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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Mar 18, 2022 1:57:16 GMT -5
Last finished Season 5/the final season of Hell on Wheels on DVD. This season's hardly even worth reviewing, it was SO crap. There were only three things in the WHOLE season that I actually liked: 1) The Swede FINALLY got hanged (after miraculously avoiding the noose on multiple occasions). He should've been killed off by the end of Season 2 at the latest, but instead they just kept finding ways to keep him hanging around - each more ridiculous than the last. This is what happens when writers fall in love with a character/the actor - they keep them on the show even after they've outstayed their welcome. It's now gotten to the point where I hope I don't see the actor in anything else I watch anytime in the near future, I'm so sick of him. 2) Eva shooting the ho who was stealing money and so full on herself/smug that she thought she was safe. I especially loved Eva's "We're gonna need another redhead." remark after she'd done it. 3) Eva's ending, with her riding her newly-acquired horse off into the sunset (I'm SO glad she didn't get thrown off the horse - which it looked like was going to happen at one point). And that's^ it, the only three positive things I could find about this final season. What a major drop in quality this show took after Season 2. For me, the series died with Lily Bell and never recovered. Anyway, at least Anson Mount's now gotten himself a new gig as Captain Pike in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Hopefully that show won't drop the ball like this one did after its second season.
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Apr 24, 2022 15:09:49 GMT -5
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Apr 24, 2022 15:11:19 GMT -5
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Apr 25, 2022 12:08:50 GMT -5
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Post by Weirdraptor mini™ on Apr 25, 2022 16:31:02 GMT -5
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. A short-lived, but really good animated series form 1993. It's... well. It's basically what Jurassic World Dominion is shape up to be. Dinosaurs have returned and live alongside mankind, who struggles to survive after being thrown back into the mix with them. It's actually a very well-written, engaging show that gets political without getting preachy and doesn't lean all the way red or blue, so to speak. The series actually tackles the issue of needing to be able to compromise and engage with people maturely. I can think of many individuals who need to be tied down to a chair and forced to watch this.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on May 6, 2022 2:13:15 GMT -5
I most recently finished Season 1 of Emily in Paris on DVD. {Spoiler}I didn't really know anything about this show when I got it other than apparently it had 'offended' some people for some reason (which was reason enough to check this out, since everyone seems to be SO easily offended these days and usually it's over nothing). I'd watched a trailer for Season 1...but that hadn't really piqued my interest. I knew the show came from the creator of Younger (which was the last show of his I finished watching) and I'd enjoyed that show (at least in its early seasons), so I thought that despite the uninteresting trailer, it was worth giving this show a shot. Thankfully...I didn't hate it. It mostly gets by on the charm of Lily Collins as Emily Cooper, who manages to keep her character endearing (at least for *me*, anyway). I'd heard that people found her 'annoying' and such, but she was really no worse than those who treated her like crap as soon as she arrived in Paris. Yes, they kept pointing out that she came to a country she didn't speak the language of...but does that mean all none-English-speaking people should get booted out of any countries that mainly speak English? Somehow I doubt it. Anyway, we saw she was taking lessons and learning Parisian French, and plus this job was something that fell into her lap at the last minute when her boss couldn't go, so that's why she was unprepared for it. Naturally, Emily clashed with her work colleagues and boss (the former were pretty one-dimensional early on, but seemed to warm up to Emily towards the end of the season...while the latter seemed to just stay in 'cold bitch mode' and never really seemed to show and 'growth'. I remember when I started watching Younger, I thought the main character's boss seemed kind of a bitch, but then we were shown she had layers and she slowly warmed up to the main character...plus she was funny/entertaining. Unfortunately, that's not the case with Emily's boss here who, unlike the others, didn't seem to show any 'growth'. I think there was only *one* instance in the whole season where she complemented Emily, and then it was business as usual after). Really, the best/most likeable supporting characters in this show were Mindy (who was the first to really befriend Emily and in return she helped Mindy work up the courage to utilise her great singing talent) and Camille (another actually *decent* person Emily encountered...unfortunately, she's together with the guy who's Emily's neighbour, who she naturally grew feelings for after he helped her out a lot). Other than these two and Emily, I can't say I really liked any of the other characters in this show. Maybe they'll get more development in Season 2? I'm not really a social media type of person, so a lot of Emily's things that she said/did in regards to that was stuff I didn't really understand a lot of, but I think I got the gist of it. Predictably, the French style of doing things and Emily's American way clashed, but I think it was inevitable that she'd point out things she perceived as just plain 'wrong'. I know others criticised her for this, but what would they have rather had...her just sit back and accept everything, going with the flow and not having any disagreements with anybody? That would've been rather boring. I think I found the early seasons of Younger funnier than I found the first season of this show, but there ere *some* amusing moments scattered throughout - I think the most amusing parts came from Emily getting exasperated by certain things people said to her and her responses to them. One thing that must be mentioned is how Emily fashion sense/clothes were almost like their own character in the show. Some were really nice, others somewhat questionable, but I appreciated the original style she seemed to have. It was unique/stood out and made watching her always interesting (though Lily Collins being very easy on the eyes also helped. I was shocked to learn she's over thirty now. She still looks more or less the same as she did when I first became aware of her...which was quite some time ago). The other 'unofficial' character in the show would have to be Paris itself (which I was glad to hear they actually filmed in, as it would've been tricky to 'fake' that kind of scenery). It certainly has a very special 'look'/'feel' to it, which the show utilised well. On the whole, I ended up fairly happy that I took a chance with this show (especially seeing as how couple of shows I'd bought previously didn't turn out so great and I regretted buying them). I'm not sure how long it'll take before this series starts losing its 'charm' (with Younger, it took a few seasons), but I do hope they release the other seasons here on DVD - so the fact that I want that to happen must mean I enjoyed it enough. But let's see more croissants next season! I LOVE a good croissant.
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Jun 6, 2022 16:41:34 GMT -5
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 9, 2022 3:56:07 GMT -5
Recently finished Seasons 1 & 2 of Burn Notice on DVD. I never watched this show when it was on TV here, but I knew of it and I was at least mildly interested in checking it out. When I saw the complete series box set was available here for an absolute BARGAIN, I decided to order it. I’ve done ‘blind buys’ before with DVDs/Blu-rays, where I’ve bought shows or movies without having seen them. Most of the time they end up being something I don’t regret buying, and thankfully there has only been a few instances where I have regretted doing so (and not usually with the big complete series boxsets...although the complete series of Hell on Wheels was a bit of letdown after Season 2). Anyway, I was surprised when I watched the first one of the two-part series premiere and Gabrielle Anwar’s character of Fiona Glenanne seemed to have what sounded like an Irish accent. I'd see commercials for episodes of the show on TV when it originally aired, and I was sure I'd heard her speak in them and she wasn't Irish. Turns out, TPTB basically said that an American accent would appeal to a wider audience ( ), and so Gabrielle Anwar (who’s apparently ‘British and American’) dropped the accent after those first two episodes with just a throwaway line about how she couldn’t very well go around sounding ‘like a leprechaun’ to explain in-show why she no longer spoke with one. So, I guess her *character* is still Irish, but now Gabrielle Anwar doesn’t have to put on the accent for the rest of the series...though according to the episode commentaries (which were HILARIOUS, btw, especially when featuring members of the cast...which, unfortunately, seemed to not continue into Season 2. Such a shame, as they were almost more entertaining than the episodes themselves) she was disappointed by not being allowed to keep up the Irish accent (it’s also funny how every episode features a recap at the beginning that summarises what the show’s about and the two clips of Fiona just happen to be of her speaking with her Irish accent, so I imagine anyone who tuned into the show partway through the series and saw these summaries at the beginning of the episodes would wonder why she sounded Irish in them but not in the actual episodes themselves). Speaking of those recaps, there’s one part I just can’t BEAR to watch when they appear onscreen...and that’s the part featuring the main character’s mother. The show’s lead, Michael Westen (played by Jeffrey Donovan, who I’ll forever remember as Jarod’s brother, Kyle, from the first season of The Pretender), is a likeable enough main character (though his voice in the voiceovers took me a while to get used to, as I found it slightly irritating to begin with), and him combined with Fiona and Sam Axe (played by Bruce Campbell, who’ll always be Autolycus from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess to me) make a pretty awesome trio. Unfortunately, Michael's mum feels completely unnecessary to the show and every time there’s a scene with her, it just brings the action/fun to a complete halt and feels so forced/shoehorned in (like they just need a reason to justify the actress who plays his mum being a ‘regular’ in the show). The fact that she mainly comes across as an annoying, chain-smoking nag (seriously, she smokes in EVERY scene she has) who’s always on Michael’s case about the most trivial things and bitching at him certainly doesn’t help. The show would be MUCH better without her in it. I do love Fiona, though, and her enthusiasm for not only guns, but blowing shit up. Hers and Sam’s dynamic is a fun one, since they don’t exactly get along, and I find it funny how Michael and Sam are always pulling her back on how big to make her explosions whenever they need her to create some. It's a bit frustrating seeing Michael not seem as into Fiona as she is into him, when he’s got a pretty kick-arse girlfriend. It was fun to see guest stars Tricia Helfer and Michael Shanks (from BSG and Stargate SG-1 respectively) in Season 2. While the show is fairly ‘procedural’ in nature, it manages to usually keep things interesting. And, amazingly, Michael’s voiceovers don’t really bug me like I thought they would (they’re more informative than anything), though they kind of overdo the names of characters we’re introduced to appearing onscreen with a whoosh sound effect, especially considering they typically appear straight after someone has actually said who the characters are. The text onscreen saying the same thing feels a bit redundant. At least they seem to have fun with the names/descriptions on occasion). On the whole, this is a pretty easy watch. It’s not overly complex, but it’s not so basic/formulaic that it’s boring. Some episodes have not been as good as others, but I don’t think I’ve outright hated anything thus far (other than Michael’s mum and her intrusive appearances in almost every episode. It was a relief when for an episode or two she didn’t appear). I think they kind of overdo the yoghurt promotion in this show (whereby at least *one* member of the main trio is seen eating it in each episode. They eat yoghurt on this show almost as much as Michael’s mum smokes). I’ve now started Season 3 on DVD and I haven’t really taken a ‘break’ so far, which is more than I can say for other TV shows I’ve bought the complete series boxsets of previously. Hopefully I don’t get bored of this one. Also finished another show with a lead character named Michael (though a far more annoying one) - Season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}I’d put off buying this season because I thought Michelle Yeoh’s character of Philippa Georgiou (Mirrorverse version) wouldn’t be featured as much as the previous seasons. Turns out she was featured the MOST this season (I think so, anyway. It at least felt that way to me). However, it eventually became available for a decent price (part of a ‘Buy 1, Get 1 Free’ deal) and so I got it. Yeoh/Georgiou remains the BEST part of the show. Her character’s just so fun and snarky...but not in the annoying sort of way, unlike the character of Jett Reno, who - for me personally - is the WORST part of the show. She’s even managed to supplant Michael Burnham as my least favourite character in this show. I learned that the person who plays Reno is apparently a stand-up comedian - and that’s exactly what she comes across as in this show...albeit an unfunny one (at least to *me*, anyway). She’s just so predictable with her old, cranky sarcasm and it’s not amusing as far as I’m concerned. She doesn't feel like a proper character or like she's got much depth to her besides snarking (whereas Michelle Yeoh brings so much nuance to Georgiou). Unfortunately, she’s clearly one of those types of characters who the writers love writing for and who others enjoy, so I don’t think I’ll ever be rid of her (which is disappointing and brings my interest in watching the show WAY down). I still like Saru (he’s probably my second favourite character after Georgiou) and it's a shame he didn't get to remain Captain after he scored that position this season, Tilly is mostly likeable (though can get slightly annoying at times), I think I finally learned most of the bridge crew’s names this season (took me two and a bit seasons, but I got there), but unfortunately Burnham’s *still* being written/presented as THE BESTEST, MOST AMAZING/FANTABULOUS PERSON EVER...and that had already gotten old back in Season 1 (amusingly, when I type her name into Google search, one of the automatic results that comes up as I’m typing is ‘Why is Michael Burnham so annoying’, so clearly others feel the same way about her. I will say that she annoyed me somewhat less this season than the previous two seasons...at least for a handful of episodes around the beginning of this season, anyway, before she reverted to her typical annoying self. Then at the end of the season, of course, became Captain. Considering how often she disobeyed all her previous Captains' orders, I wonder how she'll be now that the shoe's on the other foot?). Maybe if they used some of her screentime to further develop the bridge crew, I’d care more about them. At this stage, I don’t hate them or anything, but I’m not particularly attached to them either. The best thing to come out of this season was the character Book...’s cat named Grudge. Seriously, she left much more of an impression than her owner (the first episode of this season just being about him and Michael was NOT a great way to start things off - talk about DULL - but I liked the cat). Tilly's dynamics with Saru and Georgiou were good, but I especially enjoyed her interaction with Grudge like when Grudge hailed the Discovery and Tilly’s “...Grudge?” reaction or when she asked if Grudge had eaten Michael, who she was searching for, due to Grudge's size. If only Grudge HAD eaten her! I say we make Grudge the Captain. There were some really good episodes this season, but also some average ones. While there are some aspects/characters in the show that I like, I’m not sure if they’re enough to keep me invested/interested in the show now that Georgiou/Michelle Yeoh has been written out. I really wish she’d get that spin-off we’d been promised with her. After all, she's AWESOME and totally deserves it As it stands, I’ll probably do with Season 4 what I did with Season 3 when it eventually gets released on Blu-ray here - ie. wait until it becomes cheap before I buy it. Until then, I can’t say I’m anxiously awaiting the next season (unlike Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard, which I’m actually eager to see. I’m also super-eager to see Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, but since it’s only just started airing, it’ll be a good while before it’s released here on DVD/Blu-ray). In a weird coincidence, as I was searching for pictures of the DVD covers to one of these^ shows, I stumbled across what it would look like if the two series were combined... Not so sure I'd be into that^.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 10, 2022 5:33:03 GMT -5
Finished Season 4 of The Crown on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}I had bought and watched the first two seasons of this show on Blu-ray ages ago, but once Season 2 ended and I knew Claire Foy (who was my main reason for checking out the show) would no longer be playing the Queen/would be replaced by Olivia Colman (since the show jumped ahead in time with Season 3), I had no interest in continuing with it. Unlike most people, I’m not a fan of Colman and so I didn’t really have anything to entice me to watch the third season (from some comments I read, it doesn’t sound like I missed out on much. Though I’m bummed that I missed out of seeing Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret, as she seemed to be mostly wasted in this fourth season and didn’t have a lot to do). The only real reason I decided to give Season 4 a look was because of Emma Corrin as Diana. I’d seen how she actually resembled the real Diana (albeit only from certain angles, while from other angles she didn’t really look much like her at all), but some clips I’d watched of her showed she also nailed the voice and mannerisms. Added to this was Gillian Anderson playing Margaret Thatcher and, well, these two were intriguing enough to bring me back to the show and put up with not-Claire Foy this season. Of course, not having watched Season 3 meant I had to work out who was who in the Season 4 premiere, but eventually I did. While I wished they could’ve found someone who more closely resembled Matt Smith to play the older Philip, Tobias Menzies impressed me in the TV series Outlander, so at least I knew he’d turn in a solid performance. He continued the character's personality Matt Smith had started off portraying in the series, it seemed Philip never really 'matured' a great deal since he was still a real jerk at times, but other times he came across as almost decent. He even amused me on the rare occasion. Unfortunately, not being a fan of Colman (there's only *one* instance where I've ever sort of been impressed with her acting and that was during one scene of The Night Manager mini-series. I never got the high praise heaped on her for Broadchurch. Then again, I never got the praise for that show as a whole, which bored me to tears as half of it seemed to be unnecessary slow-mo), I can’t say I really enjoyed her performance as Queenie (though comments I read said she did a better job in this season than she did in Season 3). I think the most I enjoyed her was during the episode focused on her sister, Margaret, when they had a real genuine sibling feel/vibe going on. Speaking of Margaret, she could be really bitchy at times and was especially unfriendly towards both Diana and the Thatchers, but I still enjoyed HBC’s performance. Again, my one regret about not watching Season 3 was that I didn’t get to see her, as I imagine she had much more screentime in that season than she did in this one. Other characters we only got bits and pieces of were Queenie’s other non-Charles offspring - Anne, Andrew and Edward. Anne was fun some of the time, and gave Charles a necessary smackdown on occasion, but other times kind of annoyed me. The other two hardly even appeared in the season, and apart from a memorable line uttered by one of them featuring the C-bomb, nothing really stood out to me about them. Gillian Anderson’s Thatcher was a different matter. She was hard *not* to notice. I know some called her performance a ‘parody’ of the real woman, like she was doing some bad imitation of her, but I thought GA committed to the role fully. The voice/way of speaking, the mannerisms, and all that seemed pretty genuine to me and not like it was just a mere 'imitation'. I also thought that despite the fact she was shown in not a great light on several occasions, GA still managed to make me feel sympathy for her. The first instance was when she and her hubby spent time with the Royals and they weren’t very understanding towards them being unprepared/unaccustomed to how the Royals spent their time together (though that episode also featured some very funny moments, such as her reactions to all the things she found odd and her playing their bizarre drinking game, but doing it sloooowly. Still, she was very precise and even though that wasn’t really the aim of the game, as far as she was concerned...she nailed it) and then at the end of the season, when she got booted out as Prime Minister. GA really sold this tough woman having moments of vulnerability and I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for her (all due to GA’s performance). The most noteworthy characters/storyline this season were, of course, Charles & Diana. He meets her in the first episode as someone dressed as a tree from the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream and she piques his interest, he’s remembering the words of his great-uncle (who got blown up by the IRA, but not before writing a letter to Charles) and is being pushed to forget about Camilla Parker Bowles (another character who I probably could’ve gotten to know better by watching Season 3, but...eh...I didn’t really care to, nor did I really need to see him fall for her – which was another reason Season 3 was so skippable for me). It’s not long before Diana’s meeting the Royals and she’s passing their ‘tests’ (unlike Thatcher). Philip, in particular, seems to think she’s pretty marriage-worthy material. Unfortunately, Charles only ever has eyes for Camilla and it’s very telling how, after he proposes to Diana, he informs his mum (as well as Margaret, his grandmother and his sister. Speaking of, after the other two 'awwing' at his mention of what Diana said following the proposal, Anne's less enthused '...aw' greatly amused me) that he’s done so in such a way that it sounds like he’s confirming a kill after a hit has been put out on someone (ie. “It’s done.”). I knew Josh O’Connor previously from a show I'd watched called The Durrells, so I was somewhat familiar with him as an actor. Here he got to really sink his teeth into playing a version of this real life person that was NOT AT ALL likeable. To list all the heinous things he did/said regarding Diana would require more time and effort than I’m willing to devote, but suffice to say it wasn't long before he went from being seemingly smitten with Diana to apparently loathing her. Yes, there were brief instances where they seemed to have some ‘happy’ moments, but those were few and far between. On the flipside, I came out of this season feeling nothing but sympathy for Diana. She was very young when she got with Charles (who was a good percentage older than her), she clearly had a romanticized version of how their relationship would play out, but gradually she realised just what she’d gotten herself into and that it was more of a nightmare than a fairytale like she’d hoped. I saw some people describe Emma Corrin as being overly ‘simpering’ with her portrayal of Diana, saying she overdid the head-tilts and whatnot, but like with GA as Thatcher, I thought Corrin did a tremendous job at nailing the voice and mannerisms (the hair/makeup and clothes also helped a lot...though at times her hair/wig didn’t appear to be that blonde, really. At one point it looked brown). I did enjoy seeing the few times Diana got to actually *enjoy* herself and be happy, as there really wasn’t much of that considering her situation. It was a shame that even though for a very brief, fleeting moment it seemed like they talked about their problems with each other and could've been on the road towards recovery/making their marriage work...it was basically false hope. When they *did* get along, it was nice to see (I'll be forever amused that Australia seems to be the country where these Royals would first fight with each other, then make up and get along...at least for a while. Their attempts to recreate Australia were also amusing...though unintentionally so). I'd watched the movie Spencer starring Kristen Stewart as Diana prior to watching this season of The Crown, so KStew's performance was the first one I saw. I thought that maybe if I watched Corrin's performance first, my opinion of KStew's portrayal would suffer because I already had heard that Corrin did a great job. In the end, I think it's unfair to compare the two, since Spencer was a very different telling of Diana to The Crown's version. I think KStew played what was required of her for that film to the best of her ability. Having said that, Emma Corrin still managed to really *embody* the character in such a way that I could really 'see' her as Diana. In the movie we got to see some of Diana's dancing and whatnot through the palace, but here we got to see more of it (including roller-skating). Another thing the movie and these episodes had in common was not shying away from Diana's self-induced vomiting (we even got warnings about depictions of an eating disorder coming up in text form at the beginning of the episodes in which we saw her throwing up after eating). The most bizarre thing was all the lead-up to the wedding...and then not getting to see it. Hell, they didn't even showing her in her wedding dress from the front. All we was her from behind. Pictures that were released showed us more of it than the episode did. I guess they couldn't afford to recreate the wedding, but the show-makers saying you can just watch the wedding on YouTube is a bit of a cop-out excuse for skipping it in the show, since one could say "You can watch it on YouTube" about a great many moments in the show. It was really sad seeing how Queenie wasn’t really there for Diana even when she reached out and wanted to connect/talk to someone about all the problems going on in the marriage. Hell, Philip was more sympathetic towards Diana than his wife was. Margaret, like with Thatcher, was anything but. However, the worst person in all this was easily Charles, who lied/deceived, continuously cheated, hypocritically gave Diana hell for seeking solace in the arms of other men, then tattled on her to his mummy and acted like Diana was the worst person in the world who couldn’t do anything right. The way he acted when she tried to give him gifts made him come across like a real ungrateful a-hole. Her first gift to him was on his birthday, with her dance performance onstage set to ‘Uptown Girl’ which any normal guy would've loved/appreciated. I totally misread where this seen was going when she randomly excused herself to go powder her nose (what is even the point of powdering one's nose? I've never understood it, and it made even less sense he when she just been watching the opera - looking bored - and then randomly got up to go do it, like suddenly her nose required powdering), then next thing the song started playing and I thought Charles was going to be annoyed that she walked off just when it would've gotten to something she probably would've enjoyed. I totally didn't expect to see her onstage (then again, I don't know that much about the r/l couple, whereas if I *did*, I probably would've seen this coming). Since he said how he hated public displays like that^, for their anniversary she made him a personal/private video of her - albeit with a full orchestra - performing a song from The Phantom of the Opera. Sure, her singing wasn't the best...but the sheer EFFORT she put into that performance should've at least garnered some praise/thanks. We only get to see part of it in the episode, but I found the full performance on YouTube (I particularly hated seeing him badmouth her to both Anne and Camilla, the former of which laughed together with him about the performance - which made me dislike Anne quite a bit, but then her giving him the verbal smackdown about how marriages aren't perfect somewhat made up for that). Meanwhile, he continued to be ALL ABOUT CAMILLA and did nothing but bitch about Diana to her (even Camilla she wasn’t willing to go all-in on their affair by leaving her husband who himself was a cheater). Honestly, every shitty thing Charles did/said to Diana this season was pretty rage-inducing (the ONE ‘positive’ thing I can say about Charles was that his joke he told, with the aid of Camilla, whilst dirty...actually genuinely amused me). Admittedly, Diana wasn’t as ‘perfect’ as people perceived her to be, but nothing she did made her deserve the horrid treatment she suffered from her husband. I think I hated him most when Diana really *tried* to make things work with him, but he just ignored her/dodged her calls, knowing full-well that’d cause her to go back to the few men who she was with (not to mention he was fully aware of her mental health problems and how alone she felt, which just made him extra-dickish by purposely avoiding her at all costs), thus causing her to be 'in the wrong’ (since Queenie had made her swear she wouldn’t do that). In the season final, him yelling at Diana about her ‘hurting’ Camilla was complete BS also, since it was all Camilla’s own feelings of not being able to compete with the public’s love for Diana and nothing Diana herself had done to Camilla. Queenie not being sympathetic towards Diana also really pissed me off. It made sense that the last shot of the season was of Diana being far apart from Charles in a family portrait that was taken as it became clear to her just how trapped she was. As frustrating and sad as watching their trainwreck of a marriage was...it certainly provided compelling viewing, at least. And I will say Josh O'Connor was quite good in the role, even though he was playing someone so loathsome. I actually really got into this season (there were a couple of episodes I didn’t enjoy - the first being the one dealing with an intruder in the palace who sat down with Queenie and told her his woes/what she needed to do to improve the lifestyle of her ‘people’, while the other one was the Margaret-centric episode which dealt with the mentally-ill family members of the Royal family who were hidden away and forgotten about) and am sad we only got to spend one season with Emma Corrin’s Diana and GA’s Thatcher. However, I *am* looking forward to seeing Elizabeth Debicki in the role of Diana. I think she can totally live up to Corrin’s performance (my only worry is some may judge her harshly since her performance is coming ‘second’ to Corrin’s and people seem to often love only what came *first*). The casting of Dominic West as Charles is a headscratcher, since he bears NO resemblance to either r/l Charles or to Josh O’Connor (I’m guessing they just had to rush to find someone who would not be dwarfed by Debicki’s height after she was cast...but still, they could’ve done MUCH better than who they settled on for 'older Charles'). I was SO happy to see Claire Foy return for one scene in an episode this season, as to me she’ll always be THE Queen in this show and it’ll forever remain a disappointment that they couldn’t just ‘age up’ her and Matt Smith rather than replace them completely (on the other hand, old age makeup often doesn’t really look that great, so I can’t entirely complain about the decision to just go with different actors instead). Anyway, I’m glad I bought this season and watched it. I’ll probably do the same with Season 5, at least (though I still have no desire to watch Season 3. Maybe if it ever becomes really cheap, I might).
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Jun 27, 2022 12:21:25 GMT -5
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Post by Weirdraptor mini™ on Jun 28, 2022 0:22:00 GMT -5
How have you been liking it?
