The Falcon And The Winter Soldier Season Recap: Who Wields The Shield?

April 27, 2021 by Joe

This past Friday, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier completed the sixth episode of its first (and possibly only) season. There have been a million reviews and recaps already, so I’ll be doing my season recap by way of the primary characters’ story arcs. As noted, this is a season recap, so you’ll no doubt find spoiler a-plenty below. Please do not continue any further down unless you’re cool with that.

Sam Wilson – Despite being – to perhaps because of being – the character that the show revolved around, Sam didn’t have much of an arc. This was mainly because the distance between being Falcon and becoming Captain America was not very far, as Sam Wilson had already proven himself a worthy successor to Steve Rogers. The trick was getting him to believe that.

Sam started out the season as a freelance military contractor after getting a “helped defeat Thanos” pardon for his actions in Captain America: Civil War. After being bequeathed Steve Rogers’ shield, he promptly turned it into the Smithsonian, as he didn’t believe there could, or should, every be another Captain America. This sort of pessimistic outlook was exacerbated by being turned down for a bank loan to save his family’s fishing boat, despite being a world-saving Avenger.

Once his friend Torres filled him in on a revolutionary group called the Flag Smashers, Sam reconnected with Bucky Barnes for help taking them down. Unbeknownst to Sam at the time, this reunion set him on a path to where he needed to be. Once he was made aware of the Flag Smashers’ agenda, Sam’s plan all along was to try and quell the group using non-violent means. This didn’t quite line up with Barnes’ plan, and was very far way from newly-government-issued Captain America, John Walker’s, methods. But it also displayed an example of why Steve chose Sam to carry on the Captain America mantle.

Upon learning they were super soldiers, Barnes took Sam to visit the only remaining super solider he was aware of: Isaiah Bradley. The plan was to find out how there could be more super soldiers out there, but the revelations of the American government’s crimes against Bradley only further cemented Sam’s belief that Captain America had no real place in the modern world. A belief that was continually reinforced by John Walker’s series of failures and crimes (which we’ll discuss further when we get to Walker later).

When Sam was finally able to confront Karli Morganthau, the leader of the Flag Smashers, Sam did what he actually does best: He made a connection with her. This was a reminder that Sam Wilson does have super powers of sort, and empathy is one of them. When he and Barnes finally have time to bond, and truly get to understand one another without having to rush from one fight to the next, we are shown a great example of Sam’s other super power: His ability to see the best in people, and make them see that in themselves. With some tough love, Sam is able to break through what’s left of Bucky’s hard exterior, and help him understand what he really needs to do if he wants to make peace with his past and himself.

In return Barnes brings him a new uniform, complete with new Vibranium wings (as his original wings were ripped off by Walker during their fight) courtesy of the White Wolf’s friends in Wakanda. By the time the Flag Smashers make their final move to kill everyone on the Global Relocation Council (GRC), Sam is there in his new Captain America gear to stop them. The world is watching as Sam dons the stars and strips, stops the Flag Smashers, and demands that the senators of the GRC do better to make things right for all the people of the world. After claiming the mantle, and shield, on his own terms, Sam has convinced everyone – including Isaiah Bradley and himself – that the world does still need Captain America. Just as long as the right person wields the shield.

James Buchanan Barnes – Like Sam, Bucky was also given a fresh start with the “helped defeat Thanos” pardon, and is working with a government-appointed therapist to make amends for his deeds as the Winter Soldier. This mainly involves helping to take down the people who were placed into power by Hydra sending in the Winter Soldier to do their dirty work. He has a sort of mission of sorts, but no personal connections to the world. The only people we see him interact with are an elderly man whose son he murdered as the Winter Soldier, and a bartender he flees a date with because he simply does not know how to be with regular people.

He seeks out Sam after Sam gives up the shield, which is subsequently given to John Walker by the government. He’s angry at Sam for handing the shield over, since their mutual best friend Steve Rogers designated him as the man to carry on the Captain America legacy. But, really, he’s angry because if Steve was wrong about Sam being the right person to take up the mantle, then Steve may also have been wrong about Barnes deserving redemption for his deeds while under Hydra’s control. Despite this tension, he and Sam start working together the take down the Flag Smashers.

Along the way, we discover that Barnes did make a strong connection with the Wakandans who sheltered him, and cured him of Hydra’s brain-washing. Most notably Ayo, a member of the Dora Milaje, shows up to collect Baron Zemo, after Barnes and Sam broke him out of prison for help, clearly share a bond with Bucky. This demonstrates that he is still capable of connecting with people, just as long as he doesn’t need to hide the dark deeds of his past from them. While seeing Ayo again helps Barnes come out of his shell a little, it’s not until he and Sam have a chance to stop fighting that he finds the sort of personal connection that he’s been missing.

After finally setting their issues with one another aside, Sam and Bucky defeat John Walker, and take the shield from him. At that point, with no other active leads to follow, they travel to Sam’s hometown for some good old fashioned bonding. Spending time with Sam’s family, and closest friends, helps Barnes find the true man inside the Winter Soldier, and bring him back to the surface. Sam also helps him realize that, to truly make amends, he needs to stop hunting bad guys that he helped, and start seeking out the people he hurt to give them the peace-of-mind that only he can. He admits to Sam that he and Steve could never fully understand what it would mean to a black man to be Captain America when they discussed passing the shield onto him. While, at the same time, he provides Sam with his own version of the Captain America uniform. Notably, he only gives Sam a locked suitcase from Wakanda, and leaves it up to Sam to decide if and when he opens it.

In the end, Barnes has found his true mission as well as his new family. The former is to find his own peace by giving peace-of-mind to the ancillary victims of the Winter Soldier’s crimes, while continuing to fight by Captain America’s side. As a benefit of the latter, Bucky now also gets invited to awesome cookouts and block parties at Sam’s place. With a new social support network, Barnes’ has started living the sort of life he had not led since before shipping off to World War II.

Bucky’s arc took him to a much better personal place but, in many ways, he’s still a work-in-progress. This is probably why the title card at the ends of the season read “Captain America and the Winter Soldier” rather than “Captain America and the White Wolf” but I believe we’ll still get there in a forthcoming movie, or second season. Perhaps one that will further explore his connection to Wakanda, where he was able to break free of the Winter Soldier programming, and was given that other cool nickname that doesn’t come with all the baggage.

John Walker – Walker started off the season as a slap-in-the-face to Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson in his knock-off Captain America uniform. He then was proven to be a joke by failing on each of his first missions, partly because he was trying to deal with super soldiers while not having the same physical gifts as Rogers. His lack of worth was further accentuated by the fact that he displayed neither the gift of empathy, nor the ability to inspiration, that Steve and Sam shared.

He was able to match his physical self up to his self-perceived level of due respect by injecting himself with a dose of super solider serum. But his actions in the immediate aftermath completely struck home the personal failings that made him unworthy to wield the shield, as he publicly executed a member of the Flag Smashers who was surrendering to him. He has his rank and charge removed during his trial for the murder of a Flag Smasher, but this does not dim his misguided belief in himself.

While he had done nothing to deserve redemption for his crime, he does ultimately help Sam and Bucky stop the Flag Smashers’ plan to murder the GRC. He also defers to Sam’s proper claim to the shield when he sees him demonstrate, firsthand, the traits and values that Captain America needs to represent. However, rather than continuing on his path to better himself, Walker promptly signs up with the enigmatic Valentina Allegra de Fontaine to join her mysterious organization as the U.S Agent.

