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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Aug 25, 2023 6:07:00 GMT -5
Finished Season 1 of The Strain on Blu-ray. I’d originally watched this when it aired on TV, same with Season 2. However, they stopped showing the series on TV here after Season 2 and I was forced to buy Season 3 on Blu-ray, then Season 4 on DVD (because they didn’t even bother releasing the final season on Blu-ray). I finished the series that way, then thought since I had the last two seasons, I may as well get the first two seasons so I could do a rewatch of the complete series one day - which is what I’ve decided to do now. When I began this rewatch, I remembered some things, but I was surprised by how much I’d forgotten of how the show began. Things started off rather slow, as the entire first episode was basically just setup of the whole vampire strain getting out into the public. These early episodes weren’t the most exciting thing ever...but they weren’t quite as boring as I remembered them, so that was a plus. Somehow I'd forgot that the whole thing started on a plane (it was reminding me of the very first episode Fringe, which I *do* remember the opening scene of quite vividly in all its literally jaw-dropping gory glory (though this show has some surprising moments of gore too. I totally wasn't expecting a head-mashing at the end of the first episode. I don't know if it was edited when the episode aired on TV here or if I'd just forgotten about it, but that was definitely a "Holy shit!" moment for me). The one thing I HATED, that I definitely remembered from when I originally watched the first season of this show on TV, was that a dog dies in the first few episodes thanks to one of these newly-turned vamps (called ‘strigoi’ in the show). I was prepared for it, but still fast-forwarded past the part where its body was shown. I just don’t see the need for animal violence/death in a show like this when we *know* that people who’ve been turned are bad news...so what does showing a dead animal add that we couldn't have got without it? It’s enough seeing all the people who get killed - that gets the message across that strigoi are bad news. The inclusion of needless animal death just seemed gratuitous (I guess the one ‘good’ thing to come out of it was seeing the dog’s owner get revenge on a neighbour who’d obviously regularly been complaining about the animal and who it was revealed had HIT the poor pooch. Seeing its owner trick the neighbour into a shed with her newly-turned strigoi husband to be food for him was a fitting comeuppance for the animal-abuser. There's a few people I'd like to do that to, for sure. You hurt an animal? You DESERVE to be eaten!). Although I didn’t mind the team of Ephraim ‘Eph’ Goodweather (Corey Stoll), Nora Martinez (Mía Maestro) and Jim Kent (Sean Astin), I was just itching to get to the point in the story where they met and teamed up with Abraham Setrakian (David Bradley), Vasiliy Fet (Kevin Durand) and, most importantly (to me, anyway), Dutch Velders( Ruta Gedmintas). I think what spurred on this rewatch for me was the fact that there was disappointingly little of Ruta Gedmintas (who I became a fan of thanks to this series) in the last show I watched on Blu-ray ( His Dark Materials) that I was eager to see more of her and I *knew* she was much more prominent in this show. Of course, she doesn’t start out that way. We don’t meet her character until episode 4, then she disappears for a while and doesn’t show up again until episode 8. She’s only a ‘guest star’ this season, but evidently the showrunners realised her character added something that was missing (I watched behind the scenes features where one of the creators mentioned they felt another female character was needed in the show - which I agree with), and by the end of the season she became a crucial member of the show (I think she's upgraded to 'regular' status next season). Eph and his family woes weren’t particularly interesting (he's a recovering alcoholic separated from his wife, Kelly, and fighting for shared custody of their son, Zach, while she has a new dude she was involved with. But on the upside Eph gets to live out every man's fantasy when it comes to the new man in an ex's life by decapitating the guy...after he was turned into a strigoi). Nora, meanwhile, had a mother with dementia/Alzheimer's to take care of (I’m in a similar situation, thus I was able to sympathise with her situation). I wonder if the showrunners were relying on us as an audience to automatically think Jim Kent was a ‘good guy’ simply because he was played by Sean ‘Samwise Gamgee’ Astin? I remember it being somewhat surprising that it turned out he played a part in the outbreak, giving the ‘okay’ to a van that was carrying the originator of the virus (the original strigoi, called - rather unoriginally - The Master) in a giant wooden box/coffin. Not that he *knew* that’s what was in the van, but just the fact that he was doing the bidding of a clearly evil German strigoi-in-human-disguise, Thomas Eichorst, made him enough of a person with questionable morals. However, the whole reason he was doing it was to help his wife who had cancer get treatment - which made him at least somewhat sympathetic. Fet was a character I wasn’t real sure how I felt about when I originally watched Season 1, and I think that was partially due to me not having been a fan of Kevin Durand in much of what I’d seen him in prior to this show. I always remembered him as a loathsome, seemingly unkillable bastard in Lost who killed a character I’d liked and I guess that made it hard for me to see him as ‘likeable’ in anything. Here he played a rat catcher of Ukrainian descent and I think I was able to enjoy him a bit more from the start this time around since I knew he’d become more likeable as the show went on. It was also interesting seeing the early beginnings of the Fet/Dutch relationship that would eventually develop. She was tasked by Eldritch Palmer (a rich old dying guy in league with both Eichorst and The Master who wanted to be made immortal, but by season's end just had to settle for having his health restored which allowed him such perks as having the strength to casually toss a lady off a rooftop - which was the most entertaining I found him all season) to take down the internet as part of their plan. Once she learned the reason for it, she turned against them and joined the side of the good guys. I find it interesting how people held the part she played (in the bad guys' plan) against her while they seemed willing to forgive the fact that it was the character of Gus who drove the van that got The Master over water which allowed him to move freely through the city. Speaking of Gus, while I tried to tough out sitting through his storyline, it got to the point where I was so bored by his storyline that I ended up fast-forwarding most of his scenes after the first few episodes (just as I’d done when I originally watched the first season). The best part is that since he’s SO separated from the rest of the characters, his scenes are easily skippable and you lose virtually nothing important by not watching them. While what had come before was decent (and at least not as mind-numbingly BORING as I found the first season of The Walking Dead to be when I watched it on TV), I felt things didn’t really get going until episode 8 when the main characters (except for Gus, of course) were brought together at a gas station convenience store. What I think made it so much better was seeing all these different characters having to work together to stay alive with a bunch of strigoi outside itching to make meals of them. It was their different dynamics when interacting that made this the first where I really felt the show found its 'groove'. Setrakian, naturally, clashed with Eph and Nora, since he didn’t have time for sentimentality while they cared *too* much at times - especially when Jim got infected with a worm (it’s actually amazing that ALL of them weren’t infected considering that when the strigoi shoot out their tentacle-like ‘stingers’, they’re covered in their white blood and crawling with worms that by all rights should’ve landed on the skin of those who miraculously managed to narrowly avoid being stung by them. Same goes for when they behead strigoi and their blood spurts everywhere. Logically, I think ALL these characters would’ve been infected many times over and they should really be wearing hazmat suits the entire time they’re fighting the strigoi - but that just wouldn’t be practical/look ‘cool’, and so we’re required to suspend disbelief that NONE of them - except poor Jim, of course - ever got splattered with a single strigoi worm. Yes, they were pretty heavily clothed...but what about their faces? They should've at least worn masks). It made sense that Setrakian and Fet more or less got along since they were like-minded in their shoot/behead first, ask questions later attitude towards those infected. While it was probably easy for viewers to hate Eph and Nora because they were outraged by Fet shooting Jim dead without warning, I could understand them being angry that they didn’t get to have any proper last words/goodbyes with him before he got unceremoniously ‘put down’ by some stranger who didn’t even know him. Yes, what Fet did was the 'practical' thing, and dismissing their anger is something we as viewers could easily do, but if we were in their situation (ie. a close friend being killed by someone none of us even knew), I think we wouldn’t be so quick to judge. Fet not having any connection with Jim allowed him to do what had to be done, but as the series progressed we would see that *all* the characters had people they connected with/formed attachments to and not even Fet was above succumbing to that 'weakness'. It was this mix of different personalities between the characters which made the group work. Although it was a blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment, we did see that Jim’s death even bothered Dutch (despite her only having just met him). She later mentioned it to Nora, as it was clear she didn’t think much of Dutch and had dismissed her (as did Eph, which later led to Dutch leaving the group for a short while before eventually returning). I liked what Ruta Gedmintas brought to the table in regards to her character. She, like Fet, was a bit more ‘entertaining’ of a personality when contrasted against Eph’s, Nora’s and Setrakian’s more ‘serious’ characters. She gave some good snark, proved a quick learner when it came to the art of taking out strigoi (she was doing a pretty decent job shooting/beheading them by season’s end) and I appreciated her backstory that she regaled Fet with whilst performing her tech wizardry at one point (just in that one scene you could tell they had enough chemistry that it made sense why the writers eventually hooked them up). She had a plan to get word out to the public about the strigoi threat, thus proving herself a useful member of the team. Not so useful were the characters of Nora’s mum and Eph’s son. Unfortunately, the wrong one wound up infected and Nora was forced to cut her own mother’s head off (Mía Maestro did a hell of a job conveying all the emotions her character was feeling in that moment, as she had to do the impossible - ie. make it believable that a daughter could decapitate her own mother who’d just been turned into a vampire after having only just recently learned that vampires were even real. While I’m sure a lot of people dismissed Nora as ‘boring’ and ‘useless’, she was the 'moral compass' that the group desperately needed to prevent them from becoming just kill-happy vigilantes. It was a pretty thankless role, but I felt Maestro did the best she could with the material she was given and I really felt for her). Practically, Nora’s mum just wouldn’t have worked as part of the group long-term, so I understood her getting the chop. It’s just too bad it wasn’t ZACH instead, as I know from having watched the entire show previously that his death in this first season would’ve saved COUNTLESS LIVES, greatly improved the series, and rid us of the future antichrist of a character that he’d become from Season 2 onwards after being recast for god-knows-what reason. Seriously, WHY did they recast? The kid who played him this season actually wasn’t terrible and I was pretty shocked that Zach wasn’t *too* annoying (at least not until the season final when he faked needing his asthma inhaler just so they’d take him home and he could grab the family photo album. I guess the first indicators that he’d turn into the mum-obsessed monster he’d be were here, as he lost it when Eph tried to put down his newly-turned strigoi ex-wife...but failed). Speaking of failures, the season-long lead-up to the gang’s battle with The Master ended up being rather underwhelming, since they were counting on the sunlight to burn him to a crisp just as it did with all the other strigoi, only to find that he managed to survive it (though it looked as if it hurt quite a bit, at least). Obviously the showrunners wanted to draw out his existence as the main antagonist in the show and thus couldn’t off him in the first season, but I feel they could’ve at least had the gang do more serious damage to him or something so it didn’t feel like such a letdown. I guess they figured having the characters off a bunch of strigoi before taking him on made up for their lack of victory (though there was an unintentional funny moment where it simply looked like someone had hit ‘rewind’, as all the minions of The Master walked backwards when he was being hurt by sunlight. For a show that did such a great job with its creature effects/makeup, this particular moment was disappointingly dodgy-looking). That one questionable effect aside, this series really showed how far things had progressed with TV at the time it originally aired, and that we could get this sort of high quality CGI/makeup that previously only the movies would've been able to afford. I appreciated the effort that went into making the strigoi look as nasty as possible, and there were more than a few things they had in common with the Reapers from Blade II (considering Guillermo del Toro was involved with both, it’s no surprising). Regarding The Master - whenever I hear that name, by mind automatically goes to the 'Big Bad' from Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer since he was also called the Master and had a similar look to this one (well...the back of his head, at least - which is all we saw after episodes of him remaining hidden under a hooded cloak, but then eventually his full visage was revealed and I actually didn't mind it too much. I saw others complain, but I thought he had a unique look. Coupled with his gigantic size, it really made him look like a monster. I also thought his mouth was what Apocalypse from the X-Men should've had in live-action...but instead we got stuck with what looked like a relative of Ivan Ooze). Overall, I liked the ‘atmosphere’ the show had going on, especially when it came to the darker scenes with the eerie green lighting that I’ve come to associate with del Toro. It brought some of the ‘horror' feel back to the world of vampires that’d been missing for some time. As far as the baddies go, Richard Sammel was quite the find as Eichorst, giving off this kind of Christoph-Waltz-as-Hans-Landa-in- Inglouriou Basterds vibe, playing a ‘former’ Nazi who had history with a much younger Setrakian (as we saw via flashbacks) and was ‘polite’ in the way he acted. Since he spent the majority of his time in human guise, it was good that they showed us in one of the earliest episodes how he really looked and that it took a considerable makeup job to make himself look like a regular (albeit still creepy-looking) person. I’d totally forgotten all of the flashback stuff, so it was like watching it for the first time for me this second go-round. We saw young Setrakian held in the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, where he was tormented by Eichorst during the day and at night The Master would whoosh amongst the bunks of those slumbering, all billowy cloak and King of Pain, finding victims. Setrakian was then entrusted with creating The Master’s ornate coffin by Eichorst, who he actually shared at least one or two exchanges with where they spoke civilly with each other, but then The Master crushed Setrakian’s hands and thus he outlived his usefulness but narrowly managed to escape execution by firing squad. I have to say, it was a bit of a jolt going from him as being fairly young to quite a deal older between one episode and the next in the flashbacks, but we saw him leave his wife and children at home alone in his pursuit of The Master which, obviously, wasn’t a smart move and naturally his family got turned (though I felt more sorry for the poor white horse he purchased, then tied up outside the well he went down and thus left it at the mercy of Eichorst who we saw had gutted it once Setrakian eventually pulled himself out of the hole. That poor animal didn’t stand a CHANCE, and once again this animal death was unnecessary since they could’ve just had Setrakian get there on foot and I don’t recall even seeing him riding the horse - so its sole purpose seemed to be to die horribly and make it harder for him to get home in a rush). While the majority of the time old man Setrakian seemed pretty calm, cool and collected, we *did* see him lose it at times as he still had that singlemindedness whenever it came to The Master (at one point he was willing to go all suicidal - taking the others with him - when he wanted to go through a pile of hundreds of strigoi just to get to The Master). While most viewers probably enjoyed Setrakian's antagonism with Eph and camaraderie with Fet, the dynamics that *I* found the most interesting with his character were the ones we didn’t get a whole lot of - namely him & Nora (I appreciated seeing his reaction to Nora offing her mum, since he could sympathise with that - having had to do the same to his wife & kids) as well as him & Dutch (he seemed to take her confession of being the one behind the internet blackout the best, as it didn’t appear he judged her too harshly/held it against her like Eph and Nora did). I wish we could’ve seen more one-on-one scenes between Setrakian and these two women, as I felt there was some interesting stuff to explore there. I was bummed when, by the end of the season, the gang were forced to leave Setrakian’s lair (which Dutch amusingly observed as being like the Batcave when she first entered it), since it was a pretty awesome-looking hideout, being a pawnshop with all manner of ancient things (speaking of ancient things, he had a cane which had a hidden sword made of silver inside it with the coolest-looking handle EVER - an elongated neck that curled around with a wolf's head at the end of it. He'd also put together silver-shooting nail guns which came in handy for the others to use when fighting the strigoi). It should also be mentioned he had the worm-infested heart of his wife he’d cut out after beheading her and kept it in a jar, which he fed with drops of his blood to keep it 'alive'. I appreciated this time around seeing things that would prove relevant in Season 2 like the whole heart thing (Palmer takes it when he and his goons raid the place, and he displays it on his mantle - which is ironic since I know he’ll be displaying the heart of someone *he* cares about just like that by Season 2’s end) and the bit with the gang on the train tracks seeing a strigoi getting fried and Eph saying not even they deserved such a nasty death (which makes it all the more sad that a certain main character will meet such a demise in the Season 2 final - unfortunately, NOT Zach). One could almost think of these as ‘foreshadowing’...but I doubt the writers planned that far ahead and it’s more likely the stuff in Season 2 was just intended as 'callbacks' to these moments. On the whole, this was a fairly solid first season. A lot of it was like watching it for the first time for me, but I have a feeling I’ll recognise more stuff from Season 2. As far as this being compared to the first season of TWD goes...I was far less bored watching this.
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Aug 29, 2023 23:01:41 GMT -5
honestly I don't think i *need* to convince you
think about your favorite shows ever
did they have one great actor?
maybe two?
succession got 14 best acting nominations in season 3
it won best writing all 3 seasons
it is pretty easily the best television show i have ever seen
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Sept 1, 2023 4:12:43 GMT -5
Finished Season 2 of The Strain on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}So, after finishing my rewatch of Season 1, I went straight into Season 2 and was surprised again by how much I’d forgotten as the season began with showing the backstory of how The Master came to be this hulking giant he currently is and it turns out he was just a dude who was cursed with gigantism, he was the original owner of what would become Setrakian's cane and he became a strigoi thanks to venturing into a cave where he unfortunately happened upon a creature feasting on someone's face (I certainly wasn’t expecting that unpleasantness - I have to wonder again whether the aired version I watched on TV originally was edited or I just completely blocked this moment from my memory) and then turned the gentle giant into a strigoi by puking up worms in his face, transferring its ‘essence’ or whatever, thus making him into The Master. This showed us that The Master we’d come to know wasn’t the first body he’d had, and he did this to keep going whenever a vessel was all used up or damaged beyond repair...which apparently his current form had been after prolonged exposure to daylight during last season’s final (so, it would appear the gang actually managed to do more damage to him than I’d originally thought). This leads to him eventually doing the worm-puking-in-face-trick on a character from last season (who I just thought of as ‘that Goth douchebag’- which Eph called him at one point) named Bolivar. The character was pretty much a nonentity to me all of Season 1, he made so little impact, and even turning him into the new vessel for The Master didn’t make him anymore interesting, imho. I preferred the big guy, as at least he looked formidable, whereas the Bolivar version (to quote a new character who was added this season) 'lacked intimidation'. The show had something unique-looking going with their Season 1 Master and it’s a shame we lost that/he was replaced by a much lamer version. Though it was interesting seeing Eichorst reduced to a pitiful version of himself when he'd been expecting to become The Master's new vessel but was passed over for Goth dude. I think he was even crying over the empty shell The Master had formerly inhabited, which was definitely something we hadn't seen from Eichorst before. As for the good guys - a big deal was made in the Season 1 final, following their failed attempt to kill The Master, where Eph took a drink (while Nora was begging him not to) after he’d been sober for whatever period of time in an effort to get shared custody of his kid. I think Eph spent most of this season drinking/getting drunk (they really hammered home how much he’d fallen off the wagon by regularly showing him boozing it up), so this added to the list of things that made him a rather crap lead character. He and Nora figure if they can't create a cure for those infected, they could at least use their knowledge of viruses to create one that’d take out as many strigoi as possible. At one point an old couple they were helping got turned and were coerced into lending their bodies to Eph & Nora's experimentation on strigoi with this virus they were cooking up. Since the old couple were going to die anyway, it seemed like a way to use their deaths to help mankind (we saw how much it affected Nora, while Eph ended up strapping the husband onto a table against his will after he’d changed his mind). Eventually, they tested the virus out in the open and it seemed to work, spreading from strigoi to strigoi (creating gross pustules which Eph just HAD to poke with his sword, making them ooze). But after giving himself a new haircut, shaving off his wig I mean hair, it seemed Eph abandoned this plan and was much more intent on assassinating Eldritch Palmer simply because he was involved in the deaths of an old friend of Eph’s (played, to my surprise, by Tom Ellis from Lucifer...with an American accent) and some other chick he only just met and then boned. Once again, Eph put his own personal need for revenge above everyone else. The only time I found him mildly entertaining was when he reacted to Fet & Dutch’s PDA and talk of explosives as ‘foreplay’ with visible disgust. While Eph became worse, a character who improved this season from Season 1 was Nora. Previously she’d been of the ‘no killing people, only saving people’ mentality, but obviously after being forced to decapitate her own mother who was turned last season, she developed a new outlook. This season, while trying to help the population by creating the virus to kill the strigoi, she also got her hands dirty, killing strigoi pretty awesomely with her sword or gun with silver bullets (also awesome to see was when she eventually tied her hair up out of the way so she would be less likely to have strigoi worms land in it when she was chopping off heads/blowing brains out of these creatures which had a nasty habit of splattering their white worm-infested blood everywhere - which all the heroes still miraculously managed to avoid, even when it would’ve been near impossible to do so like one instance where a strigoi was right on Eph and surely some worms would’ve landed on him...but, unbelievably, nope. Anyway, the point being that Nora’s strigoi-hunting ensemble she eventually wore was pretty cool). We got the backstory of how Eph and Nora met in the second-last-episode of this season (which also saw Sean Astin return for flashbacks as his character Jim who got infected and then was offed by Fet last season) and it was funny hearing Eph in the flashbacks declare that he knew how to keep personal and professional relationships separate (after Jim had advised him to be cautious about wanting Nora to work for him), only for Eph to pretty quickly be proven as a total fibber when the two of them got together. In the ‘present’, however, it became clear she was totally over Eph's BS (going off halfcocked to assassinate Palmer without even telling her) as evidenced by the look she gave him after they’d rescued Dutch from the clutches of Eichorst. I was always annoyed by people complaining about Nora’s character being ‘boring’, etc - just because she acted like a human being who *cared* about the lives of people and wasn’t all kill-happy right from the outset. Sure, she mightn’t have had one of the ‘flashier’ roles, but she felt like a real person. The writers royally screwed her over in the Season 2 final by having Eph go off to feed his alcohol addiction on a train, leaving her stuck with his demonspawn, Zach, and then after the train crashed into a ton of strigoi and derailed, she once again proved herself the *real* parent to that little shit by doing everything she could to keep his worthless life safe, only for him to do the most dickish thing ever by distracting her from killing his strigoi mother, Kelly, on the train tracks and thus poor Nora got stung/infected. Even worse, that mum-obsessed little bastard ignored Nora’s pleas to run and not go with his monster mum, instead HUGGING the bitch who just infected the woman who was like a real mother to him, and then walked off holding hands with her, leaving Nora alone lying on the tracks in agony. Eph eventually found her, she said that Kelly ‘took’ Zach (when in reality that shitstain WILLINGLY went with her despite all of Nora’s protestations, literally giving up her life to keep him from going with his strigoi mum) and then, in her final selfless act, she said to Eph that she didn’t want The Master to see him through her eyes (because he has this whole hive mind/connection thing going on with the strigoi where their eyes lighting up red means he’s looking through them at whatever/whomever), nor did she want to come after Eph or Zach since they learned in Season 1 that people who were turned would first go after their loved ones (REALLY, Nora? Even after all that bastard did to you, you’re *still* thinking of his safety?!), and then came the callback to ‘the third rail’ (which she’d warned Zach about earlier in the episode and they were all first warned about by Fet, I think, back in Season 1) as she sacrificed herself by touching it with her sword just to keep that piece of shit and his father safe. It was done in a slow-motion super-dramatic way with Eph screaming, and I think it was intended to have a certain ‘beauty’ about it...but there was nothing ‘beautiful’ about a truly decent human being such as Nora dying because of a devil’s spawn like Zach. I don’t know what possessed the writer of the episode, Carlton Cuse from Lost (though that should've been the first clue we were in for some highly questionable writing regarding female characters given what he did with them on that show), to screw over Nora Martinez (and Mía Maestro who played her) so thoroughly. I listened to the commentary for the episode and his excuse was total BS - that it was to 'keep the narrative alive' and show that *anyone* could die and how it was necessary to get Eph to a certain place character-wise...so, basically, she died to serve his character (isn't that what's known as 'fridging'?). Nora Martinez/Mía Maestro DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER! Maybe this utterly shameful treatment of Nora’s character wouldn’t have stood out so much had we not just had the other main female character on the show, Dutch, put through a traumatic kidnapping by Eichorst where she was almost violated-by-strigoi-stinger - but that, coupled with what was done to poor sweet Nora, just stank of highly questionable treatment by the showrunners towards its female characters/castmembers. With Dutch, it all started after her ex, Nikki (the chick we’d seen her with at the gas station convenience store episode last season, who ran off and left her), reentering the picture this season (after Dutch & Fet had been happily together all too briefly, making an entertaining couple) when Dutch went to look for her. It was hard not to side with Fet since he kept listing all the reasons Nikki was not good for Dutch (ie. stealing all her money, abandoning her, etc), but to be fair to Dutch...she *did* outright tell Fet before they officially hooked up that she ‘specialized in passionate, destructive relationships’, so he can’t say he wasn’t warned. Still, it was frustrating to see her keep making the wrong choice by choosing Nikki (even after Nikki's shitty mum kept abusing/blaming Dutch for every bad thing in her daughter’s life) instead of the obvious right choice which was Fet. I know a lot of people hated Dutch for it, but as frustrating as it was watching her making wrong choices time and time again...I could relate (as I’ve found throughout most of my life that when it comes to choosing between two things, the majority of the time I always seem to choose the wrong option) and I can’t hold it against her that she was self-sabotaging when it came to her relationship with Fet. Although she made quite a few mistakes, they were hers to make and as wrong as they may have been, she didn’t deserve to die for them. Dutch was a deeply flawed individual, but that didn’t make her a 'bad person'. I did enjoy her one-on-one interaction with Eph during his attempt to assassinate Palmer - the discussion of pygmy chimpanzees was particularly amusing... Just like I enjoyed Fet and Nora interacting more when they went off with Setrakian. Although it was clear that the coupling in the show was intended as Eph/Nora and Fet/Dutch, there was some merit in exploring the different dynamics of the alternate pairings. If the show had decided to spend more time in exploring these (instead of other pointless stuff this season), I think they could’ve mined some pretty good material from the interactions (in a way, Eph was more like Dutch and Fet was more like Nora in that the former were prone to impulsive decision-making and self-destructive tendencies, while the latter seemed to be smarter and cared deeply for those they cared for). We already knew how much Nora cared about human life, but Fet also seemed to have a kindness about him - especially when it concerned Setrakian, who he appeared to want to look after like he was his father. Fet made sure Setrakian ate/was taking care of himself, raised concerns when he felt the strigoi hunter was making unwise moves/decisions, and he clearly felt a bond with him (even when Setrakian wasn’t the nicest to him in return - then again, he wasn’t overly nice to anyone, really. Though we did see him soften somewhat, and I got my wish from last season about wanting to see more one-on-one interaction between Setrakian/Nora and Setrakian/Dutch. With Nora, it was him confessing to her - and nobody else - that he boiled strigoi worms and used an eyedropper to ‘ingest’ them which prolonged his life and that’s how he was able to continue fighting The Master for so long - this was after he’d almost died and she’d saved his life, of course. As for Dutch, I liked how she had an idea that he thought was a good one and the look she gave after he sounded proud of her was nice, as it showed his approval *meant* something to her. I just wish we’d had more moments like these between the characters, as I know for a fact there were other characters/storylines that took up time which were a complete