What Ben's Watched On Streaming for June/July

I've watched a bunch of things on streaming media recently. Here are my short-ish reviews:

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, Season 3 (Netflix)

A friend of mine recently said, "yeah, I was watching Agents of SHIELD, and then it got really stupid." I think she was referring to sometime in Season 2. 

Which is true, Agents of SHIELD perenially has a plot which I'd describe thematically as "peak comic book," where all plot threads come together into a unified whole no matter how disparate they seem to be at the beginning, and some stuff seems shoehorned in. It is apparently inconceivable to the Agents of SHIELD writers that SHIELD could have to deal with two major issues at the same time and they never team up or subsume each other. 

The show is also knocking off characters at a Game of Thrones rate (okay, pre-season 6 season finale Game of Thrones rate) sometimes seemingly because Joss Whedon doesn't want to pay for an actor anymore. Similarly, the "big bad" for the last half of the season sometimes seemed to be down a henchman because, I think, either the actor they had for him (who's B-list famous) was too expensive to be in every episode if he didn't have lines or he had a prior commitment so he couldn't appear in half the episodes you'd expect to see him in.

That said, as a guy who just read all the issues of Radioactive Spider-Gwen and spin-offs available on Marvel Unlimited (Gwen Stacy is a much more interesting Spider-Person than Peter Parker! Also she's in an alternate universe where Captain America was always an African-American woman and Daredevil is evil! You really should read it!), I have a pretty high tolerance for comic book stupid (I had to read through several issues with Spider-Ham -- yes, the Spider-Man that is an anthropomorphic pig -- crossovers) if a show is otherwise diverting. And Agents of SHIELD remains entertainingly diverting.

Also, Clark Gregg is still clearly enjoying his job and is a joy to watch.

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (Amazon Prime)

Elevator pitch for this show: "It's Attack on Titan, but with zombie mobs instead of naked giants, and it's set in a steampunk late Tokugawa Japan where most of the action takes place one of the armored supply trains for the rail system that keeps the last few human outposts connected."

The execution is, at best, fair. Writing seems to be done by folks given the directive: "use the formula we know works for shounen [teenage boy-marketed] anime for the elevator pitch you just heard. Do not, under any circumstances, take any risks with plot or characterization or otherwise give the audience something they likely have not seen before in another anime."

It's always magical zombies with glowing hearts covered in some sort of difficult-to-penetrate metal alloy. isn't it?

I could go on and give details, but it would really be a waste of your brain space. It's not good.

Penny Dreadful (Netflix)

This was reviewed before on this blog, but I actually like it a little more.

Let's not get too excited: I don't love Penny Dreadful as high art. I like it as a television version of a gothic horror (which also has influence from - and name-checks - the Grand Guignol style of gory theater) acted by people who are capable of much more substantial work than being "morally compromised supernatural evil-hunting team."

And that's what Penny Dreadful is -- Timothy Dalton plays the rich African explorer father of Mina Harker -- yes, that Mina Harker -- who assembles a semi-random team of dangerous misfits to rescue his daughter from a vampire. They are:

• the African explorer's mysterious African warrior butler/something (Danny Sapiani)
• demon-possessed psychic childhood friend of Mina (Eva Green)
• American gunslinger whose dark secret would be only revealed in the last episode of the first season if it wasn't spoiled by the credits sequence (Josh Hartnett)
• Dr. Victor Frankenstein -- yes, that Dr. Frankenstein (Harry Treadway)

In a parallel plotline, for reasons I can't quite understand, there's Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney); yes, the Oscar Wilde one with the painting. He seems to be there mostly to create multiple romantic issues with Josh Hartnett's character; Gray has sex with two women Ethan Chandler (Hartnett) is romantically entangled with, plus Chandler himself. I don't think this spoils much in the first season because, as I said, Dorian Gray has no direct relationship to the main plot. 

Here's Ethan Chandler and Dorian Gray making out. While there is a bunch of male full-frontal nudity in this show, sadly not of these guys. 

Also, Billie Piper is in this as a prostitute dying of consumption. She needs a better post-Doctor Who agent. 

As I said above, this show is sort of an update of gothic horror and Grand Guignol; the point is not that it's good, it's that it's constantly entertaining or at least shocking in a visceral way. There is a plot and there is dialogue. As the previous blogger on this beat noted, neither are particularly compelling (although the pacing of the story is good). But the production values, the acting, and the fact that everyone making this is taking it seriously instead of winking at the audience somehow raise it above "dumb" to "weirdly fun." 

TV Sluts Threeway, OJ Simpson Edition

Hello, Readers! As we are wont to do from time to time, your TV Sluts have joined forces to collectively discuss The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story. The miniseries, the latest from Ryan Murphy and co. and following up on the success of American Horror Story, profiles the trail surrounding the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1995. What did we think of it? Find out... 

Please let there be aliens... please let there be aliens...

Arsenic Pie: SLUTS ASSEMBLE

Maggie Cats: WOOHOO. That's the secret; we're always slutty.

Clovis: Slutty, slutty assembling.

AP: But we are not always assembled and not always slutty in the same place in time and space. Who would like to begin? BECAUSE OMG

MC: General thoughts?

C: So much racism! So much sexism!

AP: It was, much like the case itself, a train wreck. In that I could not look away.

MC: I remember when the trial was happening, I think I was...14? But most of the broader cultural implications were completely lost on me.

AP: Also: Kato!! What what what was he on?

C: Kato was criminally (see what I did there?) underused.

AP: I see what you did, and I appreciate it.

MC: That pun was a crime.

AP: Yeah, I remember it all happening, but I also paid zero attention to it. If punning you is wrong, I don't want to be right!