This pretty much puts him back as square one as the incognizant cog in someone else’s machine. I found Walker’s arc interesting until the season finale when it seemed to abruptly end in a manner that seemed far too tidy for him. We’ll definitely be seeing more of John Walker in the future, so hopefully we get a more fitting payoff at that time.

Sharon Carter – Sharon’s onscreen role was much smaller than expected when going by the promotional materials, and her spots in Captain America: The Winter Solider as well as Captain America: Civil War. Offscreen, however, as the Power Broker, she played a big part in orchestrating many of the events that propelled the story forward. Her character arc, however, played out before the start of this show.

Not having received the “helped defeat Thanos” pardon that the fellas enjoy, since she apparently didn’t have access to one of those handy sorcerer portals at the time, she had been a fugitive from the United States government for the past five years. Sharon felt that she chose the right side, by joining Steve Rogers’ team against Tony Stark’s in the Avengers’ Civil War. Embittered by receiving this treatment despite years of service to the government, an sensing an opportunity in the power vacuum that ensued from half the criminals on the planet turning to dust, she became the Power Broker.

Or so we have to assume, as the show never provided us with the specifics of Sharon’s situation. This was one of the biggest disappointments of the show for me. But, like John Walker, we’re sure to see Sharon again. Hopefully, we’ll get to learn her whole story then as well.

Baron Helmut Zemo – Zemo was another character whose arc happened in the years between Civil War War and Endgame. He’s no longer a vengeance-driven force of destruction aimed directly at the Avengers. When he’s re-introduced to us, he’s an enlightened fugitive millionaire playboy who’s the most charismatic character every time he’s onscreen. He helps Sam and Barnes in their mission, as it aligns with his own mission to rid to world of enhanced individuals. And he manages to evade capture by the Dora Millaje until he’s good and ready to get captured.

His Plan A seemed to be getting shot in the face by Bucky, which was also how he wanted to end his Civil War plan, until Black Panther thwarted his suicide attempt. But Barnes is well-past his Winter Soldier days, and chooses to hand Zemo over to the Dora Millaje rather than killing him. They end up taking him to The Raft supervillain prison, though his loyal butler/manservant completes his mission for him by blowing up the remaining Flag Smashers after they are taken into custody. This establishes that Zemo is very capable of being dangerous even from behind bars. He may have been the most consistent highlight of the show, so I look forward to seeing more of him in future projects.

Karli Morganthau – Karli was pretty much done dirty through the run of the show. She was made into less of a character, and more of a human stand-in for a valid ideology taken to extremes. Some efforts were made to humanize her, such as her conversation with Sam before Walker crashed the party. But nothing truly enlightened us to who she was as person. We were given the broad-strokes of the Flag Smashers’ belief system: That the GRC were destroying the lives people built for themselves during the five years where half the population was gone. The viewers were given space to agree, or disagree, with this stance, and I chose the former.

The issue with Karli, was the she was the one pushing the group toward escalating violence, but we were never told the reason why. Was there some deeper, personal tragedy tied to the way her family was treated by the GRC? Was she simply someone with a history of violence who was drawn to the Flag Smashers’ mission, assuming it would give her to opportunity to indulge her more destructive tendencies? It’s impossible to say since, even given six hours to work with, Karli was never allowed to be anything approaching a fully-formed character.

As a whole, I really enjoyed The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was great spending time with Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes again, and watching them form the sort of bond that they’ll need to rebuild the Avengers and lead them into whatever cataclysmic threat rises next.

But, more than that, it was great seeing Marvel embrace the legacy of one of their most beloved characters. They passed the mantle onto Sam Wilson, a character who stands for millions of people who spent far too long not being allowed to see themselves in the greatest superheroes ever created.

A fourth Captain America movie was announced with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s showrunner writing the script. I am greatly looking forward to seeing where they take these characters next. Steve Rogers was my favorite character in the first three phases of the MCU. It would not surprise me in the least is Sam Wilson ensures that Captain America retains that spot for me through the next phase.

Avengers: Endgame – Closing The Circle

March 4, 2021 by Joe

Talk about a cliffhanger. I posted a spoilers and speculation blog about Avengers: Infinity War way back in 2018, shortly before I took an unplanned three year break from blogging, and never followed it up. That’s like a Star Wars Original & Prequel Trilogy style gap.

But I still didn’t want to leave anyone, including myself, hanging. So, I’m writing this piece to close my own circle with some general thoughts about Avengers: Endgame, and what’s come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since then. I made some predictions in that blog, and I’m happy to say that I was more right than wrong in my predictions.

Loki and Heimdall definitely died “for real” even though Loki is getting his own time travel-ly series out of it. All victim of The Snap returned, though that wasn’t exactly a long shot. I was right to assume Hawkeye wasn’t snapped, and that the original Avengers squad all survived for a reason – I was also right about the reason being to give them a proper curtain call. Doctor Strange’s apology to Tony Stark did end up being because Tony had to sacrifice his life to save the universe.

Steve Rogers bowed out with a happier ending than I’d suspected. Bucky Barnes likely isn’t the one carrying the Captain America shield forward, so I was wrong about that part. But he, and Sam Wilson, are working together to fill the void, so I was right about the group effort part. Black Widow died, but still has a solo movie coming out (some day) so I was about 50/50 on that projection. Thor is getting a fourth movie, as expected, and they’re keeping Hulk in their back pocket, likely to drop by on the She Hulk series.

As for the movie itself: I loved Avengers: Endgame, and I think the last hour or so of it is the most rewatchable MCU movie out there. The time travel trip down memory lane worked way better than it had any right to. Just the fact that they introduced time travel out of nowhere, and made it work, is a small miracle. Though my faith never really waivered in Kevin Feige and the MCU brain trust.

The Star Wars crew couldn’t even properly wrap up a trilogy with the disastrous Rise Of Skywalker. Meanwhile, Marvel capped out a 20+ movie arc in the most entertaining and satisfying manner possible. Both of these are under Disney’s banner now, but you can see a stark difference in the way they’ve been handled.

I think Marvel has had a looser leash, which worked out for them Meanwhile, they course-corrected Star Wars on-the-fly, likely with a Bible full of studio notes, which ended up being a problem. But, if The Mandalorian is a sign of things to come, and it appears that it is, then Star Wars may soon be rising to Marvel’s standards. Imagine saying THAT twenty years ago.

Now, for how things are looking in a Post Infinity Saga universe.

Spider-Man: Far From Home was the only post-Endgame MCU release so far, even though Black Widow was scheduled to drop a year ago, before the pandemic effed up everyone’s lives for most of the past twelve months. Far From Home was a lot of fun, and a good demonstration of how well Marvel Studios can get themselves back into the flow of smaller, non-universe destroying crossover films. It was very encouraging.

No one has seen Black Widow yet, as I noted above. But I’ll definitely check it out when – and where – I can.

WandaVision is really interesting. I’ll probably post a review of it once the season concludes, since I don’t want to fully judge it without having seen the entire run. It’s pulled the rug out from under the viewers several times already, so I’ll gather up my thoughts about it when standing on more solid ground.

The Falcon & The Winter Solider is coming later this month, and I’m very much looking forward to more of the love-hate-buddy-cop action that those two characters have only been able to hint at up to this point. I’ll probably write that review up after the season (series?) concludes as well.

Loki is up after that in May. Lots of timey-wimey stuff going on there, starting with Loki being not-dead in the first place. But the character is always fun, and time travel worked out nicely in Endgame, so let it ride!

