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Comments
So there's like 13m to go over Andi and Jonah being CW levels of not getting back together dramatic, Buffy finally telling Marty she likes him, and Cyrus and T.J. holding hands before the last two have Andi be like "Oh yeah I got accepted to art school later guys~".
I mean in season 2 they spent like 3 episodes being Sad about Buffy moving and she didn't even move.
Overall, Andi Mack was a fun show and I liked it. As I've said elsewhere, I feel like the third season lost it's specific "indie show with Disney Channel sensibilities" charm, not just owing to the massive production issues after the guy who Andi's granddad being arrested for soliciting minors on Grindr. The second half of the season did feel much more disjointed than the first, owing to what must have been massive re-edits.
However, I feel like before that somebody convinced Peyton Elizabeth Lee that her acting as Andi was powerful so in Season 3 she was always acting really powerfully.
Anyways this weekend is Descendants 3 so expect me to say lots of words about that.
Because, frankly, I have the whole series DVD boxset and it'd be inconvenient if I didn't like it.
Well, I'll always have the first two seasons (hopefully the second season comes out on DVD).
Frankly at least now I'm not extremely super excited/looking forward to yet another thing.
It's later revealed that the hotel is in the red, deep in the red, but said star daughter did not look through any financial documents before freaking out at her dad and trying/succeeding in cratering the planned sale. In fact, he literally just has to tell her this after she screws the sale up.
I mean, I shouldn't blame her, since she went to soap opera business school, but it really gets my goat when this sort of thing happens.
It was actually good and well-written, and I think it's a show a lot of people not already into musicals/teen-dramas could enjoy. I'm really looking forward to the rest.
Unrelatedly, people are always on about how Canadians say 'aboot' or whatever but watching Canadian live-action shows I have never heard a more culturally specific pronunciation of a word than whenever they say "against".
Two years ago I watched The Real O'Neals via [Alternative Means] and it recently became available via an official streaming service.
At first I didn't remember it was there.
Then I tried to stream it on my phone and it wouldn't work itself out, even though I'd just finished watching half an hour of HD YouTube.
Then I tried to download it to my phone so I could just watch it that way, but that didn't work either.
Then I found the HDD I put the show on, copied it all to my phone, and then I actually watched an episode.
So, yeah, streaming.
I have complained elsewhere how S.W.A.T. currently has a polyamorous relationship as an ongoing plotline, and how this makes my blood boil (I hope I don't have to explain how I'm still exercising tolerance even under these circumstances again).
Anyways, at first, Chris (the bisexual squad member in said relationship) interacts with Deacon (the squad's Catholic family man), who she expects will disapprove. All Deacon says is that he's afraid she might get hurt.
At the time, I assumed a lot from Deacon's reaction, but mainly that Chris would never face pushback, and that she was rewarded for being confrontational.
In the last episode I watched, Chris invites her partners to a formal S.W.A.T. benefit, and then begins to explain the ins and outs of said relationship to Deacon's daughter (in a child friendly way, and in my personal opinion; as far as there is a child friendly way to explain polyamory).
Deacon's wife, Annie, comes to snatch her daughter away, and explains to Chris that she shouldn't be attempting to open her daughter's mind to such things as they are attempting to at least raise her a certain way.
As an aside; I in my whole life never thought I'd be on this side of a sexual liberation argument, but here I am, agreeing with a Catholic lady.
Chris confronts her, as she tends to do (this is a personality trait, not a strange author-involved tool I'm railing against) but Annie holds her own, explaining that she would never have made Chris her youngest daughter's godmother if she knew this was the type of thing Chris engaged herself in.
This exchange made me rethink how I'd approached Deacon's position earlier.
Of course Deacon wouldn't have wanted to rock the boat on the team. She's his teammate, and he'll agree to keep his opinions to himself any day before he compromises the team's unity or harmony.
After all this, Chris has some unrelated relationship drama, but her relationship with Deacon and Annie all seem to remain amicable.
So... uh... yeah, go TV.
See, Network TV is a very small part of the new TV landscape, and few 24 episode network serials are considered serious contenders for modern pop culture's zeitgeist at all. Therefore, Network TV is actually starting to shift towards a new market. That is, people who don't care enough to have streaming services.