C: I remember classes in my high school shutting down so that we could watch the verdict being delivered. Even in small town lily-white MI, it was a thing.

MC: I think the main things I took away from the show was how ridiculously underprepared the prosecution was for the defense's strategy and how Marcia Clark was eviscerated in the media. Basically for being a woman. That enraged me.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!

AP: Well, that hairdo was pretty bad. I had no idea she was a rape victim.

MC: Me neither! I wonder if that came out in the book she wrote after the trial.

AP: And I also didn't remember/know that a tabloid published a nekked photo of her. Because what do you do when there's a lady lawyer? You slut shame her OBVS.

C: Duh. Ladies practicing law? Pshaw! Who ever heard of such a thing?

AP: Next you'll tell me they let the womenfolk do the doctorin’. That just ain't natural.

MC: Seriously. It kind of opened my eyes to the progress we have made even in the last few decades. Though stuff like this still happens, but nowadays I think there would be backlash.

C: I was really glad to see how they treated Marcia Clark as a character. Which is to say, I thought they showed really well that she was always in a damned-if-she-does-damned-if-she-doesn't place.

MC: I absolutely agree. Any character with Kiss From a Rose as their theme song is OK by me.

C: Oh Man, we need to talk about the wondrous ‘90s music employed in this show.

AP: I was also interested in the way they portrayed her. They showed her as someone who was really trying to do her job and get at the truth, and not as a famewhore. Who was Johnnie Cochran. Who is the biggest famewhore in the history of famewhores BT Dubs. And that actor’s portrayal was spot on. 

Real life v. Hollywood. Brother from another mother?

MC: Absolutely. She did an impossible job AND was in the middle of a custody battle. That's brutal.

C: Agreed, but I also liked that Johnnie Cochran was a complex character himself. Like, he was a total famewhore, but one who did have a very clear guiding principle that wasn't just around his own self-aggrandizement. (Though, that obviously was a factor as well.)

MC: The guy who played Cochran [Courtney B. Vance] has been in a lot of Law & Orders and is always great. I was psyched when I saw he was playing that role.

AP: I remember when I started watching it, I looked up who was playing Cochran because he nailed it. He was really the stand-out for me, acting-wise.

C: Totally. I had to keep reminding myself that he wasn't actually Johnnie Cochran. And on the other end of the spectrum WTF John Travolta?

AP: I know, right! Oh, he was baaaaaad.

MC: OMG that was so weird! Sarah Paulson for me was the real stand out.

AP: Yes, she was excellent.

MC: Was Travolta supposed to be bad though? Like, was that the character? He was just so swarmy.

C: It was like watching a demented sad clown trying to be a lawyer. Krusty would have been a better choice.

AP: I am so over Travolta. And was he wearing a bad make-up job or is that is face now?

MC: He is plastic fantastic. I actually thought he was fabulous as that character; but that's because we aren't supposed to like that guy either.

AP: It was a departure for him, but I can't say I'm a fan of his acting. Just kind of chewed the scenery a bit. It was a bit too much.

Pennywise wasn't this disturbing.

MC: CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT DAVID SCHWIMMER? He was great.

AP: YES! YES WE CAN BECAUSE HOLY SHIT ROSS IS ROBERT KARDASHIAN!

MC: "Juice...Juice..." It was crazy. So basically OJ Simpson is responsible for the Kardashians. THANKS,OJ.

AP: And that is why OJ is currently in prison. He *was* good, I have to say. But I was always distracted by his skunk hair.

MC: That's what that guy's hair looked like though!

AP: No wonder Kris cheated.

C: What did you guys think of the decision to incorporate the Kardashians into the story? Obviously, they're trying to say something about what fame does to people.

MC: I had read the showrunners were specifically setting out to show the cultural impact of the trial. Example: Kato.

C: And the Kardashians are obviously one of the biggest components of that.

Next season on American Horror Story...

AP: I thought the scene with the little Kardashians was good foreshadowing. Like, you could see Little Kim plotting to become famous somehow. Overall, you could see that the show was addressing the cultural shift.

MC: It certainly did not paint a flattering portrait of most of the LA rich people.

AP: It was kind of the first time there was wall-to-wall coverage of a murder case, and it wasn't because people were interested in it legally or wanted to see justice done, they just wanted to be entertained, and the media complied.

C: Agreed. It seems to me that the big takeaways the show wanted us to, well, take away were the danger in obsession with fame, the problem with putting justice essentially to a public vote, and the very real and very much still pervasive mistreatment of minorities by white people in power.

MC: Absolutely. The whole thing had a "last days of Rome" feel to it.

AP: It was bread and circuses all the way.

MC: Everyone had a stake and an opinion on it. It was like a perfect storm with the race issues, celebrity, and salaciousness. Fo sho

C: I mean, Chris Darden's last speech to Johnnie Cochran even lays it out when he says "[the police] are still going to keep right on killing us." They may as well have had a flash forward to a Black Lives Matter march.

AP: And don't forget the domestic violence angle. Because yes, the cops were racist. And yes, Mark Furhrman is kind of a Nazi. But that doesn't take away from the fact that OJ beat and terrorized Nicole.

MC: Since I didn't follow the actual case closely as a kid, a lot of the facts of the crime were a surprise to me. Like how the LAPD failed at every possible step of the way. The prior beatings and abuse were a shock to me as well. It was so awful.

AP: They completely failed. That was one part of the case I knew about. I knew about that and the glove, and that was about it.

MC: I think the show also worked to keep the focus on the victims, something the trial was not able to do. Like, "hello? Remember the people who were brutally murdered?"