waste that could've been better spent on characters interacting who I actually cared about). Speaking of characters I cared about, one episode from the show I always remembered (apparently I forgot a *lot* of others) was the one where Dutch was held captive by Eichorst and we learned his backstory. The episode before it ended with this really freaky final shot of her stuck in his white padded torture room with a collar around her neck attached to a chain that was pulled towards what looked to me like a stone chopping block as Eichorst turned a crank and we heard her blood-curdling scream. That was a HELL of a cliffhanger ending, but what followed was even more intense. It started out with her actually standing up to him and even throwing some snark his way about how he joined the Nazi party because he couldn’t get laid and his junk falling off 70 years ago. I’m glad she put on as brave a face as she could manage given her circumstances, while still clearly showing she was terrified. In situations like this, I feel it’s often the case that shows have their heroes act *too* confident/cocky when in reality they’d likely be shitting themselves. I felt they reached the right 'balance' with Dutch where she wasn’t some sniveling weakling begging for her life, but at the same time we could see her terror and eventual losing it when her last ounce of hope about escaping disappeared. I also found the moment when Eichorst quit being ‘polite’ to her and roared in her face was effective specifically because we saw him so rarely losing it. I get extremely tired of bad guys who YELL all their lines all the time and find it much more powerful when a villain who’s actually pretty quiet most of the time has this sudden burst of rage that’s completely unexpected. We learned that Eichorst was originally an unsuccessful door-to-door salesman who, despite putting in his best effort to sell a woman one of the radios he lugged around in an oversized suitcase, was put in his place by her husband who came home at the exact wrong time, ripping up the paper she'd signed and throwing it in Eichorst’s face, leaving him to pick up the pieces. When Eichorst's boss asks him how many radios he sold, he has to confess ‘none today’. It’s immediately clear how little Eichorst’s boss and colleagues think of him...all except a good-looking blonde woman named Helga who thinks Eichorst sucks at selling radios because he’s meant for 'bigger things'. He eventually works up the courage to ask her out and she agrees. Unfortunately, their date is interrupted by a Nazi doing one of his recruiting speeches and despite Helga wanting to leave, Eichorst is intrigued and wants to hear more. When the Nazi is doing his “We need *you*, and you and YOU!” bit where he directly points to Eichorst on the last 'you', we know he’s already won him over with the promise of actually getting respect and *being* somebody. After they eventually leave, Eichorst puts his foot in it further with Helga by badmouthing Jews, she points out that she is a Jew, then he tries to backpedal by saying Hitler only hates other Jews, but not German Jews. Understandably, she dumps his arse, telling him she was wrong about him - that’s he’s right where he ‘belongs’ at the bottom. Once he’s become a fully-fledged Nazi, decked out in the uniform and strutting down the street now having acquired the ‘respect’ he so desperately wished for (even from his old boss) - albeit through fear - he joins his fellow Nazis and is surprised to find they've captured Helga. She gave them Eichorst’s name, saying he knew her, and they demand to know if this is true, Eichorst hesitates for a moment and you can see the precise moment where he morphs into the Eichorst we’re familiar with as he lies to them that she’s a thief, leaving her at their mercy. Whilst she’d said her and her family were going to be deported, turns out ‘deported’ actually meant hanged - which Eichorst is shocked to see later on, then he has to act all Nazi-like in regards to her death so as not to get into trouble, but we can tell that his being responsible for her death has indeed rattled him. It goes without saying that Richard Sammel got to shine (even more than usual) in this episode, showing us a completely different side to Eichorst than what we’d seen prior. He was able to play someone so completely different in personality and do it well. But I never forgot what his character was, and despite feeling twinges of sympathy for him in how he was treated by his co-workers, all that evaporated the moment he showed interest in what the Nazis were selling. He upped the creep factor quite a bit by first slicing HUGE chunks of pineapple (it felt like watching Hannibal - except it wasn’t human meat he was chopping up, though to me pineapple's just as gross) and then forcing Dutch to consume it (that whole scene where he at first told her politely, then when she refused, his tolerance of her being so uncooperative quickly faded and he totally lost it at her after she battered the tray of pineapple away was SO disturbing. Watching her being forced to eat those ginormous disgustingly fluoro-yellow pieces of pineapple was pretty gag-worthy for me). Even *more* disturbing was what came later, after she’d eaten some of it, where he made her drop her pants, bend over and spread her legs (I saw some comments saying they thought it was 'out of character' for him to want to do this to her because we hadn't seen any hints of such tendencies from him previously, but I think they forget that we'd already seen him keep some other victim in this room last season, Dutch clearly reminded him of Helga - he even sniffed her hair at one point, thinking she wore a perfume like Helga's but it was actually the shampoo she was using, and this was him getting to live out the sick fantasy of what he was never able to do with Helga. The dude was a clear sadist and a Nazi - I think him also being a rapist wasn't too far a leap). I’ve seen a lot of shows where rape has been used gratuitously (where it served no real story purpose and was mainly there to have the most horrible thing imaginable happen to a female character and to more serve the male character's story as he went looking for revenge on the victim's behalf), but I think this scene managed to not cross that line due to the fact that despite the threat of him raping Dutch with the stinger he produced from his mouth (apparently consuming pineapple makes that particular part of a female’s anatomy ‘taste better’ from what other comments regarding this scene have said), he didn’t actually get to go through with this vile act due to her turning around and spraying him in the eyes/mouth with pepper spray she’d nicked from the cop he brought in earlier (who he force-fed schnapps to, then stung/drank from, then broke the neck of and left in the room with Dutch, explaining how he enjoyed a human ‘cocktail’ once in a while) using her feet (Quentin Tarantino would’ve been proud) and then making good her escape from his Room O' Pain. And so followed a classic horror/slasher movie chase scene through the halls of the creepy hotel, with Dutch fleeing for her life whilst Eichorst slowly stalked after her, tormenting her further by calling out, and as she was running down the stairs, the trio of Eph/Nora/Fet were coming up the stairs - at one point it even looked like they were going to reach her, but instead of them running into each other...they ran into a wall. I think Ruta Gedmintas did an outstanding job the entire episode in portraying Dutch’s fear, but when she was met with nothing but wall (after she'd put up a hell of a fight and managed to keep on going even after getting a random nail imbedded in her foot - this was before A Quiet Place ever did it) and we saw her lose what little hope she had left of escape, I thought she totally sold Dutch’s feeling of utter hopelessness. As there was nothing she could do against brick wall, Eichorst caught up with her and then proceeded to drag her UP the stairs by her feet (ow!). Since she was out of all other options, the one thing she had left at her disposal against him was verbal abuse (I loved her "Screw you, arsehole!" - though if this show had been on another network, I'm sure she would've used the F-bomb instead). Luckily for her, Fet apparently carries explosives around with him wherever he goes and he blows the shit out of that wall separating them. As soon as Dutch sees one of the familiar silver grenades land beside her and Eichorst, she dives out of the way and he gets blasted with silver, then flees as Dutch runs towards Fet and does a flying leap into his arms, overcome with emotion. This was a great episode...at least the Dutch/Eichorst parts of it, anyway. For some reason I’d misremembered the episode as being mainly about them, but in fact it also included other much more boring stuff involving Gus and his whole pointless storyline as well as Setrakian’s pursuit of an ancient book (which he believed held the secret to defeating The Master after having mistakenly thought sunlight would do the trick - he was too hard on himself about that, as while it didn’t kill The Master, it damaged his host body enough to cause him to find a new one) that he spent basically the whole season searching for. Honestly, I would’ve much rather more time been spent on Dutch/Eichorst and the trio’s search for her (as well as Eichorst's backstory) rather than dividing it up between them and these other two far less interesting plotlines. Setrakian’s plot all season pretty much boiled down to “Nothing matters as much as killing The Master!” and then “Nothing matters as much as getting the book!”. It kind of made him a bit less interesting than he was in Season 1, but there were some good character moments with him here and there that helped make up for it (I’m just annoyed that we likely won’t get to see his reaction to the news of Nora’s death. Same goes for Fet and Dutch - I think all three actors would’ve done a fine job conveying their characters' reactions to the sad news, and although I can’t remember for sure. Or maybe I'm misremembering and when they all eventually meet up again they *do* learn of her death/we see their reactions). Gus continued proving to be the second-most superfluous character in the show (the first being Zach, naturally. Actually, he’s worse than useless...he’s a hindrance - but I’ll get to that later). He started off the season teaming up with what looked like a half-strigoi dude in a red & black hood named Vaughn. I didn’t quite get how he looked strigoi-like, but wasn’t really one of them. He died after only a few episodes, then his replacement was introduced in the form of a character named Quinlan who looked pretty much like a carbon copy of Vaughn. It’s felt as thought they'd had a plan for the Vaughn character, but either the actor didn’t work out or he wanted to leave (maybe due to the makeup?) and was easily replaced with a lookalike. We learned through dialogue that apparently Quinlan trained Vaughn, but it felt to me like the writers had to do some shuffling and it was a haphazard way of having a character they wanted to have with Vaughn, but for whatever reason they had to substitute him with Quinlan. Anyway, we learned Quinlan was once a gladiator and I think the gist of his backstory was that The Master screwed a woman who ended up being Quinlan’s mother and thus a ‘half-breed’ was born, so at least that explained why *he* looked strigoi-like but acted pretty human. Him and his bone-hilted sword were pretty neat...when he showed up. There were long stretches where he didn’t, but I can’t say I was as into his character as others seemed to be. At least he was more interesting than Gus, who met a family, had the hots for the daughter (played by an actress I recognised from the show Manifest who I liked in that series and thus I put up with Gus’s boringness to watch her scenes in this show...but even she wasn’t enough to keep me interested) and teamed up with an old crippled former Luchador named Angel. The whole thing bored the shit out of me and I ended up fast-forwarding quite a lot. Only by season’s end was Gus finally made relevant to the main plotline - as he, Quinlan and Angel joined up with Setrakian and Fet on a boat (after, of course, Gus survived an explosion in the trusty van our gang had been traveling in for the last two seasons - because, for some unfathomable reason, the showrunners elected to give him plot armour. Nora really could've used that!). Damn it, show, don't stick characters I like (Fet and Setrakian) with characters I don't (Gus and Angel), as I want to continue being able to fast-forward past the boring-ass ones! As previously mentioned, The Master was kind of a non-entity after he switched from giant dude to Goth dude, Eichorst remained entertaining, and as for Palmer...this season he got himself a hot new personal assistant in the form of Lizzie Brocheré (an actress I think I first became aware of in Season 2 of American Horror Story and have become a fan of ever since, watching various shows she’s appeared in and at least one movie) as a character named...Coco Marchand. Yes, that’s right, COCO - that’s her actual first name. Not sure why out of ALL the names this character could’ve had, they went with that one. All I know is that when she said her own name, it sounded fine...but whenever Palmer would say it, it sounded pretty ridiculous - especially since he was usually saying it with affection, being that he eventually hooked up with her in the biblical sense (why do you hate yourself, Coco, WHY?! You could do SO much better!). She started off as nice and smart, albeit naïve in regards to just who exactly Palmer was involved with - but that was because he kept the whole strigoi/Master business from her until he couldn’t anymore when Eph botched his assassination attempt and ended up shooting her by accident instead, which led to Palmer demanding The Master give her ‘the white’ (which always sounds so dirty), just as he was given at the end of last season, to heal her. Once she was saved, it seemed as if the writers changed her character’s personality and she suddenly became this completely different person, whispering in Palmer’s ear about how he didn’t need The Master like The Master needed him. Consequently, after Palmer felt ‘disrespected’ by The Master, he withdrew the funds he’d promised (that Eichorst was going to use to outbid Setrakian at an auction for the book they were both after) and this eventually led to The Master paying Palmer an in-person visit like he’d demanded...but it wasn’t to show him respect. Instead, he infected Coco with his stinger, killing her and putting Palmer in his place (not sure why he even needs Palmer alive and doesn’t just turn him, then he couldn’t withhold his wealth from The Master since he’d be a slave to him). Eichorst obviously enjoyed this payback against Palmer, since he'd been giving Eichorst shit about The Master choosing Goth dude to be his new vessel when Eichorst had been The Master's loyal servant the longest. As I mentioned in my Season 1 review, there was a callback to Setrakian cutting out his infected wife’s wormridden heart with Palmer doing the same to his 'beloved' following her demise. Funny how, despite the claim that 'anyone' could die, it ended up being all women characters who bit the dust this season. As for the hellspawn AKA Zach, I’m not sure what possessed them to recast the role, as although the kid last season wasn’t ‘great’...he was award-worthy in comparison to the kid actor they got this season to take over the role. He seemed to have only one facial expression: resting bitch face (actually, make that *two* expressions: resting bitch face and resting smirk face). It’s like the only direction he received was to be ‘pissed off at all times’. Even when he was supposed to be playing other emotions, he *always* did it with either a smirk or like he smelled poo on someone's shoe. I remember one scene where Nora was having a talk with him and she was asking how he was doing, then after he told her, he asked her how she was doing...except he did it with this evil look, and then when they hugged I was totally expecting him to either stab her or something (amusingly, they didn’t cut to his expression and I’m willing to bet it was because the kid actor couldn’t even portray the right expression for that particular moment, so we just saw the back of his head). I actually felt sorry for all the adult actors who had to have one-on-one scenes with this kid, as they were clearly trying to give the scenes their all (and probably hoped to pull out a decent performance from the kid), but he was just giving them *nothing* in return. It was like they were acting opposite a block of wood (a smirky bitch-faced block of wood). Right from his very first appearance this season (where he threw a knife at a wall that narrowly missed his father), he was the absolute WORST. If he wasn’t complaining about a warm can of drink (which Dutch thoughtfully brought his ungrateful ass), he was trashing his dad and Nora’s virus experimenting to take out the strigoi. He went off to catch a bus by himself to go see his monster mum and they had to chase after him, he *never* listened, and the one time Eph gave him some 'tough love' treatment (shoving his face against the case a strigoi was contained within), it didn’t even get through to him and Eph eased off. Even giving Zach a strigoi-killing weapon didn't help, as he never used it. He just wanted to get back to monster mummy and didn’t care who he screwed over/got killed in the process (even when his dad tried to cheer him up by taking him for some baseball practice, the ungrateful little shit managed to be a bitch about it and ruined their outing). This kid is SATAN and a FAR WORSE enemy to our heroes (and Eph) than The Master or Eichorst could ever be! Regarding Zach’s strigoi mother, Kelly - I have to wonder if when the actress first scored the role back in Season 1 whether she was expecting that she’d end up playing a monster in extensive makeup/prosthetics for the majority of the series. Or did she only learn about it halfway through the first season and then just had to do the best non-verbal, twitchy creature performance she could muster up (it’s not a very glamourous job, looking how she does. Though she *did* get to play dress-up for an episode or two where Eichorst made her look like her old self - since he’s adept at fabulous makeup jobs like we saw last season with how he makes himself look human). I guess she did as good a job as one could. Kelly was also granted some of her own self back by The Master (like Eichorst had) and ‘gifted’ this season with a bunch of blind kids-turned-strigoi called ‘Feelers’, who she was in charge of playing ‘mother’ to (which included thinning out the herd by snapping the necks of those she deemed ‘weak’ or whatever). They moved in a crab, or rather spider-like way (hence being described as ‘spiderkids’) and made these clicking noises, they were especially fast, zipping around the place (and on walls/ceilings) faster than even adult strigoi could...but they weren't immune to being dispatched by the heroes (and Eph) and I must applaud the show for not shying away from showing kids getting decapitated and shot in the head (even if they were monster children). There was one episode this season which included an animated opening credits sequence where all the 'regular' castmembers had comic book-y shots of them appearing onscreen alongside their names...and for some strange reason both Mía Maestro and Ruta Gedmintas were given insultingly BAD animations of themselves (whereas everyone else's animated versions at least resembled them). WTF was up with that?! Thankfully, it was only the one episode this season (though I'd remembered it lasting for more episodes than that). It made you *really* appreciate the original minimalistic title card for the show that they had in place of opening credits (that was just eerie music playing over icky-looking strigoi parts of some description - which kind of reminded me of the alien slugs from the movie Slither - as they dragged along tiles and left behind a gross bloody trail that spelled out the show's title). Overall, this season was probably about as equal parts interesting/annoying/frustrating as Season 1 was. While the antichrist AKA Zach made it somewhat of a chore to get through, there was other good stuff in the show that helps lessen the pain. That and alcohol.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Nov 8, 2023 5:42:41 GMT -5
Most recently finished the complete series boxset of Sons of Anarchy on DVD. I’d never seen this show when it originally aired, but I’d heard of it. The DVD store I go to for all my DVDs/Blu-rays had a special deal going where if you bought one TV series boxset, you'd get a second boxset with 50% off, so I decided it was the best time to buy this show (the other one that I got the 50% off from was the complete series of The Last Kingdom, which I’ve got two more seasons left of to watch. I was simultaneously watching a season of both shows at a time, but eventually SoA took over and I binge-watched it pretty much from Season 2 onwards). I think I had a certain idea in my head from bits and pieces I’d heard/read about this show of what the series was going to be like (I’d even imagined how I thought certain character deaths would play out that I’d been spoiled for), so it came as somewhat of a surprise for me that, really, only the first two seasons of the show ended up being like what I thought the series would be and then from Season 3 onwards, things kind of veered off-course and the show turned into something quite different to what I’d imagined. Because I’m reviewing all seven seasons from memory (and a shoddy memory it is), I’m bound to forget things, but I figure the best approach is to just tackle my thoughts one character at a time (at least to start with, anyway...but by the end I'll inevitably be too lazy to bother with that and will end up grouping characters together ). {Spoiler} Jax - I’d only ever heard of Charlie Hunnam for the longest time and hadn’t really seen him in anything until I eventually watched a couple of lackluster films he happened to be in. When I started watching this show, my immediate thought was regarding his walk - he has a very distinct stride as Jax Teller. Also, if I hadn’t read about his signature white sneakers before watching the show, I wonder how long it would’ve taken me to really notice them (they’re BRIGHT white, so probably not that long). I read somewhere that someone (a biker) he talked to had such shoes, so it wasn’t as crazy an idea as it might’ve seemed that his ‘tough’ biker character in the show had shiny white sneakers that kinda clashed with the rest of his look (something about being able to afford many pairs of such shoes to replace each previous pair when they inevitably got dirty was a sign of ‘prestige’...or something). I did more or less like Jax in the beginning (I think), as he at least seemed to have a conscience back then (when killing unnecessarily hadn't become a hobby of his). There were times throughout the middle few seasons where he did stuff that I didn’t approve of, but it wasn’t until the final couple of seasons that he seemed to really cross that line into trigger-happy killer guy territory where he barely seemed to need a reason to kill anyone and was racking up bodies by the truckload. It annoyed me how at first he gave his g/f, Tara Knowles, grief for ditching him (which had taken place prior to when the show started), then eventually he worked out the best thing for her and their kids (the first of which he had with his junkie ex-wife, Wendy, who Tara basically adopted/raised as her own, while the second he actually had with Tara) was to get the hell out of the town of Charming (ironically-named, considering all the decidedly non-charming things that went on there), only for him to change his mind after he’d promised to leave with her, and by then she’d fallen so head over heels for him that she stuck around, he kept telling her to go, but it was too late and his mother killed Tara. He also had the nasty habit of treating women like shit at times (like bashing the face of a porn star named Ima Tite - which sounds like a Bond girl's name - into a mirror, threatening her and calling her 'whore' after he'd cheated on Tara with her...which was pretty much the pot calling the kettle black, since Jax was the biggest whore in the show. Poor Ima - whenever she appeared, she seemed to be getting her face bashed in and probably kept having to go get nose jobs from a plastic surgeon who wondered WTF was going on with her. Though even worse than his treatment of Ima was when Jax was shooting Wendy up with drugs after she was starting to get clean) while other times he could actually be quite kind/sensitive towards the ladies (it just depended on how he was feeling at any given time). While Charlie Hunnam’s American accent did wander/his English accent came through at times (I think it was more noticeable in the later seasons, but I may be misremembering), I will give him credit for really selling the deeply emotional moments his character went through at various points in the series - like the loss of his ‘best friend’, Opie, who sacrificed himself in Season 5 or when he learned of his mother being Tara’s murderer in the final season (and all the innocent people who’d died as a result of the lie she'd used to cover it up, as Jax sought revenge for his wife’s murder and thus many people died - both innocent and guilty). However, the moment that really lived up to all the hype I’d seen regarding Hunnam as an actor on this show was the end of the Season 6 final when he discovered Tara’s body - that was some pretty impressive acting from him, as it felt very 'real' to me (while some actors tend to overact when it comes to conveying grief). Although he was at his worst in the final season of the show, at least he acknowledged all the shit he’d done/caused and took responsibility for it, even being okay with the club voting for him to ‘meet Mr. Mayhem’ (ie. meet his maker). Of course, then he didn’t actually hang around to *pay* for his sins/suffer the consequences of his actions, but instead attracted the attention of as many cops as he could who pursued him (on his father's motorcycle he'd restored) in a scene reminiscent of The Blues Brothers, then decided his last dickish act would be to have some random trucker played by Michael Chiklis (who'd shared a scene with Jax's mother in the previous episode - making it rather coincidental that Jax just so happened to cross paths with him as well. The scene with Gemma was pretty pointless, so I think they should've just left the Chiklis cameo for the last episode) be responsible for his death by riding straight in front of the poor guy's oncoming semi (which is how his father had apparently died - though throughout the show we were first led to believe it was an accident, then that Jax’s mum and her husband, Clay, were responsible - with him sabotaging the bike and her giving it the ‘OK’, and in the final season someone else told Jax his dad had purposely killed himself). While I certainly didn’t get all weepy as Jax committed suicide via semi, I actually liked the final scene (and wasn’t even bothered by the ‘bad CGI’ others complained about. I had more of a problem with the ‘murder’ of crows constantly flying by one at a time, as it was on the nose/far too literal). What I think made the final moments of Jax’s life 'work' was the song used, as it seemed fitting/felt 'right' (I'd always imagined that some slow moody version of 'Don't Fear the Reaper' would be used...but this song choice was better). My favourite part of Hunnam's performance as Jax being at peace with dying was two blink-and-you’d-miss-them subtle facial expression moments - one was this look of almost happiness as he got the idea of how he was going to end his life, and the other was this slight grin he had as he put his plan into motion right before he took his hands off the handlebars and went all Jesus pose. I thought it was effective how the music/sound cut out for a second and then we heard the crash without actually seeing any of it, as the final shot of the show instead focused on two crows feeding on some bread (which I didn’t even realise was bread and had to look up what it was supposed to be) by the side of the road before blood seeped towards them (apparently this shot was mirroring the opening of the very first episode - not that I remembered it, due to my shoddy memory). While Jax certainly ended up not being a very good person by the end of the series, at least the show didn’t try to convince us otherwise (as is often the case with characters in shows/movies who are actually horrible, but we’re meant to think of them as ‘good’/’heroes’). I didn’t actually hate Jax at the end...but he really had nowhere else to go. It was the perfect ending for him (how much would it have sucked for him if his poetic suicide had failed, the trucker had avoided him, his bike had slid and he'd gotten caught by the cops then spent the rest of his life in jail?). Gemma - I’d never watched Married…With Children really, but knew she was in it and that her role in this show was the COMPLETE opposite of that one (I mostly knew her as the voice of Leela in Futurama). I’d also heard about how ‘impressive’ she was in this role of Jax’s mother who was NOT to be messed with and that she was going to have an antagonistic relationship with Tara after she’d left Jax and ‘broke his heart’. For the first season, Gemma and Tara were definitely at odds, but by Season 2 they bonded over shooting the car of one porn star Jax cheated on Tara with and then I was surprised to see them...not exactly become ‘friends’, but become friendlier towards each other, eventually reaching the point where Tara was helping Gemma get through a vicious rape she suffered in the Season 3 premiere, and Gemma actually seemed somewhat ‘nice’ towards Tara. I knew this wouldn't last, but wondered how exactly they got to the point where Gemma would viciously murder Tara (which I'd been spoiled for). Everything started going to hell with the whole Irish storyline (WTF was that about?), as in the season final Tara found letters regarding Gemma and Clay’s apparent involvement in Jax’s dad’s death (which were meant for Jax, sent home inside a bag by a woman who’d been with his dad and given Jax a half-sister as a result...who he almost BONED, though thankfully they didn’t go full Lannister and only snogged before learning they were related. While some people apparently hated this development, I personally found it morbidly amusing). If it wasn’t for those damned letters Tara accidentally happened upon when doing laundry, things might’ve turned out very differently for everyone (like, she’d still be ALIVE...as would probably many others). I blame Jax’s hellspawn that he had with Wendy (Abel), who pulled out one of the letters Tara had hidden in a bag to draw on with crayon which Gemma found and this kickstarted the whole Clay-ordering-a-hit-on-Tara thing, as he didn’t want the truth revealed about his involvement in the death of Jax’s dad. Gemma seemed the sort who could be a fierce friend if you stayed on her 'good side', but if you got on her bad side she became your worst enemy. Back in the first season, despite her being at odds with Tara, I didn’t mind her as a character (even when she randomly beat up one chick with a skateboard - it was still the kind of crazy behavior that you could shrug off). Where Gemma started becoming really unlikeable was when she’d react without getting all the necessary information first. She’d go crazy, beating people up (or killing them), only to discover later she was mistaken - which was the case with her murder of Tara, having been led to believe Tara had ratted on the club and consequently Jax was going to get sent to jail (when in fact he’d given himself up so Tara and the kids could leave Charming). Gemma was far too possessive of her grandkids (it was weird how she referred to them as 'my boys' and acted like they were her sons. Same with how she eventually started referring to Tara as 'my daughter', after she and Jax got hitched, instead of 'my daughter-in-law') and wasn’t going to let Tara leave with them, being particularly vicious towards her in the Season 5 final, which is why Tara took such drastic actions (faking a pregnancy, then setting Gemma up as having caused the ‘death’ of the unborn child). Things really got out of hand in the Season 6 final when Gemma lost it, beating Tara up with an iron, attempting to drown her in a sink of dirty water, then stabbing her in the back of the head repeatedly with a carving fork. