent hard feelings between Robert and his younger brother Doug, who had taken over the running of the family business.

The sibling rivalry part of this docuseries was truly weird. Robert had some real issues with his brother Doug and Doug was avoiding everything to do with his brother, especially the documentary that was being film about him.

But the real meat of this episode was back with the murder of Susan Berman, who was murdered in Los Angeles. Susan had been a huge Robert Durst supporter, but she wound up death, with a bullet in the back of her head, execution-style in her home. There was a timeline laid out that indicated that Robert could have done it. He is placed in California, but not actually in LA. Even Robert said it though, they never placed in in LA and California is a big state. That line from Robert was chilling. He clearly stated this as a way to show what his defense would be if this charge ever became reality.

But then the letter was found that had been sent by Robert to Susan that matched the letter that had been sent to the LA police, that had the same misspelling of Beverly Hills, with an extra E in the word. The handwriting sure looked to match between the two documents. Andrew Jarecki wanted to record the reaction of Robert to this piece of evidence that no one knew they had.

This is what would lead to the bombshell next episode. The insanity of this entire show has been off the charts and this little man is just an amazing character that you find so difficult to believe was real.

Man from Atlantis S1 E5

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“Melt Down”

This is the first episode of the weekly series. Prior to this, Man from Atlantis was a series of TV movies, each around 90 minutes long (give or take). This started season of 13-episode season.

For the first time, we get an opening theme, which I liked quite a bit.

Episode 5, “Melt Down” saw the return of Mr. Schubert, the villain from the first TV movie performed by Victor Buono. Buono makes a fantastic villain.

A couple of big, welcome changes seem to have been made. Mark Harris has gained some superpowers besides being able to just breathe underwater. He had some extra super strength as he showed by kicking the ass of Schubert’s goons and crashing through some doors and a sonar of some kind he used to destroy some technology. The extra powers make a lot of sense and I was very pleased to see Mark crashing through the wooden door.

The show even threw in some A-Team throws, with the goons being thrown by Mark out of the pool he was in and flying across the room.

The characters of Elizabeth and C.W. were still here in episode 5, but Miller Simon was not here. I do not know if he returns as the series progresses, but I’m not sure he was needed.

Mark had more of a personality as well, confident and strong. He always felt so detached and icy, and, though he still had some of that, he seemed more human than he was before.

The sci-fi aspect of the show continued to be good, and the underwater scenes are still just fantastic. I would have loved to know how they filmed these scenes and how much of it was actually Patrick Duffy.

This episode dealt with the villainous Schubert causing water tides to rise across the planet, threatening worldwide flooding. It was like a climate change story on fast forward.

This was a really good episode and I feel like it put together some of the things that the TVV movies had been lacking. We’ll see if it can maintain this level of sci-fi goodness.

Who is NO/ONE?

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I am taking a class for my educational license renewal on podcasts in education. I started it yesterday and one of the assignments was to basically try out a podcast. I was considering the Wolverine one, but then I remembered. The podcast that went along with Image Comics’ series No/One. I saw the ads for it at the back of the comic and I always wanted to give it a try. This gave me the perfect opportunity.

Starring Rachael Leigh Cook and Patton Oswalt, I only had to listen to the first episode for my class. I was hooked. By the end of the night, I had gone through the entire six episodes that are currently available.

I have been loving the No/One comic series. This podcast was a remarkable compendium to that book. Listening to the podcast, I had that background knowledge from the books and so when the podcast would describe something that I remembered from the comic, it was as if I was a special insider.

Rachael Leigh Cook and Patton Oswalt were great in telling the story of the Richard Roe murders and the copycats.

The comic series is ten issues so I assume there will continue to be a podcast episode for wach issue. This was a fun listen.

Picket Fences S3 E6, E7, E8, E9

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The running storyline of the season has been the struggle of race relations and the first of these three episodes is part of that, but then the next two do not include it. The last two go back to the Brian Latham case.

“Elective Conducts”

The Rome mayoral campaign dominates the episode, and Jill faces more controversy as Zack writes a report that included racial stereotypes. When Zack is confronted by a group of black students in the rest room, Zack peed on them in self-defense. It was shocking.

When it came to the mayor’s race, Carter stepped up and became a true challenger in the election. So much so that, when Jill realized that she had no chance, Jill decided to drop out and support him instead.

Ed Lawson wound up winning the election in a 12 vote difference. Ed Lawson is Donald Trump decades before Donald Trump. It is actually a bizarre correlation.

“Rebels with Causes”

This is the crossover episode with David E. Kelley’s other TV show at the time, Chicago Hope. It guest starred Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, his character from the show.

Douglas Wambaugh collapses as he prepared for the trip to the Supreme Court. Jill believed he had a heart attack, but wanted to take him to Chicago to see a specialist. She then came into major conflict with Dr. Geiger, whose manner and attitudes rubbed her the wrong way.

Turned out that Doug had M.S. and not a heart attack.

There was also a conflict between Jimmy and Kimberly because Kimberly wanted to date Kenny. Jimmy flipped out over the possibility, and, like all things with Picket Fences, there is much deeper truths behind it. Everything here dated back to Jimmy’s infidelity.

One of my favorite moments was very meta in this episode when Jill commented that more people went to the other hospital (meaning the TV show ER which was also set in Chicago).

“May it Please the Court”

Douglas Wambaugh and John Littleton go to Washington to argue the Latham case.

This was an amazing acting episode from both Fyvush Finkel and Don Cheadle. Their passion showed through the great writing of the episode.

The Supreme Court justices are portrayed wonderfully by the group of the actors cast in these roles.

The second storyline going on in this episode was involving Carter. Carter had made an agreement to have a surrogate give birth to his child. When the surrogate decided she could not go through with it, she wanted to abort the baby. Kelly Connell gives a serious performance from a character that is usually used as a joke.

“For Whom the Wind Blows”

The Brian Latham case comes to a close here.

Maxine, Kenny, and John start to believe that Brian Latham was actually innocent. They convinced Judge Bone that he was innocent and that the father was the killer. Bone took to the court to sentence Latham, except, instead, he threw out the conviction stating that the evidence was not enough to convict. He overturned the conviction and set Latham free.

All of this came from Maxine’s hunch that the father had gone to confession to confess that he actually killed his daughter. Father Barrett would not break the seal of confession, but Max could tell from his expression that there was more to this story. Bone went to Father Barrett and asked him whether or not, in his opinion, Brian Latham was guilty. When Father Barrett said that he thought Latham was not guilty, he was implying to Bone what he knew.

The group went after the father, pushing hard for his wife to testify against him, offering immunity.

Then the mother tells the truth on the stand… she had killed the daughter in a fit of rage and the father had just helped cover it up.

Judge Bone had to, once again, skirt the rules as he said the immunity agreement was gone because the mother had committed fraud. In the end, the police got it done, if not with questionable methods.

Jimmy during this whole time started to have doubts if he could handle the position of sheriff any longer. He saw the fire in the eyes of John, Max and Kenny and Jimmy started to believe that he was in the way.

The Brian Latham storyline came to a close here with another shocking twist that Picket Fences was known for.