To What Ends? - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton
I hope any who haven't seen it will have the opportunity to move through it without spoilers. The notion of it ending up in syndication, where the uninitiated will be randomly exposed to single episodes, is a sad one. It's the only solidly, essentially episodic comedy I can think of. With that in mind, I'm just going to run a season one promo here... and even then, I'd suggest just watching the show without set-up. As best I recall, I mainly put it on my DVR schedule initially mostly on the strength of knowing two of the leads were Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, and the advance word from critics was positive. I mainly only knew Bell from her appearances, as herself, on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson, where the two obviously hit it off.
From opening to closing, I can't recall a show with as complete and satisfying a set of story and character arcs as The Good Place. Getting this on Blu-Ray (and finally getting a BluRay player) would likely be a good move for me; who knows where the show will end up. Most likely it'll eventually be exclusively behind a paywall on the Peacock streaming platform (or whatever that morphs or is absorbed into), though we on the outside have no idea how long the current deal with Netflix is set for.
A paced rewatch of this series may become my refuge for a while.
I'll try to show some restraint and not simply burn through it. I watched the show week to week, season to season, and while I did watch some episodes more than once at the time, I've mostly just experienced it as it rolled out, starting with Eleanor Shellstrop's (Kristen Bell) bewildered, awkward introduction to the afterlife. I'm dearly looking forward to moving through it from ending to ending again.
The teaser promo for the new Amazon Prime series, Utopia (arriving today, the 25th; 8 episodes) caught my attention. [Note: By the second episode it becomes graphically violent, as repeatedly things that would normally just be threatened in most adventure programs, but then averted, mercilessly happen.]
An unwitting young woman goes with her finance to inspect and take charge of her late grandfather's home. The place is fit to be an episode of Hoarders. They set about trying to clean and declutter the place. Among the precarious stacks her fiance comes across some pages of original artwork. They turn out to be a manuscript called Utopia. Seeing potential dollar signs floating before his eyes, he does a quick web search on his phone. He soon discovers that this is the unpublished manuscript for a long-awaited sequel to an underground fantasy comic Dystopia, a work with a cult following. So, they set about arranging a call for interested parties, willing to bid on the item, choosing the comics and fantasy convention Fringecon as a likely gathering place.
The online notice sparks the interest of a variety of fans, many of them already networked, and a group of five of them - people who've only known each other from online postings - arrange to meet at the con and pool their resources to buy the manuscript. A chance to put faces and voices to the names of people they've come to think of as friends.
As it turns out, there are others who are also interested, and willing to go much farther to get the manuscript and keep others from seeing it.
While not part of the lead group of dedicated fans the show follows from the start, the show does include some relatively high-profile names: John Cusack and Rainn Wilson.
The only negative aspect I have going into this is tied to the man-made virus conspiracy element of it, which may resonate in unfortunate ways with some people. (I seem to be finding more QAnon-infected people in my facebook feed each week recently, each needing to be excised as cultural and intellectual rot.) There there was a two season (or series, at they're wont to say) U.K. original series from 2013/14. That this U.S. version is an adaptation of it was news to me - mainly because I was unaware of the earlier one. A quick look didn't show that original version showing (at least as part of a basic service) anywhere at the moment.
Awakening from a three-year coma (which gave us three seasons of different scenarios for the characters, ranging from a noirish 1947 era gumshoe mystery, to a '30s tropical island adventure, to a space-faring, retro '99 sci-fi one) Archer is back in the spy for hire game. Three years in a coma, though, have left him seriously atrophied. He's trying to adjust to a world that's moved on without him to greater success, though in typical Archer fashion his first and possibly most lasting impulse is to return everything to the way it used to be. His three years of dream scenarios found him going through it with different versions of the people in his life, and he's come back to the waking world with some clarity about what's important to him. What remains to be seen is if it's all too late.
While there had been some speculation that season ten might be the
last, and ultimately the decision to cancel will first depend upon the
host network, word from the inside is that the three seasons "away" from
the original premise have re-energized the writers for the show. They
had moved to the coma-induced scenarios because while the characters
remained fun the show had become too formulaic. Bored, plotbound writers
are not something anyone wants.
The eight-episode season runs at 10 pm Eastern on Wednesdays, and is on Hulu the following day. As of today the first three episodes of the season are available.