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she then set up some innocent Chinese dude who Jax tortured and eventually ended the life of with a fork of his own to the guy’s cranium in retribution. Gemma really was the overarching ‘villain’ of the entire series, since so much of the shit that went down was because of her. Frustratingly, we didn’t even get to enjoy Gemma's eventual demise in the second-last episode of the series, as she actually got to dictate to Jax (after he’d learned the truth) the 'when and where' of how she died, getting to be amongst the garden of her old home and at peace (there was a whole storyline involving her father who had Alzheimer's which was well done, but that didn't excuse her actions...it just made me feel for her poor dad, since I have family with that disease myself). When Jax hesitated to shoot the MURDERER OF HIS WIFE, I was like, “Oh, COME ON!!” and Gemma actually had to give him her blessing/the go ahead to do it before he finally shot her through the back of the head (which was far too quick a death for her. She got off easy, when she should’ve suffered like she made Tara suffer, damn it!). I guess one of the ‘perks’ of being wife to the show’s creator/showrunner was that the show really did become all about *her* in the end (to the detriment of not only the other actors/characters, but the show as a whole). While I won’t deny that Katey Sagal certainly impressed in the role, her character just became TOO MUCH as the series went on. Everything was about her (even stuff that should’ve been about other characters), and it kinda ruined things. Tara - I knew Maggie Siff previously from Mad Men and she was one of the main reasons I wanted to check this show out. I liked that she played someone who was primarily a *good* person (a doctor), but who would help out the club whenever they needed her (seriously, SO many of them would’ve been royally screwed without her since she patched up numerous club members whenever they received injuries as a result of the shit they got up to). However, over the course of the show, she gradually started compromising her principles, whether it was indulging her anger (the shooting of a car, as previously mentioned, or beating up of her boss at work who tried to fire her but later became her closest friend/confidant, which I wasn’t expecting. A shame we never got to see her reaction to Tara’s death. She was played by a relative of Katey Sagal, interestingly enough). Slowly the ‘good person’ Tara had been kinda morphed into a younger Gemma who would do whatever she needed to protect her kids/get them away from the dangers of the club (even if it meant doing highly questionable things). Unlike apparently a lot of people who watched the show, I never hated Tara. I was more or less on her side throughout the show up to and including her violent death (which she DIDN’T deserve). Considering at one point Gemma had threatened her, taking glee in the thought of her being ‘fist-raped’ in prison (which, thankfully, didn't end up happening and instead Tara beat the snot out of some bitch who stole her blanket. Tara got sent to jail thanks to a member of the club named Otto - played by show creator/showrunner Kurt Sutter - who 'took one for the team' by being in prison and suffering horribly, losing an eye, getting raped, etc...but once he learned one of the other club members on the outside had boned his wife and that she got beaten to death by I forget who, he turned on the club and tricked Tara into bringing him a crucifix he used to kill a nurse and set Tara up as aiding/abetting in the murder which resulted in her arrest) I couldn’t really blame her for what she did in regards to setting Gemma up. Plus, there seemed to be this weird incest-y vibe going on with Gemma in regards to her son, where it felt like she was fighting Tara for 'possession' of Jax (this was none more obvious than in the the Season 4 final where Tara held her arm over him like she was saying to Gemma, "He's mine, bitch. Back off." which was a direct reference to a photograph of young Gemma doing the same arm move with Jax's dad. In the Season 5 final Gemma did it again with Jax as Tara got carted off to prison). It’s just too bad that they eventually became enemies again after all they'd been through, as they were pretty cool together when they were getting along and helping each other. It’s a shame they didn’t have ghosts in this show (though they had a homeless woman 'Angel of Death' occasionally appear - who I didn't even twig to until I listened to the first of many commentaries on the DVDs with the show's cast, though eventually those started dwindling to the point where in the final season there were no commentaries whatsoever...which I imagine was because they weren't getting along by the sounds of the behind the scenes goings on - which was what many had theorised she was supposed to be, but there was never a clear answer given, though we did discover she looked like the woman who was killed in the crash that also claimed the life of Jax's dad, as a photo of her was shown at one point and Jax recognised the face after having seen her at various points...so it would seem she was some sort of entity who appeared to Jax, and eventually Gemma, when deaths of characters were imminent - including Jax and Gemma's own deaths. She got a line in the final episode when she told Jax "It's time.", before providing him with a handy blanket that he used to look like a reaper - the club's symbol - whilst posing as a homeless person himself, before blowing away a villain as part of his tying up loose ends), as it would’ve been neat/pretty funny to see Ghost Tara with a fork sticking out of her head, as I saw people suggesting in regards to the final season of the show when Gemma was seemingly talking to herself (but was apparently supposed to be talking to Tara, who wasn’t there - I guess either because they couldn’t get Maggie Siff back or because dead characters turning up as ghosts was too ‘out there’ for this show. Though, really, at least that would’ve provided some entertainment value, whereas Gemma just talking to herself with no one else visibly there just seemed like an excuse for the showrunner to give his wife monologues - because not enough screentime was spent on her already). Yes, Tara ‘used’ Jax to help her get rid of her creepy stalker in Season 1 (and it’d seem that having sex in the same room as dead people, or after having just made people be dead, was a consistent character trait with Jax, as he and Tara boned after he blew away her stalker in Season 1 and then he had sex with Wendy after having only just offed two people including his own mum hours earlier in the final season. I guess the thought of dead people got Jax going? Ew). While Tara may have been regarded as 'annoying' or 'boring' by some people, I sympathised with her character and understood where she was coming from with her, at times, highly questionable actions. Maggie Siff was consistently great throughout the six seasons she appeared in and was one of the best actors in the show, I thought (I felt she didn't get nearly enough of the credit she deserved, as other actors in the series played more 'showy' roles which got them more attention but she really brought raw, believable emotion to all her scenes). Clay - I remember that I’d caught a tiny bit of one episode of this show when it was on TV here where I saw Ron Perlman’s character with breathing tubes stuck up his nose and had wondered how far into the series that was when I started watching the show on DVD. Turns out, it was by Season 5 (after he’d been shot by Opie, who was getting revenge against Clay because he’d shot his dad, Piney, in the chest with a shotgun all thanks to those damned letters). While Clay wasn’t exactly a likeable guy, Ron Perlman was endlessly watchable in the role (though, to me, he’ll always be Vincent from the Linda Hamilton Beauty and the Beast series I watched when I was young). Having been listening to a podcast with two of the actors from the show where they recap/review every episode...I’ve gathered from stuff they’ve said - as well as other actors they've had appear on the podcast - in regards to the showrunner, Kurt Sutter, that he was a major dick to Perlman (among others), and I wonder if Sutter resented him because of all the scenes with Ron getting it on with Katey Sagal since they played husband and wife - though that’d be a stupid reason to resent Perlman, since Sutter was the one who *wrote* all those sex scenes between them. Alternatively, maybe Katey Sagal wanted a ‘better-looking’ onscreen sex partner and that’s why Clay got the shaft in Season 6 (hardly appearing in the season, and when he did, it was confined to a jail setting until he finally got broken out...only to be shot by Jax and become a scapegoat), as she ‘upgraded’ to Jimmy Smits who played the character of Nero from Season 5 onwards. It’s a shame what was done to the Clay character (ie. making him unforgivably ‘villainous’) in the later seasons, as he wasn’t ‘all bad’ in the early seasons and actually had complexity about him. I enjoyed the few instances of one-on-one scenes we got between him and Tara...until that all went to shit (damn you, letters!), as he was usually pretty nice to her. I think the real character assassination of him came when he beat the shit out of Gemma, as he'd always seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't actually go that far. Sutter made him far too 'one-note' in the later seasons and it was a waste of not only what started out as a really good nuanced character, but also the excellent Ron Perlman who deserved a much better send-off/death in the show. Chibs - I’d seen Tommy Flanagan in various movie roles, but not in a TV role (to my recollection). I spent a lot of the time struggling to understand half of what he was saying, I didn’t care for his estranged wife or kid when we met them (it was a joke when Gemma built up his wife as being the ‘only’ woman she was scared of, as the character didn’t live up to the promise of someone who’d scare Gemma and they had to make Gemma throw a lazy swing at her and have her punch Gemma in the gut to show she was a match for her, but it stank of trying too hard and she barely left an impression, imho), then in the final season Chibs got saddled with a lame romance involving the latest town Sheriff (played by Annabeth Gish, who always seems to get stuck playing these unlikeable characters. I still can’t tell if she’s a sucky actress or just has sucky roles written for her) which reached embarrassing lows during a scene where she demanded he prove his feelings for her and they screwed on the hood of a police car (all I could think of during it was the “You had SEX with Giles? You had SEX WITH GILES? On the hood of a police car?? TWICE?!” quote from Buffy to her mum in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3 episode ‘Earshot’). In the final episode, though, he seemed to have gotten what he wanted from her and threatened her, which wasn’t a real good look for the character (though, naturally, some people enjoyed that moment). Tommy Flanagan didn’t get a whole lot to do much of the time, but when he did he was quite good (especially in the emotional scenes his character had when members of the club were dying off, etc). Tig - Kim Coates (one of the two actors who do the show podcast) was someone who I’d seen in various things but didn’t even know the name of until pretty late (whenever I saw his name come up in credits for shows/movies, I always assumed it was the name of an actress as I haven't seen too many guys named 'Kim'). His character here was the ‘weirdo’ of the club and I think was actually responsible for almost as much bad shit that happened as Jax and Gemma were. This started near the end of Season 1 when Clay was led to believe that Opie had ratted on the club and ordered Tig to off Opie in a drive-by, but Tig didn’t even bother to check to MAKE SURE it was Opie driving the car he rode up behind on his bike and consequently he offed Opie’s wife, Donna (who he’d switched cars with at the last minute), by mistake. This kicked off a whole thing with Opie, Clay and the one who’d set Opie up (an ATF agent by the name of June Stahl played by Abby Walker who I knew of from the 90’s TV series Profiler - not that I ever watched that show, but there was a crossover with it and a show I *did* watch called The Pretender, so I knew of her via that. I liked her in the role on this show, as she played a good 'villain' who was someone that *should've* been the 'good guy', but like a lot of 'good guys' on this show, ended up sinking to the level of the 'bad guys' in her pursuit of taking down the club. She was easily the best of all the law enforcement characters in the show. While some might've been annoyed by it, I personally found Ally Walker's way of speaking whilst in character to be interesting/compelling), and unlike most viewers...I actually felt a twinge of sympathy for her when she eventually met her end whereas pretty much everyone else was cheering her demise). Eventually, Tig came clean to Opie...but only received a moderate beating from him as payback (while Clay didn’t even get that much. Though I think Opie tried to shoot him, but was stopped...he would later succeed in shooting him, but not killing him, in a later season after he learned Clay offed his dad, Piney). When Opie eventually paid Stahl back by killing her in much the same way as Donna was killed - ie. shot in the back of the head with a load of bullets whilst inside a car - I thought it was somewhat unfair to put ALL of the blame for Donna’s death solely on her when, really, Clay and Tig were just as much to blame (Clay for ordering the hit and Tig for carrying it out without even being sure of who he was killing). Yes, Stahl started the whole thing off by setting Opie up to get what she needed, but the other two were the ones who made Donna's death actually happen. So, by all rights, when Opie was telling Stahl, “This is what she felt.” (in reference to Donna, before he blasted the back of Stahl’s head), he also should’ve done the same to Tig (and to a lesser extent, Clay) since it was at Tig’s hand that Donna’s life was ended. It seemed to me that Tig earned a ‘pass’ throughout the show, no matter what shit he was responsible for, because he was well-liked by the audience. He really only had himself to blame for his daughter’s death, when he thought another club was responsible for Clay getting shot and once again, before getting all the facts, he took action by crazily driving towards a member of that other club whose g/f died as an unintended result (Tig was making a habit of unintentionally killing the wrong people by this point) and then her father (who was built up as the biggest, baddest mofo...but was actually pretty lame/boring, played by the "WAAAAALT!!!" actor from Lost. His righthand man was actually much more effective and thankfully took over once Tig killed the guy who killed his daughter) got revenge against Tig by burning one of his two daughters alive in a pit by a railroad (I’d totally imagined this scene playing out a bit differently when I’d heard about it prior to ever watching the show. I also thought Coates made a questionable acting choice moaning “Oh, baby...” over and over even when his daughter was SET ALIGHT. To my way of thinking, him screaming “NOOOOOO!!!!” should’ve happened at that point. Ah well, I was glad to see the actress who played Meg 2.0 in Supernatural bite the dust, as I never liked her much in that show and she was unlikeable in this show too). What I liked about Tig was his love of animals, especially dogs (one of which he rescued from a dog-fighting ring. I only wish when the bastard who ran the thing was locked in a car with one of the dogs, that they'd kept him locked in there for the dog to rip to pieces. Instead he just suffered some moderate injuries and was allowed to live - albeit in humiliation). Tig had numerous 'quirks' to him (like being afraid of dolls), though I was surprised people were so happy to see him get involved with a member of the LGBTQ+ community (before that group added more letters) named Venus, since it was basically suggesting that the ONLY person who could be interested in someone like Venus was a weirdo like Tig. Shouldn't that have offended people more than made them happy (the message seemingly being "Only weirdos would like someone like that!")? There's no denying that Walton Goggins did a good job in the role of Venus (making the character feel like a real person rather than a caricature as others might've played the part), but considering the club had a rule about no 'black guys' being members (which only got changed in the final episode as one of Jax's last acts as Club President), you'd think they'd also have rules about club members being with someone who was LGBTQ+...but other than some teasing towards Tig, they were actually pretty openminded in regards to it (even happily giving him the go-ahead to off other people who weren't so openminded). Juice - It took me a while to even learn the names of most of the club members (though I'd read about Juice prior to watching the show, and all I could think was what a dumb name that was for a character. No, it wasn’t his actual birth name...but it was still a dumb nickname. Tig and Chibs weren’t much better. Really, ‘Jax’ was the only cool-sounding name of anyone in the club). Theo Rossi is the other person who does the show podcast with Kim Coates, and from having listened to six seasons' worth of him commenting on the show...he sounds like someone who resented how underutilised his character was in the early seasons - but, honestly, those were the only seasons where I didn't mind his character. When he actually got some *focus* in Season 4 and onwards, I found the storyline he was given was pretty 'meh' (he was threatened by the Sheriff at the time - not Annabeth Gish's character, as she came later - who wanted him to be a rat against the club, and if Juice refused, it'd be made known to the club that his father was *gasp* BLACK - which was a big no-no regarding being a member of the club, apparently. Which was a bizarre rule, considering Juice and another ironically-named club member called Happy - who was anything but happy the majority of the time - were both non-white members themselves. But I guess that was regarded differently to being black). This blackmail by the Sheriff (who himself was black) led to Juice ratting on the club, setting up another innocent club member for a crime Juice himself had committed and offing the poor dude which he claimed was 'self-defense'. His worst sin, however, was him shooting the Sheriff (but he didn't shoot the Deputy! Not that I can remember, anyway) in the Season 6 final to help cover up Gemma's murder of Tara (this was only after a brief talking with Gemma, which somehow was enough to make him loyal to her - because apparently EVERYONE just loved Gemma). Early in the series Juice seemed like an okay guy, but from Season 4 onwards he became someone I didn't like and by the final season I was well and truly ready for him to die. He, like Gemma, got to dictate when he died and he went out on more or less his own terms...but at least he didn't go as easily as she did (instead of receiving a quick bullet to the brain, he was stabbed repeatedly and died choking on his own blood). I've seen that Juice was a lot of people's favourite character from the show, but he became one of the WORST club members for me (the only worthwhile thing he did was tell Jax the truth about Gemma killing Tara and his helping her cover it up). Opie, Piney, Bobby & Unser - I didn't actually know what to make of these characters for a good portion of the show. Bobby was probably the most 'decent' one, as he offered some sage advice to other characters (not that they often listened to him). Though he *was* responsible for Otto turning against the club, so he wasn't without his faults. In the final season he got captured, then tortured (losing an eye and fingers, as well as having his jaw broken) before finally getting shot dead in front of Jax. I mostly knew the guy who played Bobby from Batman Begins. Opie was someone who I couldn't really make my mind up about for the longest time, as he didn't really seem to 'emote' much (except when Donna died or he went after those responsible for her and his dad's deaths). He could be a cheating dick at times, which resulted in the SHORTEST MARRIAGE EVER on the show (after he wed one of the club's porn stars named Lyla - who had first been with Jax), and for a BFF of Jax...he didn't seem too BFF-like (more often siding with Clay against Jax...that was until he learned of Clay's involvement in Donna's death). Honestly, Opie's beard and long hair (which was covered up by his signature beanie most of the time in the early seasons) left more of an impression on me than Opie himself did, but at least he got to go out sacrificing himself for his BFF, Jax (as well as Tig & Chibs), which ended with him receiving a fatal blow to the back of the head with a lead pipe. Opie's dad, Piney, was even less of note to me than Opie was, as he didn't really seem to do a whole lot (I rolled my eyes at one line of his about the club being 'the good guys', considering a lot of the shit they did was most decidedly not 'good'). In the end he tried to protect Tara against Clay (DAMN YOU, LETTERS!) and met his end standing up to him. Unser was the Police Chief for the first three seasons who was on the club's payroll and looked the other way when they got up to questionable shit (which was most of the time), while also acting morally superior to the club, voicing his dissatisfaction with their actions but not really doing anything to stop it. He really sank to the club's level in the Season 3 final when he helped set up Stahl to be executed. After that, he retired but still somehow stayed involved in club business (though it felt like the show struggled to find a use for him. I was amused by his nickname of 'Uncle Touchy' when he wound up playing babysitter for the kids - which he pointed out to Gemma was a highly inappropriate nickname for him, but she said that's why she liked it). He'd always had a thing for Gemma, but it became clear how little she felt the same way about him in the episode where he died when he was trying to protect her from Jax, Jax shot him in the chest (doing what Unser's cancer couldn't/seemed to be taking its sweet time doing - ie. ending his life) and then both Jax and Gemma proceeded to act like Unser's corpse wasn't right there beside them as they reminisced about old family photos, before Gemma's death (so Unser really died for nothing in his effort to protect her). I didn't mind Unser in the beginning, but by the end he was another character who I wasn't sad to see go as he was kinda too dumb to live. Other Characters - This show's attempts at 'humour' could at times fall flat, as was often the case with the character of Chuckie...who was a chronic masturbator. He was good as a one-off laugh in the first season, but then they made him a recurring character who had all but his index fingers removed by the Chinese, then was gifted wooden hands (by Gemma, I think), and it seemed the show struggled to find a purpose for him other than having some random new 'quirk' every episode (be it speaking French or playing a damn KAZOO) - most of which were more annoying than 'funny'. I could've lived without his character (his attempt at a 'catchphrase' - "I accept that." felt too try-hard, imho). The club had various 'Prospects' (ie. those whose joining the club was pending approval), most of whom I didn't even really know the names of nor care about. The only two who I did know the names of/sort of cared about were the first Prospect in the show, Half-Sack (who died protecting Tara and Jax's hellspawn in the Season 2 final against the Irish dude who stole it and sent them on that whole mission to Ireland - seriously WTF?? You could tell the show was getting off-track when they travelled to frickin' IRELAND. Yes, it did lead to stuff that impacted later seasons...but hardly seemed worth it, like they could've reached the same result without a journey to Ireland), and then in the last few seasons another Prospect called Ratboy. All the rest were pretty forgettable (though Filthy Phil seemed like a decent guy, who unfortunately was one of two Prospects shot in the head, then dismembered to send a message to the club from one of their many enemies throughout the course of the show). Jimmy Smits is an actor I find easily likeable...but after he was introduced as Nero in Season 5, he quickly seemed to become someone whose world/role revolved mainly around Gemma, he sort of served as older 'mentor'-type figure to Jax (who he didn't exactly listen to as often as he should've) and by the end I thought Smits was being pretty wasted on the show playing a character who didn't seem to have much of a point...but at least he got to LIVE, leaving town with Wendy and the kids. Speaking of Wendy, despite being played by Drea de Matteo (who I like), I wasn't fond of her character when she first appeared since she was kind of a 'rival' for Tara in regards to Jax (though he made it quite clear to her that he only had eyes for Tara). I also didn't think it made much sense for Gemma to seemingly rather have Wendy (the junkie) as a daughter-in-law than Tara...but this was back when she hated Tara's guts. However, when Wendy returned in the later seasons, although she could be annoying with listening to Gemma and going against Tara, it was hard not to feel sorry for her after Jax treated her like shit (the previously-mentioned shooting her up with drugs against her will being the prime example) and eventually she was in on Tara's plan to set Gemma up (unfortunately for Tara, everyone she recruited as part of her plan easily caved and it didn't even last longer than an episode or two before everyone knew about it). In the end, Wendy was certainly no Tara...but she also ended up being one of the least terrible characters in the show. Another was Lyla, who started off as a porn star for the club (as they were in the porn business) who Jax cheated on with Tara with and thus I didn't like her in the beginning, but when she and Tara eventually became friendly to each other (she even slapped someone else Jax cheated on Tara with - I think Ima - on behalf of Tara, who saw her do this and later thanked her), I tolerated Lyla more. I also felt sorry for her that Opie self-sabotaged their marriage (yes, she had an abortion...but so what? I get sick of characters in shows who either go to get one but end up changing their minds, or if they *do* go through with it, they're vilified. She did what she had to do given her situation, plus she wound up saddled with Opie's kids on top of her own once they became orphaned - she had more than enough on her plate. I was amused that she ended up running the club's porn business in the end and directing the 'movies' she once starred in (one of the only genuinely funny moments in the final season was the 'Skankenstein' movie we got to see part of) and I was glad she survived, since she'd been through so much crap. Porn stars and prostitutes seemed to make up a decent amount of the female guest stars on this show. It was fun to see Ashley Tisdale (mostly known for being a Disney actress) playing an escort...who Gemma beat up because she was with Clay, and then in the final season Inbar Lavi (who I knew from the shows Imposters and Lucifer) guest-starred in two episodes as a prostitute who Jax, naturally, got it on with. There was a semi-decent cop character named Hale, who was Unser's Deputy until he got plowed down by drive-by shooters in the first episode of Season 3. He seemed like he was an antagonist to the club in the beginning, but he actually wasn't a bad guy and at least tried to do the right thing (moreso than Unser did, anyway). Plus, he had Tara's best interests at heart. I imagine something might've developed between them had he stuck around, but I think something must've happened and the actor had to be written out. There seemed to be a lot of sudden exits for characters from the show, like one named Kozik (played by Kenny Johnson, who I know from TONS of stuff). Tig seemed to harbor animosity towards him and kept refusing to vote for him when the rest of the club wanted him to 'patch over' (ie. join their club), and we were only given a hint of where that animosity stemmed from when we heard them talk about someone named 'Missy' in the past tense...who turned out to be a German Shepherd. It would appear Kozik must've had something to do with her apparent death, though he said he 'loved her too' when he and Tig talked about her. Some theorised that he must've entered her in a dog-fighting match - which would certainly explain Tig's emotional reaction when he came across that dog-fighting ring...not that I actually watched it (as I *knew* it was coming after having checked doesthedogdie.com prior to watching the show, which is a handy site to visit if you want a head's up on animal violence in shows/movies, as well as other sorts of things you might want to avoid seeing), averting my eyes just like I did with all the other animal violence/death in the show, but I'd heard about Tig's reaction, so that's how I knew he had an emotional response. I also can't believe Kozik would enter the dog into a dog-fight and then claim he 'loved her too' (as such an action would be the total opposite of what someone who 'loved' a dog would do). Unfortunately, we never got a concrete explanation of what happened between him, Tig and the dog they both loved, as Kozik was unceremoniously blown to bits (one of his arms comically whacking Juice in the face) by a landmine in an episode - which barely even seemed to register on the other characters' radar (according to what Kenny Johnson said on the podcast regarding his abrupt exit, Sutter was being a dick - which seems to be a recurring theme in regards to what various people have said about him). His wasn't the only character this sort of treatment happened to, as the show hardly ever seemed to linger on anyone's deaths. I thought the show's opening credits were kinda neat, with images of who we could imagine *were* the characters themselves (though they were only parts of them, such as their bare backs, their chests, hands, etc so they were somewhat obscured from view) that would have tattoos on them (in some cases) which would turn into the names of the actors who played them (while in other cases different parts of the images would morph into the actors' names). They were all very fitting, as they kind of 'summed up' who the characters were. By Season 7, the opening credits underwent a significant change as so many castmembers had been killed off, and I kind of resented the image chosen for Drea de Matteo on her behalf, as it was the hand of (presumably) Abel playing with a toy motorcycle. At least with all the rest, we could pretend the images we were seeing were the actors/characters, but the hand of the hellspawn was most certainly NOT Drea de Matteo's/Wendy's - which seemed slightly insulting, I thought). One thing I'll be forever grateful to this show for is the music it introduced me to. Not only the last song played in the closing moments of the final episode, but also these: Played^ during the opening montage of an episode (which the show had plenty of, as well as closing montages, for episodes throughout its run. Some were better than others and they kind of overdid the musical montages at times). I liked it SO much that I immediately had to listen to it via YouTube. I actually thought it would've been better utilised for the opening of a season final in the show, as it had that slight hint of foreboding (like bad shit was about to go down - which generally happened in every season final), but instead it was used at the beginning of just another normal episode partway into a season (which seemed like kind of a waste to me). Played^ during an extended scene during the Irish storyline (DIE, LETTERS, DIE!!!) where Jax did his best creepy stalker impression, watching a couple who'd adopted Abel (when he was still an infant and before he turned into the dead-eyed likely-to-become-a-future-serial-killer 5-year-old he was in the last couple of seasons) after he'd been stolen and taken to Ireland. Jax started out fully prepared to take his kid back, but when he saw that Abel was with an obviously kind/caring couple (kudos to these bit-part actors, who didn't get a single line of dialogue, yet had to convey they were the right sort of people to raise Abel through only their body language and interaction with the child - not an easy task, but they did a good job...which made their brutal deaths soon thereafter all the more sad, as they were innocents caught up in the club's war and didn't deserve that. Ironically, if Jax *had* snatched his son back from them, they may have lived), he decided his kid was better off being left with them. It was a good scene, Hunnam once again showed some solid acting (as his whole thought process/all the emotions he went through were conveyed entirely on his face/in his reactions without a word being uttered). I appreciated the show taking the time to let this scene 'breathe', since it wouldn't have worked had it been rushed. Played^ during one episode's closing montage where Tara was cradling her child whilst having a gun sitting nearby at the ready because she feared Jax would come after her once he learned of her plans to leave with the kids...but without him. Maggie Siff actually sang this whole song (though the way it was used in the episode, we only saw/heard Tara start to sing it, then the rest was played over the montage and people might've thought someone else sung the 'professional' version, but it was ALL her). The show had some really excellent music choices that added a lot to scenes/moments, and I've been listening to these^ repeatedly. I think it took me a couple of seasons to really get into this show, but once I did, I was watching multiple episodes at a time and I can understand how it would've been 'must watch' TV for people at the time it originally aired). I enjoyed the first two seasons the most, the next few seasons were just 'okay', and the last season was pretty dire...but despite its faults, it was a show that I enjoyed watching and I'm glad I bought it (despite knowing very little about it and not having seen any of it previously). Although I'd heard that the spin-off ( Mayans M.C.) wasn't as good, towards the end of watching this show, I just felt like I wanted to stick with the SoA-verse a little longer and so I bought the first two seasons of that spin-off on DVD (though, annoyingly, it appears the other seasons haven't been released here and it looks unlikely that they ever will be...so when I do eventually get around to watching my DVDs of it, it'll be an 'unfinished' show for me once I reach the end of Season 2).
