Into the Badlands Review: “The Fort”

Jim’s Review

I’ll give almost any show on AMC a shot. Despite having a pretty wide array of shows, they seem to have a pretty specific formula for a series in mind. I think the key to it is they don’t try to keep it going indefinitely. When they start a show, they know where it’s going, and they have some idea how to get it there. That helps them avoid the pitfalls of other shows, the endless love triangles, the new characters shoe-horned into the story, and all the other annoying tricks showrunners try to squeeze one more season out of a hit show. With all that being said, I’d have given Into the Badlands a look even if it weren’t an AMC show. The premise is interesting enough. I think when Kyle asked me about it, I described it as a post-apocalyptic Kung Fu fantasy. Gets your attention, right?

From an aesthetic point of view, I think the look of the show is striking. By that I mean this doesn’t look like a post-apocalyptic world I’ve seen before. There’s green grass and blue sky. Actually, the show is generally a back and forth between vibrant color and more muted noir. The choreography that goes into the fight scenes is impressive. I’m not a Kung Fu movie buff, but from what I’ve seen, I’d think the action would satisfy those who are.

From a narrative standpoint, I described this is a post-apocalyptic Kung Fu fantasy, and that’s really because the story borrows a few tropes from all those genres. If anything drags the show down, it’ll be a reliance on those tropes. We’ve got a world under the control of barons (read feudal Japan or China), a mystery orphan with mystical power, a forbidden romance, a baron’s lieutenant questioning his loyalty, and a young baron’s son living in his father’s shadow. How well any or all of that works depends on how the characters in question are developed along the way. The premier episode was more focused on world building than character building, so it’s not fair to render a verdict just yet, but the potential for the show is easy to see. The world they did build in the premier feels enough like its own, and I think the writers found a good balance between introducing us to that world without loading the show down with exposition. There’s a lot we don’t know about this setting. We’re not sure what the apocalyptic war was about. We’re not quite sure why people flocked to the barons for protection, but I prefer a little mystery to a story that wants to take me by the hand and drag me through every mouse hole.

Into the Badlands caught my interest with its debut. I’m not certain it’ll hold my attention, but for now, it’s earned a chance.

Bob’s Burgers Review: “Nice-Capades”

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Kyle’s Review

Bob’s Burgers got back on track with this week’s “Nice-Capades.” I love it when Bob’s Burgers focuses on family, strong character development, and squeezes in a revelation by one of its many characters and this week’s episode had plenty of all.

I don’t want to spoil anything but I fear I’ll have to a little bit here, so you’ve been warned. The Belcher kids boot the mall’s Santa out of a massage chair, which prompts the mall Santa to warn them that he’s the real Santa’s eyes and ears. The rest of “Nice-Capades” revolves around the kids trying to make nice with the mall Santa. When every small gesture fails, they put on an ice show, hence the “capades.”

“Nice-Capades” highlights Louise’s hair-brained idea, Linda’s singing, Gene’s show tunes, a couple of Fishoeder cameos, and Tina playing the part of Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas, basically everything viewers have come to expect from a solid family-centric Bob’s Burgers episode. The twist in the change Louise makes. I’m afraid I’ve said too much, but we don’t see Louise break down that often and she does here, making “Nice-Capades” a standout episode of Bob’s Burgers’s young season.

Grimm Review: “Lost Boys”

Kyle’s Review

Grimm channeled Peter Pan with this week’s “Lost Boys,” and the result was a disturbing story—in the best way—that had more to do with Grimm’s ongoing plot lines than meets the eye. I’m not sure if Nick is fully back on the force as Monroe came to Nick directly when Rosalee gets kidnapped. I probably said too much already for folks who haven’t seen the show. It’s difficult not to give away things in this review, so consider this warning for the rest of the write-up. Wesen kids who ran away from the foster care system kidnapped another woman, who died accidently, and that’s when Rosalee gets snatched by the same kids.