I complained about S.W.A.T. and it's tryst with polyamory, but aside from Annie's strong rebuttal of the practice in that one episode, there's a few other odd things that have surfaced:
Chris' "partners", Ty and Keira, are basically nonexistent entities on the show. They have actors, and they have lines, but no effort has been put into making them characters or likeable in any way. Of course, no effort has been put into the opposite either.
Everybody knows that the endgame for this show is Chris and Street, and it's started moving in this direction with Chris kissing Street and then bumbling her way back into her polyamorous nonsense.
I also mentioned elsewhere that there's an episode where fans of a talk radio host plan a terror attack on an LGBT event. I think this is the only episode possibly ever of S.W.A.T. where the victims weren't portrayed as being entirely sympathetic. The whole first half of the episode was the talk radio host being held hostage by an angry gay man with a massive gun, and then the second half has one of the terrorists (I feel should specify that they were white surpremacists) surrounded by a mob of LGBT Antifa-esque gun nuts, and S.W.A.T. have to save him.
I mean, I don't think I've ever seen that sort of "both siding" on any TV show, and it's probably because they knew they would alienate a sizeable amount of their audience if they just presented evil white guys going after a Pride event.
Continuing with this theory, the second season opens with Hondo (team leader) suddenly very mad about everything in a plotline that looks like it's leading to some Black Lives Matter stuff. I mean, at one point he's even pulled over by a prejudiced road cop who he later intimidates once the cop learns what Hondo's position is. Anyways, after the cop infuriates him some more, he goes back to his hotel room and trashes it.
However, during the back half of the season, the show kind of does a 180 on everything? Hondo takes in a young boy, the son of his old best friend (who is in jail owing to their chaotic gang-adjacent upbringing). I guess the point of this is that Hondo slowly starts to realize his anger is a crutch he's holding on to for some reason, but actually it's just as if it basically stops being a factor and it's never really explained.
Now, for the big kicker, in the season opener a group of (vaguely socialist) Social Justice Warriors (who are, indeed, very good with keyboards, but the hacking kind) kidnap some billionaires' kid and try to lure the team into doing something dumb. In this episode, they're portrayed a little sympathetically since like, they're fighting for the little guy.
However, in the season finale 22 episodes later, they're just whacko nutjobs who nobody likes or trusts, and law enforcement's role in protecting statutory bodies is treated as paramount. And harking back to a weird Black Lives Matter thing, the leader of this group purposefully gets himself shot just as soon as he's dropped his gun (it involved some theater and bad lines of sight), but Hondo saves his life and then calls him a vain idiot.
Basically the whole finale was a quiet defense of classical liberalism, the importance of law enforcement (especially un-tethered from restrictive policy), current modes of government, and... possibly even capitalism?
Anyways, this was actually supposed to lead to some stuff about Prodigal Son, but this post is way too long already so I'll write about that some other time.
But nope, this is an actual plot point.
Vaguely relatedly probably don't do a #MeToo Pro-"S##### Media Men List" episode in the same episode as one where your protagonist is facing (untrue) unsubstantiated claims of an intimate relationship with a superior for personal gain.
Or an episode where you simultaneously denounce nationalism and admit that globalization means accepting atrocities as long as they're committed by other global powers or nations said global powers are willing to shield from consequences. Or, like, at least acknowledge that both are valid viewpoints rather than just being all "Say NO to Nationalism!!!! It'll give you cooties!!"
Instead, it was the happiest ending ever (ie worse than worst), where the final speech is composed almost entirely of apologism for Chief Murder Coveruper Annelise Keating. Frankly, it was really weird.
For example, Connor is so shaken by the events of the series so far that he seems to regress to his first season self. Most of all, this is in terms of his ability to connect with others, especially after Michaela's betrayal. He even decides to divorce Oliver, because he believes their relationship is toxic, and then is carted off to jail.
But THEN in the epilogue Connor and Oliver are still happily married, and it's just throwing away all that karma he's accumulated over the series for nothing.
And then there's Michaela herself! I mean, she's done literally all the worst things, and then nothing bad ever happens to her, nor does she feel bad about it, nor does Connor calling her a sociopath seem to matter. This whole finale was about a crazy power-hungry governor taking down Annelise and so of course Michaela also manages to get her own giant seat in power (I think she's a supreme court justice or something).