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Jun 28, 2022 10:34:20 GMT -5
the first episode was fantastic, i loved it
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 29, 2022 4:47:41 GMT -5
Most recently finished Season 2 of Impulse on DVD. {Spoiler}Unlike a lot of unwatched shows I have on DVD/Blu-ray, there wasn't too big of a gap between when I bought this one and when I decided to watch it (whereas others I buy and then don't get around to watching until months or even YEARS later). I really enjoyed Season 1 and thought that it did an excellent job of telling the story of a girl who'd been a victim of an attempted rape and her dealing with that as well as discovering that she was a teleporter. Weaving an issue as serious/real as rape in with a fantastical sci-fi element like teleportation would've been tricky to do, as one wouldn't want to make light of the former by focusing on the latter...but this series really managed to do the impossible and create a story where the sci-fi element was second to the real world trauma the show's lead character Henrietta 'Henry' Coles was living with. I didn't remember all the different plotlines from Season 1, since it'd been quite a while since I watched that season on DVD, but I remembered the most important stuff ie. Henry's power manifesting when Clay attempted to rape her in his truck and her teleporting away which caused the truck to crush his legs, permanently crippling him (before anyone reading this thinks, "Poor Clay!" just remember this is a guy who doesn't even think he did anything *wrong*, who showed basically no remorse and even when his mother sits down to talk to him about her own rape this season, he doesn't want to listen to it/doesn't seem to care. The tiniest bit of nuance we saw was him yelling into his hands after eavesdropping on his mum talking about him being a rapist to someone else. Even after Henry saved him from the fire at the end of last season, it appeared he hadn't learned his lesson. He was still as unwilling to take responsibility for his actions...and that hasn't changed this season. I know some people felt sorry for him, but rapists and even attempted rapists don't deserve *any* sympathy...which was basically what his brother, Lucas, admitted to Henry this season when he said that Clay deserved what he got - when you're own brother says you deserved it, then that pretty much confirms it. Thankfully, Clay wasn't in too much of this season.). I also remembered some other stuff, but there were some things I'd forgotten (such as the details of the whole Amish storyline, how much the Sheriff - who became ex-Sheriff this season - knew regarding Henry, the stuff with Henry's friend, Townes, and the girl he met online named Zoe as well as the guy feeding him information about teleporters and those who experimented on them, etc). At least I remembered that Season 1 ended with Clay's dad, Bill Boone, pointing a gun at Henry and her mum, so Henry teleported away with Bill's arm (shoulder and all) that was holding the gun...though her mum still got shot. The first episode of this season did a good job of picking up where last season's final left off, with Henry having to cope with her mother bleeding out and also killing Clay's dad (due to blood loss from the wound he'd sustained). While my memory's a bit fuzzy on the details of the earlier episodes this season, I do remember thinking it was a pretty great Season 2 premiere. Season 1 introduced Nikolai (played by Callum Keith Rennie, who most would probably associate with Battlestar Galactica...but to me he'll always be 'New Ray' from the TV series Due South), who's a fellow teleporter and trying to train Henry to control her power/properly deal with her trauma. He was also handy with getting rid of Bill Boone's body by dissolving it in a tub of acid (Henry's reaction to seeing this mirrored my own). Unfortunately, Henry wasn't one for dealing with things and so she wanted to go to a party and there she hallucinated ripping off another guy's arm after she imagined everyone there sitting around the fire knew about her teleportation power and wanted to see her display it whilst basically calling her a freak. While I was pretty sure what we were seeing wasn't actually happening, it would've been a hell of a surprise if she *had* done it for real. Clearly, Henry was coming apart at the seams...and not just metaphorically, but also literally (considering the cracks we saw forming on her skin at one point). The first two episodes of this season were pretty good, but the third one (where the only part I could remember from it was Henry and her mum going on a road trip) was rather disappointing since it felt mostly like 'filler' (I also didn't really care about the other storylines going on such as Clay's brother, Lucas, becoming Amish or whatever. He got an Amish girl he had the hots for into strife by not being able to resist temptation, then he left, so in the end it all felt rather pointless. About the only noteworthy/useful thing he did this season was take the blame for killing his dad in an attempt to steer the ex-Sheriff away from Henry as the prime suspect). Fortunately, the fourth episode proved MUCH more interesting than the third one, as it was focused entirely on the backstory of Nikolai. A good deal of the episode featured a younger actor than CKR playing the role, but it was still a riveting episode. I don't remember much from the next one, but I recall thinking there seemed to be a pattern this season where we'd get two good episodes, then a 'meh'/'blah' one in between - which was more or less the case for most of the season. I liked the moments where we saw Henry getting along with Jenna (her step-sister of sorts, since her mum and Jenna's dad were together...though not actually married). When Henry wasn't being horrible to Jenna, they were actually good together. It's quite funny looking back on Jenna informing Henry that she was a 'good person' considering all that Henry did to her - and others - by the end of the season (I'm pretty sure Jenna would've been re-evaluating that earlier assessment she'd made of Henry). I enjoyed how thoroughly not-nerdy the two of them were, as illustrated by them often not getting the pop culture/sci-fi references their friend, Townes, would make (mistaking the Enterprise for the Millennium Flacon? Star Wars and Star Trek nerds alike would've been having a fit!). Speaking of Townes, while it was clear that he that he had ASD, and he was the self-appointed 'sidekick' to Henry (who he thought was a superhero), helping her out when she asked for it, I must admit that at times he could be a little much. He could be especially rude to Jenna, who was only ever decent to him (actually, she was decent to pretty much everyone, even those who didn't really deserve it). I'm glad we finally got to see Zoe in person, as I was starting to think she wasn't really who she claimed to be (also good to see an actress with an actual prosthetic arm playing the role of a character with one). Though by the end of the season when Townes finally told her what the deal was with Henry, even though Zoe seemed cool with it...I had to wonder if she was going to be going to someone to tell them he was crazy or to report (having been a plant). Guess we'll never know. The most I think Henry and Jenna ever got along was in the episode where Henry volunteered to accompany Jenna to the school dance she'd been wanting to go to and begrudgingly admitted she liked Jenna (though she had a funny away of showing this most of the time). It was in this episode that Jenna, who'd been slowly realising she had feelings for other girls, came out to Henry (to her credit, she immediately accepted it and was a good friend to Jenna...in this particular moment, anyway). This^ was the happiest they ever were together, as it finally appeared that Henry was maturing (albeit slightly) and being less awful to Jenna than she had been previously. So it was quite the case of whiplash when, in the next episode, what little 'friendship' they'd developed was utterly destroyed. I felt SO bad for Jenna, as she was stuck with knowing Henry's teleportation secret, lying to others, dealing with people dying left and right, putting up with Henry's shitty treatment of her, coming to grips with her own sexuality and her dad not even talking to her about wanting to take things further with Henry's mum. It obviously took a toll on her as evidenced by her being informed at school that she was failing - this, combined with Henry being unwilling to share her secret with anyone except Jenna (and Townes), and it's no wonder Jenna finally lost it at her (unfortunately, this occurred at the exact wrong moment, when Jenna's dad was planning to propose to Henry's mum complete with a romantic dinner he'd prepared). Everything Jenna said to/about Henry was the truth - she *was* a shitty person who used her 'friends' and, in Jenna's words, was "toxic, abusive and a mess". Sarah Desjardins deserves just as much praise for her performance as Jenna as Maddie Hasson does for her portrayal of Henry. Both actresses played so well off each other when they were getting along, but they also really went for it during this heated argument. It was cathartic to finally see Jenna let loose, and Sarah Desjardins totally brought it. Honestly, as much as Henry's been put through/had to deal with, poor Jenna went through almost as much crap - and unlike Henry, Jenna didn't have a good friend who was always there for her. I was never really fond of Henry's mum, so her leaping to Henry's defense against Jenna's truth bombs didn't really get me like her any more. I get that she didn't like how 'judgmental' of her daughter Jenna's dad was being...but it seemed more like Henry's mum felt compelled to defend her daughter rather than her actually thinking she deserved to be. If she had half a clue (or cared) how horrible Henry was to Jenna, she would've shut up. Instead, everyone got into heated verbal fight which culminated in Henry doing the SHITTIEST thing she'd ever done to Jenna - namely outing her to her dad (after having promised to keep Jenna's sexuality a secret). Sure, Jenna sounded like she was about to reveal Henry being a teleporter...but, really, I don't imagine Henry's mum or Jenna's dad would've believed her (at least not until having seen the teleportation occur with their own eyes). So despite Henry talking over Jenna, blurting out "Jenna's gay." to cover up what she imagined Jenna was about to say...there really was no need for that, since she was in no real danger of her mum knowing she was a teleporter for realsies. It was just another in a long line of examples of Henry being selfish/only thinking of what *she* wanted/cared about. Her and her mum basically getting kicked out, then eating takeaway together in their car garnered no sympathy from me. They deserved each other (clearly Henry's mum was so offended on Henry's behalf when Jenna's dad was throwing accusations Henry's way because she's basically the same sort of person her daughter is - which is to say...not a very good one). After this^, I couldn't see any way how Jenna could ever be 'friends' with Henry again, so good on her for informing Henry that she was done with her. However, things got even worse once Jenna discovered the mobile phone of the ex-Sheriff, Anna, who Henry had teleported away and left at a hole in the wall of a waterfall because Anna was getting too close to discovering what had really gone on with Henry (in regards to Clay getting his legs crushed in his truck). This led to Jenna and Townes thinking that Henry had offed Anna (especially after she admitted to them she'd offed Nikolai - which happened in the season final once he admitted to having killed Henry's dad and she felt was an especially cruel betrayal since he'd led her to believe her dad was still alive whilst he trained her to control her power). Things got out of control pretty quickly and at one point Henry was fighting Jenna for the phone - I was worried Henry was going to inadvertently hurt Jenna like she'd done with others, but instead Townes used a device he'd been given by the guy who'd been feeding him information about the teleporters and knew that Nikolai was no good. This device emitted a noise which hurt/weakened Henry, and whilst she was writhing in agony on the floor of Townes' bedroom, he got her to confess that she'd known Nikolai had offed the guy who was wanting her help in getting away from the bad guys. Prior to this scene, there'd been an excellent display of Henry's teleporting powers where she teleported Nikolai to various places and basically beat him up with her power after learning he'd offed her dad long ago (which made the scenes we'd seen with her father confusing, since they'd made it seem like he was alive - I guess they were flashbacks?). We FINALLY got to see her use her power like X-Men's Nightcrawler, she kept the stuff Nikolai used to inject himself with away from him as he begged her for it, but she withheld it until he formed the cracks in his skin we'd seen her get at the beginning of the season and then he basically evaporated (don't breathe in the particles, Henry!). It's a shame that this was where the Henry/Nikolai relationship ended up, as I had enjoyed his training of her and how she seemed to slowly start to trust him. He even managed to get her to confront her trauma that she associated with Clay's truck (where she'd teleport away from it, despite not wishing to do so, after forcing herself to get inside it). While it was ballsy for him to admit to her he'd offed her dad, it was also rather foolish of him to expect her to take this news in any way other than BADLY considering all her hopes had rested on finding her dad who she just thought was missing, not dead. CKR brought a lot to this season and his scenes with Henry were some of the best. Anyway, getting back to Jenna/Townes finally having had enough of Henry's shit and turning against her...I can't say I blamed them one bit. They were eventually going to reach a breaking point, and this was obviously it. However, this wasn't the last bridge Henry burned - there was one more, and that was her relationship with her mum (ie. the one remaining person who didn't hate her). Nikolai had informed Henry at one point that to sever his connection with his home (which was where he teleported back to every time when he was younger, just as Henry unintentionally teleports back to her bedroom every time she uses her powers when she's feeling particularly emotional), he'd offed his uncle (this was after his uncle offed a new friend young Nikolai had made). This led to Henry severing her connection with her mum in the only way she could think of (that wasn't murder), which involved her saying deeply hurtful things to her mum, ending with blaming her mother for Clay's attempted rape of her (since she was essentially calling her mother weak and pathetic, etc and that was what made Henry the way she was, thereby allowing Clay to force himself on her). I've seen the whole 'hurt you to keep you safe' trope MANY times in shows/movies, but never has it gotten so emotional/'heavy' between the characters. This was a hell of a scene, both actresses absolutely KILLED it (I've only really seen Missi Pyle is 'comedic' things, so this was the first time I saw she was capable of real dramatic stuff) and it made for an emotional climax in the season final (which, sadly, would turn out to also be the series final) rather than some big action-y climax (which we essentially got at the beginning of the episode with Henry teleporting Nikolai all over the place). With all her bridges thoroughly burned, Henry finally severed ties with every connection she had and teleported far away/was free (which was something she'd always wanted...though probably not like this). Honestly, the show could've ended with Henry seemingly free of everything she'd been dealing with all season/all of her attachments. I choose to think of the show ending here and pretend that the final scene (with Shohreh Aghdashloo showing up to utter some foreboding words to Henry after seemingly freezing time like she's some Professor X type) didn't happen. Clearly the show was not intended to end here, but the fools who cancelled the series didn't care and so we're left with a cliffhanger...but not if I just pretend the series ended slightly earlier. Really, I don't think there was any way Henry could've ever come back from everything she did to her friends and family, so her getting to start over elsewhere was probably the 'happiest' ending she could possibly get. Did she deserve a 'happy' ending? That's debatable, but up until she went all 'scorched earth' on everyone, I didn't actually hate her character like so many others did (even when she was being shitty during Season 1 and earlier in this second season). Maddie Hasson gave such a 'raw' performance as Henry throughout the series, I thought. She could bring the funny (like some of Henry's reactions to things Jenna or Townes said or at her place of work which had a 'surf' theme to it where she had to deliver cringey lines to customers), but she was even better at all the dramatic stuff. I know people absolutely HATED Henry, but I can also understand how her trauma - combined with all the other things going on in her life - built up over time and it all just snowballed to the point where she just couldn't take it anymore, resulting in her lashing out at anyone/everyone, self-sabotaging what few 'decent' relationships she had. Was Henry a 'likeable' character? Not really (at least not most of the time), but she was certainly a compelling one and felt very 'real' to me. Maddie Hasson managed to keep me NOT completely loathing her (though the last few episodes of Season 2 tested the limit of tolerance towards her shitty behaviour/treatment of others). The real shame about this show not continuing on is that I don't think I'll see another series revolving around a teen character that has felt so 'real' (which might sound silly when it's a show that involves teleportation...but the emotion and the trauma all felt very believable, I thought, as did Henry, who felt like how a *real* 'moody teen' would be like. Even her constant swearing felt 'natural' and not forced like it does in some shows where they have characters regularly cussing) again any time soon. This show was severely underappreciated and I may rewatch it from the beginning at some point in the future (once I've watched the MANY still unwatched DVDs/Blu-rays I own) without the long gap between Seasons 1 & 2. This was a true gem of a show which I highly recommend checking out if good drama mixed in with sci-fi elements interests you.
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Jun 29, 2022 10:39:47 GMT -5
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Jul 4, 2022 11:09:43 GMT -5
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Jul 4, 2022 16:42:54 GMT -5
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jul 6, 2022 4:15:24 GMT -5
I last finished Season 1 of Banshee on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}I'd actually originally watched this ages ago when I first bought it, along with Season 2, but I guess there was a gap in between watching those first two seasons and when the third season got released here, and so I probably got sidetracked by watching other shows I had on DVD/Blu-ray (of which there are MANY), which meant that even after I did buy Seasons 3 & 4 on Blu-ray...I was too distracted by whatever else I was watching to return to this show. However, with recent TV shows I've watched having been sucking quite a bit lately, I've returned to 'older' shows. I thought it was about time I finished watching this series...but first I needed a refresher on Seasons 1 & 2 (since I originally watched them so long ago). While there was stuff I remembered from my first watch, there was also some stuff I'd forgotten. I remembered the show started with Antony Starr playing an ex-con who's just getting released from prison after 15 years. They make a point of not having his name uttered and that's for a very good reason. First order of business once he's released is to track down his former partner, whose real name we *do* learn (it's Anastasia), but she's now going by the name of Carrie Hopewell (Carristasia? Carrieana? Let's just call her Carrie for simplicity's sake) and is married, with kids. He stayed behind so she could get away during the heist from her gangster father known as Rabbit and wants his cut of the diamonds they stole (and is hoping to pick up where they left off with their 'relationship'), but she doesn't want him messing up her happy family life. The only name he does go by is the one he steals from the Sheriff, Lucas Hood, who just so happens to be in the same bar as this guy when a brawl starts which ends with the Sheriff (and the thugs who were robbing the place) dead. Luckily, it was the Sheriff's first day in town and he hadn't met anyone except those in the bar, so it becomes conveniently easy for his identity to be assumed by another. Aiding Not!Lucas Hood in this identity theft is the bar's owner, an ex-con and former boxer, Sugar Bates, and helping with the ID stuff is another person from his con past, a computer whiz called Job (who happens to, on occasion, dress in drag...but is not to be messed with). Once the bodies are buried, it's just a matter of Not!Lucas Hood playing the role of Sheriff convincingly...though his habit of regularly breaking the law to deal out his own brand of justice on bad guys and yet still somehow managing to keep his new job requires a suspension of disbelief. He soon meets the deputies he'll be working with including Brock Lotus (who really wanted the Sheriff job and holds it against Not!Lucas Hood for just breezing in and taking it from him), Emmett Yawners (an appropriate last name for a character who doesn't make much of an impression at all, but at least he cares/looks out for Siobhan and isn't as opposed to Not!Lucas Hood as Brock is) and Siobhan Kelly. It's amusing watching all three's constant WTF reactions to the shit N!LH pulls, but it eventually gets to the point where you wonder if they're really that good at their jobs if they continually let all this crazy stuff slide. Then again, having to hear them constantly lecture N!LH on his breaking of the law (or at the very least 'bending' the law) to suit his needs would get old fast...so I guess the 'balance' of that is letting Brock be the one to do so most of the time, but then have him and the others accept that although N!LH's methods are highly questionable, in the end he's doing what he does for the *right* reasons and at least he gets results. Naturally, there are clashes between N!LH and pretty much everyone else in town. Other characters include the far-younger-than-you'd-expect Mayor (who's pretty forgettable, which is made abundantly clear when nobody notices/cares he's in a building that gets blown to kingdom come during the season final), the local (ex-Amish) gangster, Kai Proctor, and the Psycho Smithers to his Mr. Burns, Burton, as well as Proctor's niece, Rebecca Bowman (who is an quiet Amish girl by day but sexy party girl who bangs N!LC in the second episode by night) and Carrie's family, such as her rebellious daughter, Deva (who Carrie tells N!LH *isn't* his...but is revealed to in fact *be* his, which he could apparently tell from the moment he saw her, later in the season), her hubby, Gordon (who doesn't take too long before he becomes suspicious of N!LH and his connection to Carrie), and their asthmatic son, Max. Then there are the local rednecks, the Moodys, who didn't appreciate their brother being shot by N!LH (this was after Proctor threatened to add him to the cattle at one of his slaughterhouses he owns and he in turn sought revenge, preparing to shoot Proctor until N!LH put him down). Moody's wife doesn't seem that broken up about her husband's death and is soon banging N!LH. I think he manages to screw all the regular female characters except Siobhan and, obviously, his daughter - because that would be GROSS...though incest doesn't seem so out of the question for Kai and his niece, Rebecca, who comes to live with him after she's shunned/kicked out by her family and the rest of the Amish thanks to them finding all the stuff she's stashed away that a nice Amish girl should definitely NOT possess, added onto the fact that she'd previously whipped out a knife that she slashed one of the local biker gang with when they interrupted the town's festival, causing damage and terrorising people (including nearly raping Carrie until Siobhan shot the one on top of her, which Carrie ensured would transpire as she didn't allow him to put down his gun when he was instructed to and she popped out the clip whilst raising his arm and aiming the gun at Siobhan. This, she later tells N!LH, was what she was forced to do as she didn't want her cover blown - which it would've been if she'd taken them all out whilst Siobhan was there. Unfortunately for poor Siobhan, the biker gang seek revenge by burning down her house. Luckily, N!LH takes care of them in his typical violent way and Sugar/Job are there to help dispose of the bodies whilst bickering like an old married couple). Rebecca has no problem being near-naked in front of her uncle, though she's certainly weirded out by Psycho Smithers, Burton (and with good reason, since he's hella creepy and remains silent most of the time, though when he removes his glasses this means whoever he's doing that for is DEAD MEAT, as evidenced when he offs a few different people this season - some behind closed doors and others which we witness). Having seen Antony Starr being super-intense whilst playing Homelander in The Boys, it's funny going back to this show he starred in prior to that one and seeing the hints of Homelander-style intensity in his performance as N!LH (there was even a Homelander-type line where he answered some guy he was about to beat up, who was wondering what he was doing somewhere he shouldn't be, with "Whatever the fuck I want."). As if spending 15 years in jail wasn't enough, he also comes to Carrie's rescue (and the rescue of her kids) on multiple occasions. It's clear she's his one weakness, as even when he aims a gun at her...he can't ever hurt her (he can't even stay mad at her after learning she turned him over to her gangster father, Rabbit, in exchange for the safety of her family). Although he can be a bit of a jerk at times, it's hard not to like someone who punishes bad guys (be they rapist boxers, rednecks or the local biker gang). One thing the show does well is making sure N!LH never comes out of any fight he's in without bruises/cuts/injuries and props to the continuity people, as he keeps those throughout several episodes and doesn't just 'magically heal' like so many shows have their characters do. Of course, the maintained injuries aren't just limited to N!LH. Carrie also gets in on the action and there's a stand-out fight towards the end of the season after Rabbit's right-hand man, Olek, pays her a visit. Their fight scene is probably the most intense one of the season, I think, and it's not over quickly. It's a prolonged fight where she gives as good as she gets from Olek, but it's not made 'easy' for her to take him out and the fight certainly takes its toll on her (she winds up with a stab wound, whilst she inflicts multiple ones on Olek...including the one in his neck which finishes him off). I thought this was one of the most realistic female vs. male fights I'd seen (but, of course, looking at the IMDB page for the episode showed that there were *still* those who had problems with a female character being able to hold her own against a male character in a fight, no matter the fact that it nearly killed her. There's just no pleasing some people ). I've previously seen Ivana Miličević in a great many things. I think the first thing I can recall seeing her in was the Will Smith movie Enemy of the State where she had a very small role, but left an impression (which she also does in 2006's Casino Royale). I've basically kept an eye out for her in things ever since then and, apart from Bond, I'll always associate her with BtVS (where she appeared for one episode as the new wife of Buffy's ex-b/f, Riley). She juggles the role of Anastasia/Carrie exceptionally well, as her old self bleeds through to her new self and she can't help but return to what she once was despite laying everything on the line to keep her family together. Those who hated her for everything she did to N!LH should at least give her a break after she sacrificed being with her family to go rescue him (after he turned himself over to Rabbit so Max, who Carrie's gangster father had kidnapped, could be set free). First it was just Carrie, Sugar and Job...then Brock, Emmett and Siobhan joined in (after it looked like Brock was going to arrest the other trio). It was neat seeing all these characters working together to rescue N!LH (even if it required just accepting that all of these pretty much by-the-book cops would go along with something SO not legal). Naturally, their were injuries sustained (by Brock and Sugar), but Carrie made it to N!LH, plugged her father with a couple bullets (next time go for the head, Carrie!) and rescued the guy who'd saved her on more than one occasion previously (he looked like he was on death's door). N!LH and Carrie's relationship is a complicated one, as is her one with her father. N!LH also has complex relationships with Proctor (who he arrests partway through the season, but by the end of the season he's owing him a favour since he saved him from a bunch of guys who wanted to shoot him). They're certainly not 'friends', they still don't like each other (and disagree with each other's methods in getting done what they need to get done), but they seem to have the beginnings of a begrudging respect for each other, i think. N!LH proves to be a fairly decent parental figure to Deva (seriously, what's with that name? Was it predicted she was going to be a boy who they wanted to name David and then they had to adjust that when she ended up a girl? Why not just go with Eva or Ava? Sounds close enough), moreso than the people in her life who are actually meant to be her parents. N!LH doesn't sugarcoat things when talking to Deva, but he always looks out for her wellbeing and puts his own life on the line for her whenever the occasion calls for it. She's not *too* annoying, just the typical 'moody teen', though given that she learns (at least some of) her mum's secrets by the end of the season, it's clear she's not going to forgive Carrie in a hurry. I think that while things started off as merely sexual with Rebecca, N!LH develops a fondness and even a respect for her (once he learns what she did with that knife to one of the bikers). He stands up for her against her strict Amish family (who Kai also stands up to, since they're his family as well and he demands they take her back after they shun her/kick her out). I think the most 'well-balanced' female character (and potential love interest) for N!LH is Siobhan, although she's got her own issues too (including a scar on her collarbone which we have to wait until the second season to find out the origin of). One other female character who comes in late to the season is Nola Longshadow, sister of the new chief, Alex, who takes over after the old chief (their father) passes away. It's always nice to see Odette Annable in things and she certainly makes an impression, even with her limited amount of screentime, as she's playing another kick-arse woman in the show. Although this show doesn't really have any 'supernatural' or 'sci-fi' elements to it, it *does* seem to take place in a 'heightened reality' of sorts, as there's some pretty crazy stuff which transpires. Still, it's the kind of stuff you just go with as at least it's highly entertaining stuff. I once saw this show described as 'Amish mafia' and I kind of like that (though that still doesn't do the show justice as far as describing what it's all about goes). Another thing that stands out about the series is its opening title sequence and theme. The theme music itself is pretty damn awesome (I even loaded it onto my phone to have as an option for a ringtone), perfectly capturing the mood/'feel' of the series, while the credits themselves feature many different photos of seemingly random things which actually have a *point* to them and are relevant to the characters each castmember plays (I love the fact that while Lili Simmons' name comes up, her photo never really changes and remains the knife Rebecca used). On the whole, this was a really excellent first season and I'm glad I revisited (as I will do with Season 2 next) before moving onto the seasons I haven't yet seen. I highly recommend checking this show out.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jul 8, 2022 19:02:04 GMT -5