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jan 11, 2024 4:34:53 GMT -5
Finished Season 1 of The Walking Dead: Dead City on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}As I’ve mentioned elsewhere previously, I only ever saw the first three seasons of the parent show, The Walking Dead, because those were the only ones shown on free-to-air TV here, and because they bored me to death...I never felt compelled to buy/watch the rest of the seasons when they were released here on DVD/Blu-ray (I *did* get Fear the Walking Dead, though...because I'm a weirdo). While I found TWD to be a slog to get through, I did like seeing Lauren Cohan in it after she was introduced in Season 2 (especially after the way she was treated in the show I’d seen her prior to that - Supernatural - I was happy on her behalf that she finally got a regular gig where certain people weren’t able to get her killed off). Although I didn’t watch TWD past Season 3, I did read some stuff about it/have seen some clips from it via YouTube. When it was announced Maggie would be starring in yet another spin-off from the ‘mothership show’, I hoped it would get released here on DVD/Blu-ray because while TWD as a whole had bored me, I was interested in seeing more of her character. Of course, I knew that she would be the ‘co-lead’ of this spin-off along with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the character of Negan – someone who was introduced on the original series long after I stopped watching it. While it might seem a bit weird to tune into this spin-off having not seen any episodes with Negan, I got the gist of his and Maggie’s ‘relationship’ through reading stuff and talking to those who did watch. I think I was able to get a basic understanding of what went on between them - ie. he pretty much arrived on the scene by bashing her husband, Glenn’s, head into mush, Maggie naturally wanted to get revenge by killing Negan, but when she had the chance she didn’t, and ever since there’s been this tension between them). I did see the clip from the final episode of TWD where the two of them more or less came to a sort of ‘understanding’, so I knew where they left off. Speaking of bashing in heads, this show's opening scene involved Maggie doing exactly that to a ‘Walker’ (I still find it annoyingly pretentious that TWD universe finds every other manner of word to call zombies instead of ‘zombies’. Yes, I’ve had it explained to me that zombies/zombie movies don’t exist in this world and that’s why the word isn’t used, but imho if it walks shuffles like a zombie and talks growls like a zombie...IT’S A ZOMBIE. Calling it anything else is like those superhero shows that refuse to use the word ‘superhero’ - quit trying to make a ridiculous concept sound more ‘serious’/’mature’!). Not being a fan of head-crushing, I didn’t really watch what Maggie did, since I was able to get the gist of it without looking. I thought the show's opening credits were pretty nifty and I really appreciated that Lauren Cohan's name was shown onscreen together with JDM's - as they're 'co-leads' and one's name shouldn't come before the other's. It wasn’t long before Maggie ran afoul of Raffi from Star Trek: Picard (which I bought the third/final season of on Blu-ray around the same time as I bought this show - when there was a 30% sale towards the end of last year - but still have yet to watch) who wasted no time in proving herself to be a psycho bitch and I was amused by one person’s comment I read after she got tossed to a bunch of zombies (before she could do something nasty to poor Maggie’s face, as it appeared she was about to) where they said that seeing Raffi from Star Trek: Picard be fed to zombies was something they’d been wanting for three seasons of Picard, as I pretty much felt the same way. I was surprised she bought it so quickly, but it was a nice surprise. The one who provided the zombies with this meal? A marshal by the name of Perlie Armstrong (played by an actor I recognised from the TV series Friday Night Lights which was a show I watched some of on TV, but not even my #1 crush at that time, Adrianne Palicki, could keep me watching since I find anything to do with sports deathly dull. Also, I think they either stopped showing it on free-to-air TV here or changed the days/time it was on - so that probably had something to do with me not sticking with it) who’s on the hunt for Negan complete with old-timey ‘Wanted’ poster of him (it really was quite funny how it looked like something from a Western movie instead of something from modern times). Things didn’t really pick up until 'old acquaintances' finally reunited...which went about as well as could be expected: Maggie with a knife to Negan's throat. The plot of the show basically boiled down to Maggie & dearly departed Glenn’s kid, Hershel, having been taken by a bad guy called ‘The Croat’ (which I kept pronouncing as to rhyme with ‘The Boat’ but turns out that’s not correct - meh), and because he was apparently part of Negan’s old crew, she was hoping Negan would be able to convince him to give her kid back. Pretty flimsy premise, really, since when would *anyone* who takes a kid ever be convinced into basically saying, “Oh, hey, you know what? You can him back.”? I guess if that kid was your typical ‘moody teen’ (as Hershel seemed to be portrayed in the brief flashback we got to him prior to his being taken), that might be reason enough for his kidnappers to return him. Anyway, I think most people worked out early on that this was all just a ruse and in reality The Croat wanted Negan, threatening to kill Hershel if Maggie didn’t deliver him (which indeed turned out to be the case as was revealed in the second-last episode of the six-episode season). When Maggie wound up at the end of the season in the same place as she began the season (ie. with a knife to Negan’s throat), it reminded me of that quote from Firefly (“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!”). Oh, I’m sure all the Negan fans were like, “What a BITCH! He was helping her! She’s SO MUCH WORSE than Negan ever was!” (to which I can’t possibly roll my eyes any harder), but as I’ve come to understand it, despite the fact that Maggie *has* killed people previously (including a bunch of Negan’s crew as they slept, led by Rick - not that I imagine she would’ve had much choice but to do so, since even in the first season I came to the quick conclusion that the character of Rick was all, "This isn't a democracy...it's a Rickocracy!"), at least she’s not - as I saw someone describe Negan - “a murdering, rapist, former slaver who beat people to death for shits and giggles. So there's that”. I’ve seen it time and time again on shows where male characters can do the most heinous things, but so long as they have the sad puppy dog eyes and feel really really ‘bad’ about it...they’re given ‘redemption’ and thus seen as ‘forgivable’ in a lot of people’s eyes, whereas if a female character did even half of the same shit, they’d having people calling for their slow painful deaths. It’s a classic double-standard. Male characters who do bad things are regarded as ‘flawed’, while female characters are simply dismissed as ‘bitches’. While some might say that Maggie killing people makes her "no better than Negan", there are different ‘degrees’ of killing people. Like, if you kill out of necessity to protect yourself/others - that’s one thing, but beating someone’s head in (prolonging their pain/suffering) with a barbwire-wrapped baseball bat whilst you humiliate them and gloat about it, taking a sick joy is something quite different. Yes, there was the second episode this season where Negan returned to his ‘old self’ (I presume that’s what that was, since every comment I read about it described it as such) by ‘putting on a show’ of sorts when him, Maggie and a small group of people were attacked by this other gang. He told a twisted ‘knock knock’ joke while shoving a guy’s head through multiple windows, then slit his throat before gutting him and shaking all the guts over those below as a way to scare them off. The way it was presented here, it made it seem like Negan ‘puts on an act’ when he’s doing this sort of thing - and whether that’s really the case or not, it still doesn’t (and will *never*) excuse what he did to Glenn. While most viewers probably enjoyed the gore in the scene, the part I liked best was the exchange of looks between him and Maggie - those really said everything without a word being uttered. While Negan (and JDM’s portrayal of him) is clearly the ‘flashier’/more ‘entertaining’ of the two, I do feel Lauren Cohan’s work goes underappreciated (at least in this show), since she has to play the ‘straight man’ of sorts - which can often be mistaken for ‘boring’. It’s a somewhat thankless role, as you get seen as the ‘stick-in-the-mud’, but she’s the more human of the two. Her reactions are very real, and as much as people complain about her actions, she does what most normal humans would do. I doubt anyone in reality could forgive the person who did what Negan did to Glenn if it was their own significant other. But, hey, Negan's ‘FUNNY’/‘COOL’ - so he’s the one everybody wants to see *more* of. I admit JDM suits the role. He’s obviously made it his own and like other bad-guys-turned-‘good’ in the past (referred to by some as ‘Spikification’ - named after the character of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer who went from Buffy’s enemy to ‘good guy’), he’s lasted so long because the writers clearly enjoy him, as do the audience. I enjoyed him the most during his scenes with Maggie. For a show that has them as co-leads, I wish there’d been *more* stuff with the two of them together. I certainly hope the showrunners aren’t going to keep them separated for long periods and only have them come together every so often. It’s their interaction which is the most compelling part of the show. Everything else? Not so much. Try as this show might to give us interesting supporting characters, none of them left any sort of impression. The crew that Maggie & Negan joined - which quickly dwindled (with Negan's help, as he took one of them out via death by cheese grater) to only two people...who then met their ends in the second-last episode - weren’t really interesting at all and the main villain (who turned out to actually not be so high on the villain totem pole, as another one who put him in his place was introduced at the end of the season) wasn’t that menacing despite being played by an actor who seems to have been typecast as playing bad guys (really, the last time he made any sort of impression on me was when I was introduced to him as the Magister in Season 1 of True Blood). Perlie was someone who didn’t do/say a whole lot for long stretches, and when he did it wasn’t particularly interesting (except for the zombie-feeding bit in the first episode). Still, at least there’s a chance the writers can develop him and the villains to become more interesting. Sadly, the ‘kid’ characters on this show (ie. Hershel and a girl named Ginny, who Negan has been taking care of and who was silent for the majority of the season until she begged him to stay with her and he chased her off by being mean/telling her of how he killed her father in that classic way characters do when they want to keep someone they care about ‘safe’) don’t show that much promise so far. They’re mostly just annoying liabilities, but of course they’re ‘needed’ to keep the two leads ‘human’ and be people they care about (for future kidnapping/threatening purposes!). I’m annoyed people had a problem with the ‘Walker King’ in the second-last episode. Yes, it’s kind of monster-like, but hey, when soft gooey zombies are all heaped together and it’s hot they could possibly merge to form some sort of monstrosity. I can understand the writers feeling the need to come up with something ‘new’/different’ - that’s why they created this thing (which Maggie did an admirable job of taking care of with her many stabbings whilst it was on top of her) and we got stuff like zombies falling from skyscrapers in the first episode (I appreciated the atmosphere of restricting this series mainly to a city setting, as it seemed like there were zombies at every turn and it gave a different 'feel' to the other shows which seem to take place more in wide open spaces whereas this one feels somewhat more 'claustrophobic' and has a slightly more 'gothic' vibe going on). If it’s just ‘more of the same’, then it’ll get boring fast. They need to keep thinking up ways to make zombies interesting, and if that means weird zombie hybrids...so be it. Though maybe next time don't take a timeout sitting in amongst a bunch of corpses, Maggie, since there's no guarantee that they're totally dead/WAY dead and not just a little dead. I do hope that in this show’s effort to ‘redeem’ Negan (since that’s inevitably what’s going to happen), they don’t try to make Maggie be ‘as bad as him'. She’s got quite a ways to go before reaching that level, and also it’d be throwing her character under the bus just to prop up his character. She can be ‘flawed’ (even deeply flawed), but once she starts entering Negan territory that would seem like it was betraying her character/pretty much character assassination. I worry that, since this spin-off doesn’t have either of the two lead characters’ names in the title (unlike the one with Daryl or Rick & Michonne), it was intentionally done that way so if one of the two leads ever decides to leave the show, it can still (in theory) continue on without one of them (which would be kinda hard to do if the show had both of their names in the title). While I’m sure there are those who’d be happy if Lauren Cohan/Maggie left and would keep watching with JDM/Negan (but not if it were the other way around), I personally believe that the loss of either one would be detrimental to the show. It needs *both* of them, as it’s the contrast between their characters that makes things interesting. If it was just Negan going around being his old self all the time, that would get old fast (well...maybe not for the Negan fans, but for everyone else it would). Where things left off at the end of this season does show promise of interesting things to come (although that split-screen shot of Negan & Maggie's faces joined together was somewhat cheesy, I get why they did it and like with the actors' names being onscreen together in the opening credits, having the final shot of this season be of *both* characters was only fair). Hopefully after this rather uneven/rocky first season, things will pick up in the next one.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jan 21, 2024 1:28:12 GMT -5
Finished Season 3/the final season of Star Trek: Picard on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}Unlike many, it seems, I hadn’t hated Season 1 of this show. However, Season 2 was so WTF-worthy that I didn’t even bother reviewing it. I must’ve blocked that season from my memory (or, more likely, just forgot most of it since my memory sucks these days). I’d heard people were praising this third/final season of the show, and wondered how much of that was due to it basically jettisoning all the cast of the prior two seasons (save for Seven of Nine & Raffi) and replacing them with the old TNG cast and how much was due to the show actually legitimately improving. Turns out the answer was the former rather than the latter. I think any/all goodwill this season received was mainly due to the nostalgia factor. While it certainly was better than Season 2 (which wouldn’t be hard given what a mess that season was), in some ways this season was still quite average. The BIGGEST disappointment for me was that, after showing some promise in the Season 3 opener of Seven of Nine getting stuff to do (and having to deal with a dick of a Captain who resented her ex-Borg self so much he insisted on her going by her human name, Annika Hansen), it appeared the show ‘neutered’ her character and she was relegated to maybe a few scenes each episode not really getting to do much. All the action stuff went to Raffi, while the rest of what I imagine would’ve been Seven's screentime felt to me like it was handed to the character of Geordi La Forge’s daughter, Sidney, who was introduced in the first episode this season. Every time a character referred to her as “La Forge”, I was kinda taken out of the moment thinking it should’ve actually been Geordi there instead. Calling her by her family name was no substitute, and what’s worse is that the show really appeared to be pushing her like it was trying to make her ‘happen’. She was apparently some genius who knew all this stuff that not even seasoned veterans did, and at one stage it felt as though the show had morphed into being all about the La Forge family drama (as not only was there Sidney, but her sister as well and considerable time was taken out of the main plot to focus of the La Forges - like their family problems were the most pressing matter). Considering Jeri Ryan was the second-billed person in the show after Patrick Stewart, it sure as hell didn’t FEEL like it and instead felt more like Sidney was, and thus this final season of the show pretty much wasted the character of Seven - which I was very displeased with, since she was a large part of what got me through the first two seasons (especially that terrible second season). I’d liked seeing Seven interact with Picard and also Riker (who came to appreciate her), but then we hardly got any more of that throughout the remainder of the season, which I thought was a massive waste. I did enjoy getting to see her interact with Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager (even though the first time was not really him, but a Changeling disguised as him - which was a sad reveal, as she'd looked so relieved/pleased when she'd tested him to make sure he was Tuvok...but then a minute later she worked out he wasn't - and she only really interacted with the *real* Tuvok in the final episode when he played her a recording Shaw had made - prior to his death in the second-last episode - where he praised her and recommended her for Captain...which was quite the turnaround after he’d basically fired her from her position as his second in command after she helped Picard and Riker against his wishes/orders in the first episode). Yes, it might’ve made more sense for Janeway to have originally been in the role that Tuvok served, since she and Seven had that whole mother/daughter (or was it something more? ) relationship between them, but I’m guessing all that shit Jeri Ryan got from Kate Mulgrew during their time on Voyager wasn’t so easily forgotten despite what I’ve heard about them having ‘made up’ or whatever. It probably just would’ve been too awkward. Either that or they couldn’t get Mulgrew for whatever reason. Anyway, I didn't object to Tuvok taking Janeway's place. I’ve known the actor who played Shaw (Todd Stashwick) ever since first being introduced to him as the masked bad guy in the season 1 final of the BtVS spin-off, Angel. I remember he made an impression in that, and I’d also seen him in plenty of other things (he proved he could be very funny as well in Supernatural when they did a B&W classic monster movie episode in Season 4 where he played a hilarious Dracula). Mostly, though, I figured he was brought into this season of the show because the person behind the last show I saw him on ( 12 Monkeys) was also apparently involved with this series, as not only did Stashwick appear, but so did that other show’s lead, Aaron Stanford (playing a Ferengi, who it took me maybe a minute to realise was him in all that makeup and I had to wait for the end credits to have it confirmed it was indeed James Cole from 12 Monkeys - who also got a shout-out when his character name was listed as an alias for...I forget who). With two former 12 Monkeys castmembers appearing here, I was half-expecting either Amanda Schull or Emily Hampshire to appear here as well. Alas, they did not...and I was kinda relieved in a way, since I imagine they would’ve only shown up to be stuck in makeup rendering them unrecogniseable and/or offed unceremoniously. Anyway, it was good that the character of Shaw was given a character arc and we learned he had good reason to hate the Borg (having witnessed Picard's time as Locutus and how, in Shaw's own words, he was "The only Borg so bad they gave him a goddamn name"), then at the end with his final dying breath he used Seven’s proper name thus showing he wasn’t just a one-dimensional dick of a character after all. I think having watched TNG a couple years ago certainly helped me to appreciate this season a lot more than I would have if I hadn’t watched that show. A lot of references actually made *some* sense to me (though there was still stuff I struggled to remember), and one thing that definitely had more impact since I’d watched TNG was bringing back the character of Ro Laren, who had last been seen all those years ago betraying Picard - something that finally got addressed here. I love me some Michelle Forbes, so it was good to see her again and both she and Patrick Stewart totally sold the hell out of their scenes together, paying off this big storyline between them. Sadly, though, she was needlessly killed (no matter HOW much they tried to make it out that she ‘helped’ them with her death - she could’ve given them her earring with that info and still *lived*. She didn’t have to die). If this was indeed the last of her character we get (assuming they don’t reveal at a later date she miraculously beamed off the crashing shuttle to safety at the last second), at least they wrapped up her character’s storyline that had gone unfinished for so long. This season introduced us to several new characters, the main one being that of Jack Crusher - a son Picard didn’t even know he'd had with Beverly, who kept it from him all this time (her attempts at justifying the secret-keeping....or rather the writer’s attempts, were pretty flimsy at best). I’d heard the actor’s name - Ed Speleers - who played Jack mentioned at times, but can’t say I recognised him from anything I’d watched (he may have been in stuff and I just forgot). Seems a lot of people didn’t think much of him, while I personally didn’t really have any feelings towards him one way or the other. He was somewhat annoying at times, but thankfully he became more tolerable as the season went on (though his near instant falling for Sidney La Forge was pretty eyeroll-worthy). While I understand that the big climactic battle (with him being assimilated by the Borg Queen, who was now more gnarly-looking than ever before and voiced by the original Borg Queen, with someone else in all that makeup/prosthetics. Speaking of Borg Queens, I appreciated the ‘For Annie’ tribute at the end of the Season 3 premiere, acknowledging the passing of Annie Wersching who played the Borg Queen in Season 2. She will be greatly missed, as I’ve seen her in tons of stuff starting with 24 and followed her career ever since, where she never failed to deliver an interesting performance) had to come down to being about him and his father, it really did end up being as simple as Picard ‘hugging the Borg out of him’. I didn’t object so much to the Borg returning ‘one last time’ (HA!) as much as others seemed to, since they played such a large role in TNG and it also gave Picard closure to his time as Locutus. Really, the only thing I foresee being a problem with the character of Jack Crusher is that he apparently knows SO MUCH (him listing off all the stuff he had knowledge about to Seven, after she kicked him out of her new Captain’s chair - an ongoing joke between them, it seems, as I recall her kicking him out of it at least once prior to that) verging on being ‘too perfect’ (then again, Michael Burnham has been that for five seasons of STD - though I only watched three seasons of that show, giving up on it after Michelle Yeoh left. Apparently Tilly also left, and as much as I like Saru...he alone isn’t enough for me to put up with what that show had turned into). Prior to the reveal that the Borg were the *actual* ‘Big Bad’ of this season in the last two episodes, we’d been dealing with Changelings led by Amanda Plummer’s Vadic. Physically-imposing, she was not...but she made up for that with this unnerving quality she had in the way she spoke (though the attempts to make it clear how BAD was by having her constantly smoking were kinda unintentionally funny). She was okay as a placeholder villain until we got to the Borg Queen. I’ve covered pretty much everyone except the TNG crew - all of whom eventually showed up (some later than others) in this season. I thought Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes especially felt as though they hadn’t missed a beat, picking up right where they left off with their characters’ dynamic. There was some fun banter between them (though that brief ‘rift’ they had in one episode felt totally forced/unnecessary). I thought Beverly was at her most interesting in the beginning of the first episode (shooting bad guys) and in the final episode (doing so again, but this time with a whole ship as her weapon - everyone's reaction and her response to them were amusing). The in-between stuff with her son and Picard? Meh. While I’d missed Geordi during the eps without him, when he finally turned up he seemed to be all about his daughters with a 'screw everyone else!' attitude which made me less enthused for his return. I felt the show kind of wasted Deanna Troi after she eventually appeared, though I enjoyed what little we got of her. She had some fun moments, not least of which being her reaction to some of the stuff Worf said. Speaking of, Worf was surprisingly the highlight of the returning old crew, as he got the lion’s share of the funny moments/oneliners. Pretty much everything he said was gold. I was just disappointed he was mainly saddled with Raffi for the majority of the season (who I last saw getting fed to a bunch of zombies in The Walking Dead: Dead City). Imho, all her action moments in this season really should’ve been Seven’s. Anyway, while it might have felt like a bit of ‘cheat’ once again bringing Data back from the dead, at least they did something slightly different this time by having him become as close to being human as he could possibly get. It actually served a *point* in justifying his return (and I couldn’t help but ‘aww’ at seeing his beloved cat, Spot, one last time). He also defeated his evil self, Lore, with hugs. HUGS ALL AROUND this season, it would seem. While the end of final episode made it *seem* like it was setting things up for a Seven of Nine spin-off, with her as Captain, Raffi as her Number One and Jack Crusher as her ‘special counselor’ (I like to pretend this was just Seven giving him a pretend important position when in actuality she has very little use for him), I fear that the post-credits scene between Jack and Q (who miraculously appeared despite having supposedly ‘died’ last season) makes it clear that even a Seven spin-off would be less about *her* and more about everyone else (especially Jack). If that is indeed the case, then it makes it easier for me to accept if we never do get a spin-off. However, it’d be a shame to FINALLY give her this important role as Captain...and then not do anything with it/we never get to see any of it. I didn’t have a problem with them cutting off before we heard her utter her own personal Star Trek Captain catchphrase - as what could possibly live up to the buildup of it? I think they learned their lesson with how lame Burnham’s ended up being, so best to leave it up to our imagination. On the whole, while I felt somewhat disappointed with this season after all the praise I’d seen being heaped upon it, at least it went a ways to making up for that craptastic second season. Sure, the TNG crew wound up in pretty much the same place they ended their own show (ie. playing poker together), with very little having changed (other than Picard having a son), but better that than any of them being needlessly offed just for ‘shock value’ (sometimes a series can end WITHOUT major character deaths). Now, just give me that Seven of Nine spinoff, damn it!
