Bummer Summer, From the Ashes, and No Expense Given - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton
Season two of the fast (and roaring) zombie infection apocalypse series Black Summer hit Netflix June 17th. Season one had appeared back in April 2019, which feels a lifetime ago. (The show was conceived as a prequel series to SyFy's Z Nation, as in set in that world, but focused on the early days as things fell apart. No character crossovers.) Season two's episodes are each told out of sequence, playing with the audience's reactions to the characters' actions, as earlier scenes, shown later, show us recent history that often changes the perspective of what we'd seen. It's a brutal environment, and if there's one lesson in this violent apocalypse it's that compassion, empathy and humanity are early casualties as they're readily exploited by opportunists. Weeks and more into events the likelihood of meeting someone "good" is low to nonexistent.
Pure sidelight: One element that struck me as comically common in this season is how very bad nearly all of the characters are at searching buildings and sweeping rooms for people in hiding. With so many people carrying firearms, and so many so inclined to kill strangers for both safety and supplies, it's an amusingly under-displayed skill.
Shifting to the East, and a far more localized bit of apocalypse, is the other recent Netflix addition.
Set in the ash-blasted, vastly depopulated Icelandic town of Vik, strange things are beginning to happen in the shadow of the titular volcano Katla. The volcano began erupting a year earlier, so all but a handful of hardy residents, key support personnel, and geologists who are monitoring the unusually-sustained eruptions, have long since been evacuated. Consequently, the cast is relatively small.
A naked, ash-coated woman is found wandering on the glacier. As they try to piece together her identity and story, it leads to more confusion. Then others begin to emerge in the same condition.
As the mysteries mount and then slowly unfold over the eight episodes, we have to adapt our understanding of what's happening. Most of the tension arises from wondering if there are hidden purposes for each of them.
The bleak setting can begin to wear on you before long, and it certainly seemed fitting that moodiness and suicidal themes are recurring among the characters and their stories.
The default settings for viewing will bring it to you dubbed consistently and fairly cleanly into English, save for the brief pockets of Swedish a few characters indulge in. The dubbed dialogue is the same as the closed captioning -- which, if you keep the captions on for everything like I do, you know it helps.
It could be mid-to-late July before any announcement is made as to whether or not a second season of this is coming. If not, what they've done here can reasonably stand on its own, unless one insists on having the details all resolved.
I've had one model or other of DVR in place since, roughly, 2007. Between that, premium channels and premium-level streaming platforms I'm well over a decade removed from routinely putting up with commercial-laden broadcasts. However, if the presence of commercials is light, and well-scattered, it's still in a digital format so I can pause and roll back scenes for a closer look and listen, and it represents an opportunity to watch something I can't at the moment find somewhere else -- at no cost -- then I'm open to some options with commercials. I'd previously noted this with the Peacock service, where the basic sign-up is free, and the vast majority of what they have is open to all with fairly minor commercial interruption.
Similarly, I only recently bothered to add Tubi to my lineup of video streaming options on my Vizeo smartcast screen. It had been an option there since last September, but it was just one of many I hadn't bothered with. It seems there's a surfeit of things to watch already, and I'm always reluctant to sign up for something new.
The now seven year-old streaming service is free, with an easy sign-up process - options include using facebook credentials or one's email, and one can use whatever bogus name, birthdate and gender one wants, though as is always the way with these things if you use something other than the truth it's a good idea to write it down somewhere handy.
Just during a casual, recent, remote-scroll through there I added (too) many items to my prospective watchlist. This included the complete series of '60s sitcom Family Affair, which is probably only nostalgic for those of us of a certain age, who were young kids when the show was airing. Probably more so for those of us who had tense times at home, and found it to be a warm, comforting place to spend half an hour.
Decidedly Pollyanna-esque, I understand if Buffy, Jody, Sissy & Bill Davis, and the stalwart Mr. French are nearly weaponized wholesomeness for many. I still have a soft spot for them, so it's nice to have a place to revisit them briefly here and there. It's also good for spotting guest stars, some of whom came in from other roles and others who went on to "hit" as other tv and film characters. One can even mine it cynically, whether by noting how many seemingly life-long bonds are forged in episodes only for us to never again see that character, or by seeing that the world's problems are far more soluble when one has vast connections and considerable wealth to draw on.
Another '60s nostalgia hit is the British series, Danger Man, which came to be marketed here in the U.S. as Secret Agent, complete with a theme song sung by Johnny Rivers. Here's one of the openings from late 1965 -- though a low-res, pan-and-scan one found on YouTube -- with the opening U.S. audiences saw and heard. The ones seen in the U.K., and so the ones presented on Tubi, didn't have this theme and opening. The first season had a more generic, dramatic piece, while the remaining seasons had the fast theme by the Edwin Astley Orchestra, which definitely has its charms. This series established Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake, a role he unofficially carried into the 17-episode The Prisoner series, where he is only referred to as Number 6.
The selection of films available there are broad and deep. In one corner it includes a catalog of Rudy Ray Moore films from Dolemite and its sequel The Human Tornado, to Satan's son-in-law Petey Wheatstraw, and Disco Godfather. Great, blacksploitation fun from a man whose drive and ambition far outstripped his talent. (I will again recommend looking at the Rudy Ray Moore biopic Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy, over on Netflix.)
In another corner, you'll find things like 1947's Life With Father ... the mockumentary A Mighty Wind, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, late '50s Japanese/U.S. monster film The Manster, the extremely unsettling Audition (1999), and a colorized version of the always hilarious, however unintentionally, Reefer Madness.
Tubi has put some effort into creating categories to group shows and movies, making it one of the more user-friendly streamers IMHO. So, if you can't find it without commercials as part of some streaming package you have, take a look at Tubi.
Some closing notes:
I enjoyed the return of Evil for its second season this past week. The first season was broadcast on CBS, then put on Netflix in a fishing expedition for new viewers (where I caught it -- or it me), and with this second season is now exclusive to Paramount+. New episodes appear on Sunday.
On TCM this weekend, starting at 6am Saturday (EST), they'll be running a time-jumping marathon of Alfred Hitchcock films, wrapping up as they come up on 6am Monday. It's very likely most of them will be rotated into TCM Watch as we roll into next week, and if so I'll note them - ideally - next week.
So, take care, and find some enjoyment somewhere. - Mike
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