She-Hulk, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Ironheart, and Secret Invasion have all been announced as Disney+ series, and some interesting casting news has come out already. But, it’s also far too early for me to have any real insights.

I’ll judge The Eternals when I know more about it, but I’m not familiar with the title at all, so I won’t make any assumptions yet. But I did watch Nomadland, which was also directed by recent Golden Globe Winner Chloe Zhao. I didn’t exactly know how to feel about the point-of-view in Nomadland, which I think was the point. It was a beautiful-looking film though, that’s for certain, so that’s hooked my interest in Eternals.

Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness is next up. It’s being directed by Sam Raimi, which sounds incredible. All we know so far is the title and director. But I’m loving the title and the director. It’s still in the early stages of shooting, but I’m fully on-board already. I can’t wait to further examine the mystical corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Or, Marvel Cinematic Multiverse, I suppose). I really enjoyed the back-half of Doctor Strange’s solo movie, and loved his few scenes in Thor: Ragnarok. Picking up where those left off seems pretty awesome to me.

Spider-Man: No Way Home appears set to tackle the multiverse as well, which should be fun. Into The Spider-Verse may have already done this about as well as you possibly can. But the MCU has the bonus draw of bringing in actors and characters from the previous iterations of the Spider-Man film franchise. If nothing else, that should be good to pop the crowd a few times.

Thor: Love & Thunder is deep into shooting, with Taika Waititi again at the helm. Much like Doctor Strange’s new movie, the title and director are more-than-enough to get me into a theater. Plus, Thor: Ragnarok was probably the most fun MCU movie to date, so I’m all-in for more of that vibe.

Captain Marvel 2 and Black Panther 2 are also on-deck. But the former has just started casting, and the latter is trying to figure out how best to address the tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman. Either way, it’s far too early to make any assumptions about either.

I’m happy to finally put a bow on my Infinity War cliffhanger, and can’t wait to share my thoughts about all the interesting stuff that’s coming up in the future.

What The Hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

February 25, 2021 by Joe

Way back in 2017 I wrote about The Ballad of Luke Skywalker. This was shortly before The Last Jedi was released, and I offered up some theories, and questions. The movie did answer the most important questions I had. Another of the questions was partially addressed by The Mandalorian when Luke sought out Grogu to train him. I certainly would like to see some more of that.

Luke did, essentially, get the big send off that I wanted to see in The Last Jedi. It wasn’t the way I’d imagined it, but it still worked for me. All-in-all I liked the Last Jedi quite a lot. It was a well-made movie that served up some interesting ideas to be explored in the final part of the trilogy.

Then Rise Of Skywalker happened. I’m not going to do a deep dive, because I’m a little late to the party, and pretty much every angle has already been covered 100 times. But I also wanted to wrap up my previous blog post from before my hiatus.

Rise Of Skywalker was terrible. Very likely the worst Star Wars movie I’ve ever seen. Attack Of The Clones had a strong claim to the throne for a while, but that was just the middle part of a prequel trilogy. Rise Of Skywalker was not only the final chapter of the long-awaited sequel trilogy, but also the final chapter in an extraordinarily beloved movie series that stems back more than 40 years.

Among the interesting ideas posed by The Last Jedi was that Rey was just an ordinary person who happened to be strong with The Force. Sure, I was rooting for her to be Luke’s kid, but I was fine with the fact that she wasn’t. In fact, that message was sort of inspiring in that it told us that anyone can be special.

Rise Of Skywalker decided that Rey was Emperor Palpatine’s granddaughter. Or, like, the daughter of a Palpatine clone who didn’t have any powers. Or some such nonsense that was never really explained in the movie, but was discussed in subsequent interviews. What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

On the same note, Broom Boy’s whimsically casual use of The Force at the end of The Last Jedi offered up another fun option. Maybe Rey would travel the galaxy to find these Force-Sensitive people, and enlist them in the final battle to defeat the First Order. Something like that could have been displayed similarly to the epic portals scene of Avengers: Endgame. Only, instead of superheroes and wizards, it would have been common people standing together and using what power they had to defeat the evil empire.

Rise Of Skywalker made no mention of Broom Boy, or anyone else like him at all. Sure, they alluded to Finn all of a sudden being Force-Sensitive, but then did absolutely nothing with him besides yelling “REY!” over and over again. Speaking of Finn, he also had a big secret that he wanted to tell Rey. He never told her, and therefore the audience never found out.
But we were again told after-the-fact that he wanted to tell her he was Force-Sensitive. This revelation also would have made no difference to the events of the film regardless, so who really cares. What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

Kylo Ren was made into a really interesting shades-of-gray character by The Last Jedi, before decided to stick to the Dark Side and slice his way to Supreme Leader status. The clear conflict within him sizzled up ever scene he was in, especially his scenes with Rey.

In Rise Of Skywalker, he falls immediately back in-line under Palpatine like Darth Vader 2.0, even though he had made a big deal of becoming the true big boss man of the First Order in the previous movie. So, he’s just bad again until he talks to a hallucination of his dead father, Han Solo, and is suddenly not bad anymore. Han was not a Force Ghost, not really a memory, and also not explained at all by the movie. What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

Honestly, I could go on and on about this stuff, so here’s a few more quick takes.

Palpatine is just back, which is super lame, and you would have only seen it coming if you played Fortnite. What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

Rose Tico just doesn’t matter anymore, even though she spent the entirety of The Last Jedi building a pretty fun relationship with Finn. What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

Poe and Rey have one scene of a kinda flirty Han-and-Leia interaction, and then it’s never mentioned again. But Poe’s ex-girlfriend shows up for a few scenes to waste time on a subplot that could have been wrapped up in one or two scenes. What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

Chewbacca and C-3PO die, or are erased, in service of the greater good. Until they’re back, and right as rain 10 minutes later. Even dramatic sacrifices are brushed aside, and immediately retconned (like J.J Abrams tried to do with the entirety of The Last Jedi). What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

When Ben Solo finally completes his slapdash redemption arc, and somehow manages to make a couple of cool moments happen, he’s immediately blasted down a bottomless pit before he can even take a swing at Palpatine. He could have, at least, battled Palpatine’s army of faceless fans(?) in the stands while Rey took on Palpy himself. But, nah. What the hell, Rise Of Skywalker?

And many, many more issues that became even more prevalent when I finally decided to give Rise Of Skywalker a second chance after almost a full year.

At any rate, I wanted to put a bow on my 2017 blog about Luke Skywalker, and I have. I’ve very happy that the Star Wars universe is expanding, and I freakin’ love The Mandalorian. I’m also very much looking forward to some of the other announced projects coming, especially the Ashoka Tano, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Boba Fett shows.

The only issue is that all those projects take place in the past, meaning that for the foreseeable future, Rise Of Skywalker is the end of the Star Wars Saga. I really hope that’s not the case for long.

They’ve finally got the right people in-place to shepherd Star Wars back to greener pastures (yes, another shot at J.J) with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni’s Mando staff. I’m also happy to hear that Rian Johnson is still set to make more Star Wars movies as well. If they’d given him Rise Of Skywalker it probably would have been more “Hell Yeah!” than “What The Hell?”

So, I will hold out hope that Star Wars Episode X, or whatever they end up calling it, can turn Star Wars back into the Crown Jewel that Disney envisioned when they bought the rights from Lucasfilms. Hope, after all, is where this whole thing started in that long time ago galaxy of 1977.

