Buffy v Angel: Dawn of Josstice

So, we’re currently binging Buffy & Angel. I’ve seen Buffy all the way through before, but I’d only seen maybe a third of Angel. We’re alternating between the two series, following a guide that ensures we see the episodes in the right order. I’m also following someone on Twitter who’s watching them for the first time, and their insights are often hilarious.

I love Buffy, even though some aspects of it haven’t aged well (especially the creator). Just a couple of nights ago we reached “Once More With Feeling” (s06e07), and it remains one of the greatest episodes in TV history. I still have the songs stuck in my head two days later. Okay, that’s partly because I put the soundtrack on my phone and listened to it at lunch. I’m also a big fan of “Hush” (s04E10), which is just an all-around amazing episode.

I’m not digging Angel, though. There are reasons I never finished it before. When you’re going back and forth between the two shows, the difference in quality is striking. Every night it’s like, “If we sit through an Angel, we get to enjoy a Buffy.” I’m glad we’re mostly alternating, because Angel is a real slog on its own. If I wasn’t determined to see it through this time, I’d have given up on Angel already. People keep telling me it gets better, and I hope they’re right. There’s several episodes I’m looking forward to, like the one where Angel gets turned into a puppet.

The character of Angel is just so incredibly mopey and dull. He’s easily the least interesting character on his own show. David Boreanaz has decent comic timing, but the writers don’t let him quip enough (so far). He just spends so much time standing around and looking sad.

They keep flashing back to Angel’s past, which kind of reminds me of watching the Highlander TV series. That would be fun, except Angel is just as uninteresting in the past. At least Duncan Macleod went to other countries and assumed new identities, palling around with famous people and having period-appropriate adventures. Angelus spent his entire past wearing the same clothes and terrorizing identical villages. No wonder he’s so depressed all the time. I seriously can’t tell one episode’s flashback from another’s.

The whole concept of Angel feels like the kind of spin-off people parody. They took all the characters Buffy didn’t need on her show any more, moved them to Los Angeles, and had them start a detective agency. Doesn’t that sound like something you’d see on the Simpsons? I do love Angel’s supporting cast, especially Fred and Lorne. But I also know not to get too attached to anyone, because the writers are known for killing off some of the best characters for the sake of easy drama. And it’s that much harder to get invested in a show when you know that.

Look, I understand that “dark & edgy” was popular in the 90s. But Angel’s not what I’d call dark so much as boring. “Let’s have Angel brood in this corner for a while. Now let’s have him wander off alone because he thinks it’s the only way to protect his friends. Now let’s have him obsess over his past sins. So entertaining! Oh, we’re losing viewers? Better kill off a character. Maybe they’ll mistake it for drama. People like it when their favorite character dies, right?” I’m honestly amazed it managed to last five seasons.

Anyway, we’ve got less than two seasons of Buffy left, and then it’s Angel all the way. I hope Angel’s strong enough to stand on its own by then. I remember Buffy gets pretty dark towards the end as well. But so far, the darkest Buffy episode is still more fun than the most lighthearted Angel episode. I hope to get proven wrong about that though.

What If...?

Did you really think I wasn't going to gush over this show?  Uatu know better than that.  Seriously, this is my favorite Marvel TV series so far.  I always loved the "What If...?" comic book series, along with DC's "Elseworlds" comics - I just love seeing alternate versions of my favorite heroes.  It's like a Marvel-themed Twilight Zone.  

The concept is awesome.  Take stories you know so well, change one element, and see where the butterfly effect takes you.  Sometimes they ask something obvious, like in the first episode where Peggy Carter gets the super soldier serum.  Then we have the second episode asking what if Black Panther had been Star-Lord - something no Marvel fan had ever wondered.  And yet both episodes are brilliant.  In fact, several times I've been dubious when I saw the title of an episode, but the episode itself turned out to be great.

I also love that they're sticking to the MCU films here.  It gives all viewers a common ground, so that nobody has to have read "Sub-Mariner vs She-Hulk issue 143" to understand where the plot deviates.  I hear they're already working on season 2, and planning to add new seasons annually.  This surprises me.  You'd think they'd want to wait for another decade of movies they can draw from, instead of mining the same films for ideas over and over.  

As of this blog, there's 25 MCU films to draw from.  But that pales in comparison to the thousands of stories the "What If...?" comic series had to draw from.  Season 2 is probably already too far along to include elements from Shang-Chi or The Eternals, so it will be another season of stories from the same characters that were in season 1.  That's fine, as long as they pick good stories, but I can't wait for new blood.  Just think what resources they'll have once the MCU has some X-Men and Fantastic Four movies under its belt.