C: But weirdly, we never saw the victims. Which, for a Ryan Murphy show, I was really surprised by given that he never met a bloody body scene he didn’t love to film. We see flashes of two bodies in the first episode, but never their faces. It’s not until the show ends that we even see any representation of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.

AP: I actually thought that was a good choice. It was respectful to the victims not to cast them as Body 1 and Body 2. It was better to just let the real victims be...the victims.

C: It seemed to me like the show was trying to make a point about how much the actual victims were left behind in this process.

MC: Totally agree. This was actually the strongest Ryan Murphy show I have seen. I think because it was limited run, completely mapped out in advance, and based on real events. Keeping the Dad and sister of Ron (I think?) front and center was smart.

C: Yeah, because he was bound by facts and couldn't throw in aliens in episode 6. Just for funsies.

AP: True or False: Aliens would have made it that much more intriguing.

C: I maintain that John Travolta was playing his character as an alien. It's the only thing that makes sense to me.

MC: False. Truth is stranger than fiction. Also, Hahahaha, word.

AP: I think we may have a solid theory going. I mean, Homeboy is a Scientologist. I'm sure he thought aliens factored into it somehow.

MC: Oh, lord.

C: "Aliens did it" would actually probably make a more believable defense strategy than the one they actually presented.

AP: "If I Did It," by OJ Simpson. 

Please note that this is an actual book. 

MC: So, I have to ask. Do you guys think he did it? I have never expressed an opinion because I never thought I knew enough of the facts.

AP: I still don't think I know enough of the facts, to really say for sure. I would say he probably did it, but I also wonder if there wasn't someone else involved.

C: I think, based only on what I know from reading, that yes he definitely did it.

MC: How about this: do you think OJ believes it was someone else? The way he was portrayed it was like he honestly didn't know why he was there.

AP: Yes. That I believe. He might have done it in a fit of rage, and then honestly blacked out.

C: I think OJ probably doesn't have a realistic impression of his own mind. Which is to say, I think he knows he did it, but in his head the reasoning for it is so constructed and explained away and rationalized that he effectively believes that he did not do something he did.

MC: I would believe that; or convinced himself he blacked out. Right--and justified. Since Nicole was "his." It was creepy how he always called her "my Nicole."

C: That's what makes his whole case fascinating in my mind: I think he's pretty clearly the killer, but the case lived and died on the very real issue of institutionalized racism.

AP: And he really got off because the cops were so incompetent.

MC: It was like, the jury let this one black man go who actually committed it in response to all the black men who were convicted and innocent. And, to be fair, that is a legit reason to get off.

C: For me, the show hit it best in the last episode in a scene between Johnnie and his wife. His wife effectively says that OJ very likely did the crime that he was accused of, but the reason why she's proud of Johnnie is because he shined a light on how terribly African Americans are treated by the police in this country. Even if OJ didn’t deserve to go free, the attention his case brought was still a good thing. The case was an imperfect one, but the issue it raised is one that needs to be talked about, basically.

Justice, LAPD-style.

MC: Our justice system is designed around the idea it is better to let 10 guilty men free rather than imprison one innocent man. 

AP: Or the jury may have believed the defense. They might have actually thought that they knew what cops were like, and in their minds, it's totally reasonable for cops to plant evidence.

MC: Which we all know is now how things go down. I totally agree with Clovis. And like we noted, the police fucked this up royally.

C: I don't believe that the jury "threw" the case, for lack of a better word. I'm pretty convinced that the jury members honestly believed that he did not commit the murders.

AP: No, I don't think they threw it either. I think they honestly thought the cops planted evidence. Because the jury was comprised of African-Americans, and cops have planted things on African Americans.

MC: Well, you don't have to believe he was innocent. You just have to have reasonable doubt. I'm not sure I would have convicted. Even if I believe he did it. Reasonable doubt is not that high a bar.

C: Exactly. They had enough experience with the LAPD to easily believe the police were corrupt and that it wasn't beyond reasonable doubt that they could have framed OJ. Hence, acquittal. 

MC: The defense definitely called a lot of the evidence into question; and remember, this was basically the first high profile use of DNA. There was no CSI. People were like, whaaaaa?

C: Also it shows how you have to be careful telling a story, right? "Please listen to this long, droning explanation of science" isn't as compelling for people as "these racist corrupt cops tried to pull a fast one on you."

MC: Exactly. The show did a good job of showing how the jury was totally not getting it--nobody wants to hear 3 days of some scientist blabbering on.

AP: No, if it's not in layman's terms, nobody is going to care.

C: So what do we think were the things the show did best?

AP: THE CAR CHASE. With OJ and the gun and the screaming = Hilarious. You can't make this shit up. That's why it's so good.

Traffic on the 405 this morning: Light with a few backups due to fugitive activity. Normal Tuesday, folks!

MC: It definitely told a compelling story. And I thought was pretty honest while still being dramatic.

AP: The script was compelling, and the cast was committed.

C: I thought they did a really good job of taking a period piece and connecting it subtly but solidly with issues that we're seeing today. And that it didn't have the usual Ryan Murphy hallmarks of weird shit happening just for fuck's sake.

MC: For sure; I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of everything. But it still felt soapy enough that it was entertaining.

AP: It was really quite addictive. Nobody was phoning it in, except Travolta, who was coming to us live via satellite from his auditing center.

MC: He was with his alien overlords so distracted.

C: Travolta's thetans really deserve an Emmy nod for this one.

AP: And he'll have to donate half his Emmy to the church. And Lord Xenu. And Tom Cruise

C: IT'S CALLED TITHING AND HOW ELSE ARE YOU GOING TO GO CLEAR WITHOUT IT?!?