Go To War For ‘Warrior’

February 3, 2021 by Joe

“It’s Deadwood, but with Kung Fu!”
I’d bet dollars-to-donuts that was the elevator pitch for the Cinemax (now HBO Max) series ‘Warrior.’ And, if that’s enough to get you to watch it, then my work here is done. But if you need more reasons, then I’ll do my best to provide them below.
I’ll state this right off-the-bat, I’ll be going into some spoilers, but nothing that should affect your enjoyment of – or investment in – the show.

Here’s the jumping off point: Ah Sahm arrives in 1870’s San Francisco from China. When confronted with some racist dickweeds, he promptly whoops their asses with ease. This puts a damper on his plans to take a job as a “coolie” – a derogatory term for an unskilled laborer – building railroad tracks.

Fortunately for him, Wang Chao pulls him away from the ruckus with a seemingly better deal. Chao is that character you find in these types of stories who knows everyone, plays every side, and always has an exit plan in his back pocket. His exit plan for Ah Sahm, less fortunately for him, involves selling the man to the Hop Wei to serve as a “hatchet man” or enforcer.

The Hop Wei is a Tong, essentially a Chinese crime family, who are currently in the midst of navigating their way around two other Tongs in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Father Jun is the hard-ass head of the family. But his son, Young Jun, takes an immediate liking to Ah Sahm when he finds out just how well he can “Scrap.” Scrapping is fighting and, yes, some of the vernacular of the period gets a bit overplayed (especially another one that I’ll get to shortly). But that’s just a small complaint.

Young Jun is a bit restless, and has a tough time keeping his thoughts about maybe being more fit to run the Hop Wei than his father is to himself. At any rate, he promptly takes Ah Sahm to the local hot spot (i.e brothel) run by Ah Toy. At the brothel is where we learn one more, very colorful term that you’ll hear a lot – “getting sticky.” Considering where they are when you hear this euphemism, you can likely figure out what it means. Ah Sahm bonds pretty quickly with Ah Toy, who has a very cool after-hours hobby of her own that I won’t spoil here. But she earns Ah Sahm’s trust enough to learn the reason why he came to Chinatown: To find his sister.

It doesn’t take long for his to find his sister in the last place he’d expect. She’s (unofficially) running one of the other Tongs: The Long Zii. Mai Ling fled to America years before to escape an arranged marriage to an abusive warlord. A marriage she was forced into to save Ah Sahm’s life, which she is absolutely nurturing a big-time grudge over. But she’s also planning to take down the Hop Wei using group of people who might as well be gangsters: The politicians.

Mai Ling has secret meetings with Walter Buckley, who is running his own schemes alongside the fairly incompetent Mayor Samuel Blake. Blake is married to Penny, in an arrangement not unlike Mai Ling’s. Penny’s formerly wealthy father’s business has been free-falling, so she volunteered to marry the mayor in order to get a city contract to pump back up her father’s financials. The wheelings and dealings of city officials, and broke businessmen bring us back around to cheap labor, and coolies. Which, in-turn, bring us to the truest villains of the story.

The Irish laborers have fallen on hard times, and are not helped by the fact that the Chinese are willing to work for a lot less money. Coupled with the fact that the manufacturers are more-then-willing to pay as little as possible, makes for a lethal combination. There is a level of vicious racism on display here that, up until recent years, we were happy to pretend no longer existed in this country. The silver lining is that we get to watch these guys get kicked in the face pretty regularly by Ah Sahm, and others.

The exception to this is the character meant to singularly represent all this heinous bigotry, and “patriotic” fury: Dylan Leary. Leary is an undefeated bare-knuckles boxer in his spare time, though most of his free time is spent riling up anyone without earshot about the Chinese “parasites” who don’t belong in this country, and are stealing their livelihoods. This line of bullshit probably sounds all-too familiar these days, as people like Leary still exist today, and will never stop sounding the drums of a race war.

Putting the least amount of effort possible into preventing this race war, the city creates a Chinatown Squad that consists of all of five cops. Only two of these cops really matter to the story. The first is Sgt. “Big Bill” O’Hara, who’s seen more than his share of Chinatown vices. Most of which comes from his own gambling addiction that puts him in the crosshairs of the Fung Hai Tong. O’Hara is your classic used-to-be-a-good-cop who will eventually find his way into trying-to-be-a-good-cop-again territory thanks to the other pertinent member of the Chinatown Squad: Officer Richard Lee.

Officer Lee is a transplant from the south, who made his way so far from home for reasons that are addressed near the end of season 1. He’s a good deal more open-minded than pretty much any other white character on the show, besides Penny, which is a bit of a twist considering his geographic origins. He also dabbles in some shockingly modern crime scene investigation techniques. If there was one character besides Ah Sahm who could support their own show, it would probably be Lee.

Ironically, Lee was likely given his name as an homage to the man who wrote the actual original pitch for the show: Bruce Lee. ‘Warrior’ was something he tried to get off the ground back in the early-70’s, but it never happened. I expect this was due to America not being ready for a TV show with a predominantly Asian cast at the time, and Lee’s own tragic, untimely death. But his daughter Shannon Lee is a producer, and she’s brought along the creative team from another Cinemax show that featured weekly ass-beatings: ‘Banshee’

Which bring us full circle back to the Kung Fu. If that long list of characters and their relationships to one another seems a bit dense, fear not, it’s all dished out in easily digestible segments between awesome scrapping, and getting sticky. The fight choreography is as good, if not better, than anything I’ve ever seen on TV, and they give you two or three of these fight scenes every episode. I mentioned Deadwood earlier, but the way the characters speak to one another is more akin to the lighter, snappier dialogue of Justified (itself a modern western).

The title of this blog post is Going to War For ‘Warrior.’ But really, the war in this case is just to sit back, fire up your HBO Max, and plow through the first two seasons that you find there. It was recently re-located from Cinemax, and not yet renewed for a third season. I expect they’re waiting to see how many eyeballs they can get on the show before decided whether or not to renew.

So do yourself a favor, and get your eyeballs on one of the most purely entertaining TV shows that I’ve watched in years.

Stranger, Better Things

July 23, 2016 by Joe

A lot has already been written about the new Netflix show Stranger Things, so I’m not really going to take too deep a general dive into it here. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the overall strong writing, directing, musical score, set design and performances.

This show features a number of teen, and pre-teen, actors and not one of them annoyed me. In fact, I’d say each of their performances holds up nicely against some of the better actors of any age you’ll find out there. Millie Bobby Brown – who plays the enigmatically gifted Eleven – and Finn Wolfhard – playing classically geeky and goodhearted kid Mike – deserve special mention for carrying much of the burden for bringing the viewer back to that age where the world really started changing for them en route to young adulthood.

Stranger Things

On the grown-up side of things, Winona Ryder gives a very nice performance as grieving mother Joyce, who spends much of the season bordering on insanity until she’s proven right. While David Harbour – who plays Chief Hopper – imbues the character with the sort of 1970’s-1980’s era of wry but steady masculinity defined by roles like Roy Scheider as Sheriff Martin Brody, or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

What I’m more interested in here is taking a personalized look at the influences that inspired creators/show runners The Duffer Brothers, as they are many of the same things that influenced my tastes and own creative endeavors.

But let me first take a quick moment to applaud Netflix for taking a chance on show for such a specific audience, even though it has rather surprisingly found its way to much larger audience. But it reminds you of why Netflix exists, and was so successful, in the first place: taking chances on shows like this one.