Over to yet another streaming platform, this time Disney+, we have recently had promos for two upcoming series.
First is the return of the Star Wars universe series The Mandalorian for its second season.
Set five years after the events of Return of the Jedi,
the universe is off-balance due to the fall of the Empire. Love it or
hate it, the oppressive regime had been a stabilizing force. All of
those whose lives had revolved around either being a functioning part of
it or part of the rebellion against it, have found themselves
essentially out of business, compasses spinning in the absence of that
reference.
The series centers on a bounty hunter, an adopted member
of a secretive religious order of code-bound bounty hunters, and as
with many a convert his earnest zeal is stronger than that of most of
his fellows. The first season saw a mission challenge some aspects of
his code, though, and he's now on a higher road to protect a small and
unusual life. A new mission that's put him at odds with many.
Mandalorian season two arrives in weekly installments starting October 30th.
While the Star Wars material was of interest, the main reason I signed on with Disney+ is that it was set to become the hub of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), not only as an aggregating point for their existing catalog of previously-released projects, many of which are ultimately becoming exclusive to it, but also of new series that will be key parts of that universe.
COVID-19 has all but smashed an scattered everyone's plans for 2020, and the same has gone for Disney's Marvel Studios. Their big screen, retro-feature Black Widow was supposed to hit theaters back at the start of May, was then shifted to a November 6th planned release here in the states. I'd been rooting for them deciding to kick it back into 2021, because as much as I want to see it it would be reckless to head back into an enclosed space with strangers for a couple hours this side of a proven vaccine. Happily, or at least healthfully, the press release came out around midday Wednesday that it has been pushed back once again, this time to May 7, 2021.
It's a fiscally gutsy but responsible call. The loss of momentum has definitely thrown off their stride, so they have to be concerned that additional delays could turn an awkward stumble into a full fall, but I don't think the audience is just going to dissipate.
The Disney+ platform is slated to be the exclusive home of a variety of MCU miniseries (six episodes seems to be the planned template so far) that are meant to be essential links in the same chain as the movies, with commensurate budgets and at least initially featuring main characters introduced on the big screen. Originally the first of these was to be the Falcon and Winter Soldier, which has now been pushed off into 2021.
Instead, the first of the Marvel series released will be WandaVision. Centering on the Scarlet Witch and the Vision - a mutant with chaotic powers and a fully synthetic being with control over his own density. Despite the bizarre, retro, sitcom elements, it's set after the most recent film, Avengers: Endgame (which is already on the platform with all of the other MCU films aside from 2008's Incredible Hulk, which is still entangled by a deal long-time Marvel frontman made with Universal back in the '70s!). My roots in these characters and some version of this universe go back to becoming a dedicated fan of the comics in the late '60s. While many, many of the comics specifics have been changed substantially in the translation to 21st century, CGI-amped, live action entertainment, I've long since made peace with that. The old comics are all still there for me to revisit if I want a hit of the pure stuff. We in comics fandom have been soaking in the idea of alternate realities with variant versions of these characters most of our lives, and while we may still let out small grumbles and whines over not seeing our newsprint tales faithfully and meticulously translated, I like to think most of us realize that so much of the source material, while nostalgically cherished by us, too often doesn't really hold up. And that's even just in terms of overall story, not to mention all of the unintentional cultural parochialism of work most often created by and for straight, white males. Moreover, weaving tales in an ongoing timeline is a tricky business, one that needs both planning and and the flexibility to make adjustments.
Anyway, Disney's decided to launch WandaVision this December (I still haven't seen an exact date, though current best money is on the very last Friday of the year, Christmas Day itself), likely in no small part due to knowing that many of us who signed up for the debut of the service last November are rapidly coming up on the end of our paid year's subscription, and will soon be making the decision of whether to re-up or to possibly let it lapse with the intention of signing back up sometime next year, once more bingeable content's aggregated, saving the cash in the meantime.
That's more than enough for this week. While the view from my Eastern Pennsylvania window remains green and leafy, the turn to fall is already comfortably in the air. I'm trying to enjoy that when I'm not glued to either a work or entertainment screen, and am hoping we drift through as long a period of this weather as possible before winter hits. Our comforts are dear to us. This year, perhaps more than most, we need them. - Mike
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