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Feb 19, 2024 13:27:26 GMT -5
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Feb 22, 2024 1:58:34 GMT -5
Finished Season 1 of Wolf Pack on Blu-ray. Like probably a lot of people, I got interested in this show when I heard Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, would be starring in it. I’d watched two of her previous shows ( Ringer and The Crazy Ones) which didn’t last very long and was hoping she’d finally get another show that would last multiple seasons. Alas, it was cancelled and so this one season wound up being the entire series. When I heard the news it wasn’t getting picked up for another season, I was initially disappointed (SMG can’t catch a break!), though I’d seen it wasn’t exactly highly rated on IMDB, but those ratings mean nothing to me since they often rate things I like as pretty low and rate things I dislike quite highly. As always, I like to judge for myself. However, on rare occasions...online ratings for things actually turn out to be right, and I’m sad to report that’s the case with this show. It comes to us from the same guy who did the Teen Wolf series...and somehow a better teen werewolf show was made in early 2010s compared to one made in the 2020s. I’d seen mentioned online that previous show was cancelled to make room for this one, and I guess he wanted to make a more 'mature' series...but it appears the creator thought more violence and F-bombs would automatically a more ‘mature’/’adult’ show make. He was wrong, and rather predictably this line of thinking didn’t have the result he was probably hoping for. You know those shows/movies where cussing feels needless and as thought it’s some kid trying to sound like a 'grown-up' with the dialogue? That’s what it felt like here. None of the swearing flows naturally, and instead it's like they’re just using F-bombs regularly to sound more ‘edgy’. It’s the same with the violence, though to a lesser extent (since it’s not that much worse than what was in Teen Wolf - except for the first episode, where some guy gets his face trampled off by animal fleeing the forest fire that is the main plot point this show revolves around. THAT bit of gore was pretty nasty). One of the main flaws with this show is its pacing. Basically NOTHING happened after the first episode until towards the end of the season. The revelations hardly felt like revelations at all (seriously, the ‘big reveal’ that happened in the last episode was something people probably figured out right from the start). Scenes would drag on and on where characters just seemed to be saying the same stuff over and over in slight variations, then by the end they’d just come to the same conclusions they started off with. Nothing really 'new' came out of the discussions the characters had. The dialogue was BORING, there was no wit or snappiness to it (note to writers: regular F-bombs does not witty dialogue make), and it just felt like the same conversations time and time again. The ‘lore’/’mythology’ on Teen Wolf was oftentimes questionable (at best), but compared to this show...that one actually MADE SENSE. Hey, did you know fire can turn wolves into werewolves? Because it does on this show. And that’s just one example of the bizarre mythology this show had (another being that getting bitten by a werewolf apparently does a better job of clearing up your skin than Clearasil does) that honestly felt like it was just pulling stuff out of its arse and hoping people would accept it. Regarding the show’s characters, none of the main ‘teens’ were particularly compelling. The male lead, Everett, was pretty dull/boring and I guess him having anxiety was supposed to make him ‘relatable’ to those who have it in real life, but it didn’t make him any more interesting (nor did his mum seemingly hating him make me suddenly feel sorry for him. Instead, I just found that a weird thing. Plus, I like Amy Pietz, the actress who played his mum, so the whole time I was just wondering what her issue with him was). The female lead, Blake, was your typical moody female character who had an autistic brother she was tasked with taking care of all the time. Neither this nor the dynamic with her father made her any more interesting, and the character ‘quirk’ of her avoiding technology by not having a phone ended up having the most ridiculous explanation for it when we finally heard the origin of why she was so anti-phone (“It’s to blame for my parents separating!” - hey, don’t blame the phone, Blake. It wasn’t the phone’s fault!). I wasn’t particularly fond of her character since she seemed to be rather mean towards the one 'teen' character I actually *did* half-like, (Luna) for no particular reason. While the actress who played Luna (Chloe Rose Robertson) hardly has any acting credits apart from this show according to her IMDB page, and admittedly she was somewhat stiff in the beginning, I thought she became more comfortable in the role as the season went on and unlike most of the other 'teen' characters, she was actually NICE (though I really didn't like the flashback reveal that she'd killed her own horse as a kid when she couldn't control her werewolfiness. Poor horse!). Numerous times she tried to reach out to others and befriend them (especially Blake), but was treated with hostility. Not just by strangers, though, but also her brother - Harlan - who was probably the most aggressive of the main four. The way he acted towards not only his sister, but his father and Everett as well, made him difficult to like. Also, for a character who was supposed to not be ‘defined’ by his being gay...the show sure like to shove it in viewers’ faces a lot, having numerous scenes that served no purpose other than to remind everyone HARLAN IS GAY (and with the most dull potential love interests ever). Speaking of overdoing things, the numerous raves/parties these kids attended when there was a perpetual raging wildfire going on (that never seemed to be brought under control) showed just how messed up the priorities are of youths these days. As average as these ‘core four’ characters were, at least they were better than the supporting ‘teen’ characters, all of whom I wanted to see picked off one by one every episode by the werewolf that was seemingly terrorising the town (but was in fact supposedly ‘protecting’ the ‘pack’ ie. the main four). They were ALL SO ANNOYING, I wanted them to be eaten and become werewolf shit. The adults weren’t much better. Rodrigo Santoro’s Garrett spent the first two episodes just escaping the fire, then had to put up with one of his kids (which he adopted when they were wolf cubs that turned human. If people were questioning the ‘unnatural beauty’ of Luna and Harlan, it could always just be chalked up to 'werewolfy magic', I guess) coming close to killing him and the other three joining in since they were ‘connected’ (we spent a whole episode on them learning of this connection when they could all hear each other as they were being interrogated by SMG. Like, this would’ve been something revealed in the first or second episodes of Teen Wolf, but it takes this show umpteen episodes to reach this hardly earth-shattering reveal. Speaking of those werewolfy abilities, apparently they each get just ONE - how lame. Everett gets strength, Blake gets speed, Harlan gets hearing and poor Luna gets stuck with the lamest one of all - smell. We hardly see them utilising any of these powers and when they do it’s pretty boring). The one decent piece of acting I saw from Rodrigo was when his two adoptive kids learned of him making silver bullets and Luna asked if he made them to kill her and Harlan, as Garrett’s pause before saying a final ‘yes’ (after answering the same to the questions before that) had suitable weight/emotion to it. As for SMG’s character of Kristin Ramsey...she pretty much had very little to do in the first handful of episodes and only by the halfway point of the season did she FINALLY do something. Sadly, though, we didn't get to see any of that Buffy spark until the final scene of the final episode where we learned the truth about her character (which, really, wasn’t that shocking) and she fought Mr. “I AM THE DEMON WOLF!!!” Deucalion from Teen Wolf (I did love her little eyebrow raise at one point during their fight, as that felt quite Buffy-esque). But it was too little too late, as she should’ve been this awesome ALL SEASON. The biggest disappointment of this series was how wasted SMG was in it (though since she’s an ‘executive producer’, I guess she has no one to blame but herself? Executive produce better shows, SMG!). You know a show’s bad when not even Buffy can save it (nor does it even deserve its own opening credits sequence which was nice in its simplicity, especially the piano tune. Though one shot reminded me of the opening credits for the Laura Vandervoort werewolf series Bitten - which, although not great, I'd still rather have been watching than this show). Suffice to say I’m NOT saddened by the fact that we won’t ever get any closure to any of the cliffhangers this show ended on, as I don’t even care enough to find out. It's slow, boring and easily the worst werewolf show I've watched thus far. Don't waste your time with this, watch Teen Wolf or Bitten instead.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Mar 9, 2024 22:05:56 GMT -5
Finished Seasons 3 & 4 of The Outpost on Blu-ray. {Spoiler}The first two seasons of this show were released here on DVD/Blu-ray quite a few years ago and it had eventually got to the stage where I thought they were NEVER going to release any other seasons (which has happened many times before with other shows. One series called Wynonna Earp, for example, which I really enjoyed - they only released the first two seasons of on DVD/Blu-ray here, but there have been four seasons of in total. I'm not sure why it never got its last two seasons released here, as I really wanted to see the rest of the show). However, to my shock/surprise, earlier this year the final two seasons of The Outpost were released on DVD/Blu-ray (together/as one set, rather than as separate seasons like the first two were - though I think I read somewhere that Season 4 was also considered a 'Season 3B' of sorts, so maybe that's why it got released here as one) and I immediately bought it because it's the sort of show where I don’t think the store received many copies of it and I wasn't going to risk missing out after having waited FOREVER to see the remainder of the show. Due to having watched the first two seasons of this show a fair while ago, my memory of what had last happened in the series was rather vague. They provided a ‘Previously on’ regarding the prior season at the start of the first episode for Season 3, but a lot of it I’d apparently forgotten. I *did* recall the part where Garret stabbed Talon (nothing says ‘I love you’ like a stab to the ribs) and then the season ending with a fellow Blackblood of Talon’s, Zed, announcing that this was now the Outpost of the Blackbloods (who I think he’d eventually forced her into bringing through a portal after having been telling her to all last season). All I could think when this season began with Talon spying her friends returning from wherever was that she was probably feeling something along the lines of, “My friends! I’m so glad to see you all again...except for Garret, who stabbed me. You dick.” - though, to be fair, it’s highly possible he wasn’t in his right mind/was somehow being controlled when he’d been all stab-happy. I honestly can’t recall the details surrounding that, but even so I’d imagine it’d be hard for Talon to just get over it like it was nothing...though apparently she did). Since my memory sucks and trying to remember all the things that happened over the course of Seasons 3 & 4 would be too hard, I’m just going to address my thoughts on these seasons one character at a time. Talon - While some have been unkind towards Jessica Green who plays the lead character of the show, putting down her acting abilities, I’ve always thought she did a decent enough job of playing what was clearly supposed to be a rather ‘stoic’ character. I don’t think Talon was intended as someone who got overly emotional (regardless of who played the role), she’s *meant* to be the loner who gradually came to care about the characters who surrounded her at the Outpost (and they were the more ‘emotional’ ones). I liked Talon best when she was either kicking arse or just hanging with her friends. After being told time and time again by Zed to bring the rest of her people through a portal from the ‘Plain of Ashes’, it turns out she waited too long and most of her people from there were dead when she eventually went through to get them - not that she hadn’t had good reason to be hesitant in bringing them through, since Season 3 started with her basically being forced to bring one particular Blackblood through who she was suspicious of and then her suspicion was proven RIGHT. So everyone guilt-tripping her about being the reason her people died was a bit unfair, as her bringing Blackbloods through previously had a negative outcome as well. She was kind of in a no-win situation when it came to bringing people through the portal. I was also quite annoyed that, considering Jessica Green who played Talon was the *lead* of the show, oftentimes it didn’t feel like that in these two seasons. It’s like the showrunners listened to the people hating on her and decided to reduce her screentime/significance in the show and give it to other actors/characters. I personally wasn’t happy about this, as I felt that Jessica Green grew more confident with her acting as the show went on and she was doing the best she could with a character that wasn’t really written as being this overly emotional person. Whatever one might’ve thought about her acting abilities, she was still the star of the show and deserved to be treated as such rather than sidelined/marginalized in favour of characters/actors the show’s writers apparently liked *more*. At times it felt like Talon/Jessica Green had the least amount of screentime in some episodes and imho that just wasn’t right. I did appreciate what little time we got between her and her ‘best friend’ (which was debatable given how she’d treated Talon at times in the past), Gwynn. I liked that Talon always called her ‘Gwynn’ instead of Queen Rosamund (which was her actual name, but I think when she first met Talon she was hiding her true identity and ‘Gwynn’ was how Talon came to know her. It showed she never thought of her as the Queen, but instead as just her friend). It’s too bad there was so little of them together/getting along in Season 3, considering that was the last season Gwynn was in. Someone else who Talon seemed to barely interact with in the third and fourth seasons was Janzo, who previously was probably one of the main characters she interacted with. In the first two seasons, he’d had a thing for her and I think some people got sick of this unrequited love storyline for him, so the writers decided to give him a love interest in Season 3 so that he had someone who actually loved him back in the same way as he felt. Unfortunately, this meant he had little time for Talon and it felt to me like the writers kind of drove their characters’ friendship apart, which was a shame since that was one of the things I’d enjoyed about the first two seasons. Surely they could’ve given Janzo a love interest and had him get over his thing for Talon but *still* had the two friends interacting like they once had. I don’t like to speculate, but I wonder if maybe something was going on where the Talon and Janzo actors weren’t getting along or something hence their reduced screentime together. I just felt it was kinda sad that although Janzo maintained *he* was Talon’s ‘best friend’ (whenever she kept mentioning her actual BFF was Gwynn), it didn’t really feel like he was in Seasons 3 & 4 as they had very few one-on-one scenes together (and as if to drive home the fact that Janzo had 'gotten over' his infatuation with Talon, at her wedding in the final episode, he went from saying that seeing his friend married was the happiest day of his life to backpedaling/amending that with it being the 'third' happiest day of his life, with the day he learned he was going to be a father and the day his love interest, Wren, told him that she loved him being the first two 'happiest days of his life'. It felt like the writers desperately trying to make clear to the audience "SEE? He doesn't care about Talon like that anymore! He's all about WREN WREN WREN!". I thought it kinda ruined what was intended as a sweet, albeit all too brief, final scene between these two characters. A small consolation for the lack of Talon/Janzo friendship scenes was Talon coming to play the role of a sort of ‘mentor’ to a young would-be assassin by the name of Luna in the fourth season who attempted to get revenge against Talon for the death of her sister in a prior season (thank goodness for the flashbacks, otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue who her sister was), but then soon learned it wasn’t Talon’s fault and she had in fact killed the actual one responsible. Luna started off as somewhat annoying, but gradually we saw her develop a friendship with Talon (who she was a lot alike in some ways - which was pointed out to us on numerous occasions). Then there was that weird thing she had going on with Garret where it felt like the writers were testing their chemistry together, even though his first thought was that she was fourteen (why else have her make it clear she was actually eighteen than to say to shippers out there “It’s okay to ship them, she’s of legal age!”? It was pretty weird, but luckily Garret made it clear that he never thought of her ‘that way’). Luna and Talon’s bonding was nice to watch (I feel like Talon 'lightened up' a bit when it was just the two of them), and she actually wasn’t *too* annoying (maybe it’s just because I’ve been watching far more annoying ‘kid’ characters in things for some time now that, by comparison, Luna wasn’t so bad). While I certainly wouldn’t have wanted Luna to ‘take over’ Talon’s role in the show (not sure if that was the direction they were headed or not), I wasn't opposed to the ‘big sister’/’little sister’-type relationship they had going on and, really, with the Talon/Gwynn friendship being no more after Gwynn's demise and the Talon/Janzo friendship being almost nonexistent, Talon needed another good friend relationship in the show, ‘cause God knows her romantic relationship with Garret wasn’t exactly the most thrilling thing ever. Which brings me to... Garret - I know some people didn’t think much of Garret and found him rather ‘boring/dull/bland’, but from what I can recall...I don’t think I had too much of a problem with him in the past. Then again, my memory of the two previous seasons of the show being as fuzzy as they are, maybe I *did* have some problems with him and have just forgotten. From other people's comments I've read regarding the character, it seems he wasn’t always the nicest person to Talon/could be a jerk to her. I did think at times in these two later seasons he didn’t put enough trust in her considering she was someone he claimed to ‘love’. However, I couldn’t entirely hate him since on occasion he was the only one who sided with her viewpoint against others’ opposing viewpoints. He even tried to relieve her of guilt about her people dying, and most of all the fact that other characters would sometimes pick on Garret made it easier to like him (I’m guessing the writers had read comments from those who weren’t fans of the character and decided to use some of these in the show). I especially felt sorry for him when Munt outright told Garret he didn’t like him as much as his friend Tobin (after Garret delivered the news of Tobin’s death). Munt wasn’t all there, but Garret was very patient with him and assured him he thought of him as more than just a bartender as he comforted the grieving friend of Tobin (who Munt said never treated him as just a bartender). In the end, although Janzo maintained that he thought Garret didn’t deserve Talon (as they wed in the closing moments of the series), Zed expressed that he thought Garret *did* and I interpreted that as the show’s way of telling the Garret haters by this point the character had earned being with Talon (I did like when everyone including Garret bowed to Talon as the new Queen and she told him, “Get up, silly. You’re king.”). Gwynn - I can’t remember a whole lot of what she did in Season 3, but I know at times she was at odds with Talon, while other times they acted like best friends...but as mentioned, I don’t think we got nearly enough of their friendship in what turned out to be Gwynn’s final season. I’d been somewhat spoiled for her departure from the show prior to watching the Season 3 final, but I hadn’t expected it to happen so early. I thought it was going to occur in the final season, so it caught me off guard (though once she offered to be the one to take out the Season 3 Big Bad, I knew it was leading to her demise). I had actually thought she was going to be brought back in the final season...but alas, that didn’t end up happening. I’m not sure why the writers decided to kill off her character (whether they just got bored of Gwynn, whether the actress who played her *wanted* to leave, or whether there was some backstage drama that led to Imogen Waterhouse being let go - but I noticed she directed at least one episode in Season 4, so I guess she didn’t leave on entirely bad terms otherwise I doubt she would’ve returned to direct). At times Gwynn was a bit of wishy-washy character, but in the end she proved herself noble and self-sacrificing. I was bummed when she exited the show, as I thought she was a character who was needed to ‘humanize’ Talon more and one of the core friendships of the show was lost with her departure. Janzo - I can’t entirely recall what my initial reaction to this character was when I first started watching the show, but I feel like it probably took me at least a little while to get accustomed to his particular brand of ‘quirkiness’. While it’s a pretty unanimous opinion that the actor who portrayed him (Anand Desai-Barochia) was the best actor in the show, I did feel that the character of Janzo could be a ‘bit much’ at times (especially when he'd scream/shriek - it was pretty OTT). While the actor had a very expressive face and could do a lot with just the movement of his eyebrows, he also had rather exaggerated mannerisms that made him feel a lot more ‘animated’ when compared to the rest of the characters. And although Janzo was someone who clearly felt a *lot* for other people, I found he could also be rather mean to those he didn’t think much of/wasn’t fond of (like Garret, for example). There were quite a few times where I thought he was unnecessarily nasty to other characters with his comments/insults towards them, but because he could be so nice to those he liked, people seemed to forgive him. He was also his own worst enemy when it came to caring about strangers he’d never met before who he felt were ‘wronged’, as he took pity on a certain someone in the fourth season who then walloped him over the head (as well as others too - it seemed to be that character's secret power: whacking unsuspecting people in the head, rendering them unconscious) and looked to have joined the bad guys’ side. It was just fortunate that he then learned the error of his ways and decided to fight for the side of good, but for a while there it looked like Janzo was going to learn the hard way that just blindly trusting people he wasn’t familiar with wasn’t always the best/safest course of action. Zed - Like a lot of things regarding the previous seasons of the show, I’d forgotten what I thought of Zed when he was introduced in Season 2 (though I vaguely recalled coming around to not-minding him over the course of it). This season he could at times be kind of annoying, but on the whole I continued to not-mind him as a character and it even got to the stage where I was hoping they wouldn’t off him (around the time it felt like the show was becoming too trigger-happy in getting rid of characters). I thought he brought out a different side of Talon to what Garret did, and in some ways I think he had a better/’easier’ chemistry with her than Garret (which was probably due, in part at least, to Zed being a fellow Blackblood). I thought Zed ‘challenged’ Talon in a way that Garret didn’t, and I did feel during their one-on-one scenes that, in some ways, Zed was a better match for Talon than Garret was (though it became clear Talon/Garret were ‘endgame’). I also liked the various dynamics Zed developed with other characters such as Garret, Tobin and Munt. It was a unique sort of relationship with each one and I think he added quite a lot to the show. I even liked his relationship with a potential love interest character that was introduced in the fourth season (another Blackblood by the name of Nedra, who came across from the Plain of Ashes with the few other surviving Blackbloods). I actually grew to really like her as a character and was pissed off that she got killed (and in such a predictable way too). She was cool, I liked that they gave her some character development in the little amount of time she had (trying on 'human clothes', much to Zed's amusement, and finding they just weren't for her) and I wished she’d survived (or had been brought back, like I held out the vain hope that she would when he collected the dust/ashes she’d been turned into by one of the Big Bads of the season). I thought the actress who played Nedra, Tamara Radovanović, managed to do a lot with her limited screentime (and I certainly preferred her to Zed’s brother, Corven, who just seemed like an even crazier version of Janzo and who I wasn't particularly sad to see die saving his brother in the Plain of Ashes. I was more upset about Zed’s Lu-Qiri, Vikka, getting killed via the life being sucked out of him by one of the season’s Big Bads). I’m glad Zed stuck around in the show/wasn’t killed off, I just wish he’d gotten to have a happier ending by being with the one he cared for (but at least he got to avenge her in the final episode). Nedra deserved better! Tobin - His was another character who I couldn’t really recall what I thought of during Season 2, but I think he grew on me over time and he was fairly decent/likeable in these two seasons (even if, like almost all the characters, there were times when I wasn’t so fussed on him). He developed interesting dynamics with pretty much all the characters, but the best ones were with Garret and Munt. The former was a somewhat ‘antagonistic’ relationship, as it seemed they could fight at various times, but other times were begrudging allies. While with Munt, Tobin offered him advice on dating (though calling Munt a ‘beast’ and the object of his affection a ‘flower’ wasn’t one of his finer moments) and became a good friend of his. Tobin was in love with Gwynn, but then went to a childhood friend to get an army - which he could only secure by agreeing to marry her, this naturally didn’t go over well with Gwynn but he maintained that he loved *her*, only for Gwynn to die in the Season 3 final and then Tobin suddenly loved the woman he’d married strictly to secure an army. The woman in question, Falista, started off as being rather annoying in Season 3, but then became somewhat likeable towards the end of the third season. Unfortunately, due to her getting stuck with a kinj (those glowy light things Blackbloods have in their temples which are like the ‘souls’ of the Big Bads from Season 4, we learned) she started letting the power of being the new Queen go to her head (literally) and thus became hard to like in Season 4. She then became obsessed with giving the kinjs (both she and Tobin had) back to these evil so-called ‘gods’ willingly...but they still offed her (and eventually Tobin as well). I thought it was a shame what the writers did with both of them, as it seemed like a waste of two interesting characters. Wren - This was a character who was introduced in the first episode of Season 3, and straight away I found her unlikeable as she barged into Janzo’s lab, making herself right at home as the daughter of the Big Bad that season (both of whom had been brought through from the Plain of Ashes at different times). Firstly, her hairdo in that episode was not something many, if any, people can pull off (I always remember it as that hairstyle from the movie Liar Liar who Jim Carrey’s character reckons even a crazy wardrobe is preferable to so long as it takes the focus off the person’s head. The *only* time I’ve seen anyone be able to make this hairstyle look even half-decent was in the series Farscape with the character of Sikozu. On anyone else it just looks bloody stupid) and it annoyed me right off the bat. Then there was the fact that she seemed to act like basically the female version of Janzo (and one of him was MORE than enough). I also found her devotion to her mother, who was trying to destroy the world basically, to be pretty lame since all she kept saying was “She’s my mother!” (as if that was a good enough to reason for Talon & co to not want to off her/save the world). In Season 4, Wren became pregnant (not that you’d know it, considering she never really looked overly pregnant throughout the entire season. Then in the final episode there was a ‘One year later’ jump forward at the end and it looked like she was *still* pregnant. It seemed the writers had no concept of time/how long pregnancy takes. Then again, maybe it’s longer for Blackbloods?). What I found most unlikeable about her was her superiority complex, where she’d always go on about how brilliant she was and she even put down Janzo at times (and he was someone who wasn’t at all modest about his own intelligence), then there was her 'holier-than-thou' attitude towards the end of the final season when it came to saving a species of creatures called Kahvi which Talon was apprehensive about but then suddenly came around to Wren's way of thinking. While Wren did become more tolerable over time, I personally felt she and Janzo kind of ‘swallowed’ the show and it often felt like they were the ‘leads’. There was just too much of them as a pair, imho, and there were other female characters who I would’ve rather seen more of (or kept alive) in exchange for the character of Wren (who I know other people loved, but I really wasn’t a fan of). Munt - I hadn’t even really remembered him from the previous seasons until he started appearing a fair bit in Season 3. I think he was one of those characters who started out not having much to do (and I think he may have even been a bit of a jerk, especially to Janzo - though I may be misremembering), but then obviously the writers fell in love with the character or the actor who played him (or both), and thus he was given more significant screentime in Seasons 3 & 4. At times it seemed like Munt wasn't so bright, but then other times he could be quite smart/insightful, so I think rather than him being merely ‘simple’ it was more a case of his character instead being ‘sheltered’ and thus he could be somewhat obtuse when it came to some things, but he wasn’t a moron either. I enjoyed his friendship with Tobin, and although like Janzo his ‘quirkiness’ could be a bit much at times, on the whole he wasn’t too bad. I especially liked the introduction of his love interest, Warlita, who was pretty cute and nice/likeable. The two of them were good together. Unlike others, I didn’t feel she was too ‘mean’ to him when their first date was a complete disaster. For the most part, she actually seemed pretty tolerable of his awkwardness and things not going quite according to plan. It was only when he tried eating something (possibly sea urchin) the wrong way, which made his mouth bleed, and he spilt stuff on her that she left the date abruptly. But later she made it clear to him he was no ‘beast’, nor she a ‘flower’ (as Tobin had said), chugging a beer and telling Munt to just be himself/not try to be someone he wasn’t. I was glad Warlita survived (although Munt got pretty seriously injured towards the end of Season 4, I felt pretty confidant the show wouldn’t off him) and the two of them remained together, as they were a sweet couple with very little ‘drama’ (like most of the other couples in the show had). I think the show's apparent move to Serbia to film from Season 2 onwards served the show well, as it certainly gave the show some good scenery/locations, but also I imagine the majority of extras (and even some recurring guest stars) were locals, which added an extra 'flavour' to the cast. I remember one seemingly bit-part player in Season 3 had this look about her that gave her a rather unhinged quality and I found her much more creepy than the actual main bad guys in the show. It's no wonder they brought her back to play one of the evil 'gods' in Season 4 (albeit now hidden under makeup/prosthetics) since she'd clearly made quite the impact with a relatively minor role in Season 3. I was glad the final episode featured Talon kicking the most arse we'd seen her do in quite a long time (and showed not only how skilled a fighter she was - taking on these multiple 'gods' - but also how intelligent she was, as she outsmarted them while fighting off Garret and Zed at the same time after they'd been mind-controlled by one of them. It's too bad we couldn't have seen *more* of this arse-kicking Talon throughout the last two seasons). While I’m glad I finally got to see Seasons 3 & 4 of this show after such a long wait, I couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed in some of the directions the show took (especially the characters it decided to off). Although I’m sure the first two seasons had their fair share of flaws, I also feel like it was at least more *Talon’s* show back then, whereas it felt less and less like her show with the latter two seasons. Still, for a show that started off as being just this little series that not many people seemed to have much faith in (as it was never one with a big budget, and was rather ‘limited’ in a lot of ways), it turned into a pretty decent series that felt like an old-fashioned action/adventure/fantasy show in the same vein as Xena: Warrior Princess. Although it’s a bit disappointing the series got cancelled, and I’ll miss certain characters/actors from the show, at least it got more seasons than a lot of other shows do, and even better...it didn’t end on a cliffhanger and more or less got to have a proper ending that was (mostly) satisfying. I'll miss this show...but most of all I'll miss looking at Jessica Green on my screen.
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Post by President Ackbar mini™ on Mar 17, 2024 12:08:04 GMT -5
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Apr 2, 2024 2:21:11 GMT -5
Finished Season 1 of The Legend of Korra on DVD. {Spoiler}I'd heard about this show ages ago, and was vaguely intrigued but figured that whenever I saw that it was airing on TV here, it was probably already halfway through the series and I wasn't going to start watching unless I started right at the beginning. It was actually even airing when I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender on TV only recently, but again I didn't want to start in the middle (or worse, near the end). So I figured there were two options: 1) Wait until Avatar: The Last Airbender finished on TV here in the hope that they started The Legend of Korra from the very beginning again (since it's a 'sequel series'), or 2) Get it on DVD. I chose option #2 and bought the complete series boxset because there was a sale on where I am for Good Friday with DVDs/Blu-rays where if you bought one boxset, the second one was 50% off. Anyway, I had read one review for the site of the place I get all my DVDs/Blu-rays at where a customer mentioned that the first season of their boxset wasn't working properly and they had to return it (I think maybe even the one they exchanged it for had problems too), and because I've experienced this myself with DVDs/Blu-rays I've gotten in the past, I wanted to get to watching *my* boxset as quickly as possible to check for any hiccups so I could return it if need be ASAP. Originally I was trying not to watch *too* many episodes in one sitting, as I wanted to make the series last...but in the end I said to myself "To hell with spacing out watching the eps!" and binged it like crazy - partly because I wanted to check it was all fine, and partly because I just enjoyed it that much. As mentioned, I only watched its 'parent show', Avatar: The Last Airbender, recently when they started airing the show on TV here and although it took a few episodes for me to really get into it, once I *did* I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Unfortunately, partway into Season 2 they introduced a new character by the name of Toph who I took an immediate disliking to and who, although I prayed for it *not* to happen, ended up joining the main trio of characters in that show as a regular member of the team (naturally) and thus not only ruined the team dynamic they'd had going (imho), but also the show as a whole for me - so much so that a show I not-too-long-ago looked forward to watching every day became less enjoyable and now I just watched out of a sense of completion/to see it through to the end. So, with the 'parent show' having become something I was less enthused about due to a specific character, I thought watching this 'sequel series' would be somewhat of a fresh start as at least I wouldn't have to deal with that character who annoyed me. I did learn that they appear at some point in this show, but at least they're not a regular character and I'm hoping that remains the case. With this show, although there were cameos from characters of the original show (albeit older versions of them), more or less it was a new cast of characters. Of course, a bunch were offspring from the original show's cast, but at least they were still different. I'd heard people weren't fond of the Korra character, but I myself saw no real problem with her. Soon as we meet Korra (as a kid with quite the gut - sorry for causing any child body image issues), she's already gung-ho about being the Avatar and has seemingly got a good handle on three of the elements...but it's Air which is giving her problems. It then cuts to her being a young adult and she's kicking butt - and right off the bat I could tell why there was a section of people out there who apparently resented this series - a FEMALE CHARACTER WHO KICKS ARSE?! The horror! Naturally, certain people seemed to have problems with this, but I think *because* she's older it can be forgiven that we'd skipped over her learning to master the other three since Aang had already seemed pretty experienced with the elements when the original show began and he was younger than her. I remember Katara teaching him water-bending and he was showing off, apparently being able to master it better than her - and people seemed fine with that, but whenever a female character is good at more than one thing she's apparently considered "too perfect". I actually think the show made it clear Korra wasn't 'perfect'. She was clearly hotheaded and quick to anger at times, lacked patience in some areas and made mistakes (that alone should've silenced claims of her 'perfection'...but, sadly, I knew it wouldn't). What I found truly bizarre was the same people who criticised Korra for her behaviour seemed to ADORE Toph, and while Korra could be somewhat rude, brash and overconfident...at least she wasn't those things ALL THE TIME, whereas Toph *was* yet people loved her. Hypocritical much? I wondered if all these adoring fans of that character gave her a pass for her terrible behaviour because she was 'blind' (never mind the fact that most of the time she didn't even act blind and only on occasion would they remind us that she was in fact 'blind'), like being visually-impaired gives you a license to be an a-hole to people. I LOVED Korra's polar bear dog, Naga, immediately (just like I loved Appa the flying bison immediately in the original show), as she actually reminds me a lot of my dog in appearance/mannerisms/reactions. I also liked the voice actress for Korra quite a bit and enjoyed her dynamics with the characters she interacted with. Although her relationship with her mentor, Tenzin (voiced by J.K. Simmons), is the typical sort of one where the student won't listen to the exasperated teacher, it's still a good dynamic (at one point I was getting a Buffy/Giles vibe off them where one minute you thought Tenzin was going to just chastise her for telling off someone as being 'the worst ever'...but then he actually voiced his agreement with her assessment of this person, which was amusing. It was like how when Giles could be stern with Buffy, but also back up her opinion on things too - that's what their relationship reminded me of, anyway). Even the kid characters weren't annoying me *too* much (at least not to start with, though by the end of the season they were coming dangerously close to doing so when they were being arseholes towards the animal/pet characters). The only thing that REALLY annoyed me was seeing the statue of Toph - because OF COURSE they would deify her. The show writers for the previous series did, and apparently a large section of the show's fans did as well. Seeing her again (even in statue form) briefly angered me, and I was ready to be sick of her daughter, Lin Beifong, upon meeting her since it seemed like 'bitchy mother, like bitch daughter'...but it led to an amusing moment with Korra thinking she was making an "I've got my eyes on you!" gesture (and returning it) when in fact she was just opening doors. I LOVED Korra's expression she made as she was walking out (I must admit that, like Korra herself, I thought Lin was making the 'I got my eyes on you' gesture and didn't get until I read YouTube comments under the video of the scene that this was a gesture to open doors). Thankfully, her character came around to respecting Korra and even self-sacrificing for her (losing her metal-bending powers). In the second episode we met two brothers, Bolin (who you instantly knew was destined to be 'friend-zoned') and his older sibling, Mako (who I'd seen the name of before ever watching and thought it'd be pronounced 'May-ko' but was surprised to find the show pronouncing it at 'Mah-ko'), who we instantly knew would be a potential love interest for Korra. While both were 'tropes' of a sort (the somewhat goofy younger brother and the more serious older brother), I was surprised by how refreshing they still felt as characters. I was worried Mako was going to be another brooding grump-arse, and while he was a jerk to Korra to start with (which she thankfully called him out on), it wasn't long before she'd impressed him when she had to fill in for one of the brothers' teammates in a game called Pro-Bending - which was a sport that involved, you guessed it, bending of the elements (I personally thought it was visually interesting, moreso than other made-up sports like Harry Pothead's Quidditch, for example, and was bummed when it basically got written out). Luckily, he lightened up pretty quick (which I was glad for, as I didn't want to have to put up with another Zuko - who I know is a favourite of people who watched A:TLA, but who I wasn't particularly impressed with myself - yet another 'unpopular opinion' of mine regarding the Airbender universe). And he was more or less a good brother to Bolin (even bringing him home his favourite food at one point) and wasn't a jerk to him too often. Speaking of, the younger bro who almost instantly developed a crush on Korra could've just been 'comic relief', and while he *does* provide quite a bit of that (not every joke lands, but he has provided quite a bit of amusement for me with his comments/observational humour), he's not ONLY that. He does feel like a proper character. I also love his pet 'fire ferret' (which I just figured was a red panda...but apparently not), Pabu. Yes, similarities can be drawn between Pabu and Momo in A:TLA (just like Aang's flying bison and Korra's polar bear dog), but I think I prefer Pabu to Momo. As for Appa vs. Naga - I feel it's a bit unfair to compare the two since Naga's featured less, plus Appa was Aang's best/only friend for the longest time, whereas Naga seemed to be more of a 'pet' for Korra (though she still got to show that she could kick some arse, and I liked the fact that we saw Naga was having NONE of this multiple-people-riding-on-her-back stuff like poor Appa had to endure, then the characters had to resort to travelling by car. Though, annoyingly, they then disregarded Naga's rejection of carrying multiple passengers and had her doing exactly that later into the season). Making up the fourth (human) member of this new 'Team Avatar' was the character of Asami, who at first seemed like she existed merely to throw a spanner in the works of the Korra/Mako potential pairing, but then showed herself to be an actually pretty decent character in her own right even though she was the one non-bender of the team. Yes, there was some predictable 'relationship drama' involving her and the other three, but thankfully they got through that stuff fairly quickly and it wasn't dwelled on too long. There was some surprisingly pretty emotional stuff between her and her father who Korra had accused of being a bad guy and nobody seemed to believe her, but she was then proven right and we got a father/daughter showdown in the final between Asami and her dad. I appreciated this 'mature' element. In fact, this show as a whole felt slightly more 'mature' in tone to A:TLA, which I think was in part due to the main characters being older than those from the 'parent show' and also the fact that this series seemed to have more serious subject matter like protestors for 'equality' regarding those who could bend vs. those who can't as criminals basically. There was even a masked leader dude named Amon (who I totally thought would be revealed to be a certain other character who appeared at various times throughout the season, but then we learned they were in fact brothers - with possibly the darkest backstory I'd seen in either show. I was surprised with that and even more surprised by the emotional ending, with one brother taking them both out just as Amon thought they were back to being how they once were together - I was *not* expecting death by suicide in this show, but kudos to the series for going there and for not having the season's main villain drawn out too long). I think the series did a good job of making the villain a formidable foe since he could take away people's bending powers permanently (I can't even complain about how they kind of undid Korra having her bending taken away by Amon with her finally harnessing air-bending, then going into the 'Avatar state' and there apparently being some loophole in that which allowed her to not only get her bending powers back, but also restore Lin's - at least I think that's what happened. Anyway, as least they spent all season working up to it, rather than her just gaining mastery of air-bending easily. She went through hell to get there). Witnessing blood-bending for the first time was truly something scary (the way it'd distort people's bodies to the point you thought they were going to be twisted into human pretzels was actually quite horrifying). Really, the show did a good job of coming up with ways to take on benders so it was more even in their fights, plus the showrunners weren't afraid to have their heroes regularly beaten up. I liked that there were different kinds of bending in this series apart from the four elements (though I had to roll my eyes at the reveal that Toph alone had apparently discovered 'metal-bending' - like she wasn't ENOUGH of an overpowered Mary Sue type - and considering I hate that term/think it's overused by people online, you know I don't use it lightly). I liked the more 'gritty' feel to this show, the cityscapes with characters being pursued through dark alleys and also the old-style things like steampunk-type machines/vehicles, old-timey radios, etc (speaking of, using the old-timey radio voice guy to do the 'Previously On...'s for each episode was a neat way of doing them, I thought). I even liked the difference in the music used for the end credits - with Aang's show it was very fast drum-beating, whereas with Korra's it's slow and soothing-like (I'm just annoyed the credits go by SO FAST with this show, whereas with the other one I was at least able to see *some* of the cast names. Here, they're just a blur). The best thing about this DVD set, though, is the episode commentaries. I'm enjoying listening to the makers of the show, and even better...the voice actress for Korra (she has such a nice voice to listen to - the most shocking thing for me was discovering she's an actress from a show I watched called You're the Worst in which she played a supremely ANNOYING character. I never would've believed it was the same person, but it's all right there in her list of IMDB credits). I look forward to hearing more. So, all in all, I don't really have any complaints so far and am thoroughly enjoying the show (then again, I felt the same way about the 'parent show' during its first season...and look what happened in Season 2. Hopefully the same thing doesn't happen with this show).