I'm just afraid we're going to get too many variations of "What if (Hero A) had the powers of (Hero B)?" or "What if (Hero) became evil?" with the occasional "What if (Villain) got the Infinity Stones?"  Not that it wouldn't be entertaining, but it could get tedious after a while.  But hopefully my worries are groundless.  

The animation is beautiful.  I love the style.  I saw someone on YouTube complaining about the animation the other day, and frankly I'm starting to think some people shouldn't be allowed to have opinions.  

Anyway, here's my ranking of the first Season of Marvel's "What If...?"

1. S01E01 "What If... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?"

There's a good reason they made this the first episode.  Agent Carter as Cap is iconic.  You can slap her on the front of a DVD cover and instantly understand what the series is about.  Plus I love female versions of male heroes.  Rumor has it they're planning on continuing her story, putting one Captain Carter episode in each season. Personally I'd rather she just got a spin-off.

2. S01E03 "What If... the World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes?" 

So it's a bit dark, but I found this murder mystery very compelling.  I also loved how it kept showing iconic scenes from the movies, but from other characters' perspectives, giving us another view of the universe.

3. S01E02 "What If... T'Challa Became a Star-Lord?" 

Crazy idea, fun episode.  I loved how charming T'Challa's was, and seeing Thanos as a hero was great.  It took an army of heroes to defeat Thanos in Endgame, but T'Challa could have prevented the whole mess if he'd had the chance to give Thanos a good talking to.

4. S01E05 "What If... Zombies?!" 

I wasn't expecting to like this one, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Zombie stories are a dime-a-dozen these days.  The humor really saved it.

5. S01E07 "What If... Thor Were an Only Child?" 

This light-hearted romp was a nice change of pace after multiple downer episodes.  I'm glad they let loose and did a comedy episode, and I'm also glad they didn't do it often.

6. E09 "What If... the Watcher broke is Oath?"

I liked the epicness of this episode, and the way it tied up a lot of loose ends from earlier episodes.  I liked how it made its own version of the Avengers using alternate versions of existing characters.  Unfortunately, certain parts of the episode dragged on a bit.  Even some of the fights were kind of boring.  

7. S01E04 "What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?" 

An interesting episode, but dark and depressing.

8. S01E08 "What If... Ultron Won?" 

Actually letting Uatu be a major part of the story was a nice twist, but I hope they don't do it often.  It bugs me a little that they're giving these continuity, I prefer anthology shows to be unconnected.  The absolute worst episodes of "The Outer Limits" were the clip shows that tried to shoehorn several previous episodes into having a connected plot.  I don't want "The Adventures of Uatu", I just want to see cool alternate realities.

9. S01E06 "What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?"  

Easily the most forgettable episode so far, but not bad.  

And while I'm here... Ranking the Disney / Marvel Studios shows:

1. What If... ?
2. WandaVision
3. Loki
4. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

The Stand

One of my favorite high school memories was being allowed to read a Stephen King book for class.  Our Sociology textbook had book recommendations at the end of each chapter.  Our teacher told us that we each had to read one of the recommended books, and deliver an oral report about it.  We could pick any book we wanted, but no two students could pick the same book.

My fellow classmates weren't interested in reading.  As soon as she gave the assignment, most of the students started looking at the end of each chapter, looking for books that sounded short or easy to read.  In the hopes of getting dibs on something interesting, I started at the back of the textbook.  A few chapters from the end, one of the recommendations was "The Stand" by Stephen King.  

I didn't look any further.  I quickly claimed it before anyone else could, though given that it's over 1,000 pages, I probably wasn't in any danger of someone else wanting it.  It was the first full-length Stephen King novel I read, though I'd read a lot of his short stories in "Night Shift" and "Skeleton Crew".  

If you haven't read The Stand, here's a quick summary.  A highly-infectious deadly disease (informally called "Captain Trips") escapes from a military base, and quickly spreads across the world.  A tiny percentage of humans are immune, and these few survivors start gathering together to rebuild society.  But there's also supernatural forces of good and evil at play, and survivors start having dreams and visions directing them to gather in certain cities.  Good people are called to Boulder, CO, while bad people are compelled to settle in Las Vegas.  But the evil entity drawing people to Vegas has plans to eliminate the Colorado citizens.

When it came time to give the oral report, we were allowed to write as much as we wanted on a 3x5 index card.  Other students wrote out their entire reports in tiny letters on their cards.  On my card, I wrote a single quote I wanted to remember:

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Give me three and they’ll invent the charming thing we call ‘society’. Give me four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they’ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.” - Glen Bateman

Beyond that, I didn't prepare for the report at all.  I had enjoyed the book so much, that I was able to just treat it like I was describing the book to a friend.  I usually hated giving oral reports, but this was one of the few times I actually enjoyed it.  Not to brag, but I'm pretty sure my report was one of the best in the class, simply because I actually cared about the book I'd read.