Finally, I no longer want to be the guy who sits around pointing out everybody's race or sexual orientation, because it's dumb. I think the writers of this show became overly concerned with this sort of thing because out of all eight or so protagonists left, the three who end up dead are all the straight white ones.
That is, not because the show is racist, but because the show was trying really hard to avoid being called racist and homophobic that it ended up being kind of hilarious. I should note, I guess, that this show killed off another protagonist in season 3, and he was black/Caribbean.
I have to say, I think I'm at that age where you're so emotionally affected by the staging and songs that the plot becomes slightly irrelevant to the goings on. I mean, when they performed the M.A.R.S.ical (a musical, but at M.A.R.S.) I was bawling (yes, actual tears and everything) for the whole second half. The last time I'd seen anything so beautiful was probably the second season finale of Backstage.
When they reprised Let Myself Go in the The Talent finale, I was basically an emotional wreck. It was so beautiful. Not because Penny and Sasha (and Tom and Camilla) had sacrificed their shot at winning to force a mea culpa for Vicky, but because it was so, so, beautiful.
I mean, this show has had a great number of performances (sidenote: Tosca sounds like she's singing "They say that the finer the wine" here right? Not "They say that the finer the line".) and season 3 just blew everything else out of the water. I liked basically every song this season, even Shining Star, which was the only one I didn't immediately love.
As for the plot... ehhh? In terms of continuations of things I was excited for in season 2, it really dropped the ball on Penny and Sasha. They were teammates on The Talent, but the way that those segments were abridged made them seem like they were living separate lives. In fact, the first time we see a The Talent performance with Penny, she's performing with Rob.
I should really mention that the staging of the whole The Talent show was brilliant and excellent and the best.
Moving on...
The Penny/Seb/Rob love triangle was very muddled, because it was left until so late in the season to be resolved. It was obvious that Penny was going to pick Seb (and she should've), but I think the staff on the show were alarmed that as episodes passed that she was going to dump the black guy in the series finale after he'd basically been robbed (haha, robbed) of a spot in the Talent finale. In the end, Penny ended up picking neither by claiming she needed time and space to figure herself out (which is not how finales ought to play out).
Not just that, Penny decides to leave M.A.R.S. entirely to record her first album and go on a world tour after being offered a deal by a rich producer lady. It's insane that she decides to leave the place that continues to hone her talent and skills, and also hosts all her best friends, rivals and love interests, not to mention her education.
Most of all because her mother is an international superstar who has a recording booth in their home and lots of connections. Penny can become famous later, after her talents are honed and she figures herself out. Or at the very least, she has the opportunity to versus almost everybody else at M.A.R.S.
Plus, this season has kind of been the Adversity Season for Penny. Her mom's plane crashed, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down for half the season. She can't figure out if she loves Seb or Rob (actually it's more like she wants Seb back as soon as he wants her back). She bombs her M.A.R.S.ical Audition, leaving her with a bit part. She loses The Talent (even though Camilla tries to give her the award during the ceremony). I mean, a better ending would have her being fine with all of this, and moving on.
Instead, she leaves.
This season also really suffered from the dual-focus. Aside from how Magnificent and Beautiful the performances were, nobody ever really knew where they were in terms of either the M.A.R.S.ical or The Talent. Sasha is the principal dancer in the M.A.R.S.ical, and so he's enamored with Vicky, and so the story ignores his relationship with Penny almost constantly. Seb is not in The Talent, but he's the lead in the M.A.R.S.ical, a role that is somehow smaller than Sasha's. Camilla gets no decent role in The Talent, but fulfills her dreams of standing with pride on stage on The Talent.
Martha, basically the main villain of this season, is the actual star of the M.A.R.S.ical opposite Seb. I thought Martha's twitter/blog cyber bullying ways would be discovered before she went on, forcing Penny to take the lead role. Nope, doesn't happen, Martha gets to shine, and her only comeuppance is getting banned from twitter. I feel like, in an older show, she'd have suffered real repercussions but also be forgiven and inducted into the main friend group because they would forgive her, but she just kind of disappears after being banned from twitter.