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Apr 5, 2024 1:54:22 GMT -5
Finished Season 2 of The Legend of Korra on DVD. I think I managed to binge-watch this whole season in half the time it took me to watch the previous one. Anyway, I’d heard this season was considered by many as the ‘weakest’ season of the show, but as is always the case...I like to judge for myself. I thought the season started off alright, albeit with a somewhat different ‘feel’ to it as the new ‘Team Avatar’ seemed to be split up/in different places. Korra was off with Tenzin and his family, Mako was now a cop (I had to laugh at his one-liner that he spouted after taking down some criminals like he was What’s-his-face from CSI: Miami), Bolin was stuck with the worst Pro-Bending teammates ever (since Korra and Mako had left) and Asami was attempting to save her company or whatever. I often find it frustrating when shows feel the need to split up their core group of characters in the second season, when it’s usually the case that what *worked* in their first season was these characters all being together. It’s that dynamic between them as a team which was the interaction I wanted to see, whereas I wasn’t really fond of whom they ended up stuck with when they were separated from each other (for example, two of Mako's fellow cops were a pair of jerks who were absolutely useless, but thankfully Lin Beifong fired them at the end of the season). As someone who hadn’t had a problem (like others apparently did) with the character of Korra in the first season, I was somewhat disappointed to find this season she was reduced to being someone who would lose it at Mako for not saying the 'right' thing to her (like she expected him to be a mind-reader) and this would cause them to get into an argument. It happened numerous times and I was glad he actually pointed out how one minute she was angry at him for something he said and then when he readjusted his attempt at supporting her, she got angry for him for saying the opposite to what he’d said the first time. It really was a no-win situation for him, but at least he said as much to her. It seemed the writers, for some unfathomable reason, decided to make her be not a very good g/f to Mako and it’s like they *wanted* people to hate her by having her react unreasonably. While she did apologise to him at various times, it just felt too repetitive - she’d look to him for support, he’d say something ‘wrong’, she’d get mad/storm off, then later she’d apologise. It’s annoying that they had to make her like this, when it would’ve been just as easy to write her as someone who appreciated her supportive b/f. In the end, though, he broke up with her which led to their biggest fight yet. Of course, then she promptly forgot about the fight after making a trip to the spirit world and briefly losing her memory. While it was wrong of him not to fill in the blanks of her memory straight away, it was kinda worth it just to see everyone’s reactions. Eventually he *did* tell her, though, but she had remembered the fight herself by that point and they seemed to break up definitively (but this time amicably). Too bad they didn’t actually get to be a happy couple together for very long, but whatever. Mako snogging Asami not long after his first break-up with Korra probably didn’t win him too many fans, though I was half-expecting a “WE WERE ON A BREAK!” from him at one point. Alas, no friends references were made. I actually never hated Mako this season, even when he did dob in Korra at one point - he was just doing his job. Plus, I felt sorry for him when he figured out a new character introduced this season was up to no good and he tried telling multiple people, but all of them were dismissive/didn’t believe him. I think wrongfully being stuck in jail for a while was enough to make up for any shortcomings he had this season. Meanwhile, Bolin got to continue being pretty funny this season, but wasn’t just the ‘comedy guy’. He actually proved himself quite the hero...not just onscreen (as he played one in what passed for movies in the Avatar universe) but also in reality. How'd he get into acting? That was thanks to the new character introduced this season who I mentioned before - Varrick (who was a source of amusement in his own right). Although he could often be a jerk, at least he was an entertaining jerk, and he provided many an amusing moment (especially with his long-suffering assistant, Zhu Li, who by the end of the season when she was pouring him tea at one point I was fully expecting her to poison him...but I guess she’s loyal and not secretly harbouring resentment towards him? Time will tell). Their shtick was a fun one, as was seeing Varrick’s ‘movers’ (ie. movies) starring Bolin as ‘Nuktuk’, a sort of Tarzan-meets-Flash-Gordon type hero (I thought the OTT villain was definitely a nod to the badguy from Flash Gordon) who was constantly having to save a Marilyn Monroe-like damsel in distress named Ginger (the actress who played her - also named Ginger, confusingly - really wasn’t into Bolin...until he proved himself a r/l hero and then suddenly she was interested). I felt sorry for poor Naga (who Korra had left for Bolin to take care of while she was away - though, she phrased it the other way around and all I could think was it didn’t seem like Korra cared about Naga even half as much as Aang cared about his flying bison, Appa. I was especially sad for Naga as we saw her looking up at Korra departing on another flying bison at one point without so much as a ‘goodbye’ to her animal companion. Korra’s kind of a sucky friend to Naga), as the polar bear dog, along with Bolin’s red panda ‘fire ferret’, Pabu, were forced to wear makeup (Naga being made up to look like a panda, with Pabu as a raccoon) and act as ‘Nuktuk’s’ animal companions in the movers (I’ll admit the OTT ‘death’ of Pabu was funny in its melodrama and also the fact that Asami seemed to think this onscreen death had affected Bolin, but instead he was just sad about his friends not being around and he was actually rather nonchalant about Pabu’s character being ‘dead’, handwaving that he later came back to life. I was also amused by the voices provided for the characters Naga and Pabu played as well as the obviously fake limbs for the two of them when they'd do stuff they couldn't possibly do, etc). However, the BEST part of Bolin’s storyline this season was him getting in over his head when he became involved with Eska, one of Korra’s twin cousins (who Bolin had briefly thought were *both* female, despite one of them being a male named Desna). What made these twins so amusing was their creep-factor (like the twins from The Shining, though they also kind of reminded me of the albino twins from The Matrix Reloaded - obviously not in the way they looked, but the way they talked to each other), especially Eska who was voiced quite hilariously by Aubrey Plaza. Her deadpan delivery is like nobody else’s, and the stuff Eska would say was so delightfully (and unexpectedly) weird. I especially loved her ‘pet name’ for Bolin. The dialogue given to the Eska character provided quite a few amusing moments (though, disappointingly, this lessened somewhat as the season went on). The oddest part involving her character was how one episode ended with her coming after Bolin like a crazy mascara-streaked ex (after he’d dumped her when she’d wanted to get married, since he realised she was too much for him to handle) and then the next episode didn’t pick up straight after this. In fact, it was treated like that moment hadn’t even happened and I wondered if I’d missed an episode (the only continuity I saw between the two episodes was Eska still sporting her running mascara). This was an instance of an actor being so perfectly cast as the voice of a character that I dread to think if they ever attempt to make this show in live-action (like they have with A:TLA), as NOBODY is going to measure up and the only option available would be to cast Aubrey Plaza herself in the role (though by then she might be deemed ‘too old’ by Hollywood standards). Anyway, her character was an unexpected highlight of the season. The opposite of that/the lowlight of the season was Tenzin’s kids. While I’d been able to tolerate them in Season 1, as I’d been expecting/feared...they became pretty irritating in Season 2. First of all, there was WAY too much of them. I hate it when writers seemingly fall in love with writing for certain characters who are much easier to take in far smaller doses but instead they expand them to the point where they almost take over the show. The youngest child, Meelo, irritated me the most with his constant yelling (a bad habit of most kids in general, both on TV and in r/l), and basically terrorising any poor animal he encountered - in this case one of those winged lemurs like A:TLA’s Momo, who he pretty much forced into becoming his pet and gave the name Poki. This was followed by Tenzin giving his son lessons in animal training and poor Poki was suddenly not allowed in Meelo’s bed anymore (poor confused lemur probably didn’t understand what he’d done wrong to be kicked out/stuck sleeping on the hard floor). Eye-rollingly, after not many lessons, Meelo had already mastered the art of training winged lemurs and had an ARMY of them at his disposal. I just grew to really not like this kid (miraculously, my dislike of him at least didn’t reach Toph-levels of hatred from me. Not yet, anyway). The middle child, Ikki, wasn’t much better than Meelo. I can’t really remember much of what she did this season, but I know she was fairly annoying also. I think she might’ve outed Korra’s feelings regarding Mako to Asami...but, honestly, I might be getting her mixed up with the oldest daughter, Jinora (voiced by Kiernan Shipka, who others might associate with Sabrina the teenage witch but I only ever remember as Sally Draper from Mad Men) - she was the kid who got the most screentime/ was involved in the most action this season, as she developed these animal spirit friends and got stuck in the spirit world and needed rescuing, then played a part in the climactic battle at the end of the season. She was probably the most tolerable of the three kids, but I still could’ve done with far less of ALL of them. Tenzin’s brother and sister (Bumi and Kya) were also regularly featured this season, and while Bumi was obviously intended as the ‘funny one’...I personally didn’t find him particularly entertaining (he became marginally better by the end of the season when he was defending the flying bison they were on and made an animal spirit friend of his own). I actually found the sister, Kya, more amusing with her dry commentary on her brothers (I knew I recognised her voice but had to look up the IMDB cast list to see it was Lisa Edelstein who I know mainly from House, but have seen in quite a few things). I continued to get a Buffy/Giles vibe from Korra and Tenzin this season, with her reaching the point that she’d had enough of his teachings and disagreeing with the various courses of action she chose in any given situation, thus she basically fired him as her mentor. It reminded me of Giles being fired as Buffy’s Watcher and the times she got mad at him for various reasons. By the end of the season Korra had apologised (she did a LOT of that this season, I guess because she got angry at so many people) and they seemed to be back to how they were before. Another strained relationship for Korra this season was her one with her father, who had an even more strained relationship with his own brother (who Korra trusted over him, despite him warning her) and I’d read that people complained about Season 2 being kind of a ‘repeat’ of Season 1, but other than two brothers being involved in the main season arc (with one being the ‘Big Bad’), I don’t think this season was that much like Season 1. The first season had a more ‘grounded’ feel with the threat being very *real* (ie. extremists/terrorists), whereas this season’s threat was spiritual beings/demons and Korra’s uncle fusing with the biggest baddest one of them all which led to a fight with a big blue Korra like they were the Megazord and one of Rita Repulsa’s monsters going at it in an episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I know some people had a problem with this big fight between them, but I’m guessing they wouldn’t have objected so much had it not been Korra fighting the Big Bad. There’s evidence this would be true seen in the star ratings for the two-parter this season called ‘Beginnings’, which saw Korra take a backseat in the narrative as we took a detour to get the backstory of the first ever Avatar, Wan (voiced by Steven Yeun from The Walking Dead). While this backstory *did* end up having relevance to the overall arc of the season by the end, I apparently was the only one who wasn’t gaga over these two episodes (the highest-rated of the season). I mean, sure, it was somewhat interesting (though it’s funny people give Korra grief for any mistakes she makes when Wan made the most COLOSSAL MISTAKE EVER, aiding the wrong spirit and which led to many a death - which he then had to attempt to make right), but the only part I really liked was Wan’s cat-deer, Mula. I’ve seen people gush over how these two episodes looked visually, but honestly I’ve seen more impressive-looking animation in other episodes of not just this show, but A:TLA as well. I’m not quite sure what was so ‘special’ about these two. I also get the feeling at least part of the reason these two eps are rated so highly on the IMDB pages for them is because a *dude* was the focus instead of the show’s female lead. Cynical as that may sound, I’ve seen more than enough proof in the past that this is oftentimes what makes the difference in the enjoyability of things for certain people. A guy character doing all these amazing feats = “awesome”, while the show’s female lead doing the same = “Mary Sue”, etc. Honestly, I was just eager to get back to following the characters I *knew*/liked rather than spending two episodes on this new person (I’m aware I’m probably the only viewer who felt this way). People also seemed pissed that Korra lost her connection to past Avatars (I suppose they all thought, "They're erasing male Avatars to make this female one more special!" or some such shit, but I thought it showed there was some real stakes in her fight with the season's Big Bad, which btw was pretty epic even *before* they got to giant-size. There was almost an entire episode with them fighting, and we saw just about every manner of use for the four elements as one could possibly imagine. I'm not sure how they're going to top it in the next two seasons. Also, the all-black/shadowy-lookin' Korra was pretty cool, I thought. It kinda felt like Korra’s character was sidelined even after this two-parter, as her trip to the spirit world had her suddenly end up being her child-with-a-gut self again for a large percentage of it (the plus-side was we got to see Uncle Iroh from A:TLA. I do wonder if I would’ve realised he was voiced by another voice actor had I not already known the original voice actor for him had apparently passed away. I only discovered this due to recently having watched an episode of A:TLA on TV which had a dedication to his character’s original voice actor and that's what informed me of his passing. I could hear somewhat of a difference in the voicing, but they found someone pretty close to the original at least). I was somewhat amused to revisit the giant talking owl from A:TLA in an episode this season, and I really like that fox who hangs out in the giant owl’s library...but felt sorry for it when the owl chastised it (though the fox seems to also hang out with Iroh, so he’s at least better company than that permanently pissy owl). On the whole, I thought this season had some pretty good stuff and some not-so-great stuff. Admittedly, I probably enjoyed it a bit less than Season 1, but I still didn’t think it was ‘horrible’ or anything. If this is supposed to be the ‘worst’ season of the show, then that’s kind of a relief since I thought it wasn't so bad. Also, this should mean Seasons 3 & 4 will be AWESOME (however, I looked up how many episodes the character of Toph is meant to appear in this show, to prepare myself, and apparently it’s nine. I think we saw her once in a flashback during Season 1, so that means there's eight more to go. On the one hand, it’s good that the first two seasons have been mostly - and blissfully - free of her character, but on the other if her remaining episodes are all in one season...then that’s going to make for a very unenjoyable season for me most probably (since it’s almost a whole season’s worth of episodes). Of course, if they’re spaced out more then that means only four episodes per season, but even a little Toph is still too much for me at this point. I actually looked more forward to watching Season 2 of TLoK on DVD this season than watching the episodes of A:TLA I recorded off the TV. As far as second seasons go, at least this one didn’t disappoint/anger me as much as Season 2 of A:TLA has.
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Apr 11, 2024 3:05:22 GMT -5
Finished Season 3 of The Legend of Korra on DVD. {Spoiler} Episode 1We start the season with Bumi (and his bunny spirit animal with propeller ears) as he suddenly gets air-bending powers and sends himself over a cliff (his bunny spirit animal is no help, grabbing his jacket which he promptly slips out of), but manages to air-bend himself from splattering onto the ground - albeit briefly - before coming to a less grisly, but still hurt-y, landing. What’s brought this on? Something to do with Harmonica Harmonic Convergence from the end of last season. That’s also apparently responsible for the vines spreading everywhere. Since his breakup with Korra, Mako’s been sleeping under his desk at work and is super awkward with her and Asami, which they both find amusing (making fun of his salute). What Asami finds less amusing is Korra's driving skills (or lack thereof). When talking about Mako snogging both of them, they each pretend to be offended by when exactly this snogging occurred (since they were with him at different times), but they're just ribbing each other. It was fun seeing them bond, not getting hung up on each other having dated Mako/being rivals because of a guy. Speaking of, Mako’s having a much less fun time than the two ladies, getting taken out by a door when he goes to track down someone else who’s suddenly received air-bending abilities (and can’t control them). The rest of Korra’s day isn’t much better, as she’s hounded by paparazzi and the President (who’s still a douche), but she manages to talk down the reluctant new airbender guy from going all suicidal (the dude ends up falling anyways - taking her with him - but luckily she’s got one of those staffs that turn into a glider thing like Aang had, which comes in handy). Meanwhile, the season’s Big Bad breaks free from jail. Oh, and there was a bunch of shit involving Tenzin and his annoying kids but I prefer to ignore all of that. Episode 2Bolin and his Grandmother impression he did to guilt-trip Mako into joining him and the others in going on a road trip to recruit new air-benders was amusing to me (especially the “...and then she dies.” ending part). Their way of attempting to recruit was also entertaining, with Tenzin’s attempts to make it sound fun/exciting (which epically failed to entice one family man they tried to recruit who had a good life going which joining them would’ve disrupted). But I had to agree with one point Tenzin made: who WOULDN’T want a flying bison as their best friend? Then they try to be more ‘theatrical’ in public (as per Bolin’s suggestion, since he has experience doing so - and apparently he also has a supply of fake mustaches that he’s always itching to use). Mako totally not being into playing his part of a bad Fire Nation dude was funny, and once again Korra/Asami had some fun at his expense when he’s caught up in a mini tornado Korra creates that wasn’t part of what they'd rehearsed. One new air-bender guy they try recruiting is a slacker/loser who lives in his mum’s basement and who she wants to be rid of, but he annoys Korra to death with his questions/attitude and I enjoyed seeing her lose it at him/having to be pulled off by Mako & Bolin. Then came the not-so-fun introduction of a kid character named Kai, who spins them some sob story about his parents dying protecting him and his village, but in reality he’s a thief who has escaped the law after ripping off an apparently nice adoptive family, taking their life savings. Straight away I was pissed that I was going to have to put up with another Toph-like annoying kid character joining a gang of characters I'd liked up to that point, but thankfully he didn’t quite reach the level of hatred I have for Toph and at least Mako was there to not buy any of his BS (which the others seemed far too forgiving of). Also, it took no time for this kid to start flirting with Tenzin’s daughter. Elsewhere, the Big Bad frees other bad guys from prisons specifically designed to hold them (there’s a lava-bending dude on a ship who makes a lava boomerang-y thing and a chick with no arms who’s held in a suspended prison surrounded by heat...that is until she creates tentacle-like arms out of water when her fellow bad guys give her some to water-bend). The episode ends with Old Man Zuko, who I guess never got his scar healed...but on the plus-side, now he has a FREAKING DRAGON (and apparently he wants to help the Avatar - which is a far cry from how he currently is in A:TLA which I’m still watching Season 2 episodes of on TV since the current season is so frickin’ LONG and it makes me appreciate these shorter seasons of TLoK, as they’re not so drawn-out). Episode 3I was already sick to death of Kai when his stealing from various characters was treated as a ‘joke’/’funny’, plus the fact that Bolin quickly became obsessed with the kid, basically adopting him as his ‘younger brother’. Thankfully, Mako’s a bit more reasonable with his wary attitude towards the thief who steals from people so he can go live it up but eventually gets caught and thrown in prison to fight for the Earth Queen - which is a well- deserved punishment, if you ask me. Speaking of that hag, she’s an old bitchy woman who tasks Korra with getting her riches back (it was nice seeing Korra and Asami kicking some arse together at one point, with Asami still using her electro-glove thing she took from Equalists in Season 1). Meanwhile, Mako & Bolin go searching for the little thieving bastard (the funniest line of the episode has to be Bolin saying to Mako, “Bad news is we’re stuck here, good news is you can go to the bathroom wherever you want!” cheerily after they end up in a shithole that's basically Crackton from The Simpsons) and they encounter a fruit seller (who doesn’t like Mako insulting their fly-attracting bad fruit but also doesn’t like the thought of them potentially stealing it, which just confuses Mako) that just so happens to be a relation to them, he takes them back home and they meet their grandmother and cousins. Elsewhere, Old Man Zuko retrieves the entertaining twins from last season who’re bored running their tribe after their father’s demise which they weren’t sad about (what happened to their mum they mentioned in the season final?), he takes them and Korra’s dad (I think?) to go make sure a chick in an icy prison isn’t freed by the Big Bad and we only get a glimpse of her mouth. The twins are still amusing, with Eska remarking on them only just now learning of an icy prison that they could’ve been throwing people in all this time, while Desna says he would’ve thrown his tailor (who never gets his cuffs right) in there. There’s a funny bit with Old Man Zuko telling the twins he once sent a fire-bender after the Avatar (Aang) and Eska says she tried to kill Korra after her wedding mishap, shrugging off that “it happens”. While this is going on, the Earth Queen's reneging on the deal she made with Korra (who promptly tells her off, which I was thankful for). Episode 4I took an instant disliking to the three-eyed chick, who was freed from her icy prison by her fellow bad guys, when she blasted Old Man Zuko’s dragon (how dare she!). Apparently she’s a “combustion-bender” and all I could think was that combustion-benders and lava-benders are some very specific offshoots from the main four element benders we know of. I suppose there were already metal-benders, but these were even more obscure. And as if that isn’t bad enough, she then proceeds to make out with the Big Bad (much to the disgust of their two fellow bad guys...as well as us, the audience). Kai’s being trained to fight for the Earth Queen with other unwilling new air-benders, he makes a friend (by going easy on him when he’s supposed to be fighting him...at least to start with, but then he ends up blasting him with air after the trainer demands it, so clearly he ain’t so loyal - but that’s probably to be expected from a thief), and eventually they’re rescued (should’ve left him in prison!). We learn the Earth Queen has an allergy to animals and she almost catches sight of Pabu (who doesn’t think much of continually being hidden inside Bolin’s sweaty shirt) a couple times. Episode 5In Metal City, Lin Beifong’s on Korra’s case for tossing a (metal) ball with Naga when there are bad guys loose (shut up, Lin!). Then she’s a further bitch to Naga, who just wanted her to throw her metal ball (even pushing it towards her with her nose after Korra left), as Lin instead just destroys it (she’s SO her mother’s daughter. Toph was a bitch and so is her spawn) - poor sad Naga, but least Pabu’s her friend who regularly sits on her head. Turns out this show features MANY characters who are related to each other, as we meet Lin’s sister, Suyin (who I didn’t realise, until after looking at the cast list on IMDB, was voiced by Anne Heche) and her daughter, Opal, who’s another new air-bender (that Bolin takes an instant liking to). I got a laugh out of actually witnessing Mako using hair gel in this episode (it was always clear that he used it given his hairstyle, but actually seeing him use it was unexpectedly amusing) as he’s warning Bolin off of pursuing Opal, rattling off his other g/f’s (a bimbo actress and psycho ice princess). Apparently Lin’s not just a bitch to animals, but also her sister - but at least at the end of the ep Korra tells her she’s just a bitter old woman or something to that effect. Once again, I didn’t care about the stupid Tenzin kid parts of the episode. The only bit worth noting was the shaved-head guy who turned up at their place (as other new air-benders had been doing) was actually the season’s Big Bad (who looks completely unrecognisable when compared to how we first met him with long-hair and a beard) who’d snuck in. Episode 6I found this a rather meh episode, as it was all about Lin getting acupuncture to deal with stress about her sister, remembering how they didn’t get along since her sis was friends with criminals and Lin was a new cop, then when she was going to arrest her, Suyin cut a cable Lin had wrapped around her which struck her sister in the face and this explains how Lin got her scar. I can now kind of understand Lin’s resentment towards her sister (especially since she only apologises to her for being a bitch, but *not* for disfiguring her). I thought to myself “Typical Toph” when, via flashback, we saw her being tough on her daughters, chastising them when she was just like them herself when she was younger (hypocrite!) and then I had to do a MASSIVE eyeroll when Bolin said to Opal that Toph was his “biggest hero” (SERIOUSLY?! Must *every* person idolize her?! What about Korra? I’m pretty sure she was your ‘hero’ back in Season 1, Bolin, you fickle bastard!). Suyin, who seems to be the only one in the Beifong family who’s actually grown up/matured as a character from her adolescence, teaches Korra metal-bending (which Bolin also wants to learn), while the bad guys just keep on bad guy-ing (*yawn*). Sure, it’s cool that they’ve each got their own special bending skills, but other than the visuals they allow for, I don’t find any of them particularly compelling. Episode 7Another meh episode focused on Tenzin teaching the new air-benders, including his kids, his brother and the Big Bad who none of them realise is the Big Bad. Kai continues to be an annoying little shit after he was *told* by Jinora to stay away from baby flying bison and he gets into strife/she has to save his arse (annoyingly, he also keeps saying ‘bisons’ despite Tenzin pointing out the actual plural of bison is ‘bison’ earlier during training). Bumi is popular with the kids because he thinks Tenzin’s lessons are ‘boring’ just like they do, they fail at air-bending their way through an obstacle course and at the end just whine at Tenzin about being tired, wanting to see their families, etc and Tenzin’s finally HAD IT with them (can’t say I blame him). Meanwhile, there are ‘bison rustlers’ (one of whom wears a bison’s pelt, so you *know* they’re truly evil) who imprison the baby bison. Kai helps free them (it was sort of funny how when one of the baby bison was freed from its cage, it just tumbles out onto its back and then gets back up and shambles off like that’s a normal landing for it), stick the bison rustlers in the cages (poetic justice!) and now all the air-benders-in-training have bison to ride (stop enslaving these poor animals, you bastards!). Bumi has a rare ‘human’ moment at the end where he gets to be serious instead of the comic relief (though I've never found funny at all) when he says he was being the way he was to Tenzin because he thought he could never measure up to him as Aang’s son or whatever. *snore* Episode 8The bad guys attack, trying to kidnap Korra after shooting her with a dart to knock her out (prior to that, they'd already shot poor Naga with three darts and she looked kinda dead with her eyes open and tongue hanging out...but thankfully that wasn’t the case). Pabu tried to warn Bolin of intruders, but he wouldn’t listen until it was too late (listen to your animal companions, you jerks! And take better care of them too!). I actually prefer the show when it just focuses on the main four (aka ‘Team Avatar’) of Korra, Mako, Bolin & Asami like this episode (and the next few) did. Though there wasn’t much Asami in this ep, at least there were no annoying kids! Episode 9I enjoyed Korra getting angry about the Earth Queen and saying, “If I ever see her pinchy little queen face again, I’m gonna --!" before she was cut off. Even funnier was Naga (who finally got something to *do* this ep) sniffing/tracking, but Korra having no treats to reward her with, instead just rubbing her face and telling her she was a good girl - which earned Korra a tail-whipping to the face. This^ was probably one of the funniest jokes the show has had thus far (and even better that it featured Naga, who’s felt criminally underused for some time now). Bolin thinks a poster on a wall is of his ‘Nuktuk’ character, but Mako points out it’s a ‘Wanted’ poster and there’s ones for all four of them. Bolin then comes up with elaborate backstory for himself and Mako (who’s not into it and just uses his actual backstory ie. that he’s a cop) as they go undercover. When they go to get a room to stay at, the gang believe bounty hunters (who kept following them earlier) have caught up to them, but they turn out to be just fans who want an autograph from ‘Nuktuk’ and the woman made Bolin a weird doll of his character which she gives him. The gang insist on a small room (despite being offered a much better one on account of ‘Nuktuk’ being with them) because it’s across from where they’re staking out a dude who was a betrayer of the Earth Queen and involved with the bad guys (I think). It’s funny seeing them all together in the cramped room, with Naga on her back, lying on the only bed. Korra and Mako are all business with the stakeout, while Bolin’s bored and wants to play whatever their version of chess/checkers is in the Avatar world, which Asami wants to participate in but he dismisses her skills. Of course, then she wipes the floor with him EVERY TIME, Bolin keeps increasing the amount of Rounds they do until he gets to “17 out of...33?” (having to think for a moment to do the math), then just when it looks like he might win a game, Pabu jumps on the board and scatters all the pieces, eliciting a “WHYYYYYYYYY?!” from Bolin (I can relate, as I ask this question every day since nothing ever goes right for me) as the head of his doll rolls in front of him. Meanwhile, the Big Bad is chatting with Korra in the spirit world after they locate the betrayer guy who is meditating/in the spirit world (that is until the Big Bad tosses his spirit into a void, effectively killing his body in the real world...I think). Then Korra has to listen to all the philosophical BS the Big Bad has to spout, he’s part of a secret society called the Red Lotus and he goes all Darth Vader, telling her to join him, but she’s not into that. Turns out he was stalling while ‘water arm lady and lava guy’ (Mako’s names for them) find where they’re hiding. Mako and Bolin stay behind to fight them after sending Asami to ride off on Naga with Korra’s body (as she's still in the spirit world). Bolin wants to trade opponents, since he’s just giving lava guy ammo by hurling rocks at him but then water arm lady beats them both and they’re presented to the Big Bad (who’s gotten out of the spirit world) as Korra wakes up strapped to a trolley/wearing a mask like she’s Hannibal Lecter and Asami informs her that the Earth Queen’s men got them first before the Big Bad’s goon squad could. Episode 10It’s *still* funny seeing Korra imprisoned like she's Hannibal Lecter in that mask and on a trolley (do they think she eats human flesh? I vaguely recall her breathing fire at one point, so maybe the mask is for that?). Asami talks a guard into chaining her to the wall instead of the floor like he was going to do and because the airship they’re being held in is shoddily made (which Asami can instantly tell, since she’s an expert), she’s able to break the metal bar she’s chained to once the guard leaves, free Korra, then make a hole in the floor which she crawls out of, telling Korra to distract the guard, which she does when he comes to the room outside and Asami’s suddenly behind him, knocking him out. Korra then gets carried away taking out other guards and consequently stuffs the ship (basically saying it’s not her fault that it’s shit-made). They crash in a desert, the remaining crew are not happy and there’s a giant sand shark that’s going to swallow them whole. Luckily, Asami knows how to fix things, they work on the airship, but just as it’s ready...the sand shark bites it, breaking the airship into pieces, but then Asami has an idea to use the parts of the ship to build a ‘sand-sailer’ which Korra propels along by blasting air into its sails as they’re chased by the sand shark that at one point almost swallows them whole until Korra blasts its throat with fire (giving it a severe case of dry-mouth, no doubt), saving them all. The guards and their leader think they’ve been in the desert too long, as when they arrive at their destination Old Man Zuko’s DRAGON is lying out the front, sleeping. Korra meets up with Old Man Zuko, her dad and Lin (after Naga jumps on her, licking her, and she responds by asking whether Naga thought they weren’t coming back. I thought to myself when watching, “Well, it’s not like you can blame Naga for thinking that, Korra, since you leave her behind a lot of the time.”). Earlier in the episode, which I forgot to mention, Naga roared at Lin who turned up and then she gave her treats to go away - so FINALLY Naga got the treats Korra failed to give her last episode. Elsewhere, Bolin’s been chatting with water arm lady and lava guy about all that time they spent locked up and how they imagined stories for the guards to pass the time, then Bolin does the same for them and he gets ‘two out of three’ right says lava guy (one of the things Bolin made up in his head about them was that there was something going on between water arm lady and lava guy). Mako then tells his bro not to make friends with the bad guys. Speaking of bad guys, they want Korra and strike a deal with the Earth Queen, but then the Big Bad creates an air sphere around the Earth Queen's head and sucks all her air away. Guess she’s dead now.