Here’s the basic plot, as told from a child of the 80’s like myself (be warned, there will be some spoilers below):

Imagine E.T. but, instead of an alien, the kids find and bond with the girl from Firestarter or Carrie. Together, they’re searching for their missing friend in a similar end-of-the-innocence quest to the one in Stand By Me (of course the kid they’re looking for in Stand By Me is already known to be dead, while the kid in Stranger Things may not be). Either way, the boy’s been taken by a monster not unlike Pennywise The Demonic Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s IT.

Honestly, there is a lot more Stephen King spin present in this show than has been explored in some other reviews. Hell, even the main titles font from the opening credits looks like the vintage cover to a Stephen King novel.

Meanwhile, the teens are dealing with a sort of A Nightmare On Elm Street situation as this same monster presents itself as something that seems to be able to defy the laws of nature and bend reality to its will. This is not far from the truth, as there is some heavy extra-dimensional action happening a la H.P. Lovecraft stories like From Beyond or Dreams In The Witch House.

Lastly, there’s the adult characters’ story arc. This one gets a bit of the short shrift, though that’s clearly by design as The Duffer Brothers know where their bread is buttered here. Still, Winona Ryder gets to lose her mind over a lost loved one like Karen Allen in John Carpenter’s uncharacteristically sensitive Starman. And the other primary adult character, David Harbour’s police chief, ends up having to deal with your classic secret government cover-up prior to he and Ryder confronting the facehuggers from Alien and the shark from Jaws.

That all may make it sound very derivative but, seriously, everything is derivative. It’s just a matter of where you derive from, and how well you adapt it to your purposes. In the case of Stranger Things, they’re pulling from some of my old favorite things and shaping them into one of my new favorite things.

Now, my enjoyment of this show is actually due to more than just it hitting my nostalgic sweet spot. Stranger Things hits the emotional punching bag pretty hard too. It took me across the spectrum from the first tugging of love on my youthful heartstrings in the Mike & Eleven relationship, all the way to spending half of the season finale choked up for reasons I would not have understood until more recent years thanks to revelatory scenes from Chief Hopper’s past. And you better believe it takes a lot to get me choked up.

I do want to make one last mention of the fantastically retro, atmospheric synth-heavy musical score comes right out of John Carpenter’s best work. This is not a surprise, as it was composed by the same people who did a similarly awesome score for The Guest. The songs they licensed and used at key points in the show are amazingly on-point as well.

Speaking of The Guest – that film, as well as films like It Follows, Super 8, and Midnight Special, are kindred spirits in tone and theme to Stranger Things even though none were actually set in the 1980’s. Regardless, I can only hope this means we’re on the cusp of a whole new cinematic movement, as long as it gives us more gems like the ones mentioned above.

Oh and, by the way, in case I didn’t make it clear you should DEFINITELY watch Stranger Things. Believe me, you can burn through those 8 episodes this weekend. In fact, you’ll have a hard time not doing so once you start.

America Is “R”-eady!

April 24, 2016 by Joe

Deadpool just became the highest grossing R rated film of all time, which is awesome, but I’m not here to discuss Deadpool specifically. Rather, what I’m here to discuss is what that film’s success means for the future of film in a more general sense.

The boxes checked off by Deadpool are comic book adaptation, action movie, and comedy film. It would be faulty logic to try and delineate which of these flavors were the biggest reason for it’s record breaking success, as the combination of all three is clearly what led to it. What I’m more interested in is which of those genres will benefit the most from Deadpool’s big win.

We’ll start with comic book movies, as brand recognition certainly factors into box office success. But you can’t really make any more money bringing DC and Marvel characters to life than they already are. These films have made billions of dollars and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Also, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Deadpool was the first ever successful R-rated comic book adaptation. The three Blade moves were all rated R and – while only the first two were actually good movies – they all turned a profit. Kick-Ass was also received well enough by critics and audiences to warrant an admittedly inferior sequel. The Punisher (2004) and Punisher: War Zone (2008) were not especially profitable, but they were both enjoyable enough to sit down and watch whenever they come on TV some evening or weekend afternoon.

While James Gunn’s Super was very good, it was also an original property, so it may not entirely qualify for this list. But last year’s Kingsman: The Secret Service was a highly entertaining and well-reviewed R-rated comic adaptation. In fact, Kingsman itself did strong enough business to get a sequel greenlit. What I’m ultimately saying is that, even though the money Deadpool made was unprecedented for an R-rated comic book movie, the R rating itself was not.

Comedies with an R rating never really went away. You can track back even just the past 10 years to the films of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig to see that. The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Trainwreck, Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy all made money hand over fist and have strong reviews across the board on Rotten Tomatoes. However, those last two movies lead me to what I believe will be the real genre winner here: action movies.

Yes, The Heat and Spy were billed more as comedies than as action movies. But they are really just a slight shift in ingredient measures away from films like 48 Hrs, Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard. Action films used to proudly hoist their R rating before theaters began to crack down on underage viewers buying tickets to those movies. This is why memorable and fun 80’s and 90’s vehicles like the ones listed above, along with movies like Cobra, Predator, Bloodsport, Out For Justice, Con Air, and Face/Off (and numerous more that I could fill out a whole other blog post with) were replaced by a bunch of fairly toothless PG-13 movies.

It doesn’t seem like the general admission crackdown is going away anytime soon (I might write a post about how the overly Puritan mindset of the American public at-large is doing a disservice to entertainers and those they wish to entertain at a later date) but as long as you can make an R-rated action movie that parents and their tween or teen kids are interested in, then we could see a real Renaissance.

There have been some very good non-comic book “restricted” action movies that have come out just in the past year or two. A few that spring immediately to mind are The Guest, Blue Ruin, John Wick, and The Purge: Anarchy. None of these films carried anything approaching even the relatively low $58 million budget of Deadpool, and none of them had anywhere near the full court marketing press as that movie, but I found them all just as enjoyable.

There is still a market for “adult” oriented action, you can tell just by looking at some of the biggest television hits of the recent past. Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones were/are all excellent shows that bring in millions of viewers each week. Every one of those shows is much closer to an R rating than a PG-13 rating and, in fact, three of them are comic book properties. I can also guarantee that nearly half the viewers for these shows are under the age of 18.

You don’t need to be over 18 to want to see this sort of content but, if you are, then you’re not allowed to go to the movie theater and buy a ticket for it. Odds are that 99.8% of them suffer no mental trauma by watching these shows, this I say from personal experience, but now we’re moving back towards that Puritan values problem I mentioned earlier. My point is that, as long as the product is good, and as long as it is advertised and available enough, films of this nature will be successful.

My theory will get its first real test at the end of May when The Nice Guys opens. Shane Black’s last movie was Iron Man 3, so I suppose it brings a little secondhand comic book brand recognition. But he’s more well known for directing and co-writing great R-rated action films like the aforementioned Lethal Weapon and, one of my favorite action-comedies of the last 16 years, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Yes, there are some big stars in The Nice Guys. But this is not the sort of Oscar bait that most R-rated star vehicles are these days. In fact, it looks a lot more like a fun, old school romp in the spirit of something like Deadpool.

Obviously, I’m not banking on this as the be-all, end-all, since most of The Nice Guys was filmed before Deadpool was even ramping up its massive marketing campaign. But it bears watching trends over the next few years, and I’m personally hoping we get more of those vintage style action movies that I remember from when I was technically too young to watch them, but watched the hell out of them anyway.

It would be a nice break from the 21st century assembly line of sterile, overly polite versions we’ve been force fed. After all, the famous line does not go “Yippee Ki-yay, Jerkface!” it goes “Yippee Ki-yay, Motherfucker!”