Finished Season 2 of Banshee on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}So, it was straight onto a Season 2 rewatch for me after having finished Season 1. Because my memory's so shoddy, I can't remember details of the earlier episodes in this season, but I remember the basics. There's fallout from the rescuing of Not!Lucas Hood such as Carrie's family finding out at least some of her secrets (and therefore not trusting her anymore and Gordon not letting her see her kids), the Mayor getting exploded (by Kai Proctor and his niece, Rebecca Bowman) and the real Lucas Hood's son, Jason, paying a visit to N!LH. I forgot to mention in my review of Season 1 that in the season final Rebecca witnessed her first straight-up murder at the hands of her uncle's psycho Smithers, Burton (I forget who it was he killed). This season she seemed to delve deeper into the world of 'Amish mafia', as she didn't seem too fazed by having (unintentionally) killed the Mayor in that building explosion and she was even getting more confidant/sassy with Alex Longshadow, who remained at loggerheads with Proctor. Also, Rebecca still seemed to have no problem walking around showing off a lot of skin in front of her uncle, as their creepy 'relationship' kept getting even creepier. At one point there was a guy sent to kill Proctor, so he left the dude's head on Alex's doorstep, then he returned the favour by blowing up a truck full of Proctor's cattle on their way to the slaughterhouse (poor innocent moos! They had nothing to do with your power plays, so leave them out of it! Though I guess they were dead either way ). However, he then paid the price for this by having buckets of the exploded cows dumped in his jacuzzi (which spoiled his sexytimes with some chick). I might be getting ahead of myself and this happened in a later episode, but it was at least towards the start of the season, I'm pretty sure. I was sad to see Nola Longshadow, Alex's sister, leave partway through the season (it was amusing that her final words were with Job, as they met for the first time and exchanged mutual appreciation of each other's outfits before she left town) since she actually seemed to be more of a take-charge type than her brother ever was (shame women couldn't be chiefs...as she would've been less wishy-washy in the role than him). I do recall she saved Rebecca from some would-be rapists and it was like she was BATMAN (the actresses who play the roles of Rebecca, Carrie and Siobhan even said as much during the commentary for the episode). It was pretty awesome watching Nola do her ninja Batman thing, but then she kidnapped Rebecca midway through her thanking Nola for the 'rescue'. This led to Alex and Nola blackmailing Kai or something, I think, and he enlisted N!LH (who owed him a favour after being saved by him near the end of last season) to go retrieve his niece. One noteworthy thing about the rescue (which is also mentioned on the commentary) is that N!LH storming the place Rebecca's being held at kind of resembled a video game in that there were different 'levels' and it started off with one big guy, then once he was defeated there were two guys with batons on a staircase, then finally N!LH reached the 'princess' (ie. Rebecca) and the 'final bosses' (ie. Nola and Alex). It's fun watching the show invent new and interesting kinds of fights since there are SO many of them. Again, N!LH hardly went one episode without sustaining some sort of injury (I read Antony Starr actually hurt his hand during a fight near the end of last season, so that's why N!LH's hand remained injured/bandaged this season). Another fight that took place was Siobhan finally getting a little revenge on her ex-husband, Breece (this whole time I'd thought his name was REESE and I only discovered it's actually BREECE when looking it up...WTF kinda named is 'Breece', anyway?), who we not only learned was an abusive and possessive a-hole towards her, but also that he was the one who gave her that scar on her collarbone (when he BURNED her with a hair-straightener). Although he came back into Siobhan's life claiming to have gotten sober and turned over a new leaf, just coming by her trailer (which she's now living out of since her house was burned down last season) to give her flowers and such, it was quite obvious he hadn't changed and eventually he showed his true colours once again. This led to N!LH wanting to get revenge against him on Siobhan's behalf (N!LH finally managed to add two more main female characters to his list of women he slept with this season, as first there was Nola - who he didn't even meet 'officially'/learn the true identity of until his rescue of Rebecca - and then Siobhan, which explained why he was so ready to go deal hand out his own particular brand of justice to her abusive ex-hubby), but she sent him to the wrong place whilst going to take care of Breece herself. It was SO satisfying to watch her kick his arse, and it was almost funny how unfazed both she and N!LH were by this (I guess N!LH's rubbing off on her...in more ways than one). Though it's also somewhat sad that N!LH is bringing Siobhan down to his level, since she's always been pretty 'principled'. There was also the fact that he still hadn't shared any of his secrets with her, and this drove a bit of a wedge between them by season's end. Shame, since they were quite good together (but I guess the only truly 'right' one for him will always be Carrie, since she's quite a bit like him already, plus she knows all his secrets pretty much). Of course, there was also Rebecca, who N!LH didn't have too many scenes with, but he seemed to want to look out for her...while she just kept getting drawn into her uncle's Amish mafia world more and more. Proctor gave her Amish family another stern talking to about accepting her back after they kicked her out last season, then there was the plotline with Amber Midthunder (soon to be seen in the Predator film, Prey, but who I knew from the first season of the TV series Roswell, New Mexico) playing a Native American girl who got involved with an Amish boy (Rebecca's brother) where the girl wound up murdered and this resulted in Alex's people basically ready to go to war with Proctor's people. It also brought in the hulking giant, Chayton, who was all about telling off every white person in Banshee for all the crimes committed against his people in the past (even if none of the people in present day, who he held responsible, had anything to do with those crimes committed against Native Americans - he just roped all white people into one group, assuming every single one was 'racist' and treating them as such even though N!LH and his deputies were trying to get to the bottom of who murdered one of Chayton's people). He provided N!LH with probably his biggest opponent yet, but thanks to Brock, Siobhan and their tasers, N!LH managed to eventually take him down and get him locked up (he also spouted the same stuff he'd been going on about all episode to Emmett), but then he escaped and nearly offed Siobhan, but finally left town (though he showed up again in the last scene of the season final with the intention of returning 'home' to Banshee). I know he had his fans, but other than his voice and being physically imposing, there wasn't anything about his character that really left much of an impression on me and mostly he just annoyed me (I wished they'd offed him when they'd had the chance, as I already know he returns in Season 3 to cause major trouble). Meanwhile, Lili Simmons (who most seem to dismiss as merely being simply 'hot' and nothing more) actually showed quite a bit of growth as an actress this season, I thought, as she had several emotional scenes and by the end of the season Rebecca managed to save HERSELF when she went to assassinate Alex to help out her uncle, but it didn't go quite according to plan and Alex started beating her up until she eventually pulled his knife and stabbed him in the neck with it. It took three bullets (the last being in the head - should've started there, Rebecca) to finally take him down (honestly, she could've saved herself all this hard work if she'd just pulled his knife and stabbed him with it when she first felt it as they were getting hot and heavy instead of slooowly pressing the nozzle of her gun she pulled from her purse to his forehead, thereby giving him ample warning she was about to kill him). Last season ended with her witnessing her first bloody murder, then this season ended with her committing her first bloody murder. She's now fully on her uncle's team - as if this wasn't already evident when she failed to come clean to N!LH about what really happened to Jason Hood (ie, Kai and Burton followed him to the motel where he was screwing Rebecca and Burton throttled him to death with a garrote, then in the following episode we saw Kai and Rebecca sitting in chairs and calmly watching as something got minced - I'm guessing that was Jason? Hope that screwing Rebecca was worth it! Well... look at her. Sure, it's totally worth becoming mincemeat). Dopey Jason, after all the trouble N!LH, Job and Sugar went through to safely get him out of town with a new identity and everything (though, to be honest, Sugar and Job seemed kind of preemptively threatening towards him considering he only briefly suggested the hint of possibly blackmailing N!LH with his knowledge of who he was/wasn't...it's not like last season with that Wicks guy N!LH met in prison who helped him stay alive in there but then blackmailed him into giving him money, etc. That guy made it clear he wasn't going to stop wanting more from N!LH, so I could kind of understand them resorting to murder surprisingly quickly, whereas here Jason wasn't really like Wicks...yet it became clear Sugar, and probably Job too, would've been all too happy to off him. When murder becomes your go-to choice of dealing with someone who's a problem instead of as a last resort...you know you've gotten maybe a bit too comfortable with it). Anyways, at one point an actor who I recognised from various things showed up, having tracked down Jason who'd stolen from him/whoever he worked for and although he made a deal with N!LH (whilst feeding birds food dipped in alcohol - what a weirdo! Though I *had* hoped to at least see one drunk pigeon...alas, I was disappointed), in the end he still wanted to take Jason and this led to yet another creative fight scene with N!LH - this time on a roadside, with semis rushing by, which gave us one of the most imaginative kills ever: decapitation by semi. That's the sort of crazy shenanigans that occur on this show. It kind of felt like all that stuff with Jason was a bit of a waste, but it did lead to N!LH coming to the conclusion Proctor *had* offed the kid (N!LH also seemed to decide Rebecca was 'against' him since she sided with her uncle by backing up his cover story of not knowing anything about Jason) and this motivated him to take Proctor down for realsies. There was an episode partway through this season that was a departure from what we'd come to expect from this show. It was mostly focused on N!LH and Carrie as they went on a road trip of sorts. It featured quite a bit of slow-mo and really explored what their 'relationship' was. It was a nice change of pace, I thought (those who are of the "Ew, romance stuff! Go back to decapitating guys with trucks!" mentality were, of course, bored by it and thought it 'the WORST' ). There was a new character introduced this season, a detective named Racine who was played by Zeljko Ivanek. I think I was introduced to him in the first season of True Blood, where he was effectively creepy. But while I mostly associate him with playing quietly menacing characters, each time I've seen him in something else...I've found the effect he has at being creepy somewhat diminishes. Here it just seemed like the same old thing with him...but he lasted a lot shorter time than I expected/remembered as he was suddenly offed whilst chatting to the pair in the house N!LH hoped to live with Carrie...which, unfortunately, ended up being burned down by the end of the episode (hey, Siobhan can relate!). The episode did a good job of showing why the pair of N!LH and Carrie work so well together and also why they're probably the only realistic option each other has for a 'right' partner, since the other options they have either don't want to know them (Gordon), have seemingly turned to the Dark Side (Rebecca) or they just can't be let in on the secrets (Siobhan). Even though Carrie managed to sneak into her family home to leave Deva a light-up unicorn, she still seemed to be on the outs with not only her daughter, but also her hubby (Max, her asthmatic kid, was the only one who didn't seem to hold a grudge in regards to Carrie having kept her history secret - and yet he was the the one who actually had the *most* reason to be mad at her, since he was the one who got kidnapped/held captive by her gangster father, Rabbit...so, get over it, you other two!). Naturally, Gordon was just as unforgiving as Deva was towards Carrie...but then because he was out whoring it up at one of Proctor's illegal strip clubs/whore houses when Max was having an asthma attack, leaving Deva to take care of him/get him to hospital, Carrie's indiscretions weren't looking quite so 'bad' in comparison anymore. She passed no judgment on her hubby, who'd obviously been drowning his sorrows and getting himself serviced by ladies of the night, but Deva told him off and FINALLY the two of them seemed to slowly accept Carrie returning home and being part of the family once again (Carrie and Job had also gone on a heist together, minus N!LH, to get money Max needed for an operation). Of course, this all went to hell once Rabbit (who was revealed to still be alive at the start of the season - THIS is why you go for the head, Carrie! Just ask Thor - when we saw him squish a poor innocent squirrel in his hand ) was tracked down by Job, who made an ill-conceived solo attempt to off Rabbit by himself, which landed him in hospital (though not from Rabbit's guys defeating him, as he miraculously managed to take most of them out single-handedly, but in the end he was defeated by a car hitting him as he fled), and when that didn't work out, it became something N!LH and Carrie had to take care of (this also led to Gordon and N!LH coming to blows for not the first time this season, which then resulted in Carrie blurting out that N!LH was Deva's father). We got to see at the end of the season how Carrie met Job, how N!LH actually got along with Rabbit and Olek (remember him? He was Rabbit's right-hand man who Carrie eventually offed after a brutal fight last season) and they all four of them worked well together until N!LH eventually had the bright idea to rip off Rabbit (when he wanted them to pull a diamond heist which N!LH thought was too risky) and run away together with Carrie. Proving she was the smarter one of the two, she kept trying to convince N!LH what a bad idea this was and that her father had figured out what they were up to...but N!LH wouldn't listen and thus he got caught (while allowing her time to escape) and that's what landed him in jail for 15 years (oh, and he also found out the diamonds were fake/that it was all a set-up since Rabbit was already onto them when they pulled the heist, just as Carrie had warned). I imagine there was a lot of brown hair dye (and/or wigs) required for this season final, since we saw so-called 'younger' versions of Carrie, Rabbit, Olek, Racine...yet N!LH looked exactly the same as he does now. Meanwhile, in the 'present' the pair stormed the church of Rabbit's priest bother (I recognised Julian Sands, even with that beard of his, but he felt underused/kind of wasted this season) and once again N!LH was going to sacrifice himself so Carrie could get away, but luckily for the both of them Job and yet another old buddy of N!LH's (as well as some other armed guys) managed to come in guns blazing at just the right moment and saved them (it was amusing hearing that N!LH's nickname he was given by his old buddy was 'Soldier Boy', as that seemed to be the *second* unintentional coincidence with Antony Starr now being in The Boys...where there just so happens to be a character by that name). Somehow I'd totally forgotten (from back when I originally watched this season) that Rabbit met his end getting all weepy on a bench about his daughter and that they didn't actually off him themselves, but rather left him with no real option than offing himself (this time FOR REALS) instead. Have to admit, it felt like somewhat of a letdown after all the build-up to him supposedly being the biggest BAMF ever. Still...at least he's now been properly offed (I assume, anyway), since it felt like they'd kind of dragged his storyline out longer than it needed to be (he should've really died when Carrie shot in last season's final). He did mention that there'd be a bench like the one he met his death on in N!LH's future...so I'm wondering if that will in fact be N!LH's fate by the end of the series. Guess I'll have to wait and see. For now, though, at least this chapter in N!LH and Carrie's lives has seemingly been closed. Upping the creepy factor between Rebecca and her uncle was a scene in the final where he returned the favour for her having at some earlier point allowed him to see her naked in the shower by allowing *her* to see him naked in (and out) of the shower. Then it appeared like they were going to take things a step further when she got close to his naked form...but rather than going full Lannister, they settled for a hug instead (though it was still creepy). Earlier in the season Rebecca had worked out who N!LH's confidential informant was that gave him the necessary information to land a devastating blow against Proctor (ie. blowing up one of his many enterprises) and it appeared as though she was going to be okay with this C.I. being 'taken care of' (in the mob sense) after her uncle ordered Psycho Smithers to do it, but Rebecca got the C.I. away from him in the nick of time, then sent her out of town to safety. This seemed to suggest that Rebecca wasn't 'all bad'. Someone who, unfortunately, didn't get to escape the town of Banshee safely was Emmett (along with his wife). Whilst in his pursuit to take down Proctor, N!LH and his deputies crossed paths with some skinheads who took particular exception to Emmett (as you'd expect). They were eventually jailed, but not before they attacked Emmett's pregnant wife (with one of them kicking her in the baby - though it was odd that the ringleader seemed to think this was a step too far considering everything else he had no problem with doing) and this resulted in Emmett giving them the option to escape jail...if they could get past him (which they couldn't). He thoroughly thrashed all three of them, but made the fatal mistake of not ending them (he should've just asked N!LH to do it, since he clearly has no problem with such things), as he didn't like how he was becoming less and less of 'a good Christian' (though, as N!LH rightly pointed out, those guys totally deserved the beating down they got), so he handed in his badge, left with his wife to seemingly live a quiet life and then out of nowhere the two surviving skinheads (their leader was offed by Psycho Smithers in hospital after he'd given out information about Proctor whilst being tortured) appeared and gunned them down in a shower of bullets. I feel bad now for saying Emmett was rather boring last season, as he was actually quite interesting once he got some decent material...but this, sadly, only came towards the end of his storyline. I wonder whether the actor wanted out because he wasn't getting much to work with or the writers just got sick of trying to find things to do with a character they obviously didn't have much interest in. Whatever the reason...they could've allowed Emmett and his wife to escape Banshee *alive* and live together happily (as happily as two people can after having just lost an unborn child, that is). But I guess this show ain't one for 'happy endings' (doesn't bode well for N!LH and Carrie). I remembered this season ended with Deva coming to N!LH and letting him know she now knew he was her father (I guess she overheard it when Carrie yelled it out at Gordon? Or maybe, like N!LH himself in regards to him figuring out she was his daughter, she just worked it out of her own accord?). So, now I'm back to where I remember leaving off from this show the first time around. I think this season was almost as good as Season 1. There were some areas where I felt it was slightly lacking this time around, but there were others where I thought they pushed the boundaries a bit and explored 'different' sorts of things (like the unicorn episode). There are still fights aplenty, OTT action/violence (plus, PLENTY of sex scenes/nudity) and all sorts of craziness going on, but all the actors do an excellent job in their roles. Whilst my watching Season 3 has been a long time coming, I am as nervous as I am eager to watch it. Not just because I know of at least one thing that happens in the third season which will make me MOST unhappy, but also because while the third season of some shows can be my favourite season (like with BtVS), I've also found that oftentimes it's the third season where shows lose the plot/go off the rails or just become not-as-good as their first two seasons. I guess I'll soon find out which direction this show goes in its third season (up or down) soon enough. In the meantime, here's a song from the end credits of one of the episodes this season which I immediately looked up/listened to on YouTube after I heard it during my first viewing of the season (I think it rocks...as do this show's opening credits still. The theme music SO great and I like looking for the changes in the photographs displayed - I was amused that Lili Simmons 'upgraded' from just a picture of a knife last season to a picture of a knife and pies this season, as I took that to be an acknowledgement of her living in two worlds: one where she's the nice Amish girl who sells pies at the town festival and the other who WILL CUT A BITCH):
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jul 13, 2022 2:29:57 GMT -5
Finished Season 3 of Banshee on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}I said at the end of my review for Season 2 that as much as I'd been looking forward to watching Season 3 of this show (since I'd previously watched the first two seasons ages ago and then just didn't get around to watching Seasons 3 & 4 after I bought them and therefore my watching of Season 3 had been a LONG time coming), I was also slightly apprehensive since in the past the third season is where I've found some shows have gone 'downhill' for me. Sadly, this ended up being the case with the third season here. I think my first warning that I wasn't going to enjoy this season as much as the first two was the change in the show's theme/opening credits. I DO NOT like the 'remix' of the show's theme (*so* unnecessary, since it was already perfect the way it was. If something ain't broke...don't fix it, as they say) and, I don't know, I just found the photographs accompanying the names in the credits to not be as effective this season. However, the BIGGEST crime for me was them discarding the black & white photo of Carrie blinking that would always come at the very end of the opening credits sequence. Now it was replaced by some dude's hand turning a ring on his finger? Talk about an unfair trade (even the b & w photos of N!LH with the screaming face weren't as good as the ones from the last two seasons).
Anyway, before we were treated to these^ subpar new opening credits, the third season began with N!LH, Siobhan and a now-bearded Brock chasing down the last of the skinheads (who, ironically, was the only one of them who had hair) who had offed poor Emmett and his wife in the Season 2 final. It was satisfying seeing him realise he was SO effed when it became clear these cops didn't operate like normal ones. Of course, later on Brock voiced the guilt he felt about executing someone (he has a drunken chat with Emmett's grave at one point). Meanwhile, Psycho Smithers caught Proctor and Rebecca in bed together (I guess they finally went full Lannister and did the deed) and even he looked weirded out by it (and when Psycho Smithers is weirded out, you know it's REALLY wrong). I was surprised to see the actor who played Sam Uley - one of the werewolves in the Twilight films - appear in this show as the guy who replaced Emmett (going by the name of Billy Raven here). I was already SO over Chayton last season and knew that they'd drag out his continued existence to the point it became unbearable, so all I could think when watching him take out army guys with a bow and arrows was that clearly he had strong plot armour which prevented anyone being able to actually SHOOT him.
Displaying almost as questionable parenting skills as Carrie and Gordon, after N!LH catches Deva (who's now sporting Daenerys Targaryen colour hair) and friends robbing a place, he sends the friends away and then gives his daughter pointers in what to rob, how to rob and when robbing is/isn't worth it. After that, he takes her home, Gordon begs him to stay away since he already 'lost' Carrie and doesn't want N!LH to take 'his' daughter as well. Speaking of Carrie, she's now apparently involved with some Colonel Stowe guy (whose hand is the one we see turning the ring in the opening credits, it would appear). I was totally bored by Stowe as a character and felt his screentime could've better been used elsewhere, but since this season was determined to work in the army guys as part of the plot...we were unfortunately stuck with him/them. For a season premiere, this really wasn't up to the same standard as last season's, I thought, which was disappointing (and, oh, how the disappointments were only just beginning!). The one bright spot? Seeing Nola Longshadow return (to feel up her dead bro's blood on the floor where it was left after Rebecca killed him in the Season 2 final) for the post-credits scene (oh yeah...somehow I've forgotten to mention before now that every episode of this show has a post-credits scene like it's an MCU film).
As if I didn't dislike the change to the opening credits enough already, in the second episode this season they played around with them even further by not having the 'traditional' style of them but instead having the actors' names appear whilst we were watching meat processing at one of Proctor's slaughterhouses or whatever and there was barely any of the theme being played (or if it was, it was a very subtle use of it). Boooo! DO. NOT. LIKE. On the plus side, Rebecca shot a guy in the knees who was disrespecting her uncle. I was amused at Proctor chastising her like she was a kid who'd done something naughty...except in this case her 'naughtiness' led to all the guys there to make a deal with Proctor getting shot - a lot of them by Psycho Smithers with a machine gun causing red mist. One survived, though (the one Rebecca shot in the legs), so her uncle made her finish him off - which she did (albeit whilst looking at her uncle rather than the guy she put a bullet in the head of). Seems she got a taste for blood after having offed Alex Longshadow last season. I still had no interest in Carrie being with the Colonel, who was basically just like Proctor (ie. he loses control at times and beats up guys - in this case one of his own army guys - and then calms down), except far more boring (especially when he randomly decides to have sex with Carrie whilst she's at work...in the kitchen. That can't be hygienic). Also boring? Beardo Brock and his needy ex-wife who, when she wasn't getting what she wanted from him (making nuisance calls just to get him to come over and do her), decided to go be a nurse at Proctor's place and look after his dying mother who he brought home to stay with him since their Amish family weren't doing anything useful to help her. At least Beardo Brock's ex-wife complimented Rebecca’s skin and gave her stuff to heal cuts/scrapes from an attack she suffered at the hands of Chayton's goons.
Unfortunately, there was just TOO much Chayton spouting his same ol' 'death to ALL white people' BS. We wasted a good percentage of screentime on slow-mo of him and two chicks getting it on as his goons attacked Rebecca (who, thankfully, put up a good fight, injuring one of them before getting knocked out, but then Psycho Smithers took care of both and he wound up diving into the pool that Rebecca's unconscious self had landed in with the arms of a dead guy wrapped around her, so she was close to drowning until Psycho Smithers freed her from the dead goon's grip). I was mildly amused when N!LH showed up at the crime scene (he was called away from a job he was doing with Carrie, casing a joint in preparation for one of their heists, while Sugar and Job did their old bickering married couple shtick back at the bar) and no words were exchanged between him and Psycho Smithers (they just seemed to glare at each other), but he *did* express some concern over Rebecca's wellbeing (so I guess he wasn't as 'done' with her as he claimed to be last season once he realised she was in on Proctor's coverup of how Jason Hood really died). At one point N!LH goes to the reservation (with Sam Uley Raven) to track down Chayton, but everyone there doesn't like Raven...and they like N!LH even less (him being white and all), so they want him gone, but as usual he gets into some fisticuffs, then a character by the name of Aimee King appears, firing her gun into the air and making an eyeroll-worthy comment about 'putting dicks away', as she works as an officer in the corrupt Kinaho Police Department. I recognised the actress from the sucky US version of Being Human and she makes an even less convincing Native American than Odette Annable does.
Speaking of Nola, she shows up as some guys are causing trouble for Carrie where she works as a waitress. They were being lewd/rude and she takes care of one (I think she'd shown him who was boss in a previous incident and, as she rightly pointed out, he didn't learn from that experience since he was coming back for more), and then Nola appears and just knows that they deserved whatever beating they received. She handles one by herself too and then they get gone. Nola and Carrie have some smoking chemistry as they bond over guns and pie or whatever. Shame that it's taken them so long to hang out and that we didn't get more scenes between them, as they're two awesome female characters. Honestly, they could totally own this town between the two of them if they wanted to. Elsewhere, Deva's wanting to hang out with her bio-dad, but since Gordon made N!LH promise to stay away from her, he sends her away (which ticks her off). Gordon, meanwhile, is still into his hookers and drinking until lawyer lady from last season basically tells him to clean up his act...and, miraculously, this is enough of a kick in the butt to get him to do so. I almost forgot to mention this is the episode that introduces Kurt Bunker (the actor playing him I recognise from Iron Fist, though obviously he was in this show prior to that one) and he's applying for a job to work with the Banshee County Sheriff's Department, but N!LH and Siobhan instantly take a disliking to him due to the fact that he's covered in Nazi tattoos. He's very polite and apologises for his appearance, but his resumé is still rejected. The post-credits scene of this episode? The Colonel EATING and then getting up/walking away whilst naked...how riveting!
Unlike most, it seems (judging by the rating it received on IMDB), I personally found the next episode mostly boring. There was no Carrie or Deva this episode (which I know certain people would be THRILLED with, but I myself lose interest when Carrie's not involved since she is the FEMALE LEAD of the series) and we only saw them via b & w flashbacks as N!LH had flashes of them when he thought he was about to die. What brought on this life-flashing-before-eyes experience? He's kidnapped by some goons (interrupting an FBI agent played by the guy who was Russell Edgington in True Blood - Denis O'Hare - who wants N!LH for himself since he's worked out he is in fact NOT Lucas Hood). They work for a fat guy (who turns out to be the one Jason Hood stole from last season). The whole time I was watching, I wondered if the actor was actually that fat or whether he was wearing a fat suit. Anyway, poor sad ol' Fat Bastard apparently can't go to restaurants or on planes, so the only purpose he finds in life is crossing out names in his ledger he keeps. He wants Jason Hood, but N!LH breaks it to him that Jason's no longer among the living. Fat Bastard takes some convincing, as evidenced by the fact that he has one of his goons torture N!LH...with an ELECTRO-GLOVE. That's right, normal wetting the victim and then zapping him with a cattle prod or a taser isn't good enough for Fat Bastard, he has gizmos that remind me of the cartoonish villain Toby Stephens played in Die Another Day with his electro-suit that was like something out of a comic book. At least N!LH gives Fat Bastard a taste of the torture when he's touching him and touching the electro-glove, thus zapping Fat Bastard. At one point they hung N!LH upside down through a hole in the floor of the truck they're in. Try as they might to make this scene tense...I just wasn't feeling it (Fat Bastard wasn't exactly intimidating). Long story short, N!LH gets the upper hand, offs the goons and breaks the chair he's been tied to, which he then beats Fat Bastard with before sending him through the hole in the floor (luckily it was big enough) to be squished underneath the truck's tires. N!LH then makes his getaway on a motorcycle.