MC: Don't forget Nathan Lane. So random! The casting in this was so weird and so awesome.

C: How much fun did Nathan Lane have playing an uber straight dude? I mean, really?

AP: I loved Nathan Lane. He was basically playing Ken Starr.

MC: But David Schwimmer definitely wins for most random. And great. But I thought he only directed stuff now. He hasn't been in anything for a while. It was a great role too--I found his whole arc about doubting OJ's innocence and struggling with that really compelling. What would you do if you believed your best friend murdered someone? I mean, we're all cool with it because TV Sluts united forever. But it must be hard for normal people.

C: We're going to be blogging from prison, let's face it.

AP: They let you have internet time in Gitmo, right?

MC: I bet Arsenic Pie goes first. She'll get put in the slammer for speeding tickets and they'll ignore all the real crimes you've committed.

AP: FOR THE LAST TIME, PUNNING IS NOT A CRIME! You know I'm going to bust some kittens out of a university science lab and it'll be the big house for AP.

MC: 20 to life, bitch. You'll get your comeuppance.

AP: Fortunately, I learned to fashion a shiv from watching Downton Abbey. Anyway, back to it, OJ didn't seem like OJ, casting-wise. He's supposed to be a pro football player, right? Why was the actor they cast so fucking tiny?

MC: Well, he HAD been. He was retired at that point.

AP: Right, but he didn't shrink. He was physically too small for the role.

MC: It's pretty common for pro athletes to gain a lot of weight after they stop playing.

C: I thought Cuba Gooding Jr did a good job, but agreed that he never quite nailed OJ. Like, he just didn't quite become the part the way Courtney B Vance did for Johnnie Cochran or Sarah Paulson did for Marcia Clark.

MC: I actually think is a good thing to talk about--because the show didn't seem to want to take a stance on whether OJ knew he did it or not. So I don't know how much Cuba was given. It's hard to walk that line. 

AP: He did a good job being Cuba Gooding Jr. He didn't seem physically imposing at all is my point.

MC: The first few episodes of showing how he could get very unbalanced. I would have like to have seen him rage out.

AP: He didn't go all the way into how scary OJ supposedly could be.

Unclear if this is a compliment to OJ Simpson or an insult to Cuba Gooding Jr.

C: Maybe the reason for that is because the show was trying to be agnostic about his guilt or innocence. I mean, it's notable that we never once see any kind of recreation of the night in question, which would have been easy enough to film.

MC: Agreed. The audience is definitely supposed to make up their own mind. So it's difficult for an actor to play that role when the story never specifically tells him whether he did or not. He has to be convincing both ways.

C: And that fits with the idea that the show really isn't that interested in OJ himself, it's interested in the questions raised by the case (and trial) and what the cultural fallout from it was.

MC: BOOM. NAILED IT.

C: Thanks. I am incredible, aren't I?

MC: It's this kind of hard hitting analysis people expect from us. Also poop jokes.

AP: And Scientology jokes. Cuba did a fine job acting-wise. He just seemed kinda there. Like, he's not as tall as OJ, and not as muscular, and he didn't have that same physicality. Which, even if the focus isn't on OJ, OJ should still have been more of an elephant in the room. He just wasn't.

"Yes, you, young man. Would you mind trying on the gloves of this famous football player?"

MC: Yeah, agreed. The 8 previous calls to the police for domestic abuse is kind of a hard fact to ignore. The whole thing is just awful. Everyone failed Nicole in this circumstance.

C: The thing that was probably most heart-breaking to me was the scene of the Goldman family silently walking back to their car, hearing the news reports of people celebrating throughout the city and then asking "what do we do now?"

MC: Absolutely.

AP: You sue. That’s what you do.

C: Which has always been the thing that brings me back to the guilt or innocence question when you think about OJ. If he didn't do, someone did and that someone has never been pursued. Of course, the reason why is because the LA DA honestly believes that they found the killer and there's no one else to pursue, but hey. Double Jeopardy, everyone!

MC: But then when we say things like that, I want to roll my eyes and be like, of course we know who did it. Which kind of throws my whole "I haven't made up my mind yet' thing out the window.

AP: The defense did do a good job of pointing that out. That no other suspects were ever considered.

MC: Any final thoughts? 

C: I'm interested to see what next season is. This is an anthology series, after all.

AP: I would like to see them do the Steven Avery case, actually

MC: Charles Manson? Lizzy Borden? Good stuff about women in there.

AP: Nothing will top Christina Ricci though.  The Christina Ricci one was such a hot mess!!

C: I would love a season focused on the Chicago Murder Castle and the World's Fair. (Devil in the White City stuff.)

MC: As long as they focus on the murders and not the architecture. Zzzzzzzz

AP: I think this is a good series. So long as they keep attracting high caliber actors.

C: That's the real benefit of an anthology. You can get really good, big names because they don't have to sign away seven years of their lives. It's basically just shooting a big movie and then they can come back next season if they want to.

AP: Yeah, not too shabby to get Bruce Greenwood on board. I have a crush on him.

C: Didn't he play Captain Pike in the NuTrek movies?

AP: YES!

Dreamy

MC: I have a crush on David Schwimmer now.

AP: I'm telling Rachel you put moves on her man. I'll hold her down and shave her head.

C: It's hard to come back from Rachel. She did a number on all of us in the 90s.

MC: Yeah, Greenwood was great as the DA! He's very handsome. Though he seems short.

AP: He's 5'11"

MC: Someone has IMDB open.

AP: LIKE A BOSS. Anyway, overall, very good. Very compelling. A couple casting hiccups, but really well done

MC: I think it's fair to say we all enjoyed the hell out of the show. Both as entertainment and for raising conversations about broader issues. It certainly is a huge flashpoint in American history.