A few years later, I read the unabridged version.  Then in 1994, there was a TV miniseries based on it.  I really enjoyed that miniseries.  Parts of it were cheesy (especially Randall Flagg's demon forms), but it was well cast (for the most part) and did a great job of telling the story.  We've since owned the miniseries on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray, and we've watched it many times.

We're currently watching the new version on CBS All Access.  We're four episodes into it, and for the most part, I like it.  But it's not getting very good reviews.  Here's the thing... I think this version is made specifically for people like me.

If the new version has one flaw, it's the way it jumps back and forth in time.  It's already such a long story with so many characters that it can be hard to keep everyone straight.  If I wasn't already so familiar with the story, I'm pretty sure I would be lost.  It's presented well, but it just bombards you with so much information, I just can't imagine newbies keeping up.

Honestly, I'm not sure how good a job it's doing in presenting all the relevant information, because I keep filling in the gaps with my own knowledge.  Do I know a certain thing because they showed it on the screen, or because I remember it from the other versions?  Sometimes I don't even know.

The casting is pretty good, though I miss some of the 1994 cast.  Like, I just can't imagine a better Glen than the late Ray Walston.  The original Harold Lauder (Corin Nemec) struck me as "Hollywood Homely", and never really felt like the social outcast presented in the book.  But the new Harold (Owen Teague) is a big improvement.  He has a creepy quality that really suits the character.  The 1994 Harold was just a jealous nerd-turned-sociopath, but 2020 Harold is a true incel.

I'm not sold on the new Tom Cullen, it feels like such a different interpretation of the character.  Not bad, just hard to get used to.  The new Randall Flagg is a lot scarier than the last one, but he hasn't had a lot of screen time yet.  I like the new Larry Underwood better than the old one.  Whoopi Goldberg is a pretty good Mother Abigail, and I haven't made up my mind about Nick Andros.

James Marsden (I can never remember which one is Marsden and which one is Marsters) is fantastic as Stu Redman.  He has an "everyman" quality that works for the character.  I don't think he's as good an actor as Gary Sinise (who played Stu in the 1994 version), but Marsden is perfect for this role.  Unfortunately, he feels mismatched with love interest Frannie Goldsmith (played by Odessa Young).  

The new cast is also more diverse than the original.  In fact, looking back at the original, I almost wonder if only white people had the gene that resists the disease.  I love Stephen King, and for the most part he is a very progressive individual.  But a lot of his most well-known works only feature minorities as magical beings.  It's one of those tropes that looks "woke" at first - after all, the most righteous character in the book is black, how can that be racist?  But it's still a type of "othering" that keeps the races divided.  But I digress.  

Overall, I think it's a great interpretation of the novel.  But again, the presentation is confusing.  I don't mind it jumping back and forth some, but I wish they'd divided it by season.  Have the first season all take place before everyone gets to Boulder, jumping back and forth as much as they want within those months.  Then let the second season take place after people start reforming society.  

I wish they would make a re-edited version with the events in the right order.  But since that won't happen, I highly recommend reading the book before watching the CBS series.  It's worth your time.

Update:

We've now watched the rest of the episodes.  Overall, I didn't like as much as the 1994 version.  It started out strong, but each episode was just a little bit worse than the previous one.  

One problem is, despite having more overall screen time than the 1994 version, it never really gave the audience time to fall in love with certain characters.  So when those characters end up in danger later, you don't really feel anything for them.  

This is partly a side effect of the way it jumps back in forth in time.  You see how each character started their journey, and how they finished their journey in Boulder, but you don't see enough of the journey itself.  And that's when we learned to love them.

The only place it drastically deviates from the novel is the final episode.  Note that the climax of the series happens in episode eight, so the ninth episode feels like a bonus short story.  Think of it as getting to spend a little more time with the characters you love.  Except they weren't developed enough to love them in this version.  There's some good tension in that episode, but the tension goes on so long that I wanted to shout "Get on with it!"  

Bottom line:  While the 2020 version is less cheesy than the 1994 version, it's just not as entertaining.  I love comparing and contrasting remakes, so I'm glad I got to see this.  But when I get in the mood to watch the Stand again (as I do every couple of years), it will still be the 1994 version I pick.

DC Universe

I need my Marvel fix!  Okay, so Far From Home came out 7/2/19.  Black Widow doesn’t come out until 5/1/2020.  That’s just ten months, but it feels like ages.  Realistically, this is not the longest break they’ve had.  Iron Man 2 came out nearly two years after The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man 3  came out almost a year after The Avengers… still, arguably the MCU wasn’t in full swing yet at the time.  This break just feels longer because I’m used to a new Marvel movie every five or six months now.