Back in Banshee, there's a shootout at Proctor's stripper joint (which it had been hinted at previously Brock, before he was Beardo Brock, frequented and we see that is indeed still the case, as he tries to talk to one giving him a lap dance...even when he has a face full of BEWBS). Chayton's dumbarse bro, who didn't listen to him, storms the place, Raven saves Siobhan by shooting him. Aimee's boring, lawyer lady's boring, Gordon's boring, Proctor's mum is boring and Brock's ex-wife is boring. There's a WHOLE lot of boring this episode. I couldn't even give two figs about the FBI guy (who N!LH saves from being shot/buried in the hole he was forced to dig by Fat Bastard's goons) sending out a vid with proof N!LH is in fact NOT Lucas Hood until the episode ended with Siobhan having watched the tape and sitting in her trailer, a gun in her hand, prepared for when N!LH entered. This was a decent way to end an otherwise lacklustre episode. The most noteworthy thing in the ep, however, was the Nola vs. Psycho Smithers fight. I'd known about this ages ago, that it was lauded as one of the BEST fights in the show, that at least some of it took place inside a car (though, honestly, I was expecting more of it to be inside the car than what we got) and, sadly, the outcome of the fight. You know, people complain about women being able to hold their own against men in this show, butt they have no problem accepting Psycho Smithers being seemingly INVINCIBLE, since the fight starts when a tomahawk comes flying out of nowhere and nails him in the shoulder. I think she does some pretty decent damage to him...yet he seems to just shrug it off - THIS, people have no problem with, but a woman (who is clearly a highly trained fighter) being able to take on the guy? Whoa! Apparently that's too hard to believe! Anyway, I guess they were trying to keep the audience guessing as to who would bite it, since they showed flashbacks for both characters hinting at what their backstories were (since oftentimes you get a backstory for a character just before they're killed off). Sadly, I knew that poor Nola got her throat stabbed (with the hood ornament off the car, no less) and then literally RIPPED OUT in gory detail (she shouldn't have ripped off that necklace she always wore - I'm sure it would've protected her!). I'd had many years to prepare for actually watching this (actually, I think I may have even watched that bit on YouTube ages ago), but it was still very sad/disappointing to see (I actually expected it to come at the end of the episode, not in the beginning half). Nola was awesome...Psycho Smithers is creepy - they killed the wrong character! While I'm sure all the women-haters cheered, this was just another thing to add to the ever-growing list of things that made me dislike this third season of the show.
The next episode began with Siobhan angry at N!LH (which, obviously, she had every right to be), calling him out on not just his lying, but how he risked all those who worked for him (as well as the people they were supposed to be protecting) by not actually *being* a real Sheriff, then eventually she told him to leave as she needed time to think. She's not the only one mad at him, as Deva's still holding a grudge over him pushing her away when she just wanted to get to know him/let him get to know her, but eventually he runs into her again and says he mainly stayed in Banshee for her. This seems to get her to forgive him. He's unaware that she used his pointers on how to rob a place in order to steal video game for her brother. She came prepared with cutting tools like N!LH had said, but then set off the alarm by dropping them or whatever and stole the game anyway despite him having told her that if the job goes south, you leave the stuff behind. Carrie beat up a potential rapist and stole his bike and went for a joyride, but unlike N!LH, was fully aware Deva had snuck out in the middle of the night (despite her pretending otherwise), though didn't know about the stolen video game. As much as I HATED Psycho Smithers for what he did to Nola, it was interesting seeing him actually work with Rebecca (whereas previously he just seemed to regard her as a nuisance and rival for as Proctor's 'favourite'). Whilst driving, they played chicken with a car that contained not only some of Chayton's goons, but also the corpse of his brother, and sent it crashing. They then set the car alight and left those inside to burn. Chayton went to go see his dead brother's burned corpse and apparently it didn't matter that he was already dead, he didn't take too kindly to his bro's corpse being fried, and so the episode ended with Chayton and his goons shooting up the Cadi (which was formerly a Cadillac dealership, but now serves as the Sheriff's department - I never mentioned that when I started reviewing this show).
Suffice to say I kind of hated the next episode (again, it's rated highly by others, but given what occurred, all it did was piss me off). It was basically a 'bottle episode', with a bunch of cops (and some civilians) trapped in the Cadi with Chayton and his guys shooting it up from the outside, demanding Raven be handed over to them (since he was the one who killed Chayton's bro) or they were coming in to get him. Proctor was also there...albeit in jail (oh yeah, something else I forgot to mention was that he was arrested last episode, and his lawyer's all about his rights and whatnot...but said lawyer gets offed at one point. Too bad lady lawyer wasn't also, as I found her boring half the time and the other half she suddenly became Rambo with a gun despite not too long ago asking demanding to be taught how to fire one. This was when she wasn't hearing Bunker's life story - ie. that he was abused by his dad, neo-Nazis took him in, then his dad feared him/them...but eventually he realised being a neo-Nazi was WRONG and wanted out, so now all his former pals are against him. Lady lawyer basically reacts to this story with "That's still no excuse.", and so I wonder what the point of it was. Everyone seems to LOVE his character, but Bunker being a former neo-Nazi who saw the error of his ways rather bored me). Eventually N!LH lets Proctor out of his cell so he can provide backup, but the most noteworthy part of the episode is also the most upsetting. They have a contrived way of getting Siobhan alone after foolish Raven moved aside a set of filing cabinets which were blocking a hole that had been made in the protective shields that came down and so this allowed the outside enemy to gain entry, Siobhan saved him at one point, but then was attacked by one of Chayton's people (I think) who'd been in a cell, she awesomely took care of him with a machete...but then Chayton snuck up behind her somehow (really, how does a guy THAT big sneak up on someone?) and I wished she'd just stabbed the machete backwards, impaling him when he walked up to her. Disappointingly, she's left helpless and N!LH gets knocked on the head by one of Chayton's goons, so his vision goes blurry and that's really the only excuse for why he didn't just SHOOT Chayton (since he could've done so without shooting Siobhan). Instead, Chayton takes great joy in hearing both N!LH and Siobhan herself begging for her life before he snaps her neck ("like a twig", as it'll later be described). Naturally, backup finally arrives too late, Antony Starr does some solid acting, as we see more raw emotion from N!LH than we've ever seen before whilst he's holding Siobhan's body (she had decided *not* to turn him in and it seemed like those two crazy kids could've worked things out, but I guess she was doomed the moment he told her his real name...that he whispers in her ear for some reason, which is odd since they're inside a room by themselves where nobody could hear them and we can't either). I was SO pissed off at Siobhan's murder that I didn't even bother watching the aftermath montage at the end (just fast-forwarded through it). There's no two ways about it...they FRIDGED Siobhan (ie. killed her just so N!LH could have some extra manpain/guilt). I don't know if the actress, Trieste Kelly Dunn, wanted off the show or whether the writers just couldn't figure out what to do with her, but this way of writing her out did a disservice to both the character AND the actress who played her. She deserved SO MUCH BETTER.
The next episode began with a b & w replay of the first time N!LH showed up in Banshee, with the real Lucas Hood being at the bar and the robbers coming in to steal from Sugar. It was rather boring rewatching this scene play out until eventually events changed and this time N!LH used his words (instead of his fists) to de-escalate things, the thieves took money and booze, then hightailed it out of there - thus the real Lucas Hood never died, he got to become Sheriff of Banshee, N!LH never assumed his identity and Siobhan got to LIVE (N!LH encounters her again at the end of the episode in another b & w 'what if' scenario where she's filling her car at a gas station and the two of them make googily eyes at each other - oh, what might've been if N!LH had gone this route instead of the one he took). In between all this/back in reality, N!LH won't even attend Siobhan's burial and just watches it from his car. Beardo Brock gives him a talking to and, understandably, wants to make Chayton PAY (get in line, Beardo Brock!). The army wants Chayton too, since he killed a bunch of their guys, but they don't want N!LH and his deputies s involved. Elsewhere, Proctor's attending the funeral of his mum (who died around the same time Siobhan did in the last episode). Rebecca kind of stands out in her little black dress, so it's probably best she didn't try to join them. Her family approach her, saying they've forgiven her, but she says she hasn't forgiven them. After rejecting her family for the final time, she deals with some guys who were in business with Proctor, they're unhappy that they're not meeting with him personally and they want the price of his drugs to drop/want him to stop doing business with a rival gang (I think that's it, anyway). Rebecca, now fully confident with herself, tells them the opposite is what will be happening, they ain't pleased, but towards the end of the episode she's called into Proctor's office, the guys are back, he makes her apologise to them and then she leaves, teary (probably regretting having rejected her family's hand they extended to her in favour of trying to show her uncle she could handle his business dealings for him).
I continue to be annoyed there's seemingly so little Carrie this season (honestly, the show felt like it reached its natural conclusion once they took care of her father/Rabbit, and so now it seems the writers were struggling to come up with what to have happen next). We see her, Deva and Gordon briefly in one of the b & w 'what if' scenarios, once N!LH has left the bar he sees them from afar in the diner, Carrie sees him and then he disappears. Back in reality, she has a scene or two with Job, asking how N!LH is coping after Siobhan's murder, she eventually sits at the bar beside him...but we don't even get to hear them exchange any words. He got pissed at Aimee, who makes it sound like she's protecting Chayton from the army guys who want him dead, but she later learns he ain't worth protecting after N!LH goes into Chayton's tent, he has umpteen chances to shoot the bastard, but he (understandably) wants to make the POS suffer, so he stabs Chayton in the leg and twists the knife whilst holding a gun to his head, forcing him to remain quiet...that is until he can't take it anymore and yells out, alerting his guys, who attack Job and this leads to Chayton escaping...though Aimee has the chance to shoot him, but like N!LH, she *doesn't* - which gives Chayton the chance to throttle her until N!LH wounds him (embarrassingly, N!LH had tripped over a log whilst giving chase and had momentarily lost sight of Chayton), then he escapes by jumping from a cliff into the water below and this is just more dragging out Chayton meeting his demise. It's very lame. Also lame is the guy Deva seemingly takes a liking to after he catches her pickpocketing people on the street (no, Deva! You were meant to use your dad's advice about stealing for GOOD, not EVIL!), he takes her back to his drug den or whatever and Deva's friend is the SMART one here, as she voices her concerns/suggests they leave. Disappointingly, Deva's a shitty friend and ignores her/tells her to leave if she wants to, electing to stay and smoke bongs with the lame-arses.
We really are getting a LOT of b & w scenes this season, as N!LH keeps being haunted by visions of Siobhan and her murder. Chayton, who's sought refuge in a barn after getting wounded, is also seeing visions of Siobhan...but I didn't believe for a *second* that they were hinting he felt any remorse over his murder of her (I mean, he LAUGHS at one point whilst experiencing these flashes of her). A nice blonde widow proves to be not that bright when he threatens to kill her...and she still HELPS him by tending to his wound when she could've escaped from him after he fell unconscious. As if this wasn't bad enough, by the end of the episode her friendly neighbour shows up to ask her for dinner, Chayton's threatened her in order to make the neighbour leave...which she does, but he sees the bloody rags and then Chayton impales him on a pitchfork before again stabbing him in the back, then walking menacingly towards the nice, but stupid widow. Clearly, he just likes murdering white people (even those that help him), as we see her lying on the ground, dead, afterwards when he steals her truck. Proctor and Beardo Brock’s ex-wife continue to bore me, she caught him watching Rebecca sleeping (except she was secretly awake) and it's clear she's jealous of his niece/wants Rebecca out of the picture. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem the type to just give up on the object of her affection obsession easily. Deva's friend, continuing to show how much SMARTER she is than Deva, informs Carrie of the group of nogoodniks Deva's currently hanging with, so both she and Gordon go to bring Deva home, then when the idiots make the wrong move/say the wrong thing, the Hopewells open a can of whoop-ass on them. Now THIS is parenting. After *still* managing to let Chayton get away, N!LH seems determined to not give up and pursues him through a cemetery, shotgun in hand. Chayton stops, does his chanting thing, makes excuses for his inexcusable actions, before finally N!LH has had enough of hearing his BS, blows a hole through Chayton's abdomen and then BLOWS OFF HALF HIS HEAD. That was fairly satisfying (but it still doesn't bring Siobhan back, sadly). I certainly hope that alligator that was circling his corpse, after his body was dumped in the water, had a good feed. Good riddance to that POS who used his people as an excuse for his evildoings, claiming to be doing everything he did for them but in reality he just liked killing white folk and got off on it. He really wasn't that 'complex'.
To be honest, these last few episodes of the season kind of blended together for me (since I watched them in a row), so I can't really separate what happened in which episode. Basically, what I can recall was that Bunker felt bad about being a neo-Nazi, he has a talk with Beardo Brock about it, his bro (who is still a neo-Nazi) burns his tattoos off with a blow-torch...yet I *still* find Bunker's bro to be like a nerd in school trying to seem badass and failing miserably at it. He's pretty lame. Also lame? The crazy colonel yelling at the voices in his head to shut up (sorry, dude, we already have enough unbalanced bad guys. You pale in comparison to them). Carrie, Job and Sugar got kidnapped and tortured by him after he figured out they stole from him (the heist itself was filmed like it was a first-person shooter video game...which consequently made it BORING rather than interesting/tense to watch like they probably intended it to be. Also, N!LH got distracted by Siobhan visions when Job was in trouble, so that made him pissed at N!LH. We get flashbacks to the two of them first meeting and I guess N!LH must've taught Job how to fight since he clearly wasn't a fighter when N!LH met him)). Meanwhile, those guys who Rebecca tried to deal with don't take too kindly to her going behind her uncle's back and doing business with the opposition which he promised them they'd no longer do business with, and so they kidnap Proctor and torture him whilst Beardo Brock's ex-wife continues to annoy the shit out of me (WHY couldn't they have just killed her?! Siobhan should've lived and this nuisance of a woman should've been the one to die instead). The one in charge is a blind guy, eventually Proctor gets free (we see flashbacks of him meeting Psycho Smithers when they were both held prisoner somewhere at some point in the past), then Proctor teams up with the opposition, giving their leader a sword, and together with Rebecca and Psycho Smithers, they get revenge against the guys who tortured Proctor (the leader on which eventually gets his head cut off by the leader of the opposition...after a first attempt to do so fails). Proctor FINALLY gives Beardo Brock's ex-wife the heave-ho and he seems to more or less forgive Rebecca for the things she did which led to his kidnapping/torture, saying he's taking her...somewhere (I forget where). Oh, and one other thing - when Rebecca stuck her hand down the front of Psycho Smithers' pants (in an effort to make him reconsider telling Proctor what she'd been doing), she obviously expected to find his junk...but it would appear from her reaction that he in fact has none.
Back with the tortured trio, eventually N!LH came to rescue them (though I think they were in the process of rescuing themselves. My memory of it is foggy). Anywho, the long and short of it is that Carrie's used as a human shield/has a gun pointed at her head by Colonel Crazypants, N!LH flashes back to the similar situation he faced when Chayton killed Siobhan and so Gordon steps up and blows Colonel Crazypants' fingers off, then Carrie stabs him and does a nice long slow slice across his gut (that's richly deserved). Unfortunately, Gordon (who suddenly made himself useful here at the end of the third season) got himself shot (at least he managed to take out a few badguys in the process). Despite the fact other characters have suffered worse injuries and lived to tell the tale, this gut wound apparently proves fatal and he says some final words to Carrie before carking it. While this is going on, somehow nobody notices Job getting kidnapped (there was a whole plotline involving some fanboy of his, but it was SO boring that I barely remember it) and flown away on a helicopter as N!LH yells after him. Somewhere along the line N!LH quits as Sheriff and FINALLY Beardo Brock gets to be Sheriff (like he's wanted ever since N!LH first showed up and 'stole' it from him). Well...now the Cadi's going to have even LESS people working there (seriously, it seems like only the few named cops in the show work there and no one else). I think N!LH hugs Deva after she's heard about Gordon's death. These events might be slightly out of sequence - but that just tells you how much interest I'd lost in the show by the end of this season. I know it's an 'unpopular' opinion, but for me this season wasn't up to the same standard as the first two. Sure, there were some big/major character deaths, but the shock of those doesn't make up for sloppy writing, which I felt this season suffered from. While it's possible that I mightn't have felt quite so much disappointment if the anticipation of watching this season hadn't been built up over several years, I still think that if I'd watched it directly after I finished the first two seasons when I originally watched them...I'd still be pretty disappointed. Such a shame to see an awesome series become much less than it once was, but this is what happens when you go offing two of my favourite characters, show! No, that doesn't include you, Gordon. At least I only have eight episodes in Season 4 to get through rather than the ten episodes the previous three seasons had. Oh, one more thing...the song choices they used to play over the end credits in the previous two seasons were pretty great, but this season I noticed (especially in the last few episodes) the choices of songs for the end credits kinda sucked (one was basically just noise). Hopefully Season 4’s an improvement (if nothing else, at least it’ll have Eliza Dushku guest-starring!).
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jul 17, 2022 6:39:50 GMT -5
Finished Season 4/the final season of Banshee on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}The final season starts with Brock (who's still a beardo), he's managed to find a long-haired and bearded N!LH in a cabin somewhere and pointing a gun at him (there can be only ONE beardo in this show!). The opening credits post-Season 2 still bug me, there are no screaming b & w photos anymore as well as no blinking Carrie (boooo!) or Colonel Crazypants ring-turning (hurray!) as the end photo. I think it's just someone's back. BORING! Beardo Brock calls N!LH a 'mountain man' (you're one to talk, Beardo Brock! At least N!LH's beard doesn't look like CARPET) and informs him that Rebecca Bowman has been found dead/murdered. We see her corpse (pretty sure it's a fake Lili Simmons and not just her in corpse makeup), with her heart having been cut out (and if you like seeing such things, then you're in luck! As we see it constantly throughout not just this episode, but also THE REST OF THE SEASON. This is for all you Rebecca haters out there, I guess!). Beardo Brock wants to know if N!LH did it (wouldn't that totally make your job easier if he just answered, "Yep!", Beardo Brock?), he denies it, but gets taken in anyway. The Cadi has now been turned into a proper Sheriff's Department (only took them almost two years - since that's apparently how much time has passed). N!LH walks past Siobhan's and Emmett's photos on the wall, he's briefly introduced to a new female deputy named Cruz, Bunker the well-mannered former neo-Nazi is still around/ still hasn't gotten rid of his tattoos (seriously, there's NO ONE who will remove them for you, Bunker? But you're so polite now!), Raven’s off being chief and Beardo Brock apparently needs N!LH's blood (just wait a little while, Beardo Brock, as N!LH will inevitably get in a fight and this'll result in his usual bleeding. It's become a 'look' for him now). N!LH says he didn’t see Rebecca, but through flashbacks we learn she was the one who brought him to the cabin to stay in after finding him in some shithole. She went to go check on N!LH four days before her death. These flashbacks to her are sprinkled throughout the episode (and season), showing what she got up to prior to her death. I appreciated the montage we got of all Rebecca’s 'greatest hits' (and hotness). Her death was something I'd been spoiled for long ago, so I went into this final season knowing all about it. I was really mad that she didn't survive until the end of the series...but, ironically, I think this season seemed to make better use of her than last season, as she proves important to the season-long arc/is shown to form more of an attachment to N!LH than before (and vice versa). The first episode ends with some hooded figure attacking her in the woods. Meanwhile, Carrie's been seeing a shrink since Gordon's death last season and this shrink just so happens to be played by Erik King who'll I'll forever think of as that grump-ass, Doakes, from Dexter. It's so weird to see him being so nice, calm, friendly, and even smiling (the complete opposite of Doakes). He's actually likeable here. Someone who quickly becomes unlikeable, however, is Deputy Cruz who callously brings up Chayton breaking Siobhan’s neck whilst she's driving N!LH wherever. His line about liking her better when she didn't talk mirrors my own feelings towards this new character. I have written in my notes (yes, I actually made notes after watching each episode of this show) that we see all the things N!LH feels responsible for having happened since he arrived in Banshee via a montage - I can't really remember when this occurs, but I think I at least liked how they did it. It shows that his guilt over all those things has never left him. He pays David Harbour a visit (I totally forgot when doing my Season 3 review that he was shown in last season's final. I think he was someone from N!LH's past who got him involved in whatever taught him the very special set of skills he now possesses. Honestly, I wasn't really following it that closely), wants info on finding Job (who got taken), gets nothing out of him really and looks like he's going to not shoot him, as he just walks off...but then David Harbour makes the mistake of grabbing a gun and N!LH returns to shoot him in the head. Bad move, dead David Harbour. Proctor’s now Mayor (that job is kind of like the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor gig at Hogwarts - no one seems to really last in that position for long. First, young Mayor from season 1 got blown up, then Gordon - who, oh yeah, became Mayor last season - wound up dead too). I'm sure the town's Amish gangster will make a GREAT Mayor! This is what happens when you run unopposed. His faithful enforcer, Psycho Smithers, pays a visit to neo-Nazis who're working with/for Proctor (I think) and they have one dude with his head stuck in a vice. I imagine anyone who watches this show could see what direction this was heading in. Yup, dude predictably gets his head squished thanks to Psycho Smithers finishing him off. Meanwhile, Bunker's boning his bro's wife (played by Casey LaBow, who I've seen in a couple of things but mostly know as one of the Denali coven from Breaking Dawn - Parts 1 & 2) and, really, it's no wonder she's seeking sex somewhere else since her hubby's pretty much an office nerd who talks tough and imagines himself going nutso/killing his boss (but doesn't actually). Try as they might to make this character come across as 'scary'...he really isn't. There've been psychos on this show much more effective than him. Elsewhere, Carrie and Sugar don't want to give up on finding Job, whereas N!LH seems to have lost hope of ever finding him. At least he finally shaves. He also pays a visit to some yokel with a hook for a hand that is still harboring resentment towards N!LH since he was apparently the one who took the guy's hand (I wondered if this character had been shown previously and I'd forgotten about him, but it turns out he is indeed new and we find out what went down between him and N!LH in one of the following episodes). Carrie asks Sugar what N!LH had to say when he stopped by (she still hasn't come face to face with N!LH since his return), she beats up some bad dudes with a baton, there's no Deva in this episode, even though Beardo Brock is now FINALLY Sheriff...Bunker still calls N!LH 'Sheriff' at one point and needs correcting, N!LH is at the place where Rebecca's body was found, then Proctor shows up and he wants him to find out who did it. I was surprised to see that instead of having an after-credits scene like all the previous episodes of the show had, now we got that 'extra' scene directly after the show's title card appears signifying the end of the episode. I wonder if someone in charge reckoned nobody was sticking around until the credits finished to watch these extra scenes and so that's why they moved them to *before* the end credits started to roll? If so...then whoever it was clearly knows nothing since people wait AGES until MCU films' end credits finish to see what comes after. This now feels wrong with its placement *before* the end credits. Still, I think I liked this season opener more than last season's at least. The second episode begins with a bloodied Rebecca stumbling into hospital (how useful of the staff to NOT immediately rush to her aside to help her). Turns out she got in over her head (what else is new?) with some inbreds, as we see via flashback. She puts up a fight and does well against one or two, but then they get the better of her and are going to 'unburden her of beauty' by feeding her face to a rabid dog (that apparently got bitten by a squirrel?), but she manages to cause one inbred to get chewed up instead, then N!LH comes to her rescue, and she burns the inbred's meth lab...though I think she and N!LH almost get caught in the fire or one surviving inbred shoots at them or something. Meanwhile, Beardo Brock and his deputies bust a porn-filming that's going on which Bunker bro is behind. He acts all tough, but is still lame. We see that Deva came to visit N!LH in a silent flashback (she has ditched the Daenerys hair colour and has a shorter 'do now). He's determined to find who killed Rebecca since she helped him when he was in depressed mode. I didn't really like Sugar referring to her as "this girl" and making it sound like he thought she wasn't worth N!LH's efforts, but I was REALLY happy to see that although Rebecca may have been dead, we were still getting to see her quite a bit through flashbacks. We see what came after the beginning part with her stumbling into hospital (she was just in there to get drugs for N!LH - I think he must've gotten shot by one inbred). Carrie's out beating up some dude (one of the porno guys. maybe?) and then we see her come home and put away all her gear like she's Batman (I guess *someone* has to be, since our former ninja Batman, Nola Longshadow, is sadly no more). We see Deputy Cruz being Proctor's guy on the inside when it comes to the Sheriff's Department. The episode ends with a naked bearded (what's with everyone having beards all of a sudden?) Job getting blasted with water and screaming (so he's alive...not that I ever imagined for one second he wouldn't be). I don't really remember much about the third episode (I didn't even bother writing notes about it). The main thing was that Job got tortured for all that time N!LH spent not rescuing him, but through whatever means that I can't remember, he, Carrie, Sugar (and maybe someone else?) managed to finally find Job, there's a trade made (they have to give up all the money they got from their last heist) and they get him back (I think they off a few of the guys who held him too). Thankfully, the fourth episode is a bit more memorable. I guess that in the last episode we learned Rebecca was preggers with N!LH's child, since my notes say that in this episode Beardo Brock is asking N!LH whether he knew about the pregnancy. Via flashback we see her looking after him, giving him a handy, he wants to push her away ‘cause I ‘spose he thinks what happened to Siobhan will happen to her (you were right, N!LH!), but obviously they did the deed. Job's got PTSD about lights (since bright blinding lights were part of his torture), Carrie's casing out a joint and on the phone to Bunker (her new partner in crime). She returns home, almost shooting Job because he was sneaking into her weapons cabinet, he insists on going with her/not being left alone in the house, she reluctantly allows him to but insists he stay in the car (which he does...but suffers more PTSD whilst he's in there). Meanwhile, Carrie goes to town with a flamethrower on whatever the stuff is she's burning (Proctor's drugs, I think?). She's doing well, manages to beat up some guys too, but then gets caught in the fire inside the building. Luckily, she manages to do a classic slow-mo run from the explosion. We meet the serial killers who've been grabbing girls and cutting out their hearts. One is a guy with lumps on his head that are constantly referred to as 'horns', but really they just look like growths. His partner is a blonde woman. They've drugged a girl and have her tied up on a table, Blondie asks Lumpy if he thinks she’s pretty, she cuts the girl a bit...then licks it, and eventually they carve out her heart with other cultists surrounding them (there's a weird thing going on with the picture quality during this segment, where everything's really grainy - I guess they think this makes things seem creepier and more serial killer-y?). Honestly, this isn't even the most messed up thing that's happened in the town of Banshee. Things pick up once Eliza Dushku finally arrives, breaking the