C: Yes. TV Sluts agreement.

MC: TV Sluts hooooooooo!

Daredevil, Season 2

So, I've watched the new season of Daredevil, the original "Marvel comic book show on Netflix."

It's not much of a spoiler to say this season has more ninjas.

I reviewed the first season some time back, so I thought I'd take first crack at Season 2. However, my thoughts have become long and nitpicky, so I've provided some TL;DR versions up front.

Short review: If you liked the first season, you will continue to like Daredevil. There is a lot of awesome in the show.

Slightly longer review: This is a very entertaining second season that, due to not having the novelty of introducing the character, has to work harder to be as awesome, and it doesn't quite make it. It's good, but not mind-blowing.

The long, rambling review you read this blog for:

Season Two opens some months after Season One; the Kingpin is in prison. Blind but blessed with super-sensory powers -- like the ability to know without actually being able to see how much facial stubble he should have before he stops being sexy and starts being a guy clearly too lazy to shave -- Matt Murdoch continues to prowl the streets at night as Daredevil. During the day, at his law firm of Nelson & Murdoch, Murdoch is flirted with by his office manager, Karen Page. She apparently went for the mysterious hot lawyer in the partnership (Murdoch) instead of the funny, dependable husky one with the pageboy haircut (Frederick "Foggy" Nelson) who was clearly trying to make a connection with her all of Season One, and was perfectly charming doing so, but does not have Charlie Cox's biceps or abs.

(An aside: Mike Colter's Luke Cage still has the best-defined chest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.)

I so want to like the second season of Daredevil more than I do. The acting remains solid, with notable performances by Jon Bernthal as Frank Castle ("The Punisher") and Vincent D'onofrio reprising his role as Wilson Fisk ("The Kingpin").

Jon Bernthal in a scene that does not require a particularly large acting range

Just as everything seems to be going all right -- except for the fact that no one actually pays Nelson & Murdoch except in foodstuffs -- former Marine Frank Castle starts avenging his murdered family by shooting his way through half the organized crime in New York, showing all the restraint of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Murdoch, who (and this is a theme of the season) takes his Catholicism seriously and believes the power to take a life is God's alone (beating them into a brain-damaged concussion is totally within God's plan, though, as I'll mention later), is compelled to intervene.

Simultaneously, there's some business with a ninja-themed magical death cult which brings Matt's super-assassin ex-girlfriend Elektra back into his life. With all the super-tsuris, Murdoch finds it harder and harder to be the Daredevil and be a lawyer, much less a decent boyfriend.

Let me reiterate before I nitpick the hell out of it: I found it decent. It was diverting. Best points:

• Wilson Fisk's fight choreography is amazing. The Kingpin fights with his weight and strength and it's fascinating to watch. Frankly, the Kingpin episodes in this series were the most interesting to me.
• There's a scene where the Punisher has to murder his way through a gauntlet of angry men armed only with his fists, and, as grotesque as it is, it demonstrates how Frank Castle's will to survive just keeps him going (unlike some other fight scenes pointed out below).
• Madam Gao is still (briefly) in the show. She's still amazing as evil tiny grandma. 

The plot moves along at an agreeable pace, and there's lots that's still good, but there are some significant weaknesses:

1) TOO MANY VILLAINS

Last season, we had just the Kingpin. There were some subsidiary baddies, but it was just one plot.

Now, while Matt Murdoch having way too much on his plate is a plot point, there's more more villains than needed for that:

A) The Punisher (an antagonist if not a "villain") is murdering everyone in NYC on his long if ill-defined hit list.

B) The Hand, the aforementioned magical death cult, is doing something apocalyptic in a vaguely Asian way which involves Japanese people and ninja and makes me feel a little bit racist for watching it.

It was a much more sensitive treatment when the Tick and Oedipus faced "The Night of a Million Zillion Ninjas."

C) The Kingpin is rebuilding his empire of crime.

D) There's also a mystery drug dealer who is the proximate cause of the Punisher's family being killed and whose identity is revealed only in the last few episodes at which point you don't care.

You cannot do justice to all of these plots while having four separate antagonists, at least not in 13 episodes (maybe 26, but Agents of Shield continues to show us how to waste a lot of episodes on fanboy references and not enough Clark Gregg). Each villain has associated characters; the Hand brings in Elektra, as well as my least-favorite Daredevil-universe character, Stick (least favorite partly because "blind guy who can hit people accurately with a crossbow" means he isn't "blind" as most people understand the term, but mostly because his plot entwined with the Hand and if you can't tell, I find vaguely-Asian apocalyptic death cults tiresome).

2) LACK OF WOMEN TALKING TO EACH OTHER EASILY INVITES NEGATIVE COMPARISONS TO JESSICA JONES

So, remember last time, when I said Daredevil failed the famous "Bechdel test"? 

Still does, and in a crazy blatant manner.

Seriously, there are only a handful of scenes where two women have lines, and in those scenes, the number of times that women speak to each other is even lower. There are only two substantive conversations between women that I counted; both are between Night Nurse and a hospital administrator and, frankly, are irrelevant to the plot.

Let's not get confused and think I'm saying a story must be include the conversations of women to have merit. They don't. It doesn't even mean the stories are sexist, although they often are. 

Here, failing the Bechdel test makes the story weird. Let me give you an example: watching the scenes with Karen Page in them, it feels like Karen Page exists in a world where there are strangely almost no women. 

Typical number of non-Deborah Ann Woll actresses in the same scene with her.