And now to dissect the finale stunt; Penny and Sasha rope Vicky into coming onto The Talent with them, again, after they are almost eliminated the first time around for bringing a dancer as their guest during the vocal guest week. The thing with Vicky is that she lacks self-confidence due to a large scar on the side of her face, and so the judges of the show chided them the first time around for exploiting her to get more votes.
This time, actually tanking their chances to win on purpose (even though as I mentioned earlier backdoor dealings that are never addressed ever again lead to Rob being eliminated instead of Camilla and Tom) they call Vicky back on stage, along with Camilla and Tom (who are their opponents). They all have make-upped on very realistic looking scars in solidarity with Vicky.
Now, I'm not saying this was bad (as I mentioned, the whole performance made me cry, thought it didn't have much to do with this aspect, it was just really beautiful overall) but the fact is they could have just brought Vicky on and insisted Tom and Camilla not join them. It was important, I'll admit, because Martha had gotten in Vicky's head and made her believe she would never be allowed on a stage again even after Vicky had been principal dancer in the M.A.R.S.ical beside Sasha.
The Talent is a TV competition, and I know that they're all rich (tuition at M.A.R.S is not cheap, plus they all go to a performing arts school) so they don't have to worry about blowing their only shot at fame on that stage, but there was a real lack of respect for the rules of the competition to have your competitors join you. I mean, they could have performed their final number, then hijacked the show, so at least the judges would have something real to judge. And then at the end Penny still gets a record deal.
It's not a big deal or anything, it was just... odd.
Wow, I did not know I had this many thoughts about the finale.
That reminds me, I don't think I ever really liked that trope. I've always preferred the cop that plays by the rules but does so in smart ways to corner the perp. Probably explains why I don't think i was ever much of a fan of Elliot Stabler in SVU. While he does have some interesting sides to him (particularly the family life aspects, especially considering that none of the other main characters in SVU have a full traditional family), he's probably my least favorite character in the main cast due to his excessively aggressive tendencies, which would every so often just cause headaches for the prosecution, and I also wondered how he didn't get himself fired. (That seemed unrealistic, but considering the information that's come to light recently,...)
Then again I mostly watched SVU for the individual episode plots. I don't think I was ever particularly attached to the main characters themselves; I just wanted them to do their detective-work jobs in a relatively normal way so I could see the setting and plotlines of the individual episodes. I found stuff like the therapy episodes relatively boring, and instances of the main cast doing dumb things that got in the way of their work -- including but not limited to roughing up suspects, which (like I said) caused headaches for the prosecution -- were probably my more disliked episodes.
As for cleverness, Criminal Intent delivered that much better than SVU did. SVU did have occasions where the detectives needed to (for example) use empathy carefully in order to coax information out of victims, or deal with trickier perps, but it wasn't quite the same level of mind games as Criminal Intent had on a consistent basis, what with its antagonists often being quite clever themselves.
As a more general point I think I may enjoy stuff that involves cops or people in the military, but this seems mostly for the teamwork aspect. I say this because, note that I basically don't watch live-action TV though, so this is pretty much inferences drawn mostly from the anime I watch, and needless to say this is way different from reality, even more so than the already inherent unrealism of live-action TV shows set in non-fantasy/non-sci-fi settings. I know I watch a lot of anime that features a cast of characters cooperating to get something done, and it's actually rather common for renegade members of the group to get taught a lesson about the value of teamwork and doing things the right way.
I really dislike the golden years of Criminal Intent because it always thought it was better than other Law & Order shows but almost all the mind games were extremely unrealistic.
Either that, or people say things without a lawyer present in a way that's really really unrealistic.
I mean, I really liked that "Pretty Little Liars but adult men after college" episode but even I'd figured out what was going on about 10 minutes in.
TV should intersect with culture*. However, in those terms, we should remember that TV is a fantasy version of real life, which is why TV shows that strive for realism are critically acclaimed but never popular.
"If I was a cop I'd dun ruff em up" is an understandable feeling, which is why it's portrayed on TV so often. I'm pretty sure Stabler existed because presenting SVU stories as starkly as they are is painful, more so painful in portrayal than you'd think something like violent crime or anything else.
I mean, not even just as a cop, just look up comments under any news story about a pedophile and watch all the accepted threats of violence pour in.
That's why shows that deal with murder primarily can be clinical yet effective to the human mind. As such, they wanted somebody to break through it and exact a mini version of retribution (rather than justice), and that was Stabler.