Still, this was a good time for a break, and the future does look pretty saturated.  To be honest, I’m more interested in some of the upcoming TV shows than the next three movies.  Specifically, WandaVision, Loki, and What If.  But those are pretty far off.

In the meantime, I’m catching up on some DC.  I’ve always preferred DC’s characters over Marvel’s, mostly because I got into them at an early age.  Those characters just mean more to me.  It really bugs me that DC has been in such a slump lately.  Yes, I loved the Wonder Woman and Aquaman movies, but they still made me say, “Wow, that’s almost as good as a Marvel movie.”  I mean, imagine if Pepsi’s new slogan was, “Pepsi: Almost as Good as Coke.”  It’s not a flattering look.

The big difference IMO: Marvel optimizes, DC reinvents.  The MCU takes the most iconic versions of their heroes, makes little changes like modernizing their costumes so they look less like cosplay, and cleans up the details that were too convoluted or made them less cinematic.  The current DC trend is to reimagine their characters – which is great for standalone movies like Joker (which I still need to see), but is terrible for building a shared universe. 

The DCEU feels like a set of Elseworlds graphic novels.  What if Superman wasn’t a boy scout?  What if Batman was shortsighted and reactionary?  What if Ares was a foppish gentleman?  What if Aquaman was a hunky dreamboat?  What if the Flash dressed like a robot?  Look, I love Elseworlds.  They’re some of my favorite comics to read.  But for movies, these reimaginings only work as unconnected, one-off films.

We cancelled our cable last year, and we’ve been experimenting with different streaming services.  We currently have Amazon Prime, Netflix, CBS All Access, Disney+, and DC Universe.  If you’re on the fence about DC Universe, it’s… well, it depends on how much you love DC.  It’s like this… Netflix has thousands and thousands of movies and TV shows, but I’m only interested in about fifteen of them.  DC Universe has, like, twenty movies and TV shows, but I’m still interested in about fifteen of them.  I exaggerate, but the channel really is light on content. 

But that wouldn’t bother me if, at the very least, they’d make sure they had everything DC.  They’re still missing a ton of DC movies.  I understand not having the newest releases – gotta give people time to buy those DVDs before you let them stream ‘em – but even a lot of the older DC films are conspicuously absent.  Everything just looks so sparse – you go into the movie section, and you see about fifteen movies.  You go into the TV section, you see about fifteen shows.  The only thing really big is the Animated Shorts section.  Maybe DC just isn’t big enough to warrant a channel.  Maybe Warner Bros should have started a streaming channel instead, and let DC be a subset of the programming, like Disney+ does with Marvel. 

But the content that’s there is pretty cool.  Right now we’re watching Doom Patrol, which is really good.  The DC Animated Universe from the 90s-2000s is also a welcome addition to our household, even though we already own the Justice League series on DVD.  We just watched the first episode of Harley Quinn, and it was very funny, but too adult for my wife’s tastes.  I’ll have to find time to watch it without her. 

We haven’t tried Titans yet, but it’s on our list.   And we’ll want to rewatch the first two seasons of Young Justice to prep us for season three.  So yeah, there’s a ton of content for us.  But still… it just doesn’t feel like a good value.  It’s about the same price as Disney+, but only has about a quarter of the content.  And I keep finding myself doing the math – if I were to just go ahead and buy all the DC content I want on Blu-Ray, how much would that cost versus a year of DC Universe?  But the truth is, it is a pretty good value if you’re a DC fan… just not nearly as good a deal as the Marvel fans are getting with Disney+.  YMMV.

Ant-Man & The Wasp & Introspection Illusion

This past weekend we saw Ant-Man and the Wasp.  Fun movie!  It goes about where you think it would, not a lot of big surprises, but it has a funny script and lots of eye candy.  The writers put a lot of work into finding creative applications for the shrink/grow powers.

Really, though… If I was to actually write out a list all the things I liked and disliked about the movie, I think the list of bad things would be longer the good.  It’s a bit shallow, there’s a lot of Deus Ex Machina, and it tends to handwave a lot of the hard-to-swallow details. 

It also had one too many villains.   The FBI and the supervillain were enough of a threat to carry the movie, but the writers decided to add a silly black market tech dealer to pad the movie’s runtime.  But my biggest complaint is probably the abundance of spoilers in the trailers.  I can’t tell you how many times they’d do a cool shot and I’d think, “That was awesome, I wish I hadn’t already seen it in the previews.”

But you know what?  I still love the movie.  It’s flawed, but fun.  On paper it almost looks like a failure, but the film is more than the sum of its parts.  Some people won’t like Ant Man & The Wasp, and if you ask them why, they’ll list everything I said above.   So why do those flaws add up to a bomb to them, while I can look past the movie’s shallowness and have a good time?