These children force Rosalee to play house and that’s where you feel sympathy for the antagonists: it’s not that they’re evil; they want to be loved and taken care of. With the help of Monroe, Nick and Hank track down Rosalee and the beast kids, and it almost felt like Grimm hit the reset button. Nick, Monroe, and Hank were the original wesen hunters. Nick would finish the detective work, Hank would add his two cents, and Monroe would track down the wesen of the week, and those things happened in “Lost Boys,” but these wesen weren’t your typical wesen of the week. Once the kids get sent to an orphanage, the headmaster reveals himself to be a wesen and he plans to recruit the kids for his army.

Yikes! I’m liking this dark turn and Grimm’s return to basics. Trubel showed up—and she’ll factor into the main story again—and we physically saw several other characters, but it was nice to trim the fat for one week. I’m even digging Adalind and Nick’s new home: empty, stark, and defensible. It’s as if they’re playing house but everything’s off just a smidge, and that smidge makes all the difference.

Arrow Review: “Lost Souls”

Jim’s Review

This week’s episode of Arrow didn’t do it for me. The things that are working on this show right now were still working in this episode, and by that I mean Damien, but this week I saw too much of what isn’t working. By that I mean Olicity, the setup for Legends of Tomorrow, and the current flashback arc.

Focusing so much on getting Ray back made this feel a bit like the last episode with Sara. Devoting an entire episode to laying groundwork for a separate one comes off as something of a middle finger to the current audience.

I’ll admit I’m not entirely sure of everything happening on the island in flashbacks right now, but part of that is it’s not holding my interest. Clearly Ollie is being set up in this episode, but too much is happening off screen here, and beyond magic being tied to Damien and HIVE, it’s not clear what the connection is between past and present.

My big gripe with this episode was the focus on romantic relationships, particularly Oliver and Felicity’s. It’s not even necessarily how it was done, but It was given far too much screen time. In conjunction with the ending showing Lance and Mama Felicity meeting, it feels like Arrow is backsliding into what hurt it last season. If the show wants to keep its comic book audience, it has to be more than a story about whose hands are in whose cookie jar.

Kyle’s Take

And Arrow started off so well. A lot of Arrow’s early success was because Flash bore the brunt of setting up Legends of Tomorrow and now it’s Arrow’s turn. Fortunately, laying the groundwork for the CW’s new show should cease to drain either Flash or Arrow by the mid-season finale. With Curtis Holt not turning into Mr. Terrific in the foreseeable future (we knew Ray was going Atom in less than a season), the major obstacle remaining for Arrow is the love rhombus. There’s more than one so should it be love rhombi?

Watch out, Arrow, love rhombi have sharp edges and you can get hurt. This may isolate me from a lot of Arrow fans, but I don’t care about Olicity. This relationship only exists because fans demanded it but I’m not sure it works. Well, at least it doesn’t work all the time. And when you have a Ray episode like “Lost Souls,” the show gets lost in Olicity. Again, this has a lot to do with Legends of Tomorrow: they had to squeeze in one last Ray episode. So maybe the show gets the gashes it earned from its love rhombi stitched up in a few weeks.

That still leaves us with the flashback and like I’ve said before, the further removed we are from Ollie’s time on the island, the harder it is to make flashbacks to the island work. I know it sounds like Jim and I are broken records, but every time Arrow improves these shortcomings, they go back to what doesn’t work.

It looks like we’ve moved on from Legends of Tomorrow and the next big Arrow-Flash crossover is upcoming. We should see another uptick in show quality over the next few weeks, so we can forgive “Lost Souls” for losing its way.

There were some Arrow Easter eggs and we have them in our Arrow secrets page. Here’s a link. Thanks for reading.

Arrow Secrets: “Lost Souls”

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Sword of the Atom

Brandon Routh has said he wanted to bring the classic Atom tale Sword of the Atom to the screen, but he understands that aliens and space ship sets would be difficult for the CW’s small budget. Still, it looks as if “Lost Souls” kind of told the story: Atom is miniaturized against his will, separated from his powers, and eventually reaches out to friends who help him to restore himself to his normal size. That’s pretty much what happened on this week’s episode. This might be Arrowverse’s way of telling Sword of the Atom.