If you watch any recent seasons of SVU, nothing of the sort exists, because the culture shifted. Even though Liv and others have done a lot of illegal things, they're never presented as "rogues". Similarly with a lot of modern TV shows where law enforcement refuse to co-operate with ICE or take anti-anti-illegal migration stands. In presentation, that's not "rogue", that's "justice".
Nowadays, shows with rogue cops are a all for a very specific demographic. The Chicago series, maybe. Blue Bloods? NCIS... and that's probably it.
So I guess actually why is John Oliver complaining about a basically dead convention?
*Nowadays, culture enforces on TV, but that's irrelevant to what we're discussing.
That's one of my favourites. If we're thinking about the same thing, then one thing I've learned by watching the criminal psychology Youtube channel is that it's crazy what sort of obviously incriminating things people will say during interrogations, often without cool mind games being involved beyond get-comfortable-with-the-suspect and often disregarding what their lawyers told them.
Instead what I noticed is that in these shows at some point the cop would have enough and confront the suspect about what they're saying or their justifications for what they did or whatever, which makes for good drama, whereas the actual investigator would often just let the bad side "win" while they keep incriminating themselves, confident that it's not there where someone should say something but later on in the courtroom.
I'm assuming that this is a similar convention with the Stabler thing; if the heroes won by allowing somebody to really delve into their terrible activities, then they lose their morality somehow.
In this season, the secondary plotline is about the school musical -the M.A.R.S.ical- which is based on the Hans Christian Andersen story of The Ugly Ducking.
This version of the story is pretty muddled, as musicals-within-a-show generally are, but it continues on from the final part of the original story. There's a new love triangle involving The Ugly Duckling, The Beautiful Swan and The Shy Swan.
As the story goes in the M.A.R.S.ical, the Shy Swan welcomes the Ugly Duckling into the world of Swans, and thus the Ugly Duckling develops feelings for her. However, he is soon taken by the Beautiful Swan, and he abandons the Shy Swan as she cannot express her own feelings for him.
This is how it's scripted, and how it plays out.
Now, in the context of Penny on M.A.R.S., what with the whole "no matter what scars you have" and just modern storytelling convention, I thought this version would never stand. In fact, when Penny bombed her audition for the Beautiful Swan, netting Martha the lead vocal role opposite Sebastian, I was sure of it.
I thought that Martha would be caught out in her bad deeds, and somehow this would lead to a rewrite where the Ugly Duckling realized he loved the Shy Swan after all.
But that didn't happen. I mean, in the context of the story, this all matters very little, but it was a weird way for the story to go, even though this is what would probably most likely happen in a real fairy tale. Maybe this even references another fairy tale I'm unaware of...
Thinking about older stuff made me remember how Naturally, Sadie (a Canadian Family Channel show in the style of a Disney Channel show) went from "Sadie is a weird tomboy kid with weird interests" to "Sadie is basically a nice version of Holly J. Sinclair".
Holly J. Sinclair being Charlotte Arnold's super-girly mean-girl character in the middle seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation.
I'm really glad this two minute video captures it all so perfectly.
Speaking of Family Channel shows I'm suddenly reminded of how Michael from The Latest Buzz was Not Gay.
Haha the thumbnail accidentally reads "Naturally Sad".
>I should watch more cartoons
>hey I just remembered two Canadian live-action kids shows I should watch instead!
I don't know what's more me that this.
The atmosphere is... goofy, I guess? It's weird that the protagonists just get to town and mysterious ghost stuff starts happening to them. There are lots of fun scenes, like when Caleb participates in the "girl is scared by a ghost in the shower" need but this time it's a boy in the bath.
This show has some familiar faces. Nicole Gale Anderson, who previously appeared in the Jonas Brothers' short lived comedy (then drama) series JONAS (then JONAS L.A.) was kind of a lot at the start, but as the plot settles around her she becomes more tolerable as the main character.
Brett Dier, one of the best actors out of the school of Cast Cause Handsome, who later went to star in most of Jane the Virgin, plays his role as the troubled young lad well. He and his sister have a lot of great scenes.
I'm glad I waited six years to re-watch this show because now I genuinely don't remember any of the plot points. Can't wait to see how it all goes, again!