I have a theory that people actually have no idea why they dislike things.  You watch a movie and hate it on a subconscious emotional level, but your brain won't accept "I hate it because I hate it", and has to fill in the logical reasons you feel that way.

For example, I know someone who hates the sitcom Friends.  Her reason?  “Everyone is always so mean to each other!”  I’ve never actually noticed that about Friends, but I suppose it’s there if you really look for it.  Snarky comebacks are a big part of the humor, though I’ve never seen it as mean; if anything it’s part of the bond that holds the group together.

But here’s the thing – this same friend likes several other shows where the main characters are flat-out jerks, all the time.  So that’s a big part of my theory:  Whatever someone tells you they don’t like about a movie/show/book/etc, you can find examples of media they enjoy that contain those elements.

Her real reason for disliking Friends?  Probably the show simply isn't in sync with her sense of humor.  Humor is far from universal, and everyone has a unique funny bone.  If Friends made her laugh, she'd like it.  Not laughing gives her more time to notice the show's flaws.  Her brain won't accept the vague "it's just not for me", so it gave her the flimsy excuse she uses.

Now, if I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that you can’t talk people into liking things, any more than you can talk them into liking a food.  You can shoot down all their complaints one by one, doing extensive research to prove why the plot holes they found weren't really plot holes, but it won't help.  So I’m not posting this to convince anyone to watch shows they know they don’t like.  I’m just pointing out your reasons for not liking it may not be what you think they are.

I used to know a couple who hated anything mainstream.  Their logic was that most people are stupid, so if most people like something, it must be stupid.  Except… some things really do become popular because they deserve to.  And what if you see a sneak preview of a movie, before it has time to be popular?  Do you have to wait until the box office results are in before you decide if you liked it?

I had one friend who hated Forrest Gump because she didn’t like the ending – she wasn’t sure Forrest was capable of taking care of a child by himself.  Even if I shared her concern, that’s only a reason to hate the ending, not the entire movie.  Surely, while watching the movie in the theater, she’d already decided whether or not she liked the movie by that point.  If she'd had an emergency and had to walk out before Jenny died (um, spoiler alert I guess), would she have felt differently about the movie?  I doubt it.

Titanic gets a lot of haters because it was so overhyped.  As I’ve said before, that may be an excuse to hate the advertising department, but don’t take it out on the movie itself.  I’m not saying I’ve never been annoyed by hype (See Ant-Man & the Wasp above), but I do try to keep a movie and its marketing as separate entities in my mind.

One thing I’ve heard people say about both Friends and Big Bang Theory – “They don’t talk or act like real people!”  This one sets me off for a couple of reasons.  First off, nobody in Star Wars talks like real people either, that’s why it’s fiction.  I can’t remember the last time I went to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters.  Behaving like real people is not a requirement in fiction, in fact, making dialogue too realistic makes shows hard to watch.  Real people clear their throats, start sentences and change their mind, use the wrong word, stutter, and display all kinds of verbal tics that would make me change the channel.

That said, the characters on Friends and BBT remind me more of my real life friends than the people on most sitcoms.  Maybe you’re just hanging out with the wrong people.  Chandler Bing’s snarkiness is practically the foundation of my marriage.  And BBT characters actually make specific references to current media, while other sitcoms seem to be vaguely aware that Star Wars might have had robots in it or something.  Yes, these characters sometimes do unrealistically dumb things to move the plot forward, but the alternative is a plot that never moves forward.

I do it too.  If I were to give you a list of things I hated about Batman & Robin, it would probably include things like Batgirl not being Commissioner Gordon's daughter, or Bane being a mindless henchmen instead of a criminal mastermind.  But to be honest, I probably would have ignored both of those details if they had occurred in a better movie.  Would I whine because the Joker wasn't chemically bleached in The Dark Knight?  Of course not, so obviously messing with comic book continuity alone doesn't make a bad movie.

I could even go on to mention the flashiness of B&R, and how it wasn't as dark and broody as the other Batman movies, how it hyped up the cheesiness and had a lot of bad acting and silly dialogue... but a lot of these problems were present in Batman Forever, which I loved.  A lot of the goofier points of B&R were an homage to the 60s TV series, which I also loved.  Is the world no longer ready for a humorous Batman?  Well, that "Brave and the Bold" cartoon series was pretty popular, so that's not it.

I know one guy who hated 2012 because he thought he saw a plot hole.  He was wrong, and I explained it to him... he still hates it, but at least now he hates it for the right reasons.  But plot holes shouldn't be dealbreakers anyway.  There are some pretty popular movies with well-publicized plot holes.  Citizen Kane, My Cousin Vinny, Ocean's 11... and yet people still love them.  But they see one continuity error in a bland movie, and suddenly that's the sole reason it sucks.  