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Kord Industries

This week’s mention of Kord and Kord Industries was by no means the first name drop but it was the first time team Arrow paid the company a visit. We’ve seen too many Kord logos, name-drops, and even a mention that they’ve increased their security technology not to see Ted Kord, Kord Industries’ founder and CEO, at some point.

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Okay, Arrow has said that Kord won’t make an appearance but they’ve said that about other characters and things change. DC has plans for a Booster Gold movie with Blue Beetle guest-starring, but the word is that the flick will feature Jaime Reyes as Blue Beetle, not Ted Kord. Could we see Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle on Arrow? Blue Beetle was the original character Arrow had in mind before transitioning to Ray Palmer’s Atom.

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Spartan

Felicity gave Diggle the codename Spartan so she could talk to him while Curtis listened. Spartan is an interesting choice of codename and one I never considered for Diggle. DC bought out Jim Lee’s share of Image comics and with it WildC.A.T.S., and there’s a character in WildC.A.T.S. named Spartan. The comic book Spartan has next to nothing in common with Diggle but that was a conspicuous name drop by Felicity, so I wonder if Arrow plans to work the comic book Spartan into the show. That would take Arrow into a bizarre direction as the comic book Spartan is an alien who tries to pass for a human.

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Taiana

Taiana, a character introduced in Green Arrow: Year One, was a minor character, but she functions in the same way on Arrow as she did in the comic. She worked under China White as a slave for the island’s drug trade. This one isn’t much of a secret—we’ve seen Taiana on Arrow for many weeks now—but “Lost Souls” was the first time we hear her name.

Iron Deficiency

After Ray resizes, he’s told his only medical concern comes from an “iron deficiency.” We see what you did there, Arrow. The A.T.O.M. suit was criticized by fans for being too similar to Iron Man’s.

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Spectre

This was another joke but Ray delivered it this time. When he hears that HIVE is a secretive group of criminals who go by an ominous acronym, Ray likens them to James Bond’s SPECTRE and just a mere few days after SPECTRE hit theaters last week.

Coincidentally, DC comics has its own Spectre and his human alter-ego guest-starred on NBC’s Constantine, who in turn guest-starred on Arrow last week. Hmm. Maybe it isn’t that much of a coincidence.

If you missed our Arrow review for “Lost Souls,” here’s a link. Thanks for reading.

The Flash Secrets: “Enter Zoom”

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Jesse Quick (Wells)

Harrison Wells (Earth-2) called his daughter “Quick,” so I’m wondering if Quick is a nickname for Jesse like Speedy is a nickname for Thea. In the comics, Jesse is the daughter of Johnny Quick, who was another early speedster who also worked with Jay Garrick. Jesse, whose mother is also a Justice Society member Liberty Belle, would take up her parent’s calling and help those in need. She’s been a member of the JSA but also worked with the Titans and the JLA.

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Robert Queen

Everything you heard over Earth-2’s radio checked out. Oliver Queen died on this Earth, while his father Robert Queen donned the mantel of “The Hood.” Fathers taking over their son’s gigs was a common trait on Earth-2 during the Flashpoint universe: Bruce Wayne died and his father Thomas Wayne became Batman. But Thomas Wayne donned Batman’s cape and cowl for time even after the Flashpoint DC Universe.

News 52

News 52 and Big Belly Burger never change on any Earth. When Harrison watches his daughter get kidnapped on the news, he’s watching News 52.

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Cooking and Eating Way Too Much

Apparently, Linda cooks when’s she’s nervous and she cooks way too much. That’s good because she has long ties with Wally West (the third Flash) in the comics and Wally could eat a mountain of hamburgers after all his running. Remember when Barry had to eat a lot because of the calories he consumed while running (in season one)? Yeah, that comes straight from Wally West.