Batman v Superman v Batman & Superman

March 29, 2016 by Joe

I’m about to lay out my take on Batman v Superman, so be warned, there are massive spoilers ahead.

The majority of reviews were pretty harsh on this movie and, to be honest, mine will be as well. But there were some things I liked about Batman v Superman, so I’m going to hit on those first.

One big positive takeaway was that Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot were both very good in their roles. They really did the best you could expect actors to do considering the material they have to work with. Their performances managed to get me interested in seeing solo Batman and Wonder Woman films. One other sort of character note was that Doomsday was scary as hell, so they nailed that.

This movie, like any other Zack Snyder film (even Sucker Punch), was great looking. Say what you will about his movies as a whole – and I will do so below – but the guy knows how to work an aesthetic. A more specific example of this is that, like in Man Of Steel, the fight scenes were all very well executed and exciting.

Some of the content from said fight sequences were questionable, but you can’t question that they were purely visceral. I’d like to also single out the scene towards the end where Batman systematically takes out a group of thugs is genuinely the best cinematic realization I’ve ever seen of the Dark Knight in full ass kicking mode.

Now for the rest.

Batman v Superman was absolutely joyless. Everyone acted like a dick to everyone else, and it seemed like the movie took place in a parallel world where smiles were punishable by death.

I’ve seen Henry Cavill be charming in other things, like The Tudors and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. But he’s not allowed a single moment of levity in this movie. Superman was all dour and depressed and nothing else. You think that you’d got to at least give the guy a chance to show how simply awesome it is to be Superman, but apparently you’d be wrong.

There’s a montage of him saving people and, in every example shown, he looks like he’s pissed off at having to pull these fools’ asses out of the fire (literally in some cases). That is not Superman. Superman, in pretty much ever incarnation, enjoys saving people and gets a sense a purpose and satisfaction from doing so. Zack Snyder’s version has more in common with Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, a distant and removed God among mortals doing what we must for no other reason than because it’s expected of him.

I’m well aware that Snyder directed a pretty good adaptation of Watchmen in 2009, but he clearly didn’t understand that Dr. Manhattan was meant to stand in stark contrast to Superman. He was written to be a version of Superman who lost his humanity, which is quite possibly the defining characteristic of Kal El. Even clinically gloomy Alan Moore wrote a more relatable Superman in stories like Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow and For The Man Who Has Everything.

Batman, meanwhile, was blowing people up left and right with no regard for whether they lived or died. That works for a certain type of protagonist, but it is not who Batman is. Tossing severe beatings to the bad guys is very much within the Dark Knight’s wheelhouse, and flipping over their cars is par for the course. But Zack Snyder could not lay off the explosions. A flipped car here and there is cool but, for crying out loud, they do not need to explode and ensure that everyone in the theater has no doubt that those dudes are dead.

I was willing to give Jesse Eisenberg the benefit of the doubt in his portrayal of Lex Luthor, even though the trailers gave me some pause. But he played Luthor as a jittery bundle of nerves, which seemed like the exact opposite of an appropriate characterization. I’m all for giving an established character a bit of a different spin, but completely routing out the traditional cold and calculating core of Lex Luthor is doing a disservice to the character.

Which brings up to the real problem. Warner Bros has never trusted the source material for their DC comics adaptations. Meanwhile, Marvel pretty much films the trade paperbacks panel by panel. As such, WB gave the keys to Zack Snyder and David Goyer, neither of whom seems to have any real affinity for the legendarily storied history of Batman or Superman.

Everything is darker, grittier, more violent, and more melancholic than it ought to be. And this comes from a guy who really liked the dark, gritty, violent Dark Knight Trilogy. But it’s just not the right tone for a movie that includes Superman and Wonder Woman. If I had to guess, I’d say the general flaw in their thinking is that they need to makes things as stylistically different from the generally bright and sunny tones of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a result, they’ve painted themselves into a corner.

Yes, Batman should have some edge and darkness. But Superman is meant to represent the diametric opposite of that. If the symbol on his chest stands for hope, then why is his outlook – and the outlook of this film – so hopeless? BvS just came off as Dark v Darker, and this ain’t Punisher v Wolverine (as awesome as that would be). The filmmakers simply pressed too hard for distance between their brand and the Marvel brand, and ended up in a shadow realm.

WB Films should take some notes from their TV brethren. Greg Berlanti and his team have made a fully fleshed out and realized world that is the closest thing to a comic book brought to life ever seen to television. Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl bring the heart and the fun to the party. In fact, the recent crossover episode they had might as well have been called Supergirl xo The Flash.

But these shows also manage to hit the darker notes when they need to. The big difference being that they don’t start off somber leaving only a deeper abyss to descend into when they want to raise the stakes. When you feel the need to have Superman beaten down by Batman, blown up by a nuclear missile, and THEN stabbed through the chest by Doomsday in the same night to make a point about how hard it is to be a hero, then maybe you ought to reconsider your starting point.

There were other issues with BvS, such as too many nonsensical subplots, and an Apokolips teasing dream/vision sequence that absolutely no one would have missed had it ended up on the cutting room floor. Yes, it was cool to see parademons, Darkseid’s omega symbol burned into the ground and the classic Apokolips fire pits. But all that ate up 10 minutes of screen time that did nothing to serve the story as a whole.

Here’s the thing, I did appreciate the film for what it was. It had a lot of heavy lifting to do in order to be the launching point for a new muti-film franchise. It wasn’t what I’d call enjoyable, but I will certainly watch it again when it’s released on home video, even if I happen to zone out through a good half of it. And I am glad that it had a massive, record breaking opening weekend. A unified DC Universe deserves the chance to exist on the big screen. The upcoming films on the slate simply need to do better in terms of quality.

Maybe giving Snyder and Goyer a little time out, and allowing some DC people like Geoff Jones and CW people like Berlanti a place at the table would be beneficial. I’m not especially hopeful that WB suddenly decides that 80 years of continuous interest can translate to the movies, or that Snyder and Goyer will step back and re-evaluating their vision for the DC Cinematic Universe.

But the world of pop culture and entertainment will be a more interesting place with good, proper DC movies hitting the theaters every year. I just hope they can get out of their own way enough to get it right.

Fantasy Booking Game Of Throne Season 6

February 5, 2016 by Joe

Fantasy booking is a term you read a lot from pro wrestling reporters. It’s essentially when they book the storylines and matches that they would like to see, not necessarily what they expect to see. So this is my fantasy booking for season six of Game Of Thrones.

Keep in mind, this is for the TV show, not the novels. Therefore stories such as the Greyjoy family drama that no one really cares about are not taken into consideration.

Right off the bat we have Jon Snow resurrected by Melisandre. We all know this is what’s going to happen so let’s just bang it out right at the start of the season. Two minutes into the season premiere, here’s some king’s blood (likely Jon’s own blood) magic gets us off and running.

For his first act, the happy-to-no-longer-be-dead Jon says “fuck ya’ll” to his backstabby Night’s Watch brethren and decides to settle all the Stark family’s debts. His next step is to recruit any of the Free Folk settled south of the Wall, wherein has gathers a nice little army en route to reclaiming Winterfell.

The first stop, geographically-speaking, would be to find Bran. But Bran can keep doing his vision quest/learning magic thing, because he’ll be needed in season seven. You’ll understand why by the end of this post. Meanwhile Rickon & Co can keep laying low wherever they are.