tension between N!LH and Proctor who wants to kill him for getting Rebecca preggers. ED's character is an FBI agent named Veronica Dawson and she's a lot more calm and cool than her character Faith on BtVS (who seemed to be far more impulsive and on the verge of losing it at any second - at least for a period of time until her 'redemption'). She's not so good with questioning a kid who saw the guy dumping the girl's body, though (stupid kid. If he had any sense, he totally would've talked to ED Faith Dawson...and maybe even could've tried to score a hug from her). When she's by herself, she busts some crackheads, kicks them out of their crack den...then proceeds to try out their lightbulb crackpipe for herself. Earlier she questioned N!LH, spinning him some story about having had a husband named Paul who died ( Dollhouse shoutout?) in an effort to make it seem like they have something in common (since he lost someone too), but he totally knows her story's BS. After a short amount of time talking to N!LH, she tells Beardo Brock that he's innocent...but she also knows if they release him straight away that he'll go after Rebecca's killer and she wants a head start on him, so she says they need to hold him for a bit longer (Beardo Brock amusingly tells her that he knew her story was BS too - because he's always competing with N!LH). At the end of the episode, N!LH's released from jail and he knows Dawson kept him locked up when she shouldn't have/is pissed...but despite that, he still gets in her car when she invites him for a drink. Less interesting things in the episode include Bunker bro’s wife’s dad getting out of jail, coming home and being creepy to his grandkid, Bunker bro's still lame and not scary (try as they might to make him so by having him drink a FULL glass of booze while a guy he talks to only pours a little bit and he forces him to pour/drink more - like, ooh, that's SO BAD!), Carrie is now looking after Job (having been so hellbent on finding him) and, oh yeah, Raven returns briefly for this one episode. The next episode picks up with N!LH and Dawson in her car, they chat for a bit, then she leaves and somehow N!LH didn't notice the big-ass wall of smoke coming from what is now his burning cabin until he walks up to it. Proctor's there, not even trying to hide the fact that he did it as revenge for N!LH knocking up Rebecca, N!LH seems oddly calm after having just witnessed what little he had left go up in flames, Proctor says he should kill him, N!LH eggs him on to do it...but he doesn’t (what's happened to you guys? Used to be you would've gotten into a big fistfight over this. You've both gone soft....SOFT, I tells ya!). Beardo Brock goes to see the sister of the latest serial killer victim and she blames him, pointing out that 3 others were dead before her and *still* the serial killer guy hasn't been caught (good point...though poor Beardo Brock, he's the only one still trying to play by the 'rules'). Neo-Nazi dad of Bunker bro's wife has one of his own guys tied to a tree, Proctor and Psycho Smithers are there, the guy tied to the tree claims innocence of whatever crime they're accusing him of (honestly, I was so bored by everything relating to Bunker bro that I wasn't even really paying much attention to most of it), neo-Nazi dad makes Bunker bro drive a car that's attached to tree guy (despite his protestations against killing one of their own) and this rips off the bottom half of tree guy. Bunker bro seems really upset about it...and I care NOT ONE IOTA. Neo-Nazi dad says his daughter married the wrong brother (which comes back to bite him in the arse by the end of the episode when Bunker bro casually stabs him with an ice pick and then starts to cut him up with a power saw). In slightly less boring goings on, Dawson's still doing her drug thing to help her think and goes over the serial killer case before paying a visit to a sleazy club with BDSM rooms in the back, she walks in on some Fifty Shades dudes about to brand some chick on a rack, Dawson puts up a decent fight but she's outnumbered, so it's fortunate that N!LH comes to her aid before she can get branded herself. He also proves to be better at talking to kids than her, as he questions the same one she did in the last episode, but he actually GETS RESULTS - namely a crayon drawing of a guy with horns (don't flatter him, kid! Lumpy's horns are so much lamer than how you drew them!). N!LH figured there was only one place guys with lame horns would go, which was what brought him to this place. Job's still PTSD-ing, he and N!LH reunite, N!LH talks about looking for him, thinking Job was dead and giving up, but Job seems in a forgiving nature, since he says N!LH never blamed him for the 15 years he spent in jail. N!LH points out that was Rabbit's doing, but Job reckons he should've caught onto the fact that Rabbit set N!LH up to get caught/thrown in jail. Anyway, they decide to 'start fresh', Job FINALLY shaves and at one point he sends Deputy Cruz packing when she’s looking to jump over the fence/break into Carrie's new place out in the middle of nowhere (which is where she's been hiding). The Amish are protesting against Proctor for not having released Rebecca's body to them for a proper burial, he basically tells them to piss off and looks ready to lose it, but Psycho Smithers prevents him from doing so (since it would've happened in front of cameras, with reporters being there). Later, however, Psycho Smithers stops the Amish whilst on the road by brandishing a chainsaw, and I was worried for the horse pulling their cart, as I was totally expecting him to cut off the horse's head - but I guess this show elected to NOT got all Game of Thrones-y (at least not in this instance, anyway) and spared the horse, as he just cuts the thing that attaches it to the cart and the horse flees. Proctor, who's also there, declares that his ex-Amish family will no longer be selling their produce in Banshee...nor ANYWHERE (as we see smoke billowing up from a distance, and I guess that means her burned their village?). I know the Amish could be annoying...but I did feel a bit sorry for them here (mostly, though, I was just glad the horse managed to survive). The sixth episode begins with a woman in a car, she's working herself up to do what she’s about to do, a pedestrian passes by and doesn’t think it odd to see a woman hugging something in a bag to her chest whilst walking into the Banshee County Sheriff's Department? And neither does the woman at the front desk who tells this suspicious chick that Beardo Brock's in a meeting when she asks to see him. However, he's just over there, so suspicious chick walks up to him and only once she produces a can of gasoline from the bag do people FINALLY notice something sus is going on...but by then it's too late, as even while Beardo Brock's telling self-sacrificing Satanist chick NOT to set herself alight, she's ignoring him and does so (apparently the show really wanted us to see her burning in detail, as we get a close-up of her face in amongst the flames). She'd said her Satanist leader wanted Beardo Brock to 'see'...which he now has, her immolation-o-gram well and truly delivered as Bunker puts out her charbroiled corpse with a fire extinguisher and we see her burned face in amongst the smoke which wafts into the opening credits. I noticed there were finally some more interesting photos in the opening credits for this episode (plus, quite a few instances of flames - which seemed appropriate, given what we'd just witnessed). Back with with Bunker bro ( ugh), he appears fully nude to his wife, frightening her, and is rough, but she manages to cover for her fright (clearly she was afraid he was onto her love affair with Bunker), then he basically rapes her (since she really *didn't* want to do it with him, but he did it with her anyway). I was slightly amused by her casually walking her kid past someone mopping up the mess left by the immolation-o-gram, she goes to see Bunker and tells him she thinks her hubby killed her father because he had blood on him. Bunker then goes to talk to Beardo Brock (who knows the two of them are boning and asks if Bunker bro knows too), he offers to let Bunker bro's wife and kid stay at his place. Elsewhere, Psycho Smithers has dug a hole and Proctor throws a flower in on Rebecca's coffin before Psycho Smithers starts refilling the hole. He then pays Bunker bro a visit in his office with his feet on the desk (managing to be even more douchey than he already is) and he informs Proctor that they’re through doing business with him, all that was his is now theirs and when Proctor wants to know what Bunker bro's father-in-law thinks, Bunker bro pulls out his disembodied head. Once he's gone, Proctor throws the head in the trash. Job is trying on Carrie’s clothes to feel a bit more like his old self, he hears a noise, goes to investigate, it turns out to be Deva grabbing stuff to eat and she's wondering who the hell he is since she's never met him before. They have a good scene together, with some funny exchanges (she's mouthy, but naturally he can take it), he asks about her dad, she wants to clarify which one and he puts an end to her whole 'woe is me' attitude by pointing out that she has TWO parents who would kill/die for her (ie. more than most have). This is when Carrie enters and reunites with her daughter after a long time away from her (they took her kids away after what happened at the end of last season). Deputy Cruz reports back to Proctor that she's found where Carrie's been hiding out, he basically threatens Carrie when they're in court together, then later on she's in the kitchen doing stuff and you just KNOW something's about to go down. Sure enough, guys sent to kill her start shooting up the place, she manages to take out a couple and then gets into a fight with Deputy Cruz. Upstairs, one bad guy is going after Deva in her room, but Job comes to the rescue, he gives her a gun and some quick pointers on how to use it, then sends her out the window to run to safety before he has to contend with his own bad guy whilst Carrie and Cruz are still going at it downstairs. The fight is okay...but isn't a patch on the Carrie vs. Olek fight from Season 1. Deva hides somewhere under a car after one of the bad guys outside saw her fleeing, he hears her whimpering, pulls her out and when she turns over she shoots him twice...then he promptly slumps lifelessly on top of her. Understandably, she's freaked out (but this shows she's TOTALLY the daughter of Carrie and N!LH, since despite her frightened state she still manages to make her first ever shooting a successful one). Carrie and Job find her, Carrie apologises for Deva having to go through all that (if she was hoping to get her kids back before...now it would appear she has ZERO chance). N!LH shows up, thanks Job for saving his daughter (he tells N!LH there's a whole world out there, making it clear for the millionth time that he really thinks N!LH should get gone/get outta Banshee ASAP), he goes to talk to her, she tearily says she wants to go home but doesn't even know where that is anymore and he hugs her, then he goes to lecture Carrie on endangering their daughter and she rightly points out that she knows full-well what could've happened and he's got no business saying what he did, then she breaks down in his arms too. N!LH and Dawson go to question a surgeon guy about who he performed a procedure on involving horns (you SUCK, surgeon guy, since those horns are LAME and don't even deserve to be called 'horns'!). They then question another guy about Lumpy, before N!LH adds the last of the show's significant female characters to his conquest list as he and Dawson do the deed (though he's thinking of Siobhan during it). Afterwards, she totally has his number/has him figured out, but this makes him angry and he gets rough with her. She goes to question a rape victim who turns out to be Blondie the Satanist. Dawson knows something's up and leaves a message on N!LH's phone, but that's when Blondie smashes her car window. After the title card's displayed, we see Dawson tied up and Lumpy is creeping towards her (speaking of Lumpy, earlier on he'd knocked out Beardo Brock in an alley and had him at his mercy with a knife to his throat...yet he let him live and just left). While this was a fairly decent episode, it's a shame it took five episodes before things really started to ramp up/get going. The seventh episode begins with Psycho Smithers killing naked Cruz in the shower (I guess Proctor has no further use for her). VERY disappointed that Carrie didn't get to be the one to end her. Someone else who isn't having much fun is Dawson, who's being prepared to get sacrificed by Mr. & Mrs. Satanist. She has a somewhat polite/civil conversation with Lumpy, who even prepares her a drink to have as per her request, though she calls him out on his psychotic-ness (despite him claiming otherwise). Carrie’s shrink, 'off the record', tells her to finish what she started after she says Deva was endangered again and she probably won’t/shouldn’t get her kids back (it was at this point that I wondered if the shrink was all in Carrie's head, since he was encouraging her to do something shrinks probably shouldn't encourage their patients to do). Bunker tells his bro’s wife he’s gonna move her and her kid to a safer place after Psycho Smithers killed a bunch of Bunker bro's peeps (seriously, WHY is Psycho Smithers getting to off so many characters? He could've at least left Cruz for Carrie to finish off. Quit hogging all the kills, Psycho Smithers! And yet again nobody watching probably questioned how this one dude could manage to take out a bunch of neo-Nazis all by himself. They would've just accepted it, even though realistically those guys could've all attacked him at once/the same time instead of individually. Also, it's blatantly obvious the show's budget for fight scenes has been significantly trimmed since we don't even SEE most of the fight and the camera just moves around the room in a circle, focusing everywhere else until Psycho Smithers has defeated all his adversaries by the time the camera moves back to him). Angry Bunker bro (does he have any other setting?) leaves angry threatening messages on his wife's phone and appears at his brother's home, wondering where she is. It's no wonder both of them are the way they are since apparently their father thought dog fights were appropriate to take them to when they were younger. Bunker bro says that there was only ever a winner in those, no ties, and that's how it's going to be with them too (oh, gee, I wonder WHICH of them will survive? Hmmm...). Bunker bro's not done being his OTT dramatic self, as he yells in the mirror of a bathroom at work how he's going to strangle his wife with her lungs or something. His boss (who he'd imagined himself killing in the first episode of this season) has the WORST TIMING EVER and makes the mistake of walking in on Bunker bro during this, then he's treated to the sight of this neo-Nazi's tattoos (which he obviously knew nothing about until now) before he's beaten bloody (and probably killed). Bunker bro then casually walks through his office, without a shirt, and covered in his boss's blood...yet NO ONE seems to do anything about it. He's STILL not 'scary' to me. Like Colonel Crazypants before him, all his OTT yelling and cussing/being violent just comes across as WAY too try-hard. Things improve when we see Carrie appearing in the back seat of the district attorney's car, interrogating him/questioning why criminals remain free (like when Bale's Batman first interacts with Commissioner Gordon in Batman Begins). He says his family was threatened, she releases him and tells him to get them/leave town. N!LH and Beardo Brock track where Dawson’s at after listening to her message she left on N!LH's phone at the end of the last episode (clearly, by this point he's thinking that he has as lethal a penis as Sam Winchester in SPN does, considering how many of the women he's boned have wound up dead and Dawson's probably going to join them). The scenes intercutting between them and Lumpy are done in such a way that we're meant to think that N!LH and Beardo Brock are going to arrive in the nick of time, but it's quite obvious that isn't the case even *before* Lumpy answers the door. Naturally, it's just Blondie who's come to join him in his sacrificing of Dawson. N!LH locates Dawson's car, then somehow surgeon guy (who N!LH and Dawson interrogated previously) manages to knock out both Beardo Brock and N!LH. When they awake, they're handcuffed in the basement of Mr. & Mrs. Satanist. Upstairs, Dawson's trying to snap Blondie out of it by saying she was a victim of rape, but she says otherwise. Back down below, N!LH struggles against his handcuffs, Beardo Brock points out the futility of it, but N!LH reckons there is hopefully a defect in the links between the cuffs he can break. Beardo Brock wants to do the whole 'last minute confessions' thing, but N!LH isn't having any of it...that is until Beardo Brock keeps badgering him about who he really is, then finally N!LH blurts out that he's not a real a Sheriff. He comes clean about a fair amount of stuff (even mentioning Carrie, but not delving too much into who she really is). Beardo Brock is in denial at first, then gets mad and yells at N!LH before calming down and just as he asks what N!LH's real name is, they are (of course) interrupted by surgeon guy. Beardo Brock manages to kick him onto the ground close enough to N!LH that he's able to wrap his legs around surgeon guy and choke him to death. He spies the keys for the cuffs...and I'm not exactly sure how he manages to get them into his hands to free himself. Dawson's about to get her heart cut out (we're back in Grainy Serial Killer Cam once again) and the Satanists seem to be taking their sweet time getting on with it, which (luckily for her) allows her rescuers time to appear and take on the Satanists. I forget how exactly Dawson gets the keys, but she frees herself as N!LH is beating the snot out of Lumpy. After Dawson's knocked out Blondie, she tells N!LH to stand aside and she puts a bullet in Lumpy's lumpy head. Other things going on in the episode included Beardo Brock having an amusing reaction to seeing Job again (when he and N!LH wanted to find the place Dawson was being held). He recalls first meeting Job when they went to rescue N!LH all the way back in the Season 1 final, while all Job recalls is non-bearded Brock back whining about his leg that got shot. When Job finished helping them, he went and took care of the fanboy who was part of his kidnapping by having HIM become 'Job' and thus all the enemies actual Job had accumulated over time would be coming after new 'Job' - this is his revenge on him. Proctor thanks N!LH for killing Rebecca's killer (hey, DAWSON was the one who killed Lumpy! Speaking of, she had kept it pretty together during her near-death experience, but returns to the sacrifice room and finally allows herself to show the emotion she felt when she thought she was about to be sacrificed, breaking down/seeking comfort in her trusty old friend named Drugs). After the title card, we get a close-up of dead Lumpy's eyes and you half-expect them to snap open (though resurrection, even on this show, would be taking things a step too far). The eighth episode/SERIES FINAL of the show begins with what looks to be neo-Nazis and Bunker bro vs. Proctor and Psycho Smithers, but then Proctor's Senator buddy appears and says everything *I've* wanted to say about Bunker bro (ie. he thoroughly insults him). The whole time, considering the way Bunker bro was seething, I totally thought he was going to either stab or slit the throat of the Senator, but surprisingly he just takes it as the Senator dismisses the other Neo-Nazis and they leave. The best Bunker bro can manage to do to the Senator is spit at his feet, which is pretty lame (just like everything else about Bunker bro). It would seem the Senator was the neo-Nazis' 'boss', I guess. I didn't really follow it that closely. N!LH visits Deva as she’s preparing to go to college (which she thinks won’t last long), he promises her he’ll visit her, she says he’s a shitty dad but the only one she has left. Dawson questions Blondie, who she knocked out in the previous episode, and she's clearly as cuckoo for cocoa puffs as Lumpy was, Dawson works out that Blondie's lying about being in on Lumpy deviating from his lunar cycle killings when Rebecca was killed, and thus she comes to the realisation that someone ELSE killed Rebecca and just made it look like Lumpy killed her - this info she shares with N!LH. Meanwhile, Carrie's been spying on some Colombian cartel guys through binoculars and is on the phone to Bunker about it...that is until Beardo Brock takes the phone and Carrie's hella surprised to hear him on the other end. Clearly he shares with her the fact that he at least knows *some* of what her deal is (after N!LH got all confessional last episode). Proctor and Psycho Smithers meet with the cartel guys they're in business with, but when the back of the truck is opened, Carrie is revealed to be inside with (most likely dead) guys at her feet. She tells head cartel guy that she did this to teach him something about Proctor (I forget the details of what she says) and that all she wants in return is for herself and Job (who's on the roof of the truck with a gun aimed at all the cartel guys below) to be allowed to leave. It appears at first that the head cartel guy is going to allow this (much to Proctor's protestations), but then he reveals that, no, he in fact *isn't* going to let her leave. Luckily, Carrie and Job brought backup in the form of Beardo Brock with a bazooka - which he blasts the truck with, causing it to explode spectacularly (I guess the show saved its limited budget all season for this). He, Carrie and Job drive away whilst Proctor and Psycho Smithers take care of the cartel guys and then make their own getaway. While all this^ was happening, N!LH and Dawson were searching the place that they found where Rebecca was killed. He stumbles upon her necklace he remembers her wearing, but doesn't share what he found with Dawson. He also doesn’t let her know he’s gonna go ram Proctor’s car (HOW did he know exactly when and where to ram them?), causing it to roll down a hill. Proctor's leg is injured and Psycho Smithers is left in the car, unmoving. N!LH throws Rebecca's necklace at Proctor who thinks this means N!LH killed her, but he reckons Proctor did...that is until they both seem to work out at the same time it must've been Psycho Smithers who did it, but now he's disappeared from the car. He soon starts fighting N!LH and once again I must mention how the fights have really been lacking this season. It's intercut with flashbacks of Psycho Smithers indeed being the one in the hood who'd grabbed Rebecca and he sacrificed her to make it appear like one of Lumpy's killings (all because he felt that she was 'ruining' Proctor). Back in the 'present', Proctor's just there sitting on his arse and hallucinating Rebecca appearing in the distance, dressed in white and all glow-y. She smiles at him, as she now seems to be able to move onto the afterlife of whatever since her killer's finally been revealed. N!LH isn't doing so hot, as Psycho Smithers chokes the life out of him and he appears to be dying (we see flashes of enemies he's faced and people he cared about/loved), but then he remembers his promise he made to Deva and this gives him the strength he needs to kick Psycho Smithers' arse...which he then drags over and dumps in Proctor's lap. He and N!LH appear to have a psychic exchange between them both, as no words are uttered but it's pretty clear that what N!LH is thinking is, "Either you finish him off or I'll be back to finish you BOTH off." before he leaves. Psycho Smither reckons that everything he did was for Proctor, who says he understands...but that doesn't stop him from snapping Psycho Smithers' neck (Nola Longshadow: "THAT'S all it took to kill this guy - a snapped neck?! Damnit, I wish *I'd* done that!"). Proctor seems quite upset - whether it's because of his closest 'friend' betraying him or because he had to kill him...or a mixture of both, I dunno, but it annoyed me that he was crying out over the murderer of his niece. Still, I was SO glad that Psycho Smithers finally had his psychotic life snuffed out. I think I was spoiled for either that or the reveal that he was Rebecca's killer, but I enjoyed the fact that his corpse was just left there in the woods (which was what he deserved). Hopefully his corpse ends up being devoured by some woodland creatures or something. What comes next is the most BORING-ASS stuff involving Bunker and his bro. When Bunker told his bro's wife to go into the house, I thought for sure Bunker bro was going to shoot her...but nope. Instead the two Bunkers settle things the only way anything seems to be settled in the town of Banshee: through fisticuffs - despite Bunker having a GUN which he could've just used to shoot his bro to start with and saved himself getting beaten up. Their fight is yawn-worthy just like everything else involving them, Bunker seems to more or less eventually 'win' and then stupidly turns his back on his bro (who was considerate enough to slice the swastika on his brother's face - so I guess that's one less tattoo Bunker has to worry about getting removed?). Again, I thought maybe Bunker bro would shoot - having stolen the gun - but, no, he's too lame for that. Instead he just stupidly threatens not only his wife and his brother (who just kicked his arse), but also his own son (who he says he'd rather kill than have raised by the two of them). It's not until he calls his wife a 'bitch' that Bunker FINALLY shoots the annoying bastard to death. He's sad about it, whilst my reaction was "ABOUT DAMN TIME!". Bunker bro's widow sits with Bunker on the grass and comforts him. Dawson tells N!LH to look her up if she's ever in DC and leaves his file on the bed (I think some people scrutinized the file, hoping to see N!LH's real name, but all they could find was 'John Smith' which was an obviously fake name he went by at some point in the past). Beardo Brock calls Bunker into his office and he wants to know the details of what went down between him and his bro, as he knows that his report on the incident is total BS. However, since Bunker put down a neo-Nazi, Beardo Brock's basically cool with it (would appear N!LH has rubbed off on him, since he's letting things slide just like N!LH would've). There's a funny bit where Beardo Brock checks that Kurt Bunker is actually his real name since he's now paranoid about such things after learning the truth regarding N!LH...who he sees down below through the glass of his office. Once again N!LH has a psychic conversation (this one appears to be Beardo Brock assuring him that he won't 'out' him to anyone...at least not straight away). This also serves as their 'goodbye' to each other, as N!LH leaves the Banshee County Sheriff's Department for the final time. We eventually get to the scene that *I* personally cared the most about - N!LH's goodbye scene with Carrie. I was SO happy to hear their 'theme' used during this scene that's been there right from the first season of the show. It's quite haunting, but also beautiful (and even reminds me of the theme from the first Thor movie that plays when we first see Asgard, is used throughout the movie and plays again during the beginning of the closing credits). She comments on his beaten up appearance (which has become a regular thing/his 'look' by this point). He says she's the only one who ever really knew him, he invites her to leave with him, but I think he knows even as he's asking that she can't. She's finally reached the stage where she can 'quit' him, as her family (what remains of it) still needs her. She breaks down, telling him to please promise not to forget about her. When he says one last "Goodbye, Ana." I was ABSOLUTELY expecting she'd reply with "Goodbye [insert real name here].", but instead she just gives him one last "It's Carrie." (which she'd been saying all throughout the first season whenever he called her by her real name). On the one hand, I was practically yelling at the TV screen for her to say his real name, but on the other hand I totally understand the showrunners wishing to keep it a secret/keep the mystery of N!LH's real name from ever being solved. And, really, what name could've ever possibly lived up to everyone's expectations? I remember reading a comment when I was rewatching the first season that theorised maybe his real name was something like 'Devon' and that's where Carrie came up with Deva's (admittedly strange) name. I also read that back when N!LH whispered his real name is Siobhan's ear last season, Antony Starr actually whispered 'Gary'...but somehow I doubt that's his character's actual real name. Anyway, it's a very effective/emotional final scene between them (the music even got me slightly misty-eyed) that I can't do justice by describing...so here's the scene: And here's a clearer listen to their theme (which, for my money, is right up their with other TV 'love themes' like the Buffy/Angel theme from BtVS): Next on N!LH's goodbye tour is Sugar's bar, where Job is now blonde and brings out a ton of money which he gives to Sugar. Not one for emotion, the best Job is able to do when Sugar thanks him is to give the slightest of nods. His parting line as he at long last is on his way out of this town he's wanted to leave ever since he first arrived? "This is where I leave you. Banshee, Pennsylvania...suck my tit!". After Job's gone, Sugar remembers when N!LH first walked into his bar (which we're shown for the umpteenth time via b & w flashback). He proceeds to monologue about them being crims, something about thinking being in jail was their penance, but really it’s to be with normal folk and helping them...or something. He asks what N!LH is going to do now (same line as BtVS's final line, coincidentally enough considering they had a BtVS actress guest-starring this season). Since N!LH ruined the car Sugar had fixed up and lent to him (by ramming Proctor's car with it), he's going to leave town the same way he arrived - on that motorcycle he rode into town (which Sugar's been keeping and somehow still works). As N!LH rides it back out of town, we see Proctor’s watching on security cameras as the cartel come for him. There's quite a few of them and they're all armed with guns, but he nevertheless goes out to meet them (armed with a machine gun of his own) and then proceeds to fire at them and we cut away before we see him riddled with bullets (but you can bet that's indeed what happens, as not even Kai Proctor could get out of this one). Once again it would appear there's a job vacancy for Mayor of Banshee. N!LH rides off on his motorcycle, at last allowing himself to explore the world outside of Banshee, knowing that while a lot of bad shit went down since he arrived and some good people died, he also probably saved quite a few people too and punished those who needed punishing (which they mightn't have been had he not ever come to town). He was kind of the Sheriff the town of Banshee needed. After the title card appears, we're shown Sugar packing up and leaving his bar. For a series final, at least they just offed the bad guys and no 'good guys' (which I was thankful for). After the third season of this show proved quite the disappointment to me, I figured Season 4 was either going to be more of the same or possibly even worse. Thankfully, I think I liked this season more than the previous one (though it certainly wasn't up to the same standard as the first two seasons - which are the only ones I think I may rewatch if I ever do another rewatch at some point in the future). This was a pretty good show when it started, I personally felt that it began to falter in its third season, but at least it didn't go out on a low note (like so many final seasons of shows do). This was quite a unique series and I'm glad I finally got around to finishing it. Mostly, though, I'm thankful to it for creating some of the most badass female characters in a series (and for including actresses Ivana Miličević, Trieste Kelly Dunn, Lili Simmons, Odette Annable and Eliza Dushku).