Hard Light

Did Patty mention something about hard light? Yeah, that’s a nod to Green Lantern.

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Terminal Velocity

The Flash comics have used just about every common phase involving speed as a storyline title and “Terminal Velocity” is no different. In this story Bart Allen gets introduced after Wally West appeared to have died. Like many comic book heroes, Wally didn’t stay dead.

Did you miss our Flash review for this week? Here’s a link. Thanks for reading.

The Flash Review: “Enter Zoom”

Jim’s Review

Flash is definitely moving in the right direction. This week’s episode took a much darker turn. I think we got a little bit of a payoff for the buildup with Zoom. They didn’t give us everything, but it was a strong introduction.

Some of the scenes with Cisco and Wells were a bit rough. Specifically, I’m talking about how Cisco tried to sneak up and “vibe” the guy, even after losing the element of surprise. It had the same kind of awkward feel of the scene where Linda played Dr. Light to try and trap Zoom. The show acknowledged the awkwardness, even tried to turn it into a joke, but it didn’t work for me.

I’m not entirely sure I buy into Barry’s fixation on Zoom being motivated by Earth Prime Wells’ final message to him. I don’t know if it’s so much a gap in logic as much as it’s due to the message having been dropped from the story until now.

Some of these side stories are misfiring, but I have to say the showdown with Zoom was more than enough of a highlight to make the show a success.

Kyle’s Take

“Enter Zoom” was an uneven episode of Flash but it ended in a great place. With Zoom in the title we knew we’d get a lot of the titular villain and he bolted onto the screen. The action was stellar—that’s rarely a concern—and Barry even used science to his advantage, kinda. We got what we needed to see from Zoom in order to prove he or she is Barry’s match—actually they were Barry’s superior—and that was exciting, but several of Flash’s side stories and other choices don’t hold water.

A lot of my issues with these side stories are like Jim said, either gaps in logic or a story element getting dropped and then picked up all of the sudden. I’m not sure where any of them fall but hopefully Flash will shore up some these shortcomings (many are nit-picky but they’re still there): Wells wouldn’t have let Cisco get close enough to vibe on him after the first attempt, Linda playing up that she wasn’t Dr. Light would’ve made more sense if we’d have seen or heard from the real Dr. Light after she ran off naked and invisible (we knew it was Linda; the writers didn’t have to use the plot device of her hamming it up), and I don’t buy the Earth Prime Wells-Earth-2 Zoom team up because that came out of nowhere.

But all of these grievances don’t amount to much because “Enter Zoom” left us with a fantastic cliffhanger. I don’t want to spoil the episode’s stinger but Barry isn’t in good shape and what’s even better is that we may have seen Zoom in costume, but we don’t know who he or she is on Earth-2. Is Zoom Eobard, Eddie, Joe, Henry Allen, Barry, or someone else from this other Earth? I don’t know but I can’t wait to find out.

Want to discover more about the Flash? Check out our Flash secrets page. Thanks for reading.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review: “Chaos Theory”

Kyle’s Review

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. took flight with “Chaos Theory.” It didn’t take long for the Lash story thread to be tied up—for now—and just when I thought Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made a wrong turn dispatching an engaging antagonist, they pulled the trigger on how Rosalind Price, Agent Coulson’s government belle, factors into the larger web. You won’t get any spoilers from me but “Chaos Theory” left things a beautiful mess.

I can’t believe how different Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is in its third season, compared to its first. The creators were cut loose from the Marvel movies after Captain America: Winter Soldier and they didn’t look back. Even though Marvel doesn’t have cinematic control of most of its aliens (outside of the Kree), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has made good use of the ones under Marvel’s umbrella. The characters have a sense of history and place and most have well-defined wants, which is always a good thing. These same characters tend to get in their own way when it comes to obtaining their wants, which is even better. And in short, the human characters and Lash are engaging. Which is why I’m still a little nervous with where Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is going.