The plot is that this time around, Remy's mother comes back from her tenure as a war doctor, and so Caleb, Miranda, Remy, as well as fraternal twins Olivia and Luke are meant to die next in the cycle. However, only Miranda dies, and so the forces of Ravenswood go after the rest of the main cast whilst Miranda assists them in ghost form.
It should have been obvious that Miranda was going to become a ghost based on how she dressed from the very start.
I rarely talk about the shows I watch nowadays because I don't think it's fashionable to complain excessively and there's a lot to complain about nowadays.
However, doesn't mean the shows are suddenly all Fair and Balanced.
In the particular left-wing fever dream that is FBI: Most Wanted, a white supremacist woman guns down a whole church full of pregnant women.
"All Latinx," former Law & Order ADA Now FBI Director Alana de la Garza says.
I actually laughed out loud for a full minute because, hey, they were all women, in a Catholic church. Pretty sure that's the perfect time to break out "Latina" instead. It's impressive how hard fourth-wave feminism works to erase women wholesale (especially pregnant ones) in favor of "gender neutrality".
As they say, Latinx don't come from Latin America, they come from UC Berkley.
Later in the episode, my favorite character (that is to say she always has the worst possible thing to say on hand) Sheryll Barnes states the true hallmarks of white supremacy; some anti-feminist book from the 70s, being a housewife, signs that read "Home isn't a place, it's a calling.", and tradwives.
She neglects to mention where said tradwife they're hunting is a marksman skilled enough to take out 15 or so people by herself with a single AK, but that's meshed with typical TV Star Wars mook logic so I can't blame her too much.
Before I forget, the star of the show -tough as nails man who can read everything from the magic clues the TV gods only leave in his mind- is played by Julian McMahon, whose father was apparently once Prime Minister of Australia (in real life!!) and he was once married to Kylie Minogue's vaguely famous younger sister (in real life!!).
He's basically a Charlie's Angel and I love it.
Darn it Netflix.
I quit you and I'm not coming back.
I'll just read the tie-in novels.
Oh my gosh they replaced Flora and Techna with some other girl. I have already figured out that this adaptation is the worst.
They've also changed Alfea College into Alfea International School and undone the interplanetary dimensional nature of the series so it's all flattened into one magical "Otherworld".
So in this re-imagining, Solaria and Eraklyon are now countries rather than planets.
My gosh this will suck so hard and yet I'll watch every second.
Netflix Winx Club;
I never thought Netflix would be the cartoon world's edgifying force but here we are.
I wonder if this is how people who grew up with Superman in the 70s/80s/etc felt about the modern DC movie universe.
I really don't get why they made Aisha blue rather than green, aside from they gave
FlochnaTerra a color scheme neither of her pre-composite characters had (Techna is purple and Flora is pink). Bloom's original color scheme is also blue, which is less cartoonish than the new all red she has. Red is supposed to be Musa's color, but now she's the purple one.I hate to wade into this sort of thing, but I get that these days a show will have a plus-sized one but it feels extra weird that Techna+Flora is noticeably overweight because this is an action show with stunts meant for the physically fit (presumably), not to mention that it's a show about the powerful and prettier-than-everyone. I mean, I personally haven't been in shape in a while but that's probably exactly why I shouldn't be cast in YA TV shows.
And I know that the clothing on everybody is bad (except Stella) but they didn't have to make her in particular look extra dumpy. But who knows, maybe she gets a makeover eventually.
Anyways I actually came here to say I started watching Walmarts 22-part ad-slash-holiday movie, "Add to Heart". I feel like whenever one of these things has an obviously commercial bent (like the KFC one from a few years ago), there's a higher likelihood there will be a gay best friend.
I'd be more alarmed at the overt commercialism if it weren't absolutely fun and completely free on YouTube as a result.
I also learned recently that Victor Rodrigues III (who played Josh in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, ie the object of the insane Rebecca's affections) played half of a gay couple in a recent Christmas movie. There were an insane number of gay Christmas movies a while ago, but now they just tend to have the gay couple as a side-plot. I think I prefer that, it was just overly pandery to make entirely gay movies since the West isn't really Asia yet in terms of having a booming industry of live-action boy's love works (or as someone said, "Thailand's soft power").