And some people simply go into a movie with the wrong expectations.  I know one guy who hated Revenge of the Sith because it didn't explain the existence of the evil cave on Dagobah.  That's like the very definition of "I hate it because they didn't make the exact movie I would have made."  I knew a woman who hated "There's Something About Mary" because... and I quote... "They never did explain what it was about Mary."  ...You can't argue with that.

Typical fanboy review:
That movie was terrible, it wasn't enough like the book/comic/cartoon, the director didn't use any of my ideas, and anyone who liked it is an idiot.  That one scene where they showed the watch on his left wrist, then when the camera angle changed it was on his right, just ruined the entire movie for me.  Doesn't the director even read my blog?  Why can't they make a serious movie about a guy who shoots cufflinks out of his ears?  I felt like the director wasn't taking it seriously.  Has the director even read this comic?  Issue #193 clearly states that Captain Cufflink is allergic to shellfish, and yet they show him eating lobster?

A couple of those might be genuine concerns, but the truth is that you would accept all of those issues if a good movie was wrapped around it.  There are some legitimately bad movies out there, ones that earned their 0% rating on RottenTomatoes.  But the movies that are well-liked, that just don't click with you?  It's okay that you don't like them, I just wonder if you really know why.

DCTV

Gotham - We watched the first five or six episodes of Gotham, but it was just too dark for us.  I've never been able to get into criminal-focused shows.  Real life is depressing enough, and I'd rather focus on the good guys than the bad.

Arrow - I've tried to get into Arrow, but I just haven't.  It's not as dark as Gotham, but it's still a bit too dark for me.  Plus the cheesy parts are a little too cheesy, probably because they stand out more against all the dark.  When the whole Arrow team gets into costume, it just looks like cosplay to me, because the rest of the world is so gritty and real.

The Flash - This is the best super hero show on television.  Yes it's even cheesier than Arrow, but that's the theme of the show and it's just good fun.  It's like a live action cartoon.  The cast really works well together, and I really enjoy seeing their takes on DC villains.

Legends of Tomorrow - It's kind of fun.  I enjoy watching it.  But, I don't know, it just doesn't feel structured enough for me.  They threw all these characters into a blender and hoped something cohesive would come out, but really it's just kind of a chaotic mess.  But it's a fun mess.

I think my biggest problem with LOT so far, is that I feel like I've seen most of what it has to offer.  They spent the first season bouncing around from time period to time period, always with the same mission (track down Vandal Savage in that time).  I like some of the characters more than others, but I don't find myself in love with any of them.  The breakout character is Captain Cold, and even he got less interesting as time goes on.

But some of the things I've heard about season 2 have piqued my interest, so I'm still going to give it another go.

Supergirl - I'm trying so hard to like this.  Supergirl is one of my favorite comic book characters, and I really want more female superhero shows to gain popularity.  Producers are so leery of female superhero movies, because most of them have tanked hard.  Never mind that those movies were just bad on many levels that had nothing to do with the hero's gender.  If we can just get a few good ones out there to break the perceived curse, then maybe it will open the door for more to be made.

But honestly, the Supergirl TV series is lukewarm at best.  I really like the casting job on the title character, but the rest of the cast is kind of meh.  Hardly anybody has a lot of chemistry together, and I just don't like how some characters are portrayed.  The government agent characters are especially annoying, going back and forth from "all business" to "touchy feely" so much I get whiplash.

And I really don't like most of the villains.  There seems to be a tradition now where the first episode sets up where most of the show's villains will come from.  It makes the writing easier, and keeps you from wasting a lot of screen time on villain origin stories.  Smallville had the kryptonite give everybody different super powers.  The Flash's villains mostly got their powers the same way he got his.  Well, Supergirl has Fort Rozz, a Kryptonian prison from which powerful aliens keep escaping.  I'm just not digging that plotline.

There's an overarching plot about a group of evil Kryptonians, and frankly they're just boring.  I've never been fond of having too many Kryptonians in a Superman-family series; the Kryptonians bored me in Lois and Clark, they bored me in Smallville, and they bore me here.  I've always preferred the continuities where Kryptonian survivors were kept to a minimum.

Supergirl's not great, but it's got room for growth, and I really hope it gets better in the second season.  I know there's going to be a lot of changes with it changing networks, so hopefully it will be enough to save the show.

DCAU - Of course, none of these shows are anywhere near as awesome as the Justice League and Young Justice animated shows.   That entire era of the DCAU was some of the best stuff on television.  Unfortunately, as of the “Flashpoint” animated movie, that era is pretty much over.  The new series of movies is a lot more adult, and a lot less fun.  I still keep adding the new animated movies to my Netflix queue, and I don't hate them... but man, they used to be so much better.