The Fitz and Simmons team up is always good viewing and going back to Ego the Living Planet will make for a great story. There will be plenty of fallout between Coulson and Price. But Lash was the only interesting inhuman. Marvel has time to set up the movie—Inhumans isn’t due until the summer of 2019—but they’ll have to develop the current cast of inhumans. If Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. can build these characters in the same way it built Fitz, Simmons, Bobbi, May, Hunter, and even Mack, there’s no doubt in my mind that they’re up for the task.

iZombie review: “Max Wager”

Kyle’s Review

“Max Wager” was an excellent episode of iZombie. The show has a way of building up to one thing while giving us a payoff for another story thread. And there was a moment in this week’s episode that made you feel sorry for Blaine. Yes, Blaine the bastard from season one. I won’t spoil it here, but there’s a heartbreaking and disturbing scene involving Blaine and it’s a doozy.

Getting back to how iZombie builds on itself, “Max Wager” took last week’s murder mystery and the brain affecting Liv and built on both elements. A gambling lawyer, who inadvertently got last week’s victim the basketball coach killed) gets gunned down. Now, Liv was on said basketball coach’s brains last week and breathed b-ball as a result—she even gave a hilarious and spot-on halftime pep talk to Major—and now she’s on the brains of someone who betted on basketball games. Characters make connections to the previous week, we see Clive geek out over meeting ex-Laker Rick Fox, and sinister human element gets added to the zombie underground.

And it’s the sinister human element that makes “Max Wager” shine. Liv’s BFF Peyton is investigating Stacey Boss. We hear about the crime boss for a while and even hear his voice throughout the episode. Since Liv is on gambler brains, she makes bets during the episode and one of the other characters at the barber shop in which she makes her bets has his face obscured and we know it’s Boss. I don’t know why Stacey Boss gets his haircut every day Liv drops by the barber shop, but he’s there for disturbing commentary on Liv’s case. By the time he shows his full face to Liv, Boss had just shared the most disturbing “perfect murder” scenario, just for kicks. Later, when he pays Peyton a visit, he reveals who he is in an equally unnerving way. We haven’t seen the last of Stacey Boss and that’s a great thing.

Blaine also gets some much needed face time. His father blackmails him into committing a despicable act. Again, I won’t spoil it here, but you can see how Blaine got to where he is now honestly. Blaine even laments not being a zombie anymore and that moment was believable as well.

For being a show with a humorous spin on zombies, iZombie knows how to terrorize and haunt an audience. They just do it in the most unconventional way.

Thanks for reading.

Blindspot Review: “Persecute Envoys”

Kyle’s Review

“Persecute Envoys” fell short of Blindspot’s quality thus far. It took eight episodes before we saw any kind of backstory for Director Mayfair (one of the folks pulling strings behind the scenes) and “Persecute Envoys” crammed us much of Mayfair’s backstory as it could into forty plus minutes. That would be okay if it wasn’t for Blindspot wanting to capitalize on two current topics: the NSA spying on American citizens and minorities’ mistrust of cops.

Art should imitate life but these two issues—particularly the mistrust of cops—were tacked on and used a hook to gain viewers. What’s worse is that Blindspot abandoned its formula in order to fit Mayfair, the NSA, and cop mistrust in the episode. I’m all for changing up a show’s pace and formula. Heck, I praised Blindspot for doing so a few weeks ago, but in the episode I liked, Blindspot introduced a puzzle from one of Jane’s tattoos as a teaser for the next week. There was no tattoo puzzle at all in “Persecute Envoys.”

Furthermore, the mistrust of cops and Mayfair’s backstory/NSA were too on the nose and yet I still see where Blindspot is headed in the next few weeks, when it reaches its mid-season break, and I’m glad we got Mayfair’s backstory out of the way. I would’ve liked a taste of it sooner and with a lot less bells and whistles. The NSA hook should’ve been enough.

Thanks for reading.