Karen works at a law firm where both lawyers and all the clients who have anything of importance to say are men. All but one of the law enforcement officers she speaks to are men; all of the police officers assigned to protect her in various scenes are men. The journalist she has regular conversations with is a man. When she digs up a source to speak to, that person is always a man. 

Furthermore, there are two other major female characters in this season. Karen Page doesn't speak to either of them. She's in one scene with Elektra where Karen speaks four lines directly to Matt Murdoch, then leaves. Foggy gets to have a long conversation with Claire ("the Night Nurse"), but Karen doesn't even meet her. 

Claire and Elektra are never in the same scene together. 

Remember: this story takes place in modern New York City. Not a North Dakota oil field or on an Alaskan fishing boat. Statistically, there are women in nearly equal proportion to men in NYC.

Now, we get back to Jessica Jones. Even in a show where there weren't that many male characters, it was clear that men existed in New York. Just because Jessica's boss, BFF, craziest next-door-neighbor, doomed client, etc. were women, that didn't mean that she didn't also have conversations with men who were cops, bar owners, drug addicts, crazy mind-controlling sociopaths, etc. It was a New York that seemed, well, not a weird alternate universe version of itself.

3) YES, I KNOW THAT IT TAKES A LOT OF EFFORT TO KNOCK A PERSON UNCONSCIOUS BY PUNCHING HIM IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY, BUT YOU DON'T NEED TO SHOW ME EVERY TIME

I am not kidding when I say that basically all of the Punisher's facial bruising in this scene can be attributed to Daredevil or someone else punching him in the face repeatedly to try to knock him unconscious.

Daredevil's fights are brutal. In small doses, this is "realism." In large doses, it's tiresome. 

Culture blog The Mary Sue loves a five minute fight scene that takes place down a flight of stairs, calling it an iteration of the "hallway fight" from Season One. I hate it and think it's all that's self-indulgent about the violence and fight choreography of Season Two.

If you don't remember Season One, early on in the season Daredevil has to rescue a child from some criminals. He breaks into their place and fights three rooms full of them in a scene that takes place mostly in the confines of a claustrophobic hallway. It was pretty badass.

It also was early in the show, establishing Daredevil's facility with hand-to-hand combat. Also, in that scene, he's basically wearing black exercise clothes as his superhero outfit, which you can see is torn in places from violence. And even in that scene, there are times where Daredevil pops into a room with a bad guy and the exact method of his dispatch is left to your and the foley artist's imagination.

So, in this new fight scene, Daredevil has, for reasons too spoilery to explain, to fight his way through an entire biker gang down about twelve flights of stairs with an object duct-taped into one hand and holding a chain in the other. No surprise: he does so.

Unlike the scene in Season One, it's now been pretty well established that Daredevil, even injured, can mop the floor with anyone who isn't a Navy SEAL or trained by ninja or something similar. Remember at the end of Season One, where a dirty cop who was about to get shot in the head closed his eyes and then, without the camera leaving his face, there were a bunch of punching noises so that when he opened his eyes Daredevil was standing there and all the people who wanted to kill him were beat down? I don't know how else to say it -- it is not a surprise that Daredevil can beat up a building full of "mere mortal" criminals. There's really no tension to this scene; you know he's going to plow through all of these guys because it's been done on- and off-camera for a season and a half. 

Furthermore, as of the end of Season One, Daredevil wears bullet- and knife-resistant armor, so the risk he takes in fighting an entire biker gang is significantly diminished. Not only do we know that he's going to go like a weed-whacker through these guys, we know that, unless one of them is super-lucky, they can't really even hurt him much. 

And on top of the lack of dramatic tension, there are no rooms where Daredevil can fall in with a guy and you not have to watch him "realistically" beat a person into unconsciousness. Look, I appreciate that Daredevil is a show where, often, it's clear that you usually can't knock a person unconscious with a single blow to the head, but watching a fight where Daredevil delivers "I know your concussed, but now stay down" blows to people's heads is just not that much fun. I sat through it saying to myself, "okay, so when do we get to the bottom of the stairs?"

The excruciatingly long stairway fight is only the apex of watching Daredevil cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy to nearly every baddie he encounters. We see lots of fight scenes that go on for a long time because they have to literally beat the bad guys into submission. It gets old and I just don't enjoy it. 

Separately, I counted at least three separate stabbings in the eye with a sharp object, one of which was waaaaay more drawn out than it had to be. If your fight choreography go to is "stab him in the eye," you need to work on your creativity. 

BULLET POINTS OF NITPICKINESS

If you're going to have Daredevil fight a weird supervillain, the Spot is way more interesting than a mystical Asian death cult.

• New York criminal procedure doesn't work that way.
• Small law office finances, especially dealing with New York City rents, don't work that way. 
• That thing with the sorta-zombies was never adequately explained.
• I'm still not sure how the ninjas are so silent that they mask all the things that Daredevil might be able to hear, but still need to breathe audibly. In the quiet places where Daredevil more than occasionally fights them, shouldn't Daredevil be able to hear the synovial fluid squirting back and forth in their joints? If they can silence that, why's breathing a problem? 
• Daredevil's mask is really unattractive and distracting. It's like a mutant Captain America mask.

CONCLUSION

Daredevil's fine. It's diverting and well-acted. You won't regret watching it. It's just doesn't rise to hoped-for greatness. 

"I Killed Them All"

If you’re like me and 60 million other people, you spent most of last fall listening and re-listing to Serial, the podcast from This American Life that examined the 1999 murder of high schooler Hae Min Lee and the subsequent trial and conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. The story was riveting, despite being unabashedly reflective of real life police work (an entire episode was devoted to cell phone towers and how they work), eschewing the fancy Hollywood noir for journalistic investigation. And while we’re still waiting for Serial’s second season to come out, apparently sometime this fall, HBO has created a miniseries that may fill the Sarah Koenig-sized hole in your heart while waiting for the next installment. The miniseries, The Jinx, was released this spring and, much in the same vein as Serial, re-examined a long cold murder case with a fresh eye to the potential killer.