*shrug* (I was amused when doing my Google image searching for this season that apparently an ad for SpongeBob SquarePants came up on the screen during the original airing of this episode that was both ill-timed and also kinda perfect given how hated the Earth Queen was by pretty much EVERYONE). The bad guys free prisoners, break down walls and supposedly give the place ‘to the people’. Meanwhile, Mako had been encouraging Bolin to metal-bend them out of their cells they were thrown in, but despite him not being able to, another random prisoner said he believed in him too (I was amused by Bolin saying something like “Thank you, Mako and other prisoner man person.”), but then everyone lets out a groan of disappointment when Bolin can’t metal-bend no matter how hard he tries (there’s another funny moment with one voice asking whether they brought toilet paper). Episode 11Funny stuff: Bolin picking up his and Mako’s grandma to make her leave since she won’t do so, her mistaking Asami for Korra upon meeting them both and complimenting her, then Mako introducing actual Korra and his grandma just saying she’s a muscular girl, then the awkwardness that ensues when she asks why Mako’s not dating either of them. Bolin on the radio to Meelo, who’s being a little shit and saying there’s no Bolin available to talk to, Bolin losing it, Korra shoving him away and sternly saying over the radio, “This is your commanding officer” who Meelo actually respects and he immediately fetches Tenzin. Pabu appearing on Bolin’s shoulder and his delayed reaction to the reunion (while his grandma expresses disgust at witnessing her grandson kissing what she thinks is some ‘rat thing’) and at the same time Naga jumping onto Mako and licking his mouth (which, unlike Bolin and Pabu licking his mouth, Mako’s just not into). Less funny stuff: Korra’s warning to Tenzin comes too late, the bad guys attack him, his family and the air-benders-in-training. It’s Bumi and Kya vs lava guy and water arm lady (who goes all Doctor Octopus with the water arms, creating more than just two this time, and all I could think was, “Stop supplying her with water, Kya!”). Once his siblings have been badly beaten, Tenzin takes on ALL the bad guys by himself and they’re so severely beating his arse that it’s hidden behind a wall with us just hearing the sounds of it. For a second I’d worried that the combustion bitch just blew up a herd of baby bison (but she just scared them away, as confirmed by Tenzin in the next episode). Kai draws the bad guys away or whatever, is shot down but luckily one baby bison comes to his rescue (well...luckily for Kai, not luckily for me as a viewer). While Jinora and the rest of the air-benders-in-training just watched on as Kai fell, I thought to myself “You guys sure none of you can create air to blow underneath him or anything to slow his fall?”. They were kinda useless. Korra encounters Old Man Zuko’s uncle in the spirit world and he tells her Zuko and Aang were close friends and nobody knew Aang like Zuko which is HILARIOUS to me given where I’m currently up to with A:TLA since they couldn’t be further from being friends. Old Man Zuko’s surprised when Korra tells him she encountered his uncle in the spirit world. Episode 12Team Avatar are making plans, Bolin has a bird call distraction idea, but Korra’s elected to turn herself over to the bad guys in return for them letting the air-benders-in-training go. There was an amusing moment when Bolin’s freaking out and he says Pabu’s not there to comfort him, then we cut to Pabu playing tug-of-war with Naga over Mako’s red scarf which he gave to his grandma in an earlier episode and she chastises them both. I felt sorry for Naga, who hangs her head in shame. Too many people are bastards to poor Naga. I wish she’d just eat them. Korra’s all “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” after she hands herself over, is put in platinum cuffs (so she can’t metal-bend her way out of them) and it’s revealed that what the others thought were the air-benders-in-training were in fact just mounds of water covered in their cloaks which water arm lady had created as part of the ruse. They rescue the beaten-up Tenzin and lava guy reduces the place (which reminded me of Minas Tirith from LotR) to a lava-covered mountain, Bolin keeps trying to hold back the lava with his earth-bending and he looks pretty done-diddly-done for until suddenly he’s able to lava-bend (thus making up for his total lack of metal-bending skills). I liked seeing Korra fight whilst still shackled, as she did a lot of blasting her enemies using her feet and other different sort of moves since her hands/arms weren’t free. Kai flies his baby bison that saved him last episode to go pick up Tenzin, Mako, Asami and Bolin (which I thought was a bit much) and this makes the poor bison react with an “Oof!” at the weight of carrying FIVE people. Then when they land (with Bolin getting to use his bird call after all), Tenzin’s reunited with his old bison and it's forced to carry even MORE people (quit it with the animal cruelty, you jerks!), but not before Kai keeps trying to get the others’ attention as they’re discussing how to find Korra since he knows where to go (Mako later apologises for giving him a hard time on occasion and Kai says he probably deserved it, which Mako agrees with - making me like Mako even more, since he wasn’t soft on the kid like everyone else. I just wish he hadn’t felt the need to apologise). I enjoyed the epic fighting with the various bad guys, and there was one rather ‘dark’ moment with Lin’s sister sending metal (which was her own armour) flying and wrapping around the head of the ‘third-eyed freak’ (Lin’s words), and while we don’t actually see it happen, obviously she was powering up to explode Lin but did wound up doing it to herself instead (which makes the Big Bad sad...but me exceedingly happy!). Then, because the last thing he apparently cared about is now gone, it somehow lets him be free to ‘become air’ - which, according to the commentary for the episode, is the highest form of air-benderdom or whatever. We get funny reactions from his two remaining fellow bad guys, as well as Lin and her sister, as he flies away. Not-Minas Tirith turns into Mount Doom with all the lava covering it, at some point (I forget exactly when) the Big Bad sent Korra’s dad over a cliff after fighting him, but a metal-bender Head of Security woman grabbed him and she wants to join the others on their mission, but Lin says 'no'. The last shot of the episode is Korra (who was taken when the Big Bad flew away) suspended by chains in a big green area that almost looks like a void (which reminded me of the Season 3 ending of Supernatural when Dean Winchester was hanging from meat hooks suspended by chains in a greenish Hell) with her limbs splayed in an X shape. The guys on the episode commentary said they couldn’t do that with Aang in an episode of A:TLA liked they’d originally wanted to, but tried again after apparently SpongeBob Fuckface got to do it in an episode and the guy from this show complained, so they were able to get away with it this time on TLoK. How weird the kids' network must be to think someone hanging in an X shape is 'too much'. Though I'm highly amused that I stumbled across what was apparently a rivalry of sorts that went on between Korra and SpongeBob after ads for his show would come up onscreen at inappropriate times during her show. It appears someone thought Korra deserved a little revenge for that... Episode 13/Season finalWhen we left off, Korra was about to have poison liquid come at her after she’d breathed fire at the Big Bad who was saying they both lost someone (Korra thinks she’s lost her dad, while the Big Bad lost his three-eyed freak lady-love). His plan is he wants Korra to go into the ‘Avatar State’ while water arm lady prepares a water-tentacle-turned-icy-spike that has Korra’s name on it and lava guy opens a lava pit beneath her ON TOP OF the fact that she’s just been poisoned with a metallic-looking liquid, her eyes keep flickering between the bright white of the Avatar State and normal, plus she’s hallucinating the bad guys’ faces turning into the faces of previous Big Bads she’s faced such as Amon, her uncle and the demon dude from last season (this moment reminded me of the ending for the Season 7 premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when The First Evil cycled through every season's Big Bad in reverse order). There’s one close-up shot of Korra’s face looking all sweaty and wide-eyed that I thought was kinda freaky, she’s not staying in the Avatar State long enough for the bad guys to off her (which, if they achieve, will end the Avatar line since she already lost all her previous Avatar selves in last season’s final), she’s fighting it, but she also puts up a good fight against the bad guys - which Jinora sees, as she’s astral-projecting or whatever from where she’s being held prisoner with the other air-benders-in-training, while Bumi and Kya are still pretty messed up from their fights and not much use to them. Luckily for the kids, they’ve been left in the care of two inept guards (how typical), and while the more inept of the two gets taken out by a piece of rocky wall (I think by Lin or her sister), Asami takes care of the slightly less inept guard with her electro-glove thing that she’s still using and some fancy kick-arse moves (I suppose they had to throw her character a bone, since she hadn’t had much in the way of any action scenes lately). Korra and the Big Bad engage in one huge epic fight, with her propelling herself along with fire from her feet like Iron Man. Unfortunately for her, she keeps getting hurled into rough rocky surfaces again and again and it takes its toll as does the poison she’s been infected with. Elsewhere, Bolin's showing lava guy that *he* can now lava-bend too, while Mako versus water arm lady who’s doing her Doctor Octopus trick again with the many water tentacles she’s created, but then Mako electrocutes her and she pretty much looks toast. Meanwhile, lava guy decides that if he’s going down, he’s taking the brothers with him and he collapses everything...but, naturally, the bros escape and so the foolish bad guy just ended up offing himself for nothing (this often seems to be the case with bad guys who think they’re taking out the heroes with them when they go suicidal but it NEVER goes the way they planned). Korra puts up a hell of a fight against the Big Bad, looking cool as she does so, but Jinora leads the air-benders-in-training to making a tornado that pulls her and the last remaining bad guy who Korra wraps the chain attached to her shackles around the leg of as she falls so he gets pulled to earth with her and those already on the ground immediately lock him in rock. The poison’s killing Korra (plus the fact that her enemy used that same sphere-of-oxygen-sucking trick on her that he'd used on the Earth Queen), but Jinora says it’s metal-based and so Lin’s sister extracts it from Korra's body using her metal-bending skills and the bad guy’s not happy about that, but Bolin thankfully shuts him up by sticking a sock in his mouth (I saw one comment on the IMDB page for the episode from someone who wasn’t pleased with this treatment of the villain, but I honestly believe that some bad guys who NEVER SHUT UP really need a good shutting up, so I was thankful to Bolin for obliging, Speaking of Bolin, earlier when he was reunited with Opal, I was amused at how he just shoved her mother out of the way to hug the girl he fancied). We cut to two or three weeks later, Korra’s in a wheelchair and Asami’s making the finishing touches to her hair/holding her hand in support, as poor Korra looks not only broken physically, but also mentally/emotionally, she can barely muster up a brave face for everyone as they all go to watch Jinora getting anointed as the Air-bender Master or whatever (she’s now bald with an arrow on her head like Aang). The President, who’s still a jerk despite him attempting to ‘make nice’ with Korra, basically says (after Korra's gone), “Well...the current Avatar’s pretty fucked, who’ll look after us now?” and we end the episode/season on a final shot of a very glum-looking Korra shedding a tear. While I appreciate this show going to that ‘dark’ sort of place where it illustrates the lasting effects/impact Korra’s ordeal has had on her, it’s still a pretty depressing ending and I HATE seeing her all broken like this (though I’m sure her haters LOVED it, being the arseholes that they are). One thing I’ve always thought about this show is that it feels a bit more ‘mature’ than A:TLA, and that held true with this season final episode. While some claimed Season 2 was the ‘weakest’ season of this show, thus meaning the other three were supposedly ‘better’, I’ll say that this season was a slight improvement over Season 2...but I still like Season 1 the best so far. I enjoy this show the most when it just focuses on the ‘core four’ of Korra, Mako, Bolin & Asami (with occasional Tenzin thrown in). It’s getting to the stage where there are almost too many characters amongst the good guys to keep track of. Anyway, hopefully the show avoids the pitfalls of many a show before (and after) it by managing to have an actual good (if not great) final season rather than a sucky one. *fingers crossed*
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Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Apr 17, 2024 2:08:28 GMT -5
Finished Season 4/the final season of The Legend of Korra on DVD. {Spoiler}Well, it's been quite the journey since I first purchased the complete series boxset of this show at the end of March. I've managed to binge-watch it to completion within a few weeks (considering that when I started it I'd wanted to pace myself and stretch it out but I wasn't able to restrain myself and went through it so quickly tells you just how much I enjoyed it. The fact that they're only approximately 21-minute-length episodes probably helped too, as it would've taken quite a deal longer to binge-watch the series had they been 40-or-so-minute-length). When I bought this show, I'd heard *of* it ages ago but knew very little about it (I hadn't even realised it was set in the same universe as A:TLA until after I started watching that show on TV here). With my enjoyment of A:TLA having been lessened with Season 2, I was motivated to finally check out TLoK - as I still wanted to watch a show set in that universe...but one that was Toph-free (while this show wasn't entirely free of her, at least she wasn't prominently featured in the first three seasons). I watched the trailer for the first season of this show on YouTube just to make sure it didn't look too bad, and that was enough for me to go buy it. And I'm certainly glad that I did, as I've been watching a few shows lately (some on DVD, some recorded off the TV) that I've basically wound up hate-watching and it was so nice to finally get back to watching a show I actually thoroughly enjoyed. Unlike others, I didn't really see Season 1 as being that 'rough around the edges'. I personally took a liking to it pretty much straight off the bat, and while I've probably forgotten a bit of that first season already (due to my shoddy memory, *not* because it was 'forgettable'), I still believe it remains my favourite in the four seasons of this show. Part of the reason for that, I think, is because Korra seemed so 'innocent' back in that season. She hadn't yet been through so much torment (like she would be in the later seasons) and was still able to have fun/there was a certain 'lightness' about her. Also, while Tenzin's annoying kids were present, at least it didn't feel like there was so *much* of them back then. The first season focused on the four main characters I actually liked the most in the show - Korra, Mako, Bolin & Asami - and that's probably why I enjoyed it the most, as the later seasons tended to focus more on other supporting characters to the point where it almost felt like it wasn't even Korra's show anymore. However, even when this show was at its so-called "worst" (ie. Season 2), I still enjoyed it more than post-Season 1 of A:TLA. One thing I've forgotten to mention in any of my previous reviews for the show - and since this is my last opportunity to do so I might as well do it now - is that I've always liked the 'intro' for this series, which features the four last Avatars doing their bending thing while the words 'Earth', 'Fire', 'Air', 'Water' are said during the voiceover (though personally I was always thinking to myself "Earth! Fire! Vind! Water! Heart!" whenever seeing this intro at the beginning of every episode thanks to growing up watching Captain Planet). I think we must've gotten a shortened version of it at the start of the actual episodes, as it certainly didn't run as long/show as many maneuvers from each Avatar as this does... Anyway, without further ado... Episode 1It begins by showing an old-timey video/movie with the radio voice guy talking about Republic City as a tourist attraction and all the cool stuff there, he mentions Korra’s been gone for THREE years and how everyone misses her (I was shocked to hear so much time had passed) and poor Mako’s stuck playing bodyguard to the Earth Kingdom's fop of a Prince named Wu, who it turns out is the (not-so-dearly) departed Earth Queen’s great-nephew...and he’s hilariously hated by Asami, Mako, and pretty much most people. Though this was an example of a character who was *intentionally* annoying, but I still didn't completely hate him as at least he was annoying in an entertaining sort of way (his impression of his great aunt’s death was amusing to me, as he worried about assassination attempts). Mako’s SO over him, but protects him by getting him into his car before he’s hit with pies by his haters...though one got Wu's shirt, which he thinks is blood and freaks out about, then when Mako says it's strawberry pie, Wu freaks out even more - after having tasted it - because he reckons he's allergic to strawberries, before Mako points out he's actually allergic to beestings and then Wu finally calms down, claiming he always gets those two things mixed up. I'm glad they paired up these two, as Mako's continued annoyance/exasperation with Wu provides quite a bit of humour and keeps Mako fun instead of boring (not that I ever really had a problem with Mako's character like apparently others did. He *could've* been annoying...but I never found him to be so). At one point Mako thinks he’ll finally be rid of Wu, even grabbing Lin's shoulders in desperation (which no sane person would EVER do, but clearly Wu's driven him to insanity - I can relate, as I feel that way every day thanks to various things/people in my life) and it seems even she can sympathise with Mako's situation. Nevertheless, she informs him he's stuck with Wu. Meanwhile, Bolin’s working for Kuvira (that one Head of Security woman for the metal-benders at the end of last season voiced by Robin Williams’ daughter), who is a military dictator type of bad where she seems okay at first, but basically forces people to pledge allegiance to her (she's earned the title 'the Great Uniter') and has banners and it’s all very Daenerys-at-the-end-of-GoT. She fights awesomely, though, keeping totally calm/cool/collected as she dodges earth-bending attacks from stone-surfing roving bandits and hurls her metal bands back at them, efficiently taking care of them in short order. One thing I noticed with Asami, Mako and Bolin was that the animators put some effort into making them look slightly 'older'/more 'matured' - I think the difference in the hair (especially with the brothers) helped with that. Bolin and Opal (daughter of Lin's sister, Suyin) seem at odds with each other since he's working for Kuvira, which Opal doesn't approve of (and apparently Suyin has more kids than just Opal - not that I remember any of them from last season - including three grown-up sons, the oldest being an annoying bespectacled dude who we learn is engaged to Kuvira...so you can imagine how well that news goes over. The other two sons I barely even noted). Opal and Kai (who's still kinda annoying, his voice is a lot older-sounding and the only thing I like about his character is his now grown-up flying bison, Lefty) have matching superhero-like 'wingsuits' that help them glide, and they're pretty much doing the superhero thing in the absence of Korra as the Avatar. They're attacked by bandits in the air who cut Kai’s suit and he plummets to the ground, but Opal goes after him to...just fly beside him? Not sure what good she was gonna be, as I doubt she could carry him and it's Lefty who saves them both by swooping underneath them and landing them safely on the ground. They lost food to the bandits which was intended to help people in desperate need of it and an old guy who'd been resisting giving into Kuvira's demands to join her ends up having to do so. Thanks, kids! Speaking of kids, I was entertained by Naga greeting Tenzin's kids (who are also all older-looking now) by galloping over to them and immediately turning over onto her back so she could get a belly-scratch (I imagine Pabu was with Naga, but I didn't notice him). Meelo (who's still supremely annoying) thinks because he’s 'older' now, he's got a shot with Korra - who Asami was looking forward to seeing, but Korra's dad informs them all that his daughter left six months ago and it's clear nobody knows where she is, but then when the TITLE CHARACTER OF THE SHOW is *finally* featured at the very end of this episode, we see she's now got short hair and is in an earth-bending cage fight getting her arse handed to her because she's still suffering from PTSD (even three years later) after her fight with the Big Bad of last season. After her losing this fight, a dude thinks he recognises her, saying she looks like the Avatar and asks what happened to that chick and she replies that she ‘wouldn’t know’. Episode 2This was the episode that explained what Korra got up to in those three years that had passed since the ending of last season and the beginning of this one. It was definitely the most psychological episode, as it delved into her PTSD (which is quite the heavy subject to address in a 'kids cartoon series'). Via flashbacks, we see her in her wheelchair and she's going away (to stay with her parents for a while or something, I think), Bolin's excited about them being pen pals and then clarifies to Korra she shouldn't take his excitement about her leaving the wrong way (which Mako points is kinda hard to take any other sort of way), Asami offers to go with Korra (hands on her shoulders) and while she's putting on a brave act, we can tell she's not really doing well at all (some friends they are - they should've been able to tell!). Korra goes to Old Katara, who's supposed to help heal her, where she struggles to even get her big toe to move ( Kill Bill moment!) and stumbles when walking holding onto railings. The whole time I was watching Naga’s reactions to Korra that showed she felt her emotions (personally, I would’ve appreciated a bit more interaction between them). Understandably, Korra's frustrated, she gets aggro at Old Katara but apologises, and then is tasked with walking the whole way over to Naga where she finally makes it to her friend who is there waiting to support her and they hug - I wanted more of THIS... Korra gets stronger, Tenzin comes to visit, and she wants to show how much she’s progressed by fighting guys like when we first saw her as an adult near the start of the show's first episode, decked out in in armour and a helmet, but she keeps seeing visions of her 'Dark Avatar' self with the glowing eyes that she had when fighting the Big Bad in the last season final (which she also keeps flashing back to) and consequently loses this fight too. Tenzin attempts to be reassuring and she says if she hears one more person tell her to be patient she’ll water-smack him (which amused me), so then he tries to say that without using those words - something like not worrying about the future - which really doesn't help at all. Meanwhile, in the 'present', her current short-haired self has been seeing a tiny fluffy white dog that she’s been following, it barks at Dark Avatar Korra and chases it away seemingly. Back in the past, Korra left Old Katara, Tenzin AND NAGA (who howls as she departs), going all loner. Poor Naga, always left behind by her owner. She goes to a fishmonger guy who wants to take her photo (he already has one of Aang's older self), and as he's taking it, thieves are stealing from some old woman and the guy tells Korra to go get ‘em but her PTSD leads to her getting beaten again (she can’t catch a break!). Fishmonger dude and the old woman are not impressed with this Avatar. My memory of the order of events is a bit jumbled, but at one point we see the cage fight from the end of the previous episode, but this time it's from Korra's POV and it shows us that she did *not* 'throw the fight' (like apparently some people thought she did, according to the episode commentary) and what really happened was she once again saw her Dark Avatar self (this time in place of her fighting opponent) and that's why she lost the fight. Korra talks to a spirit, then when travelling through different landscapes like she's in LotR, she sees a mirage in the desert, then the tiny dog she's chasing after is revealed to be the yellow spirit she talked to, and they're in the swamp and she fights her Dark Avatar self but gets pulled down by the chain (which she had attached to her in last season's final) into a puddle that looks like the metallic liquid she was poisoned with and wakes up in a Yoda-like hovel and it’s Old Woman Toph (UGH!) greeting 'Twinkle Toes’ as she knew Korra's past self Aang. I knew Toph was going to turn up eventually, but still...UGH! I thought this episode did a good job of tackling a complicated subject in a way kids could understand and I applaud them for not having Korra just get over it quickly like other shows would've done. In the commentary for the episode, the makers of the show say how the network was worried that with all the jumping around in time, the episode would be confusing, but then they remark how thanks to shows like Lost, people are able to follow this sort of storytelling and I was amused when the actress who voices Korra interjected with "Yeah, and Lost made perfect sense." and you could tell it was slightly sarcastic, then she did this playful sort of tune thing, going " Yah dah-dah-dah" when the others were about to say something regarding Lost 'making perfect sense'. I just appreciated the little dig at that show. On the whole, this was a really good/complex episode and is another example of how I felt this series was slightly more 'mature' than A:TLA. Episode 3Poncy Prince of the Earth Kingdom is going on about his coronation and Mako (as usual when it comes to this guy) is NOT enthused with his "Yaaaay...", then at one point when Prince Wu says the Avatar world's version of "If a bear poops in the woods..." (except it's 'platypus-bear' - because every animal in the Avatar universe apparently had sex with every other animal, thus creating all manner of unnatural hybrids. I never even would've realised that Appa from A:TLA was a bison crossed with a manatee had I not heard it on one of the commentaries for this show). Wu has big plans for his coronation, but Kuvira takes it over and basically wins over the people who already didn’t think much of Wu (as well as others) with her