Jon hooks up with Brienne, Pod, Sansa & Theon before they get to Winterfell. There can be a happy reunion between Jon and Sansa, who talks him out of running Theon through since he helped her escape from Ramsey. And then we’re back to business.

We get our first reckoning, as Jon’s army takes out the Bolton Crew. Jon kills Roose Bolton himself, perhaps by stabbing him repeatedly in the belly and slitting his throat in a combo platter of what Robb, Talisa, their unborn baby, and Catelyn got at the Red Wedding. Sansa and Theon can get their own justice by killing Ramsey in an adequately gruesome fashion.

Then they venture to the Twins, where they give old Walder Frey a bunch of arrows through his chest and other sensitive parts. At this point, they’ve progressed to the Vale, where Littlefinger managed to sweet talk them out of killing him. Perhaps they bring him along, but Sansa knows to keep a watchful eye on him by now.

That brings them to King’s Landing. While the Stark Family Revenge Tour has been going on, Cersei and her FrankenMountain have been trying to deal with the Sparrow infestation. Let’s say they accomplish mixed result with it, and are still in the middle of the process when they have some uninvited guests knocking at their northern gates.

Where’s Jaime during all this? Probably grieving over his daughter and looking to get some payback of his own on the Dornish. This would involve him turning the boat around and heading back to Dorne where they can milk a substantial season-long subplot.

Meanwhile, down south, Daenerys consolidates some power by hooking up with a new Dothraki horde. She brings them to Mereen, where she apologizes for abandoning Tyrion, Daario, Varys and Jorah to go joyriding on Drogon. She then apologizes even more profusely to Rhaegal and Viserion, finally unleashing their reign of fire on the unworthy citizens of Mereen.

She takes her buddies, her Dothraki, her Unsullied and her dragon kids as she finally moves towards Westeros. Along the way, they pick up Arya who, throughout the season has pretty much finished her assassin training, and pay an unwelcome visit to the south gate of King’s Landing.

While everyone is converging on King’s Landing, the snowfall hits and winter finally comes. With it, the Night’s King and his undead army of ass-kickery knocks down the Wall via some sort of dark magic, and that’s where the season ends. This, of course, leaves season seven to deal with the real main event of every living person vs every dead person.

Unfortunately, I don’t actually expect this to be how the season plays out. But, if it were, I suspect it would be the most awesome single season of a TV show in history.

They could absolutely accomplish everything above in 10 hours of television. If you don’t believe so, then you’re most likely an HBO executive looking to milk a great show until it’s running on fumes. Personally, I’d rather to see things go down my way.

100% Pure, Uncut Narcos

September 26, 2015 by Joe

Pablo Escobar was a drug trafficker, mass murderer and terrorist. Which, of course, means that he happens to make for very entertaining television.

Netflix unveiled their new show Narcos a few weeks ago, and it may have been the purest example of what the streaming service can offer that cable and network TV cannot. The first thing they did, because they must have read my suggestion to do so, is cut the episode order to 10. There is not an ounce of fat on this show or, in other words, this is the pure, uncut stuff.

They also condense several years worth of history into this 10 episodes, rather than try to milk it for a larger episode count. This does mean that the storytelling isn’t quite as rich and dense as something like The Wire, but it does a better job of delivering the goods in a tight, streamlined manner. In some ways, Narcos is like a Wikipedia hole come to life. You look up Pablo Escobar, which leads you to his life, his crimes, his pursuers and his ultimate downfall.

The first episode begins with a title card explaining Magical Realism, which doesn’t really make much sense because Gabriel Garcia Marquez this ain’t. I have to assume that they are referring to the way that events that likely took weeks or months of research in reality, happen because a third person happens to be in the room who says “Hey, isn’t that So-and-So?” on the show. Not that I’m complaining, but it would take someone more scholarly than myself to tell you whether or not Narcos is a legitimate example of Magical Realism. What I can tell you is that I really enjoyed this show.

I’m probably going to tread on some spoiler territory below, so consider yourself warned.

The first thing worth mentioning is Wagner Moura, who portrays Escobar. It’s a killer part and he effectively kills it. It seems that the showrunners and the actor all realize that Escobar was an evil man who deserves no sympathy from the viewers. So, rather that going after sympathy, they go after motivations. Escobar does most of the monstrous things that he does to ensure the growth and survival of his empire, however, he also sees himself as unfairly persecuted and disrespected. We, the viewers, see that there’s nothing unfair about it, but Moura does a fantastic job of showing us things from Escobar’s perspective. Again, this does not elicit sympathy, but it does show us the why of the character.

All of the performances are – at the very least – solid, but the others that absolutely need to be touched upon are Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal (late of getting his head exploded as Prince Oberyn on Game of Thrones) as the DEA agents tasked with bringing Escobar to justice. Holbrook’s Steven Murphy is the audience surrogate, looped into the situation in Colombia at the same time as we are. He also provides voice over narration that is just informative enough while remaining brief, which keeps it from becoming overbearing. Pascal plays Javier Pena, who’s already embedded in the drug war culture at the start of the series, and so is both Murphy’s guide as well as out own. The pair play well off each other and, while they don’t have quite the same depths to plunge as Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective, they are more proactive and less philosophically brooding.

There are some tropes that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen this sort of story played out before. Corruption rots the core of society as cops, military and politicos are mostly crooked, Meanwhile, the politicians who take on Escobar tend to end up like the drummers in Spinal Tap.

A few more thing worth mentioning without running on too long, is that Narcos is filmed in Colombia, rather than Canada or California, so it doesn’t look like any other show on TV. A deal breaker for some may be that a good half of the show’s dialogue is in Spanish. Odds are this was done so that Netflix can continue it’s endeavors of international conquest, but it also makes sense to me since this show takes place in Colombia where most of the people you meet will not be speaking English.

The only quibble I have is that the show ran at a rate that had me believing they’d wrap the story up in episode 10, so I was a little disappointed that they did not. Still, another season of Narcos is certainly not a bad thing. All in all, I’d recommend giving it a look to most people who like full throttle storytelling loaded up for their binging pleasure. Narcos is much like the mountain of cocaine on Tony Montana’s desk at the end of Scarface, so feel free to overindulge.

A Cannibal’s Last Supper

August 30, 2015 by Joe

To kick things off with a bit of a controversial thesis: I believe that NBC’s Hannibal is a show whose quality that I place on par with contemporaries Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

It’s a very different kind of show than those others, but I find it equally enjoyable. Its lush and sumptuous art design and direction make it stand out from anything else on television. As does its sometimes meditative pacing, which can be a bit of a double edged sword.

As Hannibal concluded its run this past Saturday (which was on NBC’s accord rather than showrunner Bryan Fuller’s) I thought it was a good time to view its greatness and frustrations as a whole.

Major spoilers ahead, so consider yourself warned.

Season one revolved around Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham (fantastically brought to life by Mads Mikkelson & Hugh Dancy) as the co-lead characters, despite only one of them having his name in the title. Graham had been portrayed without much fanfare in the 1986’s Manhunter and 2002’s Red Dragon, so Dancy had significantly less pressure on him. Lecter had been portrayed by Brian Cox, Gaspard Ulliel and (most famously by a wide margin) Anthony Hopkins.

Hopkins won an academy award for playing the role in Silence of the Lambs before revisiting it to diminishing returns in Hannibal (the movie, not to be confused with this TV show) and Red Dragon. SotL made the character an icon, but I will fiercely defend my opinion that Mikkelson plays the character better than he has been in anything other than SotL. That includes Hopkins’ two subsequent portrayals.