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jul 22, 2022 5:12:19 GMT -5
I last finished Season 1 of 12 Monkeys on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}I'd originally watched all four seasons of this show when they aired on TV here, but I hadn't bought any of the seasons on Blu-ray because they remained pretty pricey. Then the complete series boxset was released...and it wasn't overly cheap either. However, there were a couple of special deals going on at the same time here recently (one was a 'Buy 2 seasons of a show, get one free' deal and the other was a 20% off all shows deal), and those two deals combined made the individual seasons not only a lot cheaper than the complete series box set, but also made them cheaper than they ever had been previously...or were ever likely to get. So, I seized this opportunity and got them (though you couldn't even really get any of the individual seasons on Blu-ray at any stores where I'm close to and I had to get them ordered in - before the date that the deals/specials ran out, no less, but luckily they arrived in time). I'm glad I didn't ever buy the seasons one at a time as they were released here, as waiting a long while finally paid off! It'd been quite a few years since I watched the first season of the show when it originally aired, so while I remembered some parts of it...I had also forgotten a fair amount. The first episode begins with Cole (played by Aaron Stanford, who I've seen in a few things but will always first think of as Pyro from the second and third X-Men films) providing voiceover, as we see him in the future finding a skeleton of a woman and saying he'll see her soon (I'd forgotten the show started with her being a corpse. Not too many shows introduce their female lead this way) and then we meet the non-corpsified and gross version of virologist, Dr. Cassandra Railly (played by Amanda Schull, who seems to be stuck doing Hallmark Movies last I saw of her - which is a damn shame, since she deserves SO much better), as she's doing a lecture on pandemics (how timely/relevant!) in the 'past'. One thing I'd never forgotten was how Cole and Cassie first meet - which involves her getting into her car, talking to her boring b/f over the phone, and then suddenly Cole making himself known, as he's been sitting in the back seat waiting for her like a creeper (boring b/f hears that something's amiss - which Cole could've avoided if he'd just waited until she hung up, but I guess this is 'time sensitive' or whatever). She tries to call out/escape, but he grabs her, covering her mouth and claiming he won't hurt her despite the fact that he mentions having a knife and that he will use it if he has to. He makes her drive, knows her name, insists she knows a man named Leland Frost (though she maintains she doesn't, even after he keeps SHOUTING the name at her like that'll somehow *make* her know who he's referring to) and informs her that in four years time, half the human race will be wiped out (by Thanos?) and he's time-travelled (which he calls 'splintering') to prevent that from happening - which apparently starts with Leland Frost (the name Cole got from a message that Cassie will leave at some point in the future). He says there'll be a plague...so, Cassie was RIGHT with her lectures! She must be OVER-THE-MOON...except for, y'know, the being kidnapped-and-thinly-veiled-threats-with-a-knife part. Though, to be fair, he only uses the knife to prove to her he's from the future by scratching the watch he swiped from her corpse (so, stealing from dead bodies can be added to his list of reasons she should trust/believe him) and this causes her own watch to suddenly have a scratch appear on it (complete with glowy light as it occurs). They wind up in an alley and Cole gets shot by the cops, he tells her to meet him in two years at a hotel and vanishes back to the future (no Delorean required). Luckily, she must have a good memory to remember where/when to meet him and didn't need it written down. Also...would YOU do what a seemingly crazy, knife-wielding, corpse-robbing backseat creeper told you to? Apparently Cassie does, as we cut to her having been hanging at the hotel for a week, told by people there to make like Elsa and let it go, and just as she's about to...FINALLY Cole shows up (still bleeding from his bullet wound) and security don’t seem to really do anything about this bizarre bleeding guy for quite a while, but when they eventually *do*, Cassie just says he’s with her and she takes him somewhere to sew him up. She has him to thank for everyone now thinking she's nutso after she tried warning people of the plague, and consequently she lost her practice and boring b/f (you're better off without him, Cassie!). She's still wrapping her head around Cole bleeding from a wound she saw him get two years ago, she *still* doesn't know who Leland Frost is even after all her searching she did in those two years that passed, but she has a friend who knows stuff. Speaking of stuff, there's some funny stuff with Cole taking big handfuls of food from a bowl and Cassie's reaction to this amuses me (evidently food is hard to come by in the future). Her friend says the message Cole was working off of was so garbled that he didn't hear what she said properly - ie. Leland's last name ain't 'Frost', it's 'Goines' ('Frost' was in relation to something else she was saying). They go to a party Goines will be at, Cole's idea of complimenting Cassie on being all dressed up is that she "looks clean" (after she compliments him, saying he looks good). Her attempts to get in the door, when her name isn't on the list no matter how many times she tells the woman to check, prove futile, but then she decides to make use of her boring ex-b/f by saying her last name LOUD enough to the list-checker lady that boring ex-b/f overhears and he's Cassie's ticket inside when he says she's with him. He then meets Cole and asks how the two of them met, to which Cole answers that she bought him a cheeseburger (which he scoffed earlier). When they're alone, he makes it clear that he simply wants to off Goines, but Cassie informs him that here in the 'past' one can't just simply go around offing people all willy-nilly (they had this conversation earlier in the car too, but Cole's justification is 1 life versus 7 billion). Despite Cassie's protestations, he tries anyway, but gets grabbed, she does too, boring ex-b/f's angry she used him to get in (well, that's what you get for not believing her about time travel!), they’re taken by Goines (played by Željko Ivanek, who I most recently saw when rewatching Season 2 of Banshee on Blu-ray), he knows some of what’s going on, mentions 'the Army of the 12 Monkeys' (which Cole doesn’t know about yet), says Cole will visit him at some point in the past that (which he hasn’t done yet) and mentions a paradox, then Cole shows him what a REAL paradox looks like by placing both of Cassie's watches (from two different times) together. Watches go BOOM (I'd forgotten how time seemingly slows and Cole's able to sling Cassie over his shoulder, making a getaway whilst everyone else is stuck in slow-mo). Somehow, Goines survives this explosion (even though he was standing closest to the explodey watches). Well, that is until Cole shoots him (Goines: "Dang it! I survived an almighty explosion just to get taken out by a measly bullet!"). Cassie witnesses her first murder, it changes nothing, Cole’s still there (I think he and Cassie briefly had a conversation earlier on about what would happen to him if he managed to successfully alter the future), Cole goes back to the future once again and the German woman who's in charge of this whole splintering thing (we got a flashback of her offering Cole the chance to get out of jail if he became her lab rat. It's funny how I remember those who can splinter supposedly being 'rare' considering how many of the main characters eventually end up doing it. They do require an injection of yellow stuff, though, to make it happen. Also, in the beginning, splintering looks like it actually hurts. I think by the later seasons it's, like, no big deal).), Jones, reckons he didn’t do his mission (shut up, old lady!), he says he did, and they come to the realisation that they went after the wrong person. We then cut to someone named Jennifer...who we don’t even see the face of until the last shot, and she's drawing a monkey's face on the wall as a guy talks to her - I guess it was designed this way for anyone who didn't know when watching the show that Brad Pitt's character from the movie version was going to be gender-swapped in this version. I took what she's wearing (yellow outfit with black stripes down the arms of it) as a shoutout to what Pitt's character wears in the film at one point, since they look pretty similar. Jennifer's played by Emily Hampshire who, after I watched the first couple episodes of this show originally, I immediately looked up on IMDB to find out what else she'd been in so I could watch more of her, as she made one hell of an impression from the very first time we see/hear her. In the future, Cole and his best buddy, Ramse (played by Kirk Acevedo who was Charlie Francis in Fringe), talk about Cole preferring the past - no plague, got food, got a girl. Cole denies it’s like that (c'mon, Cole, you totally knew you were into Cassie from the minute you surprised her in her car like a crazy stalker person). They joke about Cole looking up Ramse’s mother when he travels back to the past, doing her, and consequently being Ramse's father (oh, future humour, you're so weird!). Goines had told Cole in the last episode that at some point he'll go back to whatever year in the 80's, which is where Cole wants to go so he can stop Goines in the past, but because there's not enough power in the machine (which, btw, I think looks pretty damn awesome. Better than the movie's version, imho. It's just looks so cool and kinda creepy with its blue beam of light and what looks like a dentist's chair) - as apparently the further back in time you go, the more power is required - Cole's instead getting sent back to 2015. Unfortunately, his 'splintering' doesn't go exactly according to plan and he ends up in North Korea (2006 or 2008, I couldn't tell because I guess my eyesight now sucks). It's looking pretty dire for Cole, but then the tech nerds back at home base get the machine working again and they ‘slingshot’ him forwards to 2015 (we saw just how close a buddy Cole was to Ramse as evidenced by him getting mad at Jones and demanding she bring him back). I forget the exact circumstances of how it occurs, but Cole manages to get himself thrown into the crazy house where Jennifer's at (I think Jones had a photo of her, and that's who she sent Cole after). Emily Hampshire managed to make me love her character within just this one episode. Things as simple as waggling her tongue about after she supposedly swallows her meds (which she later spits out and shows Cole) or going on about Cole's 'soulful otter eyes' or the wave that she gives Cole when he gets dragged away later on - all those amused me. She also does crazy talk well (which isn't as easy as it may seem, as I've seen shows with characters talking crazy and it's just babbling random shit, whereas Hampshire adds many layers to her crazy talk). She tells Cole about having killed people, as we see a flashback of a character referred to as 'the Pallid Man' killing Jennifer's fellow scientists (yes, it would appear that back in her non-crazy days, she was once a scientist). Speaking of the Pallid Man (played by Tom Noonan, who I've seen in a few shows, but last time I saw him he was annoying the crap out of me in Hell on Wheels - thankfully, here he's a bit more creepy than annoying), Cassie’s friend she’s been calling (who she and Cole visited last episode for information on Leland Frost/Goines) has been killed by El Creepo and his face has had flowers stuck all over it. Understandably, this freaks Cassie out. She doesn't have time for boring ex-b/f who wants to know stuff and also wants her away from Cole, who he thinks is a psycho (well, to be fair to boring ex-b/f, Cole *did* wait for Cassie in her car like a psycho, so I guess he's got a point there...but since he's still not believing Cassie's story about time-travel, screw boring ex-b/f!). Cassie poses as a doctor (well, technically she *is* a doctor...just not the sort of one she's pretending to be here) in order to get Cole released from the crazy house, they see the Pallid Man who's got Jennifer, Cassie recognises the smell of jasmine and lavender from finding her dead flower-faced friend (Jennifer also spoke to Cole about jasmine and lavender, I think, in regards to her dead scientist friends) so this is how they work out the Pallid Man is in fact the one who killed Cassie's friend. At one point when Cole was back in the future, he told Jones he *needs* Cassie when she was saying he should be leaving her out of things (she even cleared the room of all the other people in it to show she was super-serious in her telling Cole what to do, but he made it clear that he doesn't take orders from her by calling her bluff, saying that they couldn't achieve their end goal without him - since he's apparently the only one who can splinter - and threatening to walk away, pretty much saying, "If you wanna stop me you'll haveta shoot me."). The Pallid Man has taken Jennifer somewhere dark and dank, he says he previously spared her twice and then someone in a creepy plague doctor mask appears to her at the end. I kind of slacked off with taking notes for the next episode. The main part I recall from it was they were trying to track down a place called 'the Night Room', one of Jennifer's fellow scientists who escaped being killed by the Pallid Man turned out to be a friend of Cassie's named Henri, and for whatever reason Cole (who'd splintered back in time) killed him - which makes his training Cassie how to shoot the guy who killed Henri at the beginning of the episode quite ironic. Naturally, after he'd done the deed, Cole lied straight to her face about it. I found the next episode rather boring since Cassie was only at the beginning and end of it (she and Cole, along with Jennifer, are the most entertaining/interesting parts of the show for me). She asks Cole about himself and he doesn’t want to answer/figures what’s the point if he’s going to be erased when this is all over? Then it’s all boring future stuff, though the beginning was good with them stumbling across a dog, Ramse reckons Cole has to shoot it since he spotted it first, Cole argues with him over this since that was never a 'rule' previously, and then we cut to them by a fire and Cole's eating something...but just as I was ready to wish Cole dead for killing an innocent pooch, he tosses a bit of whatever he's eating to the still-alive dog (Ramse's grumbling). I was immediately worried for the dog once the character of Deacon showed up (it would've been especially cruel to kill the pooch after he'd just gotten a reprieve from Cole). I think they leave it vague what happens to the dog. I know the actor who plays Deacon, Todd Stashwick, from other things (I think the most I've ever enjoyed him in a role was when he played a guy pretending to be Dracula in the black & white episode of Supernatural during Season 4 - he was hilarious there). I remember finding it weird when I discovered he played the 'Big Bad' in the Season 1 final of Angel, Vocah. He was actually kind of menacing in that role...whereas every other time I've seen him play a bad guy, I haven't found him to be nearly as effective. Case in point: Deacon. He TRIES to come across as some tough bad dude, but I mostly just find him annoying. Another annoying thing about this episode is that I found it a bit confusing with the switching between the ‘present’ and the ‘past’ segments (involving them meeting Deacon for the first time and them encountering him again later on) since they looked basically the same. Yes, the show makes a point of bringing up what year it is with text on the screen every time things switch...but it was still tricky to follow since they were switching between two different times that were *both* in the 'future'. Basically what it boils down to is that Deacon's all about killing people, Ramse's against it, but Cole seems to see things Deacon's way...at least for a little while. There was a rather pointless part where Cole thinks Ramse's dead...but he ain't, and there's some chick named Max who I didn't give two figs about (I would've much rather spent screentime on Cassie - who Cole sees at one point, as she's blipping in and out of taking Max's place and is even dressed all ratty like her - I can't recall if it's cause he gets conked on the head or is drugged or what). Cole and Jones tell each other their first names at some point (his is James, hers is Katarina) - super thrilling stuff, that. Thankfully, by the end of the episode Cole's back with Cassie and she's managed to find the Night Room. The next episode was MUCH better, with WAY more Cassie in it. Though before we get to that, we have to sit through Cole, Ramse, Jones and Max in the future sitting around, toasting to what they believe is their last night before they're erased (since they think the plague is about to be averted). Cole and Ramse wonder about 'Jones' being Katarina's last name since it doesn't sound very German, and - SURPRISE - it's as easily explained as her having married a non-German dude and taking his last name. HOW THRILLING. Things improve when we cut back to Jennifer being wacky with the Pallid Man who's got her, but the BEST stuff is when Cole reunites with her and she meets Cassie for the first time. It's clear Jennifer's taken a liking to Cole and instantly views Cassie as a threat to that judging by her immediate, "Just one question - who's this bitch?" in reference to Cassie (who remains polite towards Jennifer, even when she's insulting her and making it clear she wants her gone when she says, "Okay, you can go now!" with an entirely forced/fake smile after Cole informs Jennifer that Cassie helped him find her). As funny as Jennifer is, I felt bad for Cassie due to the way Jennifer was acting towards her (Amanda Schull had some very funny reactions to the stuff Jennifer said, including her continuing to mention his 'otter eyes' and being all over him). Of course, it's not all funny stuff, as this episode also includes one of the nastiest parts I remember from the show involving the Pallid Man torturing Cole (when his hand was strapped into a thing and his reaction was "Oh, that's not good." he already had an inkling what was going to happen, I think) with BAMBOO SHOOTS UNDER HIS FINGERNAILS. I remember when I watched this episode for the first time, I didn't know they were actually going to *show* the bamboo shoots sliding under his nails in close-up, so it caught me off guard and I actually watched it as it happened. THIS time, however, since I *knew* it was coming, I didn't really watch it (no need to see that for a second time). Amazingly, this doesn't seem to slow Cole down too much and he just sort of shrugs it off when he and Cassie manage to escape. Unfortunately for Cole, by the Pallid Man outs him to Cassie as the one who killed Henri. Naturally, she's mad and Cole's reasoning for killing Henri is something about him being followed to the Night Room (which Cole couldn't allow to happen) and when he tells her 'you can't save everyone', she says that's what they're supposed to be doing. When the Pallid Man's goons try to get into where the source of the plague is being kept, one of their hands gets melted since Jennifer hadn't mentioned the failsafe that was in place (her impression of the melting guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark is pretty funny). Once the Pallid Man and his goons seemingly give up/leave, Jennifer takes Cole down to the yucky human remains in a glass tube that are the origin of the plague/her father's virus (speaking of her father, although the Pallid Man tries to pull the same shit as he did without outing Cole as Henri's killer to Cassie, in this case informing Jennifer of Cole being the one who killed her father...but it totally backfires on him, as she's all like "AWESOME!"). Cole starts getting a nose bleed when he's close to the remains and Jennifer says there's something about its eyes (this immediately made me think that the remains are Cole's from some point in time and the reason he gets a nose bleed is because he's a thing from one time period coming into contact with itself from another time period - like we were shown with the watches. Honestly, my memory of this first season is so vague that I actually can't recall if this ends up being the case or not, so it'll be interesting to continue rewatching the show and seeing if my theory pans out). Just as Jennifer's starting to key in the code to get to the remains, she mentions how she'd only do this for Cole - and this is what causes him to figure out the Pallid Man and his goons have in fact *not* left. Sure enough, they reappear and force Jennifer to finishing keying in the code. Meanwhile, Cassie's being held up in a room with glass that she can see Cole through down below. Earlier it was mentioned that there are two red buttons that need pushing at the same time to burn the room, Cassie doesn't want to do it because she thinks Cole will die, but he gives her a nod and they do it, then he pulls Jennifer into wherever it is that protects them whilst the Pallid Man's goons get fried by fire that engulfs the room. The Pallid Man escapes with Cassie and she's loaded into a van just as Cole's being pulled back to the future and Jennifer's left alone. When Cole gets back to his time, the place looks abandoned (but there's washing on the lines hanging above the machine, so evidently someone's been doing laundry). Also in this episode, Ramse finds a file with photos of Jones's previous failed attempts to send people through time (they're all gnarly and gross). The next episode picks up right where the previous one left off, with Cassie having been taken. Meanwhile, Cole's back in the laundry room. When he asks two guys what's going on and they think he's an intruder, one of them asks who this a-hole is and then they realise (thanks to a tattoo or something Cole has on him) that he's one of them (which would've made things awkward between him and the guy ho called him an a-hole). Cole asks to be taken to the one in charge...but it's not Jones like it should be. Evidently, things have changed and Ramse (complete with an eyepatch) is now in charge (Cole thought it was going to turn out to be Deacon since he saw the symbol for Deacon's crew somewhere around). Turns out that weird joking about Cole going to the past and banging Ramse's mum pays off since him telling Ramse this is part of what convinces him that he's really Cole (which he'd had a hard time wrapping his head around since he apparently buried 'his' Cole after he died). I forget what exactly causes it to happen, but Jones gets shot as she's sending Cole back in time. In the alternate timeline, Cassie has been killed. Cole finds her boring ex-b/f who *still* doesn't like him or believe him about time-travel. They do make quite an amusing team, though, since Cole doesn't get boring ex-b/f's references to things such as Marty McFly and 911. It's even funnier when they go to where the previous episode ended (with Cassie being kidnapped and Jennifer left behind after Cole disappears) and Cole hands boring ex-b/f a gun, he asks where the safety is and Cole points out it's a revolver. His reactions are amusing, as is the fact that the first thing boring ex-b/f ends up shooting is the other Cole (who ran after Cassie, along with Jennifer, before disappearing) in the shoulder. This results in 'current' Cole receiving a matching bullet wound in his shoulder. The two of them go to rescue Cassie (after Cole checks Jennifer, who remained, is safe). We meet the character of Olivia (played by Alisen Down, who I know from a great many things, but recall first seeing in the series from ages ago called Mysterious Ways). Not only does she manage to rock the short haircut her character's sporting, but she also has a very particular way of talking and I find her voice really soothing (which is probably weird for a character who's clearly a 'baddie'). About half her dialogue this episode consists of her repeating phrases to Cassie including "You’re walking through a red forest, the grass is tall" (which we see flashes of). This is FAR from the last time we'll hear this line. She also talks about 'the Witness' (which was actually first mentioned in an earlier episode, but I forget which). Cassie gets drugged, and like Jennifer before her, she ends up seeing this 'Witness' who's someone in a plague doctor mask. Anyway, I think Cole and boring ex-b/f manage to rescue Cassie, then Cole disappears back to his future once again (it's funny how this is the first time boring ex-b/f finally believes time-travel is real, since he's just seen it with his own eyes, while Cassie has gotten used to Cole's disappearing/it doesn't faze her anymore). Once Cole’s back in his time, Ramse comes in, covering one eye with his hand and joking about it (having obviously heard about the alternate timeline Cole visited). He also believes Cole thought this alternate Ramse was a 'badass' when what Cole actually said was 'pain in the ass'. The next episode begins with flashes of images, it's incomprehensible (other than Cole mentioning 'the Keys' to Cassie over a phone or radio), but it sounds like he’s saying goodbye. The thing I remember from all the way back when I originally watched this episode on TV is that is features Cole grabbing all of the 'Tandoori spears' off a tray that's being served at a museum event he and Cassie go to (obviously he takes ALL the food he can get whenever he can get it, since the future's food options are pretty limited). I was amused all over again when watching him do this. Cassie's reaction to it is funny too, as is her commenting that he smells like Tandoori after he compliments her by saying she smells nice when they're dancing (he's totally winning her over with these compliments of his - first he tells her she looks 'clean' and now he's saying she 'smells nice'). They discover a guy name Wexler (who they learned of in the previous episode) is going to be assassinated with the virus, Cole has to get it, but he's taken prisoner and when he tells the guys not to open the case the virus is in...they do it anyway (IDIOTS). The only way to stop the spread is a missile strike, we come back around to where the episode started with him talking to Cassie over a phone or radio, he tells her not to warn his past self that this will happen to him (he doesn't want things to be altered), he mentions that the place he thought of going was the Florida Keys (which was the part missing from his story he earlier told her about how as kids he played a game where they'd say any place they would go to if they could and he'd seen the Florida Keys in a magazine). After the missile strike and Cole's apparent death, Cassie is desperate to tell 'past' Cole what happens to him, but boring ex-b/f tells her not to (he later burns all the stuff to do with Cole) and even though Cassie appears like she's going to spill it all...she refrains (even though it kills her to do so). That^ was the last episode of this season that I bothered writing notes on after having watched. There's just SO much going on in this show that if I recapped ALL of it, I think I'd exceed the word limit allowed for posts on Proboards forums (which happened one time before with my last season I reviewed of Riverdale). Anyway, to summarise (from I can remember), Cassie doesn't believe Cole's dead after the missile strike, boring ex-b/f once again doesn't believe her...but I think they get back together, and once that's happened, THEN Cole shows up again (I may be misremembering the order that things happened). I think Cole got pulled back to his time just as the missile strike occurred and that's how he survived (maybe?). Anyway, I do remember Olivia appearing to boring ex-b/f at one point and saying how Cassie's important to not only him, but to her as well and she makes a deal with him to keep her safe. Skipping ahead, there's stuff involving Cole's father who Cassie goes to when they need help (Cole's dying from having splintered too much - which Jones had warned him would happen). They take a sample of Kid Cole's blood, boring ex-b/f rats out Cole to Olivia (in order to 'protect' Cassie, who learns of his betrayal and wants nothing to do with him afterwards) and Cole's dad gets killed. When Cole injects himself with his kid self's blood, this caused a paradox again (since it's two of the same thing from two different times coming into contact like the watches) and things get a bit *too* science fiction-y with Cole floating up into the air as he gets all glowy. This blasts whatever bad guys are after him (probably the Pallid Man, since he seems to regularly be a thorn in the good guys' side). Then Cole ends up torturing boring ex-b/f for information about Olivia (and Cassie now appears to be totally cool with torture, which shows how much she's 'hardened' since the beginning of the series), one thing leads to another and boring ex-b/f winds up being left in a room to burn (Cassie seems upset by this to begin with...but seems to quickly get over it). Meanwhile, Ramse learns he has a kid with some woman he was with at some point, but Cole changing the future would mean erasing them and so this is what causes Ramse to turn to the Dark Side...and him going on and on about his kid will pretty much be his one and only purpose on the show for the next two seasons, I seem to recall. It gets quite annoying. He ends up in league with Olivia and winds up some big honcho or something. Either in the season final or the one before it, I think that we get to see an actual SANE Jennifer, we see her when she was her scientist self, she also had a gang of women called 'The Daughters'. Olivia checks in on 12 babies who'll be raised to end up becoming the Army of the 12 Monkeys (which look to basically just be really pale guys. I thought I was watching The Strain when they appeared). The season final's climax comes down to a Mexican standoff between Cole, Cassie, Ramse and Ramse's goon - all with guns pointed at each other. Cassie wants to off Ramse because he's trying to stop them preventing the plague from happening to keep his son (somewhere along the line, the kid's mother gets killed), she ends up shooting him, then Ramse's goon shoots her and Cole shoots the goon. Ramse shows he's not completely 'bad' since he says there's no point both him and Cassie dying and tells Cole to use the yellow stuff (which he had in a case and was originally supposed to trade with Cole, I think) on her that allows one to time travel (Ramse had a guy, who I'm fairly sure turns out to be Jones' former husband, build another time travel machine so Ramse could use it to get back to his son). Cole sends Cassie back to Jones in the hope that she can save her, but Deacon and his goons have stormed the place. I did think the way they did Cassie splintering for the first time was well-handled. It was a suitably 'epic' moment. Ramse tells Cole to go and it looks like he dies, but then Cole turns around and comes back for him/carries him away. The BEST part of this season final, however, is the stuff with Jennifer and her 'hostile takeover' of her father's business. It's highly amusing seeing her eulogy for him (with badly photoshopped pictures of him) and her saying cheesy/soppy stuff that she clearly doesn't actually mean. What makes the scene even funnier, however, is Cassie's and Cole's reactions to this (just watch Cassie's face whilst listening to what Jennifer's saying), since they're in the audience. When they confront Jennifer (who's already caused all the business partners to leave due to her craziness, including wanting to resurrect the dodo and, one day, the unicorn), she's *still* being bitchy towards Cassie, saying that all she hears when Cassie talks is 'blah blah blah' and as much as I like Jennifer, I was totally fine with Cassie slapping her in the face and saying they had no time for her crazy BS (sometimes Jennifer kinda needs this, and we know Cole wouldn't have done it, so it's handy having Cassie who has no qualms about slapping Jennifer into giving them the information they need). By the end of the episode we see Jennifer looking decidedly non-crazy/dressed up all nice, on a plane, and I think she has plans involving the virus/plague. This first season of this show reminded me how good it was right from the beginning. There were only a few episodes I wasn't that fussed on (mainly the ones focused on Ramse and future stuff). Where this show excelled at was developing the relationship between Cassie and Cole, ensuring that theirs would become an EPIC love story told through time. Both Aaron Stanford and Amanda Schull were what held this show together and I was SO glad that this series was made when it was, as it avoided all the crap shows in the last few years have had forced into them. It goes without saying that Emily Hampshire was a revelation as Jennifer Goines. She stole pretty much ALL the scenes she appeared in (and even got to play an old version of Jennifer when she interacts with Ramse at one point). It's clear that the show's creators had enormous respect for the movie which this series is based on (and, for my money, as confusing as this show could sometimes get, it actually made WAY more sense to me than the movie ever did. Even Jennifer's crazy talk was more sensical than anything Brad Pitt's version said). This is one of only a few shows which have taken a movie, adapted it to a TV series, and done it WELL. It seems the show isn't just 'making it up as they go along' and has a clear plan (which helps). As far as time-travel shows is concerned, this is one of the best and is definitely worth checking out if you're into time-travel-related sci-fi.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Aug 30, 2022 4:34:41 GMT -5