speech, metal-bending the medallion she was given - whereas Wu got zip/nada and even his room/suite is now hers as she booted him out of it. She talks Bolin into buying that what she’s doing is good, him and Mako fight over who they're with (ie. Bolin's with Kuvira and Mako's with Wu) - all of which Wu hears through the door (he takes offense particularly to Bolin insulting his 'junior suite'). Kurvira (who has tasked Varrick with experimenting on the 'spirit vines') and Suyin are not getting on, yadda yadda. Meanwhile, on Dagobah, Old Fart Toph just abuses Korra all episode, hitting her with mud, shoving her face away, tossing her around (clearly, Toph hasn’t matured AT ALL - she's still a bitch). She informs Korra there are metal bits still in her body from the poisoning, Korra wants them out, but she won’t ‘relax’ according to Toph who refuses to do it, but it's because poor Korra still has PTSD. Old Woman Bitchface says over and over that Korra's "the worst Avatar ever", and all episode, whenever she opened her mouth to say anything, all I could think was "Shut up, Toph!". I HATED that they were giving a voice to the Korra haters out there by having them essentially speak through Toph's character with the nasty stuff she said about Korra. WORST. YODA. EVER. This was a mostly blah episode for me (no Asami? Boo! But Tenzin's kids? Double boo!). The one real bright spot was seeing the weirdo twins again (albeit very briefly) and Eska commenting on Bolin being with Kuvira by jumping to the conclusion they were together together with, "Well done, she seems very threatening.", then when Bolin clarifies she's his boss and *not* his g/f, Eska responds with, "Boss, girlfriend. Same thing." and the funny kept coming with the revelation that the twins had booked in the same room and Eska stated that it was no mistake...Desna (her brother) slept in the tub. Episode 4UGH, two of my LEAST favourite things were the focus of this episode - Tenzin’s kids and Toph. Meelo (despite having grown physically) is *still* an ungrateful little shit when his mum makes them food including his favourite thing and he complains about the face on it being smudged despite just having said they’d hunt as they go off in search of Korra. He’s also evidently grown up with some sexist mentality regarding girls (how'd his parents not smack that shit outta him?). Back at Dagobah, Old Fart Toph’s doing jackshit and Korra wants to do stuff, so her bitch of a mentor sends her off to pick big slimy mushrooms for dinner but it’s a ruse and Korra sees flashes of her enemies - Amon, her uncle and that demon thing (it’s like Luke facing Vader in the cave from ESB). Back with the turds, Meelo meets a girl (whose voice I thought sounded a wee bit younger than the character looked) he calls 'the love of his life' minutes after meeting and one sis basically chases her away by getting them back on track to their mission. Not sure when exactly in the episode it happened, but at one point stupid Meelo threw their food away in the river (his whole 'live off the land' mentality), Ikki was understandably pissed, while Jinora was just meditating and couldn’t concentrate because of Ikki’s incessant questioning/bothering her/impatience and told her to go off with the spirit animals. She meets a squirrel thing after randomly blasting air (in anger over her siblings - whom she mocks, doing impressions of them like Meelo farting at inappropriate times and Jinora’s being 'above it all') at the ground. She chases the squirrel, thinking it a friend, but she’s grabbed by two guards who tie her to a chair (though we see in the background, as the two of them argue, that she’s got her arms free enough to scratch her nose or whatever - so clearly this is another case of inept guards). One’s friendlier than the other and sympathises with Ikki's middle child syndrome (also giving her a macaroon, which he seems obsessed with). Toph intentionally sent Korra to experience those visons, saying she’s holding onto past villains and therefore can’t hope to face future ones before telling Korra she's going to have to extract the metal poison bits herself (thanks a LOT, beeyotch!). Ikki's sis and bro knock the nice guy guards out (which was a situation Ikki totally had under control until they turned up), she leaves them with Meelo’s treats their mum made (the one obsessed with macaroons mumbles about them while knocked out) and *finally* the shits make some actual progress when Jinora senses Korra who's touching a big special tree and reconnects with the spirits/spirit world or whatever, getting glowing eyes. They reunite with her (the flying bison they're riding is apparently named Pepper - who was earlier pulled down into the swamp by vines, which is how they wound up there) and, miracle of miracles, Toph actually says "Well done, Korra." when she manages to extract the remaining poison from herself and even allows Korra to HUG HER before she and the kids fly off. Episode 5Poor Korra, stuck on a flying bison with Tenzin's annoying kids where Meelo wants her to fight Kuvira (I think he’s even more annoying now than when he was younger...and has stupid eyebrows). Making matters worse is there's hardly even any Korra in this episode. Varrick's testing a 'spirit vine' sample, he realises that using it for a weapon is dangerous and wants no part of it, but Kuvira threatens him (same with Bolin, who sides with her over Opal and then realises Kuvira’s nuts too). I was amused by Varrick's observational humour when he questioned where a hatch came from that Bolin poked his head through from above (this was after Varrick had been freaking out about hearing voices when in fact it was just Bolin and he'd been telling Zhu Li not to breathe - which she was having none of and he thought this meant a death sentence for both of them) and they escape. Varrick and Bolin together are entertaining, but they’re captured by Kuvira (after a mecha/robot fight with them - which made decent use of 3D animation), Zhu Li begs Kuvira to let her back on her side and is basically all "Varrick never appreciated me and I thought he was so brilliant!", he's betrayed by his assistant and Zhu Li says to Kuvira's guard to "Do the thing." (which seems to be Varrick's catchphrase, as he was constantly telling her that, expecting her to always know what he meant despite the lack of specifics in that phrase) and Varrick's all "NOT THE THING!" as he gets dragged away. Korra tried to smooth things over between Suyin and Kuvira but was too late in speaking to Suyin. Meanwhile, Asami visits her dad in prison and is still pissed at him but eventually goes back and plays a game of Pai Sho with him. Episode 6Where’s Mako? Where’s Lin? Never thought I’d miss Lin. Suyin kinda sucks. Korra goes to talk down Kuvira (with Jinora and Opal backing her up). Kuvira's army is ready to fight Suyin's, but she claims to not want to sacrifice their lives so she’s taking Korra on one-on-one. Korra has a lot of pent-up rage to work out but still isn't 100% and reckons she'll only use the 'Avatar State' as a last resort, she barely manages to hold up against Kuvira's attacks and when she does eventually go all 'Avatar State', she sees Kuvira as her Dark Avatar self and gets beaten. Adding insult to injury, the kids have to save her (including Meelo, who was waiting for some action) - how humiliating for Korra. Meanwhile, Varrick is supposed to finish work on the spirit vine weapon for Kuvira and he gets Bolin as an assistant (in Zhu Li's absence. She's now assistant to bespectacled son of Suyin), tricking the guards into thinking they might get their hands blown off if they assist, hence Bolin getting the job (though he doesn't want his hands blown off either, understandably). Naturally, Varrick just expects Bolin to know exactly what "Do the thing" means without any context, and Bolin's no Zhu Li, as he hasn't the foggiest (I was amused when Varrick said at one point that in the future people would say someone 'Varricked' themselves because someone 'Zhu Li’d' him or something like that). He bluffs his way to getting the guards and bespectacled son of Suyin to leave them by saying he's rigged a bomb basically, and it's questioned why he has a trigger if he already set a timer, but he reckons he's just covering all his bases. Once they get onto a different train carriage, Varrick tells Bolin to "Do the thing" (which in this case means unhook the carriages - which Bolin doesn't get and Varrick is mad at him, as he reckons that was an 'easy one'). The bad guys' carriage goes away, turns out Varrick wasn't bluffing, but Bolin finds them a way out by opening another handy hatch at the bottom of the train and earth-bending a tunnel for them to escape through after saying he hates Varrick. Once they escape the explosion, Varrick kisses Bolin (on the forehead) since he FINALLY got what "Do the thing" meant this time around. Episode 7It's the episode where Korra has a reunion with everyone she hasn't seen for ages - the BEST one of which is easily Korra's reuniting with Naga (who looks up at Korra on the flying bison as she's waving and starts immediately wagging after Pabu alerts her to it). The way Naga runs over and picks up Korra off the ground with her nuzzling and the two of them hug was a big 'aww'-worthy moment (just look at the happy expression on Naga's face! The animators do a good job of capturing doggy expressions accurately with Naga). My only disappointment comes from the fact that we don't get nearly enough Korra and Naga moments in the show. She's certainly not treated as lovingly by the writers as Appa was on A:TLA, that's for sure (which is a shame, as a polar bear dog is AWESOME and shouldn't be ignored/under-used). The others reunions were 'meh' by comparison. The next best one was Korra and Asami, who compliments Korra’s new short hair (causing her to blush). Upon reuniting with Mako, Korra meets Wu who’s his usual blah self and wants Korra to go into the 'Avatar State' just to see her eyes glow (which immediately turns her off him). Asami's not happy with Mako, thinking it’d just be the three of them together again at a restaurant but he couldn’t ditch Wu and says he’s going to be on his best behavior (this is *before* he asked Korra that intrusive thing he did). Wu has to go to the bathroom and wants Mako to go along with, who tells him to go by himself and Korra asks if he always goes with him. I was amused by Mako attempting to make it sound less weird by explaining how he just stands in the general vicinity...and then promptly gave up trying to defend it. Somewhere during this scene Asami got mad at Korra for questioning her trusting her dad again. Meanwhile, a guy in the bathroom offers to spritz Wu with some stuff, but it's knockout gas. Outside, Mako wonders what’s taking so long, goes to check and they know Wu’s been taken (his "The one time I don't watch him pee and THIS is what happens!" had to be the funniest line of the episode). Korra notices Wu being kidnapped (he half-wakes up in amongst laundry in the back of a van, saying as much). Korra and Mako argue over whose fault losing Wu is, she sees a train via a vision thingy (that thing she does where she touches the ground and can connect with surroundings thanks to her spirit connection or whatever) and they fight guys on the train, she air-spheres them off the train and Asami says it's like old times...except for getting on each other’s nerves (while Mako says that’s like 'old times' for him and Korra). There's an amusing part where the three of them hug and Wu tries to join in, but Korra shoves his face away. They take Wu to Mako's grandma, who faints upon meeting him (and Wu’s happy about being there too). Other things of note were when Mako and Asami find out Korra met Old Woman Toph, they ask what she was like and Korra aptly describes her as a "cranky, more miserable version of Lin.” and Mako asks, “Is that even possible?”, to which Korra replies, “You'd be surprised.” (oh, you were FAR too kind with your description of her, Korra). Also, Mako found out that Korra only wrote to Asami when she was gone and not to him/Bolin (tells ya somethin'). Elsewhere, after their escape, Bolin has to let Varrick ride on his back. Eventually they swap and Varrick is hopeless (meanwhile, apparently Zhu Li once carried Varrick on her back for 20 miles in one day with a sprained ankle). They get caught in a trap by folks escaped from Kuvira’s "re-education camp" who don’t trust them until they come back to save them from some bad guys and they all wind up together on a boat. The episode ends with Kuvira harvesting vines from Dagobah. I honestly wasn't really into the parts of the episode that weren't the Korra/Mako/Asami stuff. And because it can't be stated enough... Episode 8So it's come to this...a CLIP SHOW. I saw how the episode was so low-rated on the IMDB page for it, but this is one of those very rare instances where a 'clip show' was actually done WELL (or as well as one could expect given that it *is* a clip show). Apparently the stupid network cut the show's budget, and they were given an ultimatum - either let go crewmembers or make a clip show. The showrunners, thankfully, went with the lesser of two evils and did a clip show instead of firing people (and screw you, network, for even making them choose between those two things!). What makes this clip show *work* is it provides enough 'new' material to keep things entertaining despite seeing old footage. The first of three segments in the episode starts with Wu training (his “I’m not like you, Mako. I wasn’t raised by a pack of cops in the woods." was pretty funny) and Mako telling the story of his love life with Korra/Asami - which might SOUND 'boring', but what keeps it fun is the running commentary throughout with Mako trying to tell his story and others (including Wu and even Mako's grandma) interjecting/pointing out how dodgy some of his choices were regarding his relationships with the two ladies. It's pretty funny stuff. The middle segment is not very funny, but that's because it's dealing with Korra's continued PTSD and it was nice to have both Asami and Tenzin there to reassure/be supportive of Korra (especially after old bitchy Toph was the opposite of encouraging/supportive). The last segment is the most creative of the three, as it's Varrick telling his totally made-up story of Bolin framed as a NukTuk movie of sorts where even old footage of giant blue Korra is used to fill in as Bolin's heroic self in this total figment of Varrick's imagination. The best part of it is a conference call of sorts between the previous seasons' Big Bads with them shunning the B&W OTT villain version of Korra's uncle - who I didn't even get was *supposed* to be Korra's uncle back during Season 2, as I just thought he was a villain made up by Varrick who vaguely resembled the bad guy from the Flash Gordon movie). Also, Varrick referring to the demon guy as "the meanest, scariest kite that ever flew!" was rather hilarious given that's kinda what it resembled. All in all, this clip show was probably one of the 'better' ones I've seen (most of the time I skip them, but in this case it was worth sitting through and I commend the makers of it for doing the best they could given their circumstances. Things could've been a LOT worse). Episode 9The Loser guy from last season who became an unwilling air-bender (that Korra & co attempted to recruit) is doing a tour guide-type of gig, and not really into it, and one annoyingly overeager tourist wants photos or whatever when vines attack and take them all (thanks, vines!). Korra's making stones pop up out of the ground and Naga’s pouncing on them, Opal's not happy that no one's helping her family who got captured by Kuvira (shut up, Opal), there's a meeting between the higher-ups including the President and Korra's not happy that Wu was invited while she wasn't, then Varrick and Bolin turn up, nearly getting arrested (since they were previously on Kuvira's side) but explain what Kuvira’s been doing and Korra knows it’s got to do with the spirit vines. Opal's still mad no one wants to rescue her fam (shut up, Opal), so it’s left up to her and Lin while Bolin tries winning her over by having Pabu trick her with a note that said both his legs were broken when in reality he just wanted to have a picnic with her and she’s pissed (after she'd come running to him in a panicked state). By the end of the episode she says the one thing he could do to win her back is go with her and Lin to rescue her family - which he enthusiastically agrees to (despite the fact that, if he were captured, he'd no doubt be tortured to death by Kuvira for turning traitor against her - I don't think this even occurred to him or Opal). Varrick and Asami are working together again, though she's still pissed he betrayed her and sold her/his company or whatever, and gets even more pissed at him constantly saying ‘allegedly’ (which I can totally understand, as I too get pissed whenever I hear on the News the word 'allegedly' used regularly when in fact there's no 'allegedly' about it - it HAPPENED. It's *really* annoying how overused that word is). Korra, who's still not over what the Big Bad of last season did to her, decides to go visit him in prison to help her learn where Jinora and others got taken to in the spirit world by the vines. He unexpectedly helps Korra get to the spirit world where she finds the kidnapped people and frees them. It was interesting that this bad guy who'd tormented her so actually was the one to help her reconnect with her 'spirit self' or whatever. I guess in a funny way he did always kind of respect her (even when he was kicking her arse). It was a good conclusion to their story, as this is (I think) the last time we see him. Episode 10This was a Toph-heavy episode and therefore I didn’t really enjoy it (whereas I'm sure everyone else LOVED it). Things were off to a bad start with Bolin’s fanboying over Toph and saying she’s his ‘hero’ WAY too much. While she’s her typical insulting self towards him. All I could think during this scene of them meeting was "Why does Opal’s flying bison have mucus problems?", as it was regularly secreting green snot. Toph insults it too, as well as Appa, saying she thought he smelled bad (BITCH!), while Opal says basically that the bison chooses you and she’s tried changing hers but had no luck (you don't deserve your snotty bison, Opal!). There's a campfire talk between the Beifongs which I couldn't care less about, but at least Lin is *almost* as mad at Toph as I am, but nevertheless their family issues bore me. Toph was obviously a sucky mum (WHO'DA THUNK IT?). Although we were probably meant to be wondering why Kuvira's spirit vine weapon wasn't working properly all episode, it was obvious that Zhu Li was sabotaging it. Toph doesn’t seem to care when her family goes to save Zhu Li (after she’s caught, following her betrayal of Kuvira, and stuck in an otherwise deserted town which is going to be the first test subject of the weapon once it's fixed). Bolin goes and Opal follows on her bison. There's a pretty decent fight between Kuvira and Suyin (I liked seeing her do the opposite of the move we saw last season where she removed her armour and used it as a weapon against an enemy whereas this time she takes metal from her surroundings and turns it into armour for herself). Toph coming to save the day elicited a giant *eyeroll* from me. Opal forgives Bolin for everything after Zhu Li says his heart was in the right place even if he sided with the enemy. Meanwhile, Korra’s asking the spirits to help but they think she’s like her uncle and demon guy, so they disappear (fuck you too, spirits!). Once again, sadly, it barely felt like she was even in the episode (what a waste of the title character of this show. It's even worse that time which should've been spent on her was instead spent on the character I HATE THE MOST in the whole Avatar universe). With Asami's help, Varrick is gonna build flying mecha-suits (designed after hummingbirds) to combat Kuvira's forces. Unfortunately, her fully-armed and operational Battle Station spirit vine weapon is ready to attack them, according to Zhu Li...in two weeks (which really doesn't sound that urgent. Nevertheless, Wu's all about organising an evacuation). The best part is that Toph returns to her swamp and this is (as far as I can remember) the last we see of her. HALLELUJAH! Episode 11Bolin presents Zhu Li to Varrick who’s ‘motivating’ his workers to make mecha-suits to fight Kuvira's forces. She tells him that all the stuff she said about him when they separated wasn’t true and he means a lot to her, he seems like he’s going to say something caring, then he just acts like his usual unappreciative self and she’s HAD IT with being his assistant, telling him off/wanting to be considered his equal, before storming off. Varrick's clueless as to what prompted this outburst and Bolin slaps his own forehead at this. Korra takes Tenzin & co on a mission, thankfully leaving Meelo behind because he farts and they need to be *quiet*. They capture Suyin’s bespectacled son who knows Korra’s empty threatening him with her glowing 'Avatar State' eyes, but she eventually figures out keeping him separated from Kuvira (who he just wants to go off with and marry) is the way to get to him. Kuvira (who's one week early with her attack - WHAT A SHOCK!) has created a giant walking mecha-suit that has a cannon mounted on its arm which blasts the shit out of things. Suyin’s son thinks he's talked down Kuvira from attacking, but OF COURSE she’s gonna sacrifice him and so she blasts shit out of the place they’re all at. Viewing this from a distance, Lin says she’s going to check for survivors...and, curiously, doesn’t seem that concerned her family members may be dead. Episode 12Miraculously, everyone’s saved by Bolin holding up a massive slab of concrete which should've flattened them all like pancakes with his earth-bending, but there's a funny moment with him remarking on there being SO many people as they all run out (there were indeed a lot of characters in the scene). Suyin’s bespectacled son got hurt...but, eh, who cares? I was surprised by how ineffectual everybody was at taking on the big-ass pink/purple-blasting mecha-giant. First, Meelo runs past a store with paint and his idea is for all the air-benders to go flying over the mecha-giant with balloons attached to them that are filled with paint which they hurl at the windows of the machine to block Kuvira's view...but the mecha-suit has window-washers that easily clean the paint off, so that barely did anything (I think this was just an excuse from the writers to give that annoying little shit something to do - but there were other characters I would've much rather spent his screentime on instead. Did Mako even speak this episode? I did like watching Kuvira try to swat Meelo with the giant hand of the suit and then her trying to blast him). They then try the old cables-around-the-legs trick from ESB, Korra and others blast it with wind but that does very little besides make it trip slightly, then it blasts the shit out of everything again. Opal's hurt somewhere along the line (but again, who cares?). Asami's dad has been let out of jail because they need all the geniuses they can get to work on the hummingbird flying mecha-suits. Varrick tells Zhu Li a story about an ostrich-horse called Mrs. Beaks whom he loved but took for granted (which is clearly his way of admitting to Zhu Li he's taken her for granted), but she was hoping for more. In the end he proposes (still saying "Do the thing." which has kinda worn out its welcome as a catchphrase by this point, though at one point when he said the line she replied that there was 'no more things to do’ - which was at least a new spin on it). I forget exactly when, but Kuvira's giant mecha-suit blasts the place where all the hummingbird mecha-suits (which Varrick and Asami have made) are at to smithereens, but she's got some prototypes in her office (exactly how BIG is her office?). She and her dad have a moment together where it's made clear she's more or less forgiven him - which, as you might've guessed, is pretty much a death sentence for him. Before we get to that, though, Bolin gives the mecha-giant a hot foot with his lava-bending, Tenzin’s hurt saving one daughter from the mecha-giant's blast and Meelo saves him by slowing his fall. The plan is to use the flying mecha-suits to make a hole in the mecha-giant (there's a mosquito analogy in there somewhere) so they can get inside it, Korra throws everything at it - wind, rocks, water (which she freezes around it) - and Asami's dad ejects Asami from one of the flying mecha-suits after he says his 'ILY's to her and gets swatted by the mecha-giant (after he's managed to cut a hole in it) just like a mosquito. Korra, Asami, Mako, Bolin and the Beifong sisters (I think it was this episode where Lin, Suyin and Bolin - ALL the characters whose names include 'in' - worked together to collapse a building onto the mecha-giant at one point) get through the hole and are now inside the mecha-giant. While all of this was going on, there was some stupid stuff with Tenzin's wife singing to civilians in an attempt to keep them calm and Wu singing about badger-moles which somehow helped evacuate the civilians (thanks to the help of actual giant badger-moles appearing). The writers clearly thought this was funny, but the only bit I found amusing was one of Kuvira's men saying that Wu's singing drove away the badger-moles (of course, then this was proven false as the badger-moles returned and made short work of Kuvira's men). Ep 13/the series finalKuvira breaks her mecha-giant out of the frozen water, Korra assigns jobs to Mako, Bolin, Suyin and Lin now that they're inside the mecha-giant, Bolin creates a lava buzzsaw-looking thing to get where they need to go, the two brothers take out some guys (of which there are strangely not very many and are easily taken out - should've beefed up security in your mecha-giant, Kuvira!), while the two sisters do some major damage to the insides of the machine (they couldn't on the outside, because it was platinum, whereas inside it's metal. Again, Kuvira, better planning would've prevented this!). Whatever is needed doing to put a stop to the mecha-giant, it involves self-sacrificing and Mako's decided *he's* going to be the one to do it. There's a good moment between the bros where Bolin tells him that he doesn't have to prove how 'awesome' he is...he already knows, but in the end Mako stays behind and there's a shitload of electricity surrounding him (SO much that it burns one of the sleeves off his shirt!) and just when it looks like he's going to be the first major casualty, Bolin drags him out to safety. Meanwhile, Korra vs. Kuvira is a big-ass fight in an enclosed space. Whatever damage the others have managed to do to the mecha-giant has made its gun-arm stop working, so Kuvira...rips the arm off and hurls it away? Should've used it to club them with instead, Kuvira! Geez! At one point Korra and Kuvira blast each other back and the giant robot explodes. Korra carries Kuvira out and she hits her with a rock as a 'thank you' and runs off into the forest where the mecha-giant's gun/cannon is caught in vines and it's a 'holy shit!' moment when she fires it directly at Korra, but naturally she manages to avoid the blast. Then suddenly the gun's out of control, zapping EVERYWHERE, Kuvira can't shut it down and just as it's about to zap Kuvira herself, Korra steps in front of her and BLASTS EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE in a giant pink/purple explosion that creates a green sky-beam. Everyone’s looking for Korra and it turns out that the sky-beam is a new portal to the spirit world, which is where Korra and Kuvira currently are. Kuvira’s still being rough with Korra, pushing her away as she holds her (ungrateful! She just saved your life! TWICE!), then we learn her sob story about being given away as a child and being taken in by Suyin, blah blah blah. There's more to it than that but I don't really remember the details. Korra sympathises and Kuvira asks why she saved her. I can't remember her answer, but I think it's something to do with her now having reconnected with her spirit self or something. Anyway, Korra carries Kuvira out of the spirit world, reuniting with everyone (while Kuvira's handcuffed - she's a METAL-BENDER, people! What good are those going to do? - and willing to accept her punishment), and there are now spirits everywhere thanks to the portal between the two worlds. Cut to Varrick and Zhu Li's wedding with Bolin as the one who's marrying them (and refusing to read the vows Varrick's given to him for Zhu Li - who dips Varrick when they snog, hopefully hinting that she's not going to be a pushover in this marriage and will stand up to him when he's acting like his usual self). Pretty much all the characters are at the wedding (including a pro-bending guy from Season 1 who had his bending taken away by Amon - now the dude's playing trombone in the band). Wu's dissolving the monarchy and it’ll be democratic now, as he's gonna pursue his singing career or whatever. There's a nice final moment between Korra and Mako where he says he admires her and would follow her anywhere/always has her back (too bad there was no such final moment between Korra and Bolin). She then gets another nice moment with Tenzin where I took the gist of what she was saying to mean she felt she had to go through all that suffering she did to come out the other side and learn to empathise with Kuvira which was how she defeated her in the end (instead of with brute force). He's then called away by Asami who was just providing a distraction so she could be one-on-one with Korra. And HERE IT COMES - the moment I'd heard about before ever getting to it in the show (as it was spoiled for me) where Korra and Asami decide they're going to leave and go exploring the spirit world together - "just the two of us" (which was a major F.U. to poor Naga, who was just snoozing there in the background RIGHT BEHIND them. Seriously, Korra's a shitty polar bear dog owner, considering how often she ditches her supposed 'best friend'). According to the show's creators, they'd been laying the groundwork for 'Korrasami' the last couple of seasons (and when you look back on their moments together, you can see it - even if it wasn't so 'overt' early on). They walk to the spirit world portal hand-in-hand and turn to gaze into each other's eyes (like Varrick and Zhu Li just did at their wedding - which was an intentional 'mirroring' apparently, according to the episode commentary),we fade to a bright light and that's the end. I'm sure certain people out there hated this ending, but I was cool with it. I liked these two together and I appreciate that showrunners were willing to 'go there' with the characters (as much as they *could*, anyway). I know some people thought there wasn't enough moments between the two characters previously to make this ending not seem like it was 'random'/'came out of nowhere', but I'm guessing they probably couldn't have been as obvious with the pairing like they were here earlier in the show and they only got away with this because it was the very end. Whatever the restrictions, it's applause-worthy that the show was brave enough to do this and I'm content with the ending (the only thing that could've made it better was if Naga had gone with them...but given what they were probably going to get up to in the spirit world, Naga probably wouldn't have wanted to intrude on their 'alone time'). All in all, this was a pretty satisfactory conclusion to a show that I personally feel has been more consistent overall when compared to A:TLA (which I felt had one really excellent first season...and has had two so-so seasons since). I haven't enjoyed a show this much in quite a while and I'm forever grateful I ignored all the naysayers and gave TLoK a chance, as it was well worth it.
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