Like, Ant-Man and Stuff

Ant-man was exactly as good as I thought it would be. Not a blockbuster, but more of a low-key entry into the MCU. It might have been better suited for an arc on Agents of SHIELD than for a theatrical movie. But that's okay. I think it's too much to expect that every marvel movie is going to just explode from the screen and knock our socks off. As long as they're not outright boring, I'll probably still enjoy them.

I liked that it was something of a "Superhero comedy", even if I didn't really connect with a lot of the film's humor. Too many super hero movies feel like the same movie with a different skin, so I like that they're playing with the formula. I hope they play with it even more. I don't like "Super Hero" being a genre in itself, and I think there's plenty of room for super hero movies that are also comedy, horror, romance, or whatever. Overall, the movie didn't do a lot for me. We'll still buy the blu-ray for our collection, but I doubt we'll watch it over and over like we did with some of the other Avengers movies.

There's been a few disappointments lately. I didn't bother seeing Fantastic Four or Pixels after all their reviews, which is too bad because both of them could have been really interesting with the right direction. we started to watch Jupiter Ascending on Netflix, but only made it through the first 45 minutes or so. The special effects were nice,'but it just wasn't giving us enough exposition fast enough, and we got bored. But I didn't have high hopes for that one anyway.

Speaking of Netflix, we finally got around to binge-watching Daredevil. That was totally worth it. It's a bit on the bloody side, so you'll be covering your eyes a lot if you're as squeamish as KJ. But it's well written and does a good job of making you want to see what happens next.

I'm anxiously awaiting all the new super hero movies and TV shows, but I am worried that they're overdoing it. Eventually people will get sick of them, or there will be enough bad ones that it makes the whole genre look bad, and the market for super heros will crash. But I'm going to enjoy it as long as it lasts.

The Walking Dead

I recently read the Walking Dead comic book series.  I'd already watched the first season on TV, and a little of the second.  Several of my friends talked me into reading the comics, so I could see where the show deviated from the source material and whatnot.  I read the entire series and I'm now caught up to the current month.  I don't know if I'm going to keep reading it, though.  For one thing, I'm at a great stopping point, where I can just say "...and they lived happily ever after" rather then see how things get screwed up this time.  For another thing, I don't really like reading comics month-to-month.  A single issue of a comic is just too short, and I don't remember from one month to the next what's happening.  I'd rather wait until there's about 25 more issues, so I don't have to read it as "story McNuggets." 
 
Anyway, Walking Dead is a pretty decent comic series, though it's not the type of story I generally like.  I'm told that when it first came out, the writer said he didn't like the way zombie movies end.  The survivors always get into a helicopter or a boat, and ride off into the sunset... but you never know what happens next.  It's a world filled with zombies; where are they going to go?  So he made the comic intending to be a long-running series (it's on issue 90-something right now, with no signs of stopping), so it would cover all the day-to-day stuff: where they go for safety, how they keep finding food, and so on.

That's where the really shines, in my opinion.  They cover all the little details, the stuff you rarely see in a two-hour movie.  The longevity also gives it drama as well - they have to worry about changing weather, the longevity of canned goods, looting buildings that have already been picked clean, pregnancy, relationships, mental stability, and so on.  The movies usually all take place right after the initial event, so they don't get into these long-term problems.

The downside?  Well, it's a cruel world with very few pick-me-ups, and after a while that gets pretty depressing.  It's hard to really look forward to reading a comic where only bad things happen.  It has a large revolving cast, with people constantly getting killed off while others are introduced.  Just like in the zombie movies, no one is safe, not even the major characters.  I know many people regard this type of writing as a refreshing change of pace, but you know my feelings on downer endings.  I generally give horror a pass, zombie stories doubly so, because tragedy is an important part of the genre.  But that doesn't make it fun to read.  Some of the more significant deaths still haunt me 40 issues later.  It's no secret that the title doesn't just refer to the zombies, but to the main characters themselves (in fact, it kind of beats you over the head with it).  All the survivors are living on borrowed time.  It never seems like they're actually working toward something, except maybe a safe place to stay for a few months.  This is not a story about humans working against all odds towards ridding the world of a zombie infestation.  This is a story of the last gasps of civilization, of how the final humans struggled to postpone their deaths for a few months.

So why did I keep reading it?  Well, that just shows how well it's written.  A true test of an author is whether they can keep you interested in a type of story that generally turns you off.  There are no real "good guys" in the series.  The main characters are the heroes only because those are the characters the story focuses on.  They sometimes do selfless things, but in truth, everyone is just out to protect their own families and friends.  Some of them are idealistic at first, but that gets beaten out of them eventually.  The zombies are not the biggest obstacles in the series, and they quite often fade into the background.  Most of the story's conflict comes from other live humans.  It's a world where only the strongest survive, and that tends to breed a lot of jerks.