Finished Dexter: New Blood on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}Like most people, I was majorly disappointed with Season 8/the final season of the original show and especially the 'series final' (which seemed to be the held by many as the top standard for crap series final a show could reach...that was until GoT's, anyway). I figured that this limited series was intended to make up for that, but had heard people were just as disappointed with this as they were with Season 8. Once again it sounded like they botched the final and I was really curious to see how this could be the case, since you'd think they'd *learn* from past mistakes. I found the first episode to be fairly 'slow', but I was willing to give them a break since it had to set up things - like where Dexter was now living, the new cast of characters, what the story arc was going to be, etc. It didn't really *feel* like Dexter until towards the end when he 'relapsed' and killed again, then we got the voiceover and things seemed more like Dexter. I was glad to see him get upset about the douchebag shooting that poor white deer (which I saw coming from a MILE away when Dex was slowly approaching it). I didn't quite understand WHY he was suddenly upset over the death of animals since he killed his fair share of them back in the day, but it made me happy to hear him yelling at the douchenozzle for shooting it and how it never did anything wrong/didn't deserve it (I would've been saying the exact same thing...and probably worse. Dexter also dealt the douche a more merciful death than *I* would've). I was amused by Dex's "Bleh!"-like scare tactic too (it was random, but funny). They really made Dex's first victim be someone who we'd WANT to see Dexter kill. There was nothing redeemable about him and I was satisfied when Dex finally ended his worthless life. Unfortunately, everything before this was kind of boring. I get that we were seeing how Dex had now mastered the art of 'blending in'/acting 'normal' (he seemed much more natural at it here than he ever did in the original series), but I can't say I was really that interested in any of the townsfolk. Though I didn't mind his cop girlfriend, Angela (Julia Jones, who I don't think many people realise played Josh Brolin's wife in the 2010 movie Jonah Hex - that was 12 years ago and she *still* looks great. Though, of course, I'll forever think of her as Leah Clearwater from Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Parts 1 & 2), or her daughter Audrey (though the actress's name made me do a double take - her first name's Johnny?). Having said that, Audrey was kind of bratty to the character played by Fredric Lehne (who'll always be 'Yellow Eyes'/the Yellow-Eyed Demon/YED from Supernatural to me, though I've seen him in plenty of other things), as he seemed to be nice towards her despite her protesting and she returned his kind gestures with giving him 'tude. Of course, he did all this whilst coming off as a bit of a creeper and it felt that when it came to guessing who the serial killer was killing runaway girls, he would've been TOO obvious. In the end, though, nothing came of his character and all those earlier hints of him being not-what-he-seemed were pointless. Clearly, he was just a red herring (which I also ended up thinking that one mustached officer, who seemed like a cartoon character in his incompetence, was. I figured he must've secretly been a bad guy and his incompetency was just his cover...but nope, that apparently wasn't the case. Only towards the end of the series did he seem less cartoonish). This was just one of the many instances of lazy writing in this series (another being Dexter only remembering to burn the body of dead douche in the convenient public access crematorium well after he should've thought of that). While Clancy Brown can play a really good bad guy, I felt his serial killer character, Kurt Caldwell, was pretty boring and his method of kidnapping girls, letting them live a while in a room, only to release them and then sniper them from not- that-far-away (thus giving them no chance at all) was pretty lame. I mean, he didn't even go chasing after them! It wasn't even sporting. He paled in comparison to pretty much every other serial killer Dexter took on (he might've had a slight edge over Colin Hanks...but that's about it). I did feel sorry for the green-haired girl who was one of his last victims who actually had the balls to run straight at him (knowing full well he would've just sniped her had she fled like he ordered her to). Yes, she got a hole shot through her eye, but at least she went down standing up to him and defying his 'ritual'. Of course, then not even her corpse was spared an indignity, as he failed to make her a makeshift Phantom of the Opera mask for her ruined eye socket and wound up pummeling her face (SHE'S ALREADY DEAD!). In the end, this serial killer added nothing we hadn't had before. He was a mentor of sorts of Dexter's returned son, Harrison (who I'll get to in a moment), for a brief period, but nothing really came of that. It's not like he managed to turn Harrison into Dexter's ultimate nemesis or anything. The most he did was put Angela on the right track to figuring out Dexter's secret. Speaking of Angela, whilst everyone else seemed to be hating on her, I thought she reacted realistically to the betrayal she felt after learning Dexter's real name and that she'd been lied to all this time. I was also fine with her being the one to finally bring him in and lay all of his secrets out on the table. Can't say I was fussed on Harrison, though. The actor wasn't particularly 'bad' or anything, nor did he stand out as 'great' or even 'good', really. He was pretty average, I thought. And worst of all, he spent the majority of the season being the typical 'moody teen' towards his dad...which didn't really make for fun viewing. They did suggest that perhaps he was a future Dexter-in-the-making with his violent tendencies (it was a bit of a surprise that the student he stood up for at school against bullies actually seemed like HE would be a serial killer of sorts, with the bloody/gruesome drawings he made as part of his fantasy killing of his tormenters - honestly, despite the fact that it was revealed that Harrison set him up at school as waning to kill a bunch of students, it's probably just as well he took this unstable kid out of commission, as I think he would've eventually attempted to make his fantasy a reality). We spent SO much time on Harrison being a whiny bitch, getting into fights, being a shit to his dad, getting drunk, nearly overdosing, etc and NONE of it was worth the wasted screentime. He didn't become tolerable until the second-last episode, when he finally learned Dexter's secret and seemed to be more or less 'cool' with offing wrongdoers. I'd only read little bits and pieces regarding the final...which most people seemed to think was either just as bad as Season 8's final or even WORSE, but what little I had read gave me totally different ideas of what was going to go down than what actually transpired. I thought that what would drive a wedge between Dexter and Harrison would be Harrison learning what really happened with his mum being murdered - ie. that Rita was killed by Trinity *before* Dexter killed him (whereas Dexter made it sound like he offed Trinity as revenge for Rita's murder). I thought for sure what was going to happen would be that Harrison would kill Dexter out of anger or to stop him or whatever. So it came as a surprise to me that Dexter basically *allowed* Harrison to kill him (though obviously up until he made the decision to let it happen, he was desperate to escape. His plan kept changing - first they were just going to leave quietly, then everything went to hell and he wanted to go on the run with Harrison, then when it became clear that wasn't going to happen, Dex was even willing to leave by himself). What confused me the most was everything leading up to this ending in the episode - Dexter had given Angela the information she needed to go find all of Clancy Brown's victims in their display cases (can't say I was sad about the annoying podcaster lady being revealed as one of them in the previous episode. Her podcasting was amateur at best, though I saw a photo of the victims and one looked like the bartender...so it came as another surprise when she briefly appeared in the final, alive and kicking) and this combined with all the other things Dexter said about her evidence against him not holding up, it seemed very unnecessary that he ended up offing the decent cop, Logan, in order to escape jail. Seemed to me if Dex had just waited for Angela to return from finding all those victims, he could've convinced her that Kurt Caldwell had offed his own douchey son like he'd been trying to tell her. Instead, there was that weird escape where I didn't even realise he'd broken Logan's neck (tells you how bad this show had gotten when, for a second, I thought the bullet Logan fired backwards had ricocheted and hit him in the skull - like THAT wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility in this series). I guess offing Logan was necessary to make Harrison turn against his dad and see that he wasn't keeping to his 'code' of just offing wrongdoers, since Logan wasn't a bad guy. Was I pissed off about the ending we got? Eh, by that point I didn't really care. Yes, I would've preferred Dexter been offed by someone other than his annoying, bratty son...but him *allowing* himself to be shot was still better than how I thought it would go down, with him trying to escape and being shot against his will. At least this way, he went out on his own terms (more or less). Though it was a kick in the teeth to Deb and Rita when the Dexter voiceover said he'd never felt real love until this moment he sacrificed himself so his son would be free of his bad influence (though I highly doubt offing his own dad is going to suddenly make Harrison 'good'. And it's not like those violent tendencies he'd previously had just evaporated because now his serial killer father was dead). So...Dex never 'really' loved Deb OR Rita? How shitty of him! Speaking of Deb...or rather ghost Deb (since she was, y'know, dead), it's no wonder that after taking Dex's hand as he was dying, she ended up letting go before he passed - obviously she didn't take too kindly to his insinuation that he never 'really' loved her like he did Harrison. I know a lot of people apparently hated ghost Deb in this series (they didn't like her pointing out all the shitty stuff he'd done/calling him out on his shit and generally being negative towards him), but one must remember this wasn't *actually* Debra Morgan. This was Dexter's own thoughts of himself personified as her (just like his dad's ghost). Honestly, the biggest disappointment for me regarding Deb in this series was her lack of imaginative cussing - that was always her signature in the original series, and it was sadly absent here. Sure, she dropped F-bombs aplenty...but there was no creativeness/ imagination to any of it. Having said that, I did get a kick out of some of her amusing appearances in a couple of the episodes. Not only did she pick up the new trick of appearing in the clothes of the actually real living characters Dexter interacted with, but she also developed the ability to multiply/clone herself and even went all Fargo at one point. Unlike others, I never hated Deb. In fact, if it wasn't for her, I doubt I even would've had much interest in this series. Hers and Dexter's relationship was always the 'heart' of the original show for me, so without her in this one, it wouldn't have even felt like Dexter to me (though the appearances of two other original series characters - Angel Batista and Trinity - felt pretty pointless). I thought the way we saw Deb silhouetted against the wall in Dexter's jail cell was a neat touch. Whilst, disappointingly, we got no opening credits sequence for this series (which I can understand, as the old one would've felt 'outdated' with where he was now, plus the setting was completely different, and doing a new version of it would've inevitably paled in comparison to the original...though I *did* miss the 'Dexter Theme'), I thought what they did with the titles of the episodes being incorporated into the scenery and the end credits (which, thankfully, *did* include the original series' end credits music) was pretty neat/visually interesting, at least. While a lot of people seem to think this series final was worse than Season 8's...I can't say I agree. Season 8 and its final were worse, imho (I hated the Dexter wannabe/serial killer teen from that season *more* than I hated Harrison - though, unlike Harrison, at least that shit was offed eventually). I think this 'revival' (like most TV series 'revivals') as a whole was pretty much a huge wasted opportunity. They could've done SO much more with it, but this outcome for Dex was pretty much inevitable. What were the alternatives? He keeps getting away with what he does? That would've made this season feel even *more* pointless than it already did. I never believed for a second he'd off Harrison (though he did look like he was ready to grab a knife and do whatever he needed to do to get away from Angela when she arrested him...until Logan showed up). I had always thought the original ending I'd read about for Season 8 (with Dexter seeing all of his victims/people who played a significant part in his life whilst he was at his execution would've been a neat ending...but I guess Covid prevented that). At least this ending was pretty definitive (unless they decided to delve into Dexter being a zombie). Like most, I have no interest in any possible Harrison spin-offs (with Dexter just filling the role of his version of ghost Deb). This mightn't have been a great, or even good, way to end the series...but I thought it was less rage-inducing than the Season 8 'series final'. This felt more like an 'ending' to the story of Dexter Morgan.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Sept 2, 2022 3:35:28 GMT -5
Finished the last two seasons of Warehouse 13 on DVD. Season 4 {Spoiler}I have to say...I didn’t enjoy this season as much as the previous three seasons (with Season 3 probably being my favourite of the show thus far). Things didn’t really ‘feel’ the same in the beginning half of the season, and although Pete had his amusing moments, it did feel as though they leaned more into him being ‘bumbling’ than they did previously. I also just didn’t enjoy the episodes as much. It wasn’t until about episode 9 that things *finally* picked up with the surprising death of Leena (though it really shouldn’t have been that surprising since the show really hadn’t given her much to do for the past three seasons and she’d been absent from quite a lot of episodes. It felt like they tried to make up for that with the start of this season…but, personally, I just never felt like she ‘gelled’ with the rest of the team. While they would get in on the action, she just seemed to be there to deliver exposition and occasionally help out, but otherwise didn’t really serve much purpose. I imagine the actress got sick of this and decided to leave. I was surprised to see Wynonna Earp's Melanie Scrofano guest-star in an episode this season (though it was a welcome surprise. She played her role - which was that of someone possessed by a sadistic version of Alice from Alice in Wonderland - exceptionally well, and I wished we could've kept her in the role for the whole episode. I thought it wasn't very fair that she didn't even warrant being listed in the guest-stars at the beginning of the episode and was relegated to being one of the names in the end credits...I really miss Wynonna Earp and wish I could see the seasons that were never released here). While it was nice to also see some actors from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel, make guest-star appearances (like Amy Acker, James Marsters and Anthony Stewart Head), none of their characters even came *close* to being as memorable as their ‘Buffyverse’ characters (James Marsters’ one was probably the best of the three, while ASH and his dodgy accented character was easily the worst and a lame villain). Still, I appreciated the 'in-jokes' regarding JM having played a vampire (this wasn't the first time he's done that. He also made a snarky comment regarding vampires in an episode of Smallville). I also appreciated the show acknowledging Myka's hair seemingly constant switching between curly and straight in the show (though no matter which...it always looked like a wig to me), as I'd wondered what was up with that (I miss her Season 1 hair that actually looked natural). Speaking of hair, I miss Claudia's 'do she had for the first couple of seasons. Nevertheless, Allison Scagliotti remains the best part of the show, imho. It's no wonder she went from guest-star to recurring in the first season and then was made a 'regular' by the next season. She manages to bring the funny, but also convincingly deliver heartbreaking dramatic performances when the occasion calls for it. She can do it ALL. I don't know how she hasn't become a bigger star. I was glad to see Jaime Murray's H.G Wells/Helena return (she and Joanne Kelly's Myka have off the charts smoking hot chemistry and it's a shame the show clearly wasn't ever going to 'go there' fully with them, so we just had to make do with all the things they didn't say to each other/reading between the lines). And in regards to Myka, there was this really weird cut at the end of the episode where we learned she had cancer. It was SO abrupt/out of nowhere that it literally felt like the ending of the episode had been replaced with this ending from a different episode. Yes, it adds 'drama'...but it would've been nice if there was even a *hint* that it was coming instead of feeling like when watching something and then finding the ending has been recorded over with something else. Anyway, I felt last season's final (with the warehouse EXPLODING) was probably an ending they should've saved for towards the end of the series, as I really don't see how they're going to top that (this season's ending certainly didn't). Considering I'd originally watched the first season and then lost interest, I was surprised to find that after rewatching Season 1 (as it had been so long since my original viewing), I was really getting into the show by Season 2 and thoroughly enjoyed Season 3. It's just a bit of a shame I found this season disappointing. Hopefully they can at least deliver a satisfying final season/series final. Season 5/the final season {Spoiler}Considering this season only had six episodes, it's probably no wonder things felt a bit rushed (especially near the end). They wrapped up the 'cliffhanger' from last season's final pretty quick (which was good, since it was pretty lame. I don't know WHAT Anthony Stewart Head was attempting to do with his accents as the bad guy, but I've seen him attempt an American accent in other things as well...and he just can't seem to pull it off convincingly. On top of that, he was also trying to do some other accent that I have no clue what it was trying to be. He should strictly stick to being British in the future). Myka's whole cancer scare seemed to be treated like no major thing that was also resolved quickly. Considering how out-of-left-field it the reveal of it was last season, I didn't really see what the point of it was as it really added nothing to the show at all. I can't even recall anyone but Pete even learning of it, so we were robbed of seeing her newfound 'family' reacting to this pretty devastating news. I guess they learned of it offscreen...but we certainly never saw them act like they did. There was one stand-out episode this season, which was the one where Peter, Myka and Artie got sucked into a telenovela (along with an old flame of Pete's that returned pregnant...though it wasn't his). Seemed to give the actors an excuse to go OTT with their acting...but having watched one of those types of shows myself, I'd say it was pretty accurate to the type of acting you find in such things (and kudos to them for all their Spanish speaking they did). Meanwhile, Steve got split in two and one of his selves was like a gay cliché. I was glad the show, as well as the actor playing Steve (ie. Aaron Ashmore, twin of X-Men's Shawn Ashmore - who I had mistakenly thought *played* Steve when the character was introduced in the third season and was then replaced by his brother for Season 4. I don't know why I had thought they'd switched actors, but it made me think how offended I'd be if I was Shawn, as it'd be like saying "Hey, we can just replace you with your twin and no one will know the difference"...but that turned out not to be the case and it was Aaron all along, so the point was moot), always portrayed his character in a non-clichéd way, so I guess this splitting into two halves was an excuse to allow him to go there with the role. Of course, Claudia LOVED it. Meanwhile, I was just loving Claudia (and her utilising her 'twin peaks'). Bringing Mark Sheppard back into the show as the 'big bad' for the second-last episode was rather underwhelming. Basically stuff moved from Warehouse 13 to his new one...but then he was easily defeated and all the stuff moved back to Warehouse 13. That was their BIG CLIMAX in the penultimate episode. Pretty lame. I just spent the whole time worrying about the dog...who everyone else seemed to forget about. Honestly, what was even the point of introducing a dog to the warehouse 'family'? I especially was disappointed by the pooch not appearing at the end of the very last episode - which itself was somewhat lacklustre for a 'series final', as it boiled down to the characters creating a time capsule of their 'defining moment' and this was just basically us seeing scenes supposedly from different points throughout the show that we just hadn't seen before, but were obviously filmed especially for this. Again, these were all pretty forgettable (and Pete's was a cop-out. His 'defining moment' was ALL his moments at the warehouse?). The *one* actually memorable/impressive 'defining moment' was Claudia's, which involved an artefact causing dancing girls to appear (with scary smiles) and the gang being chased by them whilst also constantly tapdancing themselves as they figured out what to do to solve the problem. It was amusing to watch (reminded me of the whole dancing-to-death thing from the BtVS musical episode). The 42nd Street performance was grand and Claudia being the one to save the day was great. Considering all the work that must've gone into that sequence...it really felt like this should've come last in the episode since it was easily the BEST of the whole lot. Instead it was first and nothing that came after could've possibly lived up to it. While it was nice to see H.G. Wells/Helena one last time at the beginning of the episode, it would've been even nice to see her share one last scene with Myka since the two actresses who played them always had the BEST sexual chemistry in the entire show. Speaking of sexual chemistry, it felt so abrupt to suddenly have Myka and Pete admit their feelings for each other. Honestly, they always felt more like siblings, I thought, so making them exchange 'I love you's in the final episode just felt like pandering to those who always thought they should end up together. I did always think that the Claudia/Artie daughter/father-like relationship was the best 'relationship' of the fore group (with the Pete/Myka relationship and Claudia Steve relationship coming in second and third). Honestly, when Artie revealed Claudia's sister was still alive at the end of last season, for a second I thought he was going to have a Darth Vader-esque "I am your father" moment (as nonsensical as that would've been). Despite his constant grumpiness towards her (though, to be fair, he was grumpy towards basically most people), it was obvious he cared about her and vice versa. They really reached the pinnacle of drama in the third season with Artie going 'evil', killing Leena (it's funny she returned in the series final simply to say via flashback that she knew she'd die in the warehouse and that it was 'okay') and Claudia having to stab him. This is another reason why the third season probably should've been the last one. That major story arc, combined with the warehouse EXPLODING, really felt like the 'biggest' the show was able to get and consequently everything that came after had less impact. Something else we could've avoided in the show had stopped at Season 3: Pete's hair this season - this show had some serious hair issues, though thankfully Claudia's never looked 'bad' (even if I did prefer the way it was back in the first couple of seasons). Speaking of Claudia, her getting her sister back just long enough to have one good day with her and then having to send her back into a coma so she didn't inadvertently hurt people with her power was another plotline that seemed like it could've done with more time. Lastly, after this whole final episode being devoted to Claudia learning she didn't *have* to be warehouse caretaker (since we saw she much-preferred being an agent instead), that lesson (and consequently the episode as a whole) felt like a complete waste since the ending showed a flash to the future with new no-name agents taking over the Pete, Myka, Artie roles and Claudia in fact ending up as warehouse caretaker after all. I guess the writers had to cobble together this episode in a hurry or something? As it really didn't feel like a proper send-off for the show. Anyway, as I said in my review for the previous season, I think the first three seasons were pretty great (with Season 3 remaining my fave), while Seasons 4 & 5 were considerably less so (though with still some good stuff included). It's funny to think that I didn't really get into the first season of this show when I originally watched it and it took me giving it another viewing before I continued onto the other seasons - which was when I really started getting into the series. It turned out to be pretty fun, mostly lighthearted, with an enjoyable group of characters and, best of all, never felt 'preachy' (like so many shows these days do). Mostly I'm glad that I got to see so much more of Allison Scagliotti (who, prior to this show, I'd only seen in one episode of Smallville, I think). She was definitely the stand-out of the series for me (and, luckily, I'll get to see her again when I do the same with Eureka as I did with this show - ie. start watching it from the first season again on DVD, after having previously only watched one and a half seasons of it, and work my way through the whole series this time since I own all five seasons. That show crossed over with this one and vice versa, so I'll get to see Claudia again in her crossover ep/s). Goodbye, show (and all your shameless Toyota product placement).
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Sept 6, 2022 3:49:33 GMT -5
Finished Season 1 of Eureka on DVD. {Spoiler}I'd previously watched this first season of the show ages ago when I first bought it (along with Season 2, I think) after it was recommended to me. I vaguely recall getting partway through Season 2 when one of the episodes seemed to have a glitch with it and I was lucky to get the thing out of the DVD/Blu-ray player. I guess that put me off watching, as I didn't go any further with the episodes. I did, however, end up buying the last three seasons on DVD at a later date with plans to eventually finish watching the series. It's been quite a long while since I did that, but after having recently made it all the way through five seasons of Warehouse 13 (which I know crossed over with Eureka at some point), I figured the next logical step was to revisit this show and do what I did with Warehouse 13 - ie. start from the beginning again...which is just as well I did, as I'd forgotten most of what occurred in this first season of the show. I remembered the characters, but that was about it. Somehow I must've made myself forget that the first episode of this show contained a bunch of things I HATE. Namely, a beautiful husky got horribly killed (when an energy bubble thing appeared in a van, transporting whatever was contained inside to another location) whilst a thieving little shit (who stole chocolate from a store, stuffed his face and then HID when everyone and their dog - well...except his own family dog, that is - were out searching for his thieving arse, only for him to be found hiding and acting like he hadn't just lost a pet), of course, survived. Talk about rage-inducing. If there's one thing I HATE, it's turds being spared whilst animals are killed (when, from what little we saw of the dog, it was a more worthwhile being who actually deserved to live. I also call BS on it not being smart enough to get out of the way of the energy thing. And it being turned into a skeleton really wasn't needed. We could've gotten the idea of what happened with just the section of the van being cut off. They didn't have to do that to the poor dog as well). Worse still, the husky wasn't the only animal fatality in the episode, as cows also got killed by this energy whatever (and worst of all, I think we were meant to find the delayed falling over of one dead cow - which had a piece missing from it - 'funny'. Sorry, sickos, it wasn't). Honestly, it's a wonder I ever made it past this first episode of the show when I originally watched it, since all this stuff which occurred would've typically been enough for me to not bother continuing. But since I'd bought the show on DVD, obviously I was going to eventually watch it (otherwise it would've been a waste of money). Colin Ferguson plays the lead character...with the *most* generic-sounding name EVER, Jack Carter (seriously, for a period of time it felt like I couldn't watch a show without either a character with the first name of 'Jack' or the last name of 'Carter' in it, so it's like the creators of this show just took the most common first and last name and slapped them together. It was funny when he asked why a mannequin being used for testing looked like him and whoever it was answered "It's generic.", since that certainly sums up his name). He does a good job with his deadpan delivery of the sarcastic comments his character makes and the overall humour in the show. Lines/moments that probably wouldn't be that funny coming from another actor are *made* funnier thanks to his delivery/reactions. He's a likeable enough character, which - since he's the lead - is pretty important. However, I'd say my 'favourite' in the show has to be his deputy, Jo Lupo (played by Erica Cerra, who I 've seen in a LOT of things, but was glad to finally see score a 'regular' gig in this show...though it's disappointing her name doesn't get included in the opening credits sequence, like she's somehow less important than those who do). Her dynamic with Jack is probably my favourite one in the show and I liked how she went from resenting him getting the job that she figured she was naturally next in line for to her begrudgingly coming to respect him (and vice versa). I did feel, though, that the episode where it built that 'trust' between them (it was a nice moment where he told her there was no one he'd rather have watching his back than her and her reaction to this - which happened to be when she and others were under the influence of some behaviour-altering gizmo) probably should've come earlier than it did. It felt like they'd been getting along in the first couple episodes and then suddenly she was back to being angry at him, so really, this probably should've been the second episode when they were still getting to know each other rather than after a few episodes. I like Jo's whole character, with her love/knowledge of guns and the fact that she's the toughest person in town...yet gets weepy watching commandos doing their thing or whatever. It was amusing to see her act totally NOT like herself in one episode (which, again, featured some behaviour-altering doohickey) and, naturally, Jack's reaction to that. It was also good that she developed a friendship with Jack's delinquent daughter, Zoe, since it made that character a bit more tolerable. The show tried to make it a 'reveal' that this kid being transported in the back of Jack's police car at the start of the episode was in fact his daughter by not having them say anything about their relationship until partway through the episode, but I thought it was pretty obvious given how they interacted. She was the typical 'moody teen' and could be quite annoying at times, but other times wasn't so bad. Although, there was an episode that came partway through the season where she and her dad seemed to talk out their issues...and, again, I felt this episode should've come earlier than it did (and I was amazed Jack refrained from making any clown-related comments regarding her totally fake-looking red hair). I have no clue if any episodes are out of order or what, but it did feel at times like that was the case with how certain characters interacted. It seemed like they'd 'regressed' somewhat in their characterisation. I'm afraid I wasn't that into the character of Allison Blake or how hard the show tried to push the 'sexual tension' between her and Jack. I never found the two of them interacting that compelling, and compared to all the other more quirky characters, hers felt pretty 'normal' (ie. 'boring'). Still, I didn't hate her or anything, it's just that I've seen her 'type' of character a million times before and she didn't really do anything 'new' with that archetype. Her ex-hubby, Nathan Stark, was pretty 'serious' most of the time too, but he did have a very dry/sarcastic humour about him on the odd occasion which kept him from being too boring. His 'frenemy' dynamic with Jack led to some amusing moments between them. And, hey, finally I found a character with the last name of 'Stark' who wasn't someone I hated. Fargo wasn't quite how I remembered him. I always thought he was just another one in the long line of 'nerd' characters who stumble over their words whilst babbling and were intended as the 'comic relief'. While he does have that typical 'nerd' quality about him, he's far less like other similar types of characters I've watched in other shows. I actually didn't even find him that funny at all. Much funnier was his house that he created (and voiced - albeit attempting to sound 'feminine') for Jack called S.A.R.A.H. and the dynamic it had with Jack (like they were an old married couple). The *one* thing I liked about Fargo was his being a fan of Sarah Michelle Gellar/Buffy (though at times it felt like this show was making fun of SMG/Buffy fans...which wasn't so funny). The character of Henry Deacon (played by Joe Morton, who's another person I've seen in quite a few things) seemed to be mainly exist to create solutions to problems and for exposition-delivering, explaining all the technobabble in the show. He did develop a friendship with Jack, which was nice...though that kinda got destroyed when he changed reality to save his love interest and that created an alternate reality in which Jack and Allison were married/expecting a kid which all got undone when Jack prevented Henry from doing it to avoid a paradox that was causing destruction. Beverly Barlowe was a pretty 'blank' type of character. We didn't get much in the way of 'emotion' from her, though it was revealed that she was a 'bad guy' of sorts (which still wasn't resolved by the end of this first season). The *one* time she actually seemed to have a bit more personality to her was when everyone (except Jack) was being affected by one of those behaviour-altering gizmos and she really had no time for everyone's issues they kept coming to her with, so she made them public knowledge (which is a big no-no when you're the town psychotherapist). There were other characters who made up the townsfolk, but the only one that really stands out (other the the most-likely-gay-but-never-explicitly-stated-as-being-such café owner, Vincent) was the so-called 'Australian' character of Taggart. Even if I hadn't seen Matt Frewer in several things before watching this show (most notably Supernatural, where he played a pretty gross/disgusting Horsemen of the Apocalypse), it still would've been immediately obvious to me he was most definitely NOT an Australian...as his attempt at an Aussie accent is, at most, one step above the 'Australian' accents in The Simpsons. Maybe to those who think Aussies sound like English, the accent he's putting on might sound halfway decent, but to anyone who actually knows what real Aussies sound like, it's a pretty weak attempt. Not sure why they couldn't have just gotten an actual Australian for the part and also maybe one a bit younger, considering how gross it is he and Jo end up sucking face in one of the last episodes of the season. She's SO out of his league it's not funny, and once again a much older guy is paired with a gorgeous younger woman. Not sure if it was the writers/creators of this show living out some fantasy or whatever, but I felt sorry for Erica Cerra. Also, the Australian stereotype wasn't particularly appreciated (why is THAT allowed/deemed 'okay' and stereotypes of people from other countries isn't, hmm?). On the whole, I think I preferred the first season of Warehouse 13 to the first season of this show. The characters just felt more like a 'family' in that other series. Plus, Claudia from that show easily beats ANY character from this show as my favourite (yes, even Jo). It was weird seeing Saul Rubinek (who played Artie in that series) show up in this series as a totally different character (sans beard). Hopefully with my rewatch of Season 2 I'll find myself getting more into this series (which is what happened with Warehouse 13) and I'm praying that this time around that hiccup with one of the episodes won't occur.