Just a guy sitting in a dark movie theatre alone. Nope, nothing creepy here.

The Jinx focuses on Robert Durst, the son of an extremely successful and powerful Manhattan real estate developer, Durst was in line to inherit the empire his family built, but the head position ultimately went to his brother instead.  In 1982, Durst’s wife Kathie vanished after a weekend at the couple’s home in Connecticut. She has not been seen or heard from since and is still missing to this day. Durst was a suspect in her murder and The Jinx follows Durst through the investigation into her death. But just when you assume this is a simple cut-and-dried case of spousal murder, that’s when the other bodies start to appear.

The Jinx benefits from the cooperation of Durst himself. He speaks freely about his past, the investigations he’s been at the core of, his thoughts and opinions of his family and Kathie’s friends. Durst became interested in the project after seeing the 2010 movie All Good Things, a fictitious account of Kathie’s murder starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. Impressed by the lack of sensationalism in the movie, Durst approached that film’s director to see if he was interested in “finding the real story.” The result is the six episode miniseries you see here.

Hollywood turned its unflinching eye on reality and bravely cast this Robert Durst lookalike as the lead. 

So what is “the real story”? The facts, as they say, are these: Sometime over the weekend of January 31, 1982, Kathie Durst went missing around Newtown, Connecticut.  Robert Durst told police that they were in Connecticut at their weekend home and that he had put Kathie on a train back to New York City the night of the 31^st because she had to be back to attend classes she was taking the next day.  Robert said he called their Manhattan apartment and talked to her that evening to verify she made it home before returning to the city himself a few days later.

Kathie never showed up for her classes the next morning, however staff at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she was a student told police that she called them that morning to say that she was ill and wouldn’t be in class today.  And that’s when Kathie disappears off the face of the earth. Robert reports her missing on February 6, almost a full week after he says he saw her the last time. He claims the delay is due to her busy schedule as a final year medical student, saying that he would often go several days without seeing her.

I'd say there's some eerie foreshadowing in their wedding picture, but to be honest that's pretty much how all the early 80s looked.

Worth noting that is that in the weeks prior to her disappearance, Kathie told friends that Robert beat her and even sought medical attention for wounds. She claims that he forced her to have an abortion and that she considered divorce but felt hamstrung by a prenuptial agreement. The night of January 31^st, Kathie had been a friend’s party when she left suddenly after receiving an angry phone call from Robert. Kathie reportedly told her friend, “If something happens to me, check it out. I’m afraid of what Bobby will do.”

Kathie’s case grows cold for lack of evidence. Robert’s claims are dubious; he says he called Kathie from a payphone, but no payphone was close to their home; A doorman at their Manhattan apartment recalled seeing Kathie arrive home but admits that he only saw her from the back and it could have been someone else. In the end, there is no body so Kathie is officially a missing person. Durst recedes from attention, selling his home (and many of Kathie’s possessions) and fading from view.

It’s not until a seemingly unrelated murder in Los Angeles happens on Christmas Eve, 2000, a full 18 years later, that the case begins to find life again. Susan Berman, daughter of a mobster and longtime friend of none other than Robert Durst, is found murdered execution-style in her apartment.  And it doesn’t end there. In September of 2001, a family fishing in Galveston, Texas, finds a grotesquely dismembered torso floating off the beach surrounded by the severed body parts. Police are able to identify the body as that of an elderly man named Morris Black. Take one guess as to who happens to be living in the apartment above him. Robert Durst? Actually, a mute woman named Dorothy Ciner, someone Robert went to high school with. Confused? It only gets crazier.

The Jinx dives deeply into this story, one that spans multiple decades and the length of the United States. Durst himself comes off as unsettling at best. His voice is odd, his facial tics like something that an actor would create in order to appear mentally unbalanced. Durst has a way with words that  is unpolished and strangely refreshing, particularly for someone who has been through so much media and legal questioning. When asked, for example, why he told police that he had talked to Kathie when she arrived back in New York the night she was last seen given that there was no other evidence of her ever even making it on the train back to the city, he says, “I was hoping that would just make everything go away.” An odd sentiment for a man whose wife has just gone missing.

Definitely not a murderer. Can't even see how you could go there.

For all it traffics in the hugeness of the story, The Jinx strives to approach Durst with objectivity as well. It explores his childhood, humanizing him without apologizing for him. Durst tells a story about being woken in the middle of the night when he was seven years old by his father and brought to a window in their mansion. Durst's father told him to look to the roof where he saw his mother in her nightgown standing by herself. Durst says his father made him watch as his mother fell or was pushed to her death. The series establishes the myriad ways in which Robert was made to understand himself as not like his other brothers, the ones who had earned their father’s favor. To say that the Durst family dynamics were complicated is, obviously, an understatement.

In the end, The Jinx makes its biggest splash when it uncovers evidence not previously found in the original police investigations. The day before the final episode aired in March on HBO, police made a high-profile arrest based largely on evidence that the filmmakers uncovered. The filmmakers made clear after the fact that they turned over all evidence to the police upon finding it. The arrest was certainly well-timed from a ratings perspective, but unrelated to the production schedule of the show.