But I don’t want to venture too far off course here, and so I’ll bring it back to the show itself. Jack Crawford (a convincingly authoritative Laurence Fishburne) and Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas, given maybe the most active character arc through the series) become more important as the show moves through seasons one. Each episode had a killer of the week that Will is brought in to profile and help the FBI catch, which sounds fairly rote, until you consider exactly how it’s done.

Will steps into the mind of the the killer, which is illustrated in dream-like sequences where the crimes are recreated with Will as the killer. The actual killer is generally revealed halfway through the episodes, so that the show can deal with its true interest: what makes these people do the horrible things they do. It’s this difference that allows Hannibal to surpass anything like the Law & Order or CSI shows.

The real neat trick is how showrunner Bryan Fuller and his team make ghastly things appear beautifully gothic. Dead bodies are positioned like magnificent sculptures, blood flows in a manner that seems to give it a mind of its own. It’s pretty similar to something you might see from a Guillermo del Toro film, almost like the visions of a dark fairy tale.

Hannibal spends most of this first season assisting the FBI in the cases that they bring Will in on, primarily due to his fascination with the impossibly empathetic Graham. He also serves as Will’s psychiatrist, all the while continuing his killings and cooking as the Chesapeake Ripper. At this point it’s worth noting that they always make the meals prepared from human parts look so delicious that it has been widely considered Food Porn.

The developing bond between Hannibal and Will is really the driving force, as they are two sides of the same coin, and Hannibal believes he can flip Will.As things progress, Hannibal allows Will’s encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain do to infection) to go untreated, which takes a very heavy toll on Will’s mental and physical states.

Eventually, Will works through it enough to realize what Hannibal really is, and he tries to stop him once and for all. However, by that point, Hannibal has already framed Will for his own crimes as The Ripper and, in an ironic twist of fate, Jack Crawford stops Will from killing Hannibal. Season one ends with Will in a very familiar looking cell as Hannibal visits him. A full reversal of how most people were introduced to Lecter in the earlier films.

Season two is broken into two halves. The first half involves Will, fully recovered from his illness and sharp enough to take on Hannibal with equal footing. Unfortunately, he’s stuck in a mental hospital with all his allies thinking he’s a cannibalistic serial killer. This doesn’t stop Will from digging deep into his mental reserves and trying to figure out how best to bring Hannibal down.

Will manages to prove his innocence and, once freed, enlists Jack to help him finally get Hannibal. So the second half of season two has Will trying to beat Hannibal at his own game. He uses Hannibal’s curiosity and twisted affection for him to lure him into a trap. The whole game makes for fantastic television, but the finish is where the show makes its first fumble.

Season two ends with every major character, other than Hannibal, lying in a pool of their own blood from a trap set by Will and Jack gone awry as Lecter strolls out of his home. This was a mistake – not only because they didn’t have a season three renewal at the time, but because they missed out on a great opportunity to finally bring about some catharisis for the viewers after two years of Hannibal putting Will through the ringer.

It should have ended the exact same way, but with one major change. Will should have retrieved his gun, and emptied it into Hannibal as he tried to leave. The last shot of the season could have been Will and Hannibal lying across from each other with their blood mingling between them as they watch one another through dying eyes. It would have been a greatly poetic shot for a show that rarely passed on the chance to break out some gory poetry.

Which brings us to season three, the current and final season. Fuller had said that he wanted to do the Red Dragon story for season three, which was previously adapted to varying degrees of success the the 2002 movie of the same name and the 1986 movie Manhunter. For the second half of the season, which ran its series finale just last night, they did a fantastic job of running with that story. Since they kicked it off, the show has been every bit as good as it was prior to the season two finale gaffe.

The problem was with the first half of season three. The pacing of the first seven episodes were meditative, even by this show’s standards. In fact, the first four episodes were spent catching up with all the primary characters some months after the bloodbath at Hannibal’s home.

This would be perfectly fine for a show on Netflix or Amazon, where all episodes were released at once and you can blow through the first couple episodes to reach the point where things really ramp up. But asking your viewers to spend a full month getting back up to speed is asking a lot. Which is probably why they ended up hemorrhaging viewers, and got the cancellation notice passed down at this point.

The story they were telling was perfectly serviceable. It shows Will, Jack and Alana all tracking down Hannibal to Florence, a chance to roll out some gorgeous scenery, using their own methods. In episode five, they ramp up the momentum again by giving Jack his long awaited rematch with Hannibal, which is actually an joyously one sided beating laid down on Lecter. The next logical step was to have Will finally find what was left of Hannibal after the fight with Jack and lock him into that all-too-familiar cell.

But they didn’t give us that. After three years of build up, they didn’t give us the showdown between Will and Hannibal that many viewers were craving. The most frustrating thing about it was that there were two perfect setups in as many episodes for such a clash: one in Florence, and the other at the estate of Mason Verger (originally introduced in the SotL sequel Hannibal, but brought in earlier for the shows purposes). Instead, Hannibal carries a wounded Will Graham home, and then turns himself in.

The next episode jumps three years ahead to kick off the Red Dragon story. Running it over the course of six episodes, rather than a two hour movie, gave the story more room to breath than it previously had been given. These episodes got the show back on track, and may have even been better than any previous story arcs. Going with one killer, Francis Dolarhyde A.K.A the Tooth Fairy A.K.A the Red Dragon (played with the conflicted ferocity by Richard Armitage), for the home stretch allowed the show to open up avenues of greater character depth than it had before.

So, the driving narrative of season three was essentially a three way courtship of sorts between Graham, Lecter and Dolarhyde. The season, and series, wrapped up with another of planned trap going sideways, as Dolarhyde helped Hannibal escape during what was meant to be a fake escape that would lure Dolarhyde in with Hannibal as bait. Hannibal and Will ended up at the former’s secret cliffside home as they awaited Dolarhyde’s arrival.

In the end, Will and Hannibal had to team up to kill Dolarhyde – even though they were both motivated to slay the Dragon for different reasons. Hannibal always wanted to share a kill with Will, while Will wanted to stop Dolarhyde before he massacred another family. The two shared a blood soaked embrace – the blood being their own, as well as Dolarhyde’s – on the edge of the cliff before Will tightened his grip on Hannibal and pushed them both off the into the abyss below.

Graham’s reasons for taking this course of action are complex enough to deserve their own post, but part of the motivation was that he knew this might be the best chance he’d have to finally stop Hannibal. He’d unsuccessfully used himself to bait Lecter in season two, but this time Hannibal steps right into the trap. The trap, unfortunately, was Will himself. This is not exactly the direction that I would have gone in but, after painting themselves into the corner with the season two finale and the season three mid-season finale, it was about as fitting an ended as possible.

The biggest overall misstep that I feel they made was making the subtext of the twisted bond between Will and Hannibal into actual text. That ended up driving the show into a place far less accessible for most viewers. It’s always admirable when creative people do something different, but they still need to leave enough common ground to fit more than a handful of Fannibals.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think this is a great show and I’d highly recommend watching the entire run to anyone and everyone. But the rough patch that ran from the end of season two through the first half of season three has dampened my affection a little bit.

I will no doubt remember the show very fondly, and revisit it again in the future. Mostly, though, I hope to find something to fill this vacancy in my complex, prestigious television viewing slot. Much like Hannibal himself, I’ve developed an appetite for something a bit hard to come by through traditional means. Although, since I’ve never seen anything quite like it on TV before, I’m not sure I’ll see something like it again.

Joe Mikolay

Author Of The Venator Series

Category Archives: Television