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Sept 18, 2022 12:36:43 GMT -5
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Sept 22, 2022 4:42:40 GMT -5
Finished Season 1 of Knightfall on DVD. In a thread that asked what shows we gave up on after one episode, I'd mentioned this series - as I'd watched the first episode when it originally aired on TV here quite a while back. I remember being bored by it. However, because this show seemed to be hated on by quite a lot of people for its 'inaccuracies' regarding history, and because I rarely care about such things since pretty much no historical show or movie outside of documentaries is ever 100% 'accurate', I thought maybe I'd been too harsh with judging it just based on its first episode. Anyway, both seasons were available as a DVD boxset for a good cheap price and I thought I might as well give the show another shot (also, learning that an actress I'd come to enjoy in another show I recently watched would be appearing in Season of this show gave me extra incentive). Watching the first episode again was almost like watching it anew, since I'd forgotten a lot of what happened. As it went on, though, I started recalling bits and pieces from my first viewing such as there being a farm boy (Parsifal) who pretty much signed his fiancée's (Marie) death warrant when they discussed their child/what they'd name it and they seemed too happy and carefree as he left to deliver a message to the Knights Templar. This was after they'd seen a Templar (Godfrey - whose name is mentioned SO often throughout the season you'll get sick of hearing it despite the fact that we spend so little time with his actual character) die at the hands of bad guys (who he quickly dispatched most of...but not before being fatally injured). Parisfal took Godfrey's sword, delivered it, then brought the other Templars back to his farm only to find Marie dead with a crossbow bolt through her throat. I remembered this part from my first viewing and I also remembered that Parsifal becomes very single-minded about getting revenge against the one who killed her. As the episodes went on, it became clear that this was his *only* purpose on the show, as he didn't listen to the Templars who told him not to rush into things and he just made stupid mistake after stupid mistake. In the end, he *did* get revenge against Marie's killer (in a satisfying, albeit gruesome way), but then as he learned of betrayers amongst the Knights Templar, he trusted the wrong one and paid the price by unexpected getting his fool self killed. It was quite clear to me that the people in charge of this show really didn't know what to do with his character once he'd fulfilled his promise to avenge Marie and was promptly dropped him (which was somewhat surprising to me, as usually this type of character would gradually be developed to the point where they actually learned from their mistakes, became useful and eventually turned into leader material - not so here. I imagine they realised both the character and actor weren't 'clicking' with the rest so so gave him the ol' heave-ho). Probably just as well he, since his character seemed pretty worthless. The show's lead, Landry, is played by an actor named Tom Cullen - which sounded familiar to me, but whatever things I'd seen him in...he didn't leave any sort of impression. It was the same case here. Most of the time he seemed to not really do much performance-wise, then when he *did* it was a lot of OTT yelling or overdone emotion. His character was kind of hard to like, since despite taking his vows as a Templar, he broke most of them including sleeping with the wife of the KING (who he was supposedly a loyal friend of). He fought with his fellow Templars, judging them for anything he perceived they'd done 'wrong', but at the same time *he* was doing wrong things all over the place, and although he got called out on it...that didn't really make up for his hypocrisy. Most of the season his dialogue could be summed up as "blah blah blah Grail blah blah" and, honestly, he couldn't even be trusted with hanging onto the Grail since he kept LOSING it/allowing it to be stolen numerous times. As series leads go, he was rather underwhelming. A much better character was that of one of his fellow Templars, Tancrede (played by an actor named Simon Merrells, who reminded me of the actor who played Bronn in Game of Thrones for some reason). He seemed to be everything Landry wasn't, and even though he made some questionable decisions, he still remained likeable (at least moreso than Landry, anyway). The only other Templar whose name I could even remember/bother to learn was Gawain, who in the opening battle to the series we saw save Landry and get an arrow in the leg for his trouble, causing him to have a gimpy leg...which he then proceeded to bitch about for THE REST OF THE SEASON. On the one hand, I could understand him being ticked off at Landry who opposed him on many a things and it feeling like he was ungrateful for the save, but on the other hand Gawain just came across as a whiny bitch (though he *did* get a revenge of sorts against Landry at one point, going all Misery on his leg with a hammer. The two of them faced off during at battle at the end of the season, but sadly Gawain managed to get away to annoy another day). This was another reason Tancrede came out looking the best of all the Templars. Speaking of bitching, I know people complained about everything in this show from the acting, to the 'historical inaccuracies' to the CGI (I actually had no problem with that when it was featured. Unlike some, I haven't become spoiled when it comes to judging TV series CGI. I know most shows only have a limited budget, so I'm not expecting movie-quality effects from most TV series. I thought it was fine). In a weird coincidence, an actor who I'd seen in two shows I'd watched recently (the Upstairs Downstairs revival and The Frankenstein Chronicles) by the name of Ed Stoppard appeared in this series as King Philip (it's not like I was purposely watching shows with him in them, it just worked out that way), who seemed decent enough for most of the season but then once he found out about his wife, Queen Joan, cheating on him with his supposed friend, Landry, it was like he flipped a switch all of a sudden and decided "Okay, time to be evil!" as he really didn't take too kindly to this revelation that not only was someone he trusted boffing his wife (which rubbed even more salt into the wound due to the fact that she hadn't been in hubby's bed for at least two years or so), but she was also carrying Landry's child. By the last few episodes, Kingy was torturing the Queen's handmaiden in front of her, being an abusive husband and then after pummeling Landry's face for a good long while in the final as his wife gave birth, he stabbed her in her side with a sword when she begged him to allow Landry to live (though he rightly pointed out she was using the love he once felt for her to save the life of her current love, Landry - which was pretty rich). Suffice to say, he went full-blown villain by the end. As for the Queen, I found her rather plain/boring for the majority of the season...though I did like her with her handmaiden (played by an actress I recalled from the 2015 Poldark remake - and considering that was quite a while ago and she didn't play an overly 'big' role, it just shows that sometimes actors *can* leave an impression no matter how small their role is. Take note, Tom Cullen!), Sophie, whose days I knew were most likely numbered since she was helping the Queen to get away from her now supremely a-holey husband, the King. Unfortunately, the Queen's bratty, conniving daughter spied on her when she was discussing her escape plan with her handmaiden (THIS is why you check your doors/walls don't have peepholes!) and she reported back to her father, outing them. The actress playing Princess Isabella in this first season, Sabrina Bartlett, was another one I knew from the 2015 version of Poldark. She played a thoroughly unlikeable character with seemingly no redeeming qualities in the first season of that show and I was pretty relieved when she finally met her demise. I've seen her in some other things too, I think, and while I don't necessarily *hate* her...there's something about her that makes most of the characters she plays unlikeable (even when they're not supposed to be unlikeable). I think the best part she's played was that blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in Game of Thrones. I'll admit that I found her character here somewhat interesting when she conspired with her father's scheming counsellor/lawyer, De Nogaret, to do away with her soon-to-be-hubby in an elaborate ruse involving her seemingly being kidnapped in a carriage, her doomed hubby-to-be coming to her 'rescue', only for him to realise she was setting him up as she leapt from the carriage and then it exploded due to being doused with 'Greek fire'. She then was absent from some episodes, her mother was given an ultimatum by her cousin where she was to either turn over Isabella (in return for her murdering her cousin's son) or she would get stabbed in the baby. The Queen had a counter-offer/third option - namely offing her cousin to keep her daughter safe (though it seemed like her cousin was reconsidering being so harsh towards her) and in return her beeyotch of an offspring ratted her out to the King. De Nogaret was the typical weaselly type of character, and I was glad that his true self was revealed mid-season, but naturally he escaped death and was soon back in the King's good graces, so it felt rather pointless. Still, he's one of the more interesting characters (though there was a VERY unpleasant-to-watch dead horse that had been beheaded in an episode and I'm not sure how much of a role he played in that, but even if he didn't...I still can't say I 'like' his character, but at least he's not as boring as some of the others). Landry's mother who was revealed towards the end of the season proved pretty handy with a crossbow, so she actually felt less boring than Landry did. There were a couple of female Saracen ninjas (or something similar) who got phased out after playing significant parts, a Pope (played by the Mr. Carson actor from Downton Abbey) who wasn't very Pope-like (what with the murdering of Godfrey, which it was revealed he was behind), TONS of weirdly purple-ish blood splashed over all the Templars during their fight scenes (they kind of went overboard with it) and some really dodgy dialogue Landry spouted in the season final as he held the dying Queen, who he tried to save by having her drink from the Grail (which had been recovered for the umpteenth time) only for it fail to heal her and then he petulantly threw it against a tree, shattering it (THANKS A BUNCH, LANDRY! All those Templars who died to protect/retrieve it were, I'm sure, THRILLED with that). Was the Grail real or fake and did it magically heal Joan's child - which managed to be cut out of her corpse miraculously still alive - or was it just luck? Who knows! And some random dude found a teeny-weeny message rolled up in a metal cylinder inside the bottom of the broken Grail, read it...then swallowed it, CONTAINER AND ALL (dude, just swallow the paper. It'd go down much easier...and certainly be less uncomfortable when it eventually comes back out). Despite the admittedly MANY flaws this first season of the show had, I found myself sort of into it and didn't really doze off when watching (which I was guilty of doing with the last show I watched on DVD, Seasons 1 & 2 of The Frankenstein Chronicles - an entirely pointless series which I wouldn't recommend anyone checking out, despite it featuring Sean Bean as its lead. Talk about a waste!). The second season of this show features both Mark Hamill and an actress who I've become fond of (taking over the role as Princess Isabella), which I'm looking forward to.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Sept 24, 2022 16:43:59 GMT -5
Finished Season 2/the final season of Knightfall on DVD. Once I finished Season 1, I went straight onto Season 2. I'd read about some recastings and other changes made well before watching, but even if I hadn't, it would've been immediately evident from the opening battle in the first episode of this second season where it's Templars vs. the King's men and Landry (now with a thicker beard) vs. King Philip (with new facial hair of his own). It also soon became obvious this was a dream sequence when the King bested Landry (I figured if this weren't a dream, then it made Landry look like a pretty lame fighter). Naturally, soon as he's stabbed by the King, Landry wakes up in reality and there's boring stuff with his newborn kid who miraculously survived the sword to its mother's stomach (that may or may not have been thanks to the water Landry made her drink from the maybe real/maybe fake Grail). Poor Tancrede (still the best of ALL the Templars in this), getting saddled with taking care of Landry's child. I guess the writers realised how unlikeable Landry was in Season 1, so for the first part of this season he spent it 'repenting'/'being humbled'/'learning humility' after throwing himself at the mercy of the other Templars and begging to rejoin since they'd kicked him out for all his vow-breaking he did. This first episode also saw the introduction of Mark Hamill's character, Talus, who's the 'initiate master' that trains all the Templar initiates, whipping them into shape through the usual tactics these hardened/grizzled teacher types implement (namely treating them in such a rough way that it verges on abuse). If people thought he was old and crotchety in The Last Jedi, this is like that dialed up to ELEVEN. He also seemed to be using a variation of his voice as The Joker from Batman: The Animated Series. His most ridiculous rule? That when the initiates ate the slop they were served as food, they were only allowed 'seven chews per bite'...no more, no less (and if you tried for eight, he stuck his finger in your mouth until you barfed it up). How messed up a rule is that? What if you only needed three chews? That means four more unnecessary chews! If you've seen any show or movie with a tough drill sergeant type, then you basically know the way this goes with him being hard on the initiates (especially Landry) and making their lives as miserable as possible. However, it wasn't long before Landry was taking charge of the other initiates, since he obviously was well-experienced and knew things they had no clue about, advising them how best not to die in battle, even finding ways around Talus' seemingly impossible-to-complete tasks. Unfortunately, some initiates didn't listen to Landry's advice and they were all punished for it, but eventually they went from excluding him from eating with them to looking to him as their de facto 'leader'. One of the most amazing feats Landry accomplished was being the bottom of a human ladder so the others could climb on top of each other to reach a wall no one had been able to climb (whilst it was raining). Not sure how Landry managed to not only survive all these guys standing on top of him, but also last long enough when the one who was tasked with making it to the top ended up falling and he had to start again (then there was the small matter of each man pulling themselves up the rope that was lowered down by the first one to the top - I imagine Landry's arms shouldn't have even been functioning after having the weight of umpteen guys on his shoulders...but we cut away before seeing how that went). The most important part of all this was that it seemed to earn him Talus' respect. Was it realistic? Hardly, but given all the other crazy things that occurred in this show, I just shrugged it off. Mark Hamill managed to breathe some life into the first four episodes of this season, which felt as though they were mostly spent on all this training of new Templars. Without him being amusingly a-holey to everyone (and cussing more than you'd expect to hear from the mouth of Luke Skywalker), things would've been pretty boring. I was bummed when he departed after four episodes, but thankfully that wasn't the last we saw of him. Eventually, the initiates completed Templar College, with Landry among them (so it took him four whole episodes to get back to what he'd once been). One neat part was the inclusion of lepers in an episode where, despite their affliction, they seemed like pretty cool/decent guys and it was nice that Landry said they needn't have spared the Templars their unsightly visage by keeping their masks on in their own home. Speaking of 'visages', there was some changing of looks/appearances going on as far as King Philip and the people he surrounded himself with were concerned. In a bizarre case of 'swapsies', it appeared Philip traded his clean-shaveness and long hair with his counsellor/lawyer, De Nogaret, for his short hair and beard. De Nogaret especially looked weird to me now beardless and with longer locks. As was expected, Princess Isabella was recast from Sabrina Bartlett in Season 1 with Genevieve Gaunt in Season 2 (who I came to like after watching her in a show called The Royals - seems she just can't escape playing a royal - and was one of the reasons I decided to give this show another go). Does she look anything like Sabrina Bartlett? Nope, but who cares? It was a definite upgrade, and with her new appearance came an even more evil personality as demonstrated by the fact that she held a serious grudge when her brother, Prince Louis (who we'd never met before this episode and I'm pretty sure wasn't even mentioned last season) turned up with his wife, Queen Margaret...who made the mistake of 'patronising'/talking down to Isabella by saying there'd always be a place for her in her own home. Basically lowkey saying, "Yeah, I'll be Queen and you'll still just be a Princess. Nyah." - or at least that's the way Isabella evidently took it. This then led to her 'befriending' Margaret under the guise of 'sisterhood', inviting her to dinner, then promptly drugging her and leaving her in a room with two guys who clearly had their way with her unconscious self. And if that wasn't enough, Isabella fooled these rapists into thinking she'd run away with them (giving them each a ring from a three ring set that when put together looked like the symbol from the TV series Charmed), only for her to gladly have them executed, thus tying up any loose ends (and the ring she pretended was hers? Actually had Margaret's name inscribed on the inside of it so help with the lie that she'd been fooling around with them behind her husband's back). Suffice to say Isabella was a nasty piece of work, but at least less annoying than she was in Season 1 (thanks to Genevieve Gaunt's portrayal). The last time we saw her was when her father reminded her to 'be the wolf' (after we'd heard a story early in the season about everyone having inside of them two wolves - one black and one white - and that whole deal about which one you 'feed' more. I remember first hearing this story - except it was with bears instead of wolves - in the 2020 X-Men movie The New Mutants) and this was obviously a nod to her becoming the 'She-Wolf of France' which she'd eventually become known as (considering she'd been against getting shipped off to England by her father to marry a 'known sodomite' at the start of this season, and he threatened her if she didn't do it, I imagine she was now at the stage where she'd be able to handle her future hubby given how ruthless we'd seen her be). Meanwhile, Louis was dispatched to go kill children that had been baptised on a certain date because the King eventually discovered that his wife's child that she'd gotten pregnant with from Landry was still alive (he'd assumed it'd died since he SHOVED A SWORD into her belly last season). Since Landry had Tancrede deliver the child to the nuns (one of which Tancrede had history with/had a thing for, but unlike Landry, he didn't give into his impulses - another reason he was a much better Templar), they became a target (thanks, Landry!) and had to go on the run to escape Louis. At one stage Landry told Louis the truth about the King being the one who killed his mother, but Louis refused to believe this since his father had led him to believe Landry was his mother's murderer. Even weirder than Louis managing to disappear in the blink of an eye after shooting an arrow at Landry was Landry managing to shoot Louis after catching up with him again...and then not finishing him off despite the threat he posed to Landry's child and the nuns. It would've just taken a second, but no, Landry wasted time hesitating and then left him be. Just when you thought Louis might've gotten a clue about his father's true evil nature (as if his father tasking him with killing infants wasn't already enough of a clue - which Landry pointed out to him), he *still* continued doing his father's bidding. However, he did go ask a prisoner to tell him if he'd witnessed his father killing his mother - one little snag: the guy was tongueless (which I'm pretty sure Louis actually saw happen, as his father cut the guy's tongue out in the first episode this season because he had witnessed the King killing the Queen and was spreading this news which was totally messing with the King's narrative of how events went down). Why Louis asked somewhat without a tongue to 'tell' him something, I have no idea. Eventually he gave the guy his ring and he cut the symbol of the crown into the prison floor and THEN Louis asked for confirmation of his father being his mother's killer and the guy nodded in response. Louis really could've saved time by starting with this simple 'yes' or 'no' question. There was another time-wasting scene with Louis tracking the Templars at one stage, going all CSI with examining the hoofprints in the ground and fibers snared on tree branches - all in slow-mo, so it was really dragged-out. The King was a pretty pathetic villain, since all of his evil schemes basically just boiled down to him lying about things and all his evil plots depended on those lies. There was the lie about Landry killing Queen Joan, then thanks to Gawain (who was still his annoying self this season, teaming up with the King to take out his former brothers, the Templars) he learned of some heretic belief with a two-skulled something or other that was used as evidence that the Templars were no good (even though this whole thing was fabricated, with them crafting this double-skulled thingy whatsit), then there was a lie to the new Pope (after De Nogaret killed the previous one because he'd had De Nogaret's parents burned at the stake when he was a kid) that he delivered to the Templars whereby they would be given a 'fair trial' if they surrendered...which some of them foolishly did (including their not-so-wise Grandmaster), despite Landry's warnings *not* to do so, only for him to turn out to be right and they got captured/imprisoned, tortured, killed (or all three) with no intention of there being any sort of 'fair trial' for them. So basically, the King's just a big fat LYING LIAR WHO LIES and that was his entire shtick. Sure, this season tried to make him out to be some kind of 'badass' by having him torture/kill people with his own hands (at one point he stuck Landry in an iron maiden and slowly drove the spikes inside it into him...but then released him), but he still came across as rather lame. His fatal mistakes were imprisoning Gawain and having him tortured with a nail hammered into his gimpy leg (which he'd only just had come good again thanks to the King's doctors giving him stuff to inject into it) as punishment for failing to deliver Landry, beating up De Nogaret (for failing to do the same) and imprisoning Louis' wife, Margaret, after she was framed by Isabella as having 'cheated' on Louis (who didn't believe it and could tell Isabella was behind it, making a thinly-veiled threat towards her in the final episode...which we'll never know if he delivered on now that the show's prematurely ended). When he eventually found his wife, she'd already slit her own wrists after having been calling out to him for ages (you just didn't wait long enough, Margaret!). So by turning these three guys who had previously been loyal to him into enemies, there was no one to protect the King when Landry came back to face off against him (both De Nogaret and Louis purposely walked out and closed the doors behind them to leave Landry alone with Philip). Before finally reaching this last confrontation between the two, we'd had four episodes of initiates in Templar training, two episodes of battle scenes, one episode of torture and this last one kind of involved all of the above (well...except for the initiate Templar training, of course, since they were now all official Templars - none of which I particularly cared about or even bothered to learn the names of despite the show's attempts to *make* me care about them. Some betrayed others, some I got mixed up with each other and most died. It was nice to see Talus/Mark Hamill return to save the remaining ones from burning at the stake (though he was a bit late to save a couple of ones who got roasted first), revealing a big-arse crossbow at his disposal that he used to take out several bad guys...but failed to kill the King. However, he made up for this by taking out a whole group of guys by himself and I was amused by the look he gave as he walked off (like Hamill was thinking, "THIS is the sort of thing people wanted to see me do in TLJ."). One woman, who Louis widowed and also killed the child of in his quest to get rid of all the babies that might've been Landry's (at his father's behest earlier in the season), ended up becoming the Prince's 'pet' after he chained her up, subjected her to his monologuing and I think there was something about him hoping she'd help with his erectile disfunction problem he had...or something? Not real sure what his goal was with her, but the Templars freed her and she gave them sanctuary in her home...which was totally rendered moot when she screamed (I forget why), thus alerting those who were searching for them to their presence in her house (luckily the King's men were pretty easily fooled with some illogical story she spun them to get rid of them). Still, what's the point of a hideout if you basically go screaming "We're in here!"? Though she wasn't the WORST person in the final - no, that would be some little shit who kept yelling out to the King's men every time he spotted the Templars trying to evade them. I wish that rat bastard had been on the receiving end of multiple arrows instead of poor Tancrede (who was managing to function pretty well for someone who'd already been tortured by having his head cut open and a piece of skin peeled back, exposing the inside of his head), who got off the boat the few surviving Templars were escaping on to go hold the dying nun he fancied in his arms after she too got shot - albeit with only *one* arrow (lame! It took many arrows to kill Tancrede!). If there had been a Season 3, I doubt it would've been much fun to watch without Tancrede (I would've gladly traded him for Gawain dying instead. What was Season 3 going to be, just him and Landry continuing to bitch at each other about who wronged who first? No thanks!). The final scene was the previously-mentioned fight between Landry and Philip - who got a few good licks in, but at the end was no match for Landry who ran him through with his sword, then in a shot mirroring Landry's dream from the start of this season, he stood over Philip's body and brought his sword down on him to deliver the final blow...then the episode abruptly ended. I don't know whether the showrunners knew this show was cancelled or cancellation was pretty likely or what, but on the whole it was a fairly decent 'end' to the series (at least Philip was finally dispatched) whilst leaving some loose threads in case they came back for another season. While this show was by no means 'great' (or even that 'good', really), I certainly didn't hate it like others did and remain glad that I gave the series a second chance.
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Sept 29, 2022 12:16:36 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2022 15:18:10 GMT -5
I saw this chart on Reddit but I don’t really understand how it works. Rings and Dragon each got over ten million views for their premieres while She Bulk only got 1.5. It even has a super low rating on IMDb and RT user reviews. How can it possibly be ranked so high here?
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Sept 29, 2022 15:23:21 GMT -5
i think that's google searches
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