In that sense, The Jinx manages to do what Serial did not – figure out what really happened. And while that’s no detriment to Serial’s production, it does give The Jinx the kind of closure that you may find yourself craving after all this true crime hullabaloo. The Jinx manages to come off as a more interesting 20/20.  It doesn’t sex up the effects or take any questionable licenses with the topic, but it is engaging, fascinating storytelling. It’s the perfect thing to take up your time until the world’s most favorite podcast comes back. Get on it, Koenig! 

Netflix I Watched On Paternity Leave: Ben Nitpicks Attack on Titan

So, I've been spending some quality early mornings feeding and rocking and otherwise caring for a small person whom I am 50% responsible for. As a result, I've watched a lot of streaming video. Also I am writing this with a baby in my left arm.

First up: Attack on Titan. It's a diverting show, not a complete waste of time, but a bunch of things keep wrecking my suspension of disbelief:

1) The Title. The show's English title is "Attack on Titan" because that's what the Japanese designer wrote in English under the Japanese title, in English only slightly better than my Japanese.

These two lines of text are not the same.

Basically, the way this was translated is if I wrote a manga-style comic called "Revenge of the Otters" and titled it in Japanese "Revenge on Otter." Depending on whom on the Internet you ask, the Japanese literally translates to "advancing giants" or "the giants' attack." Also, in Japanese grammar you don't always have to indicate whether a noun is plural (you can leave it to context), but this is kind of an important thing in English.

And the Japanese version makes a lot of sense, because the story is one of mankind under assault by giant, man-eating, genital-less naked people with varying amounts of skin and/or grotesque physical deformities (for which "titan" is an acceptable homonym). So the titans are attacking. 

But with every opening sequence, I'm smacked with that English title and I say, "translation fail!" Which opens me to be critical of-

2) That's How You Intend To Kill 50-Foot-Tall Monsters?

So, you are being attacked by giant, super-strong, regenerating monsters, and cannon are not ideal weapons against them because you can only kill them if you hit a precise spot on the back of their necks. Let's further add that you have a century to develop an awesome steampunk way to combat these giants.

The obvious development in weapons technology is to arm the traveling cast of Peter Pan with Batman grappling hooks, jetpacks, and mini versions of those utility knife swords from Evangelion, right?

This makes so much more sense than developing man-portable, semiautomatic artillery with high-explosive shells that could be mass-produced for use by minimally-skilled troops.

As you can imagine, when humankind's soldiers fail to be the absolute perfect combination of Spider-Man, Zorro, and Cirque de Soleil, they get eaten. And as this show keeps a plausibly low number of characters with superhero-level talents, casualties are high.

So, every episode, I ask myself, "why aren't you doing something more efficient?"

But this is not what made me say, after episode 15 or so, that I could put this down and watch more episodes of Leverage when bottle-feeding a newborn. That was:

3) Obligatory Magical Teenage Boy.

So, after watching a lot of Lost Boys fail to think enough happy thoughts to avoid getting eaten by titans, the plot decides to give one of the obligatory Overly Moody Teenage Boys magical powers. Of course it goes to the Harry Potter-like one with the impulse control issues.

An aside: this show's Harry Potter has as his potential love interest his sort-of adopted sister (who has the same name as the company that made my wedding china), which is made even weirder because the reason she's sort of his sister is that as pre-tweens they teamed up to kill the slavers who murdered her family and were going to sex traffic her, so she ended up living with his family. In my mind, that's a set of facts that do not lead to a romantic relationship that I am comfortable endorsing.

The powers, sadly, do not go to the show's Ron Weasley.

Sorry, Armin, you're totally the Ron Weasley of this show.

So, basically, now I have to get smacked with bad translation title, cry with frustrated despair at futile wire-work swordplay, and deal with the least deserving, most irritating main character with magical powers, plus at least Ron gets to mack on the brains of their trio. I may finish the season; I'm a little curious what's in Magical Angst Teen's Creepy Unethical Medical Dad's basement, but I'm in no hurry.

UnREAL

What is it about us that makes us enjoy watching horrible people do horrible things? We like to think that we are civilized, but at the end of the day are we really any different than the Romans who would gather in a coliseum to watch two guy hack each other apart? Isn't that all reality television is?

Perhaps it's a bit of an overreach to compare ladies competing with each other to win the heart of a bachelor with gladiators disemboweling each other....but only a bit.

UnREAL is a scripted drama about the behind-the-scenes action on a Bachelor-style reality show called Everlasting. The characters are all generally kind of awful, but somehow it still works. Usually when a show is full of horrible people it doesn't interest me--but in this case the characters are all believably horrible. Meaning we understand the reasons for the choices they make. And in the case of Rachel, a producer on the show responsible for getting those money moments (literally), she at least feels really bad about the manipulation, the lies, and encouraging the worst in others.

She hates the job...but she's just so good at it.

From the Lifetime website:

Set against the backdrop of the hit dating competition show "Everlasting," "UnREAL" is led by flawed heroine Rachel Goldberg, a young producer whose sole job is to manipulate her relationships with, and among, the contestants to get the vital dramatic and outrageous footage that the program’s dispassionate executive producer, Quinn King, demands. What ensues is an eye-opening look at what happens in the outrageous world of unscripted television, where being a contestant can be vicious and being a producer a whole other reality.

It's all kind of a train wreck, but in the best way possible. It's well made, and well acted, and addictive. Just like the shows it parodies, the subject matter of UnREAL is tawdry--most of the characters clearly have some kind of disorder--and you'll feel like a total voyeur after each episode. But isn't that point? You're not watching Lifetime to make yourself a better person. You're watching it for the drama. And UnREAL delivers that in spades.

"We're selling true love here, people! TRUE LOVE!"

UnREAL airs Mondays at 10 p.m. EST on Lifetime.