I've been a little obsessed with sexism in comics recently, and I'm happy to say that I don't see a lot in the Walking Dead.  Two of the most competent characters in the series are female, and I see very little gender disparity.  Both sexes get killed and maimed in relatively equal numbers.  Both sexes have strong characters, weak characters, and every personality type in between.  Others may disagree, but I don't see any evidence that the author even considers gender a factor in deciding who has the most skills or who gets killed next.  Now, about midway through the series, there was one particular rape/torture scene that made a lot of people uncomfortable.  It caused an uproar in their letters column, and they probably lost a few readers at that point.  I can't say whether this plotline was really needed, though it build the villain up to be that much more despicable.  When the victim finally got her revenge a few issues later, it was quite satisfying, though it didn't really make up for the initial crime.  That entire storyline is considered by some to be a low point in the series (and not just because of the controversy... one dramatic scene comes off so silly it's listed on the TVTropes "Narm" page), but the series does get better after that.

Anyway, whether I continue to read it or not, I'm glad I read what I have so far.  Now, regarding the TV series... it's not bad.  I really enjoyed the first season, and I like the way it goes off in so many different directions from the comic.  It's similar enough to where you say, "wow, that's good casting for that character", but it's different enough that reading the comic won't give away what happens next (or vice versa).  Like a lot of people, I did get bored during their stay at the farmhouse in the second season, and only time will tell if I start watching again.  (I'm also a little miffed that they fired Frank Darabont.) 

Really, TV series or comic, you won't go wrong to give either one a try.

Update 1/12/2012; Some Spoilers:

Okay, I was thinking it over, and there actually was one additional reason I might not return to the comic.  It's because everybody's fair game.  There's a few characters I really like, and I know they're going to die sooner or later.  It might be 100 issues from now, when sales start to falter and the writer decides he needs to shake things up a little.  But it will happen.  Heck, I'm an issue or two behind by now, so it might have already happened.  And this isn't like Marvel and DC, where death is only temporary.  But as long as I stop reading now, they'll live forever.

I know that sounds silly.  I mean, I can't just stop reading/watching all fiction out of the fear that characters will die.  But I don't look at a long-running ongoing series as "art" the same way I would with a stand-alone movie or novel.  In a novel, everything happens for a reason.  Usually the entire story is plotted out from the beginning.  Yes, the author comes up with new ideas as the story comes along, and things might not end up playing out like the author originally intended.  But there's still time before publishing to go back and edit the early chapters to make sure they're more in sync with the later ones.  The point is, novels and movies are subject to Chekhov's Gun.  Superfluous details are kept to a minimum, every death has a point, and the entire package can be viewed as a piece of art.

An ongoing TV or comic book series doesn't work the same way.  Individual episodes (or issues) might, and often even an entire TV season (or comic book story arc) will follow a novel's structure.  But very rarely will issue 94 of a comic book series feature a twist that was foreshadowed in issue 3.  The writer (if it's even the same writer by then) might wish he could go back and stick a detail into an earlier issue, but it's way too late by then.  No, series fiction just sort of plods along like life, changing with the seasons, and only the most recent events tend to really matter.  In a way, that makes them more realistic than stand-alone stories, because the patterns are less predictable.

What am I missing here... oh, yes, a point.  My point is, while a series does have some advantages over novels and movies, they are less of an "art" in my mind.  The series gets handed to different writers and artists after a while, and it becomes a communal storytelling experience, like that flashlight game you play around the campfire.  And enjoyable experience, sure, but nothing I'd stick in a museum.  Even if it keeps the same writer throughout, after a while he loses his original vision, and quality goes downhill.  Sometimes they'll keep it going long after they've run out of ideas.  This is unfortunate because the same writer might still be capable of doing something great on a fresh project.  Instead he wastes those ideas by trying to fit them into his existing universe, where they don't work quite as well.  And then his work becomes something so rotten that humanity itself is infected, causing the entire human race to die off, leaving penguins to rule the Earth.  Sorry, I was seeing if you were still listening.

In any event, I wouldn't say that the Walking Dead comic is getting stagnant quite yet, and the author probably still has a lot of great twists up his sleeve.  But so far the pattern has been "Find a safe place, make the safe place better, get betrayed by humans, find a new safe place" over and over.  It was fun the first few times, but I need a break.  I'm going to go read something else now, and let the Walking Dead survivors enjoy their current safe place.

Also, I wanted to revisit my paragraph on sexism, and clarify that my praises only apply to the comic book.  The TV series keeps missing the mark on the gender equality front.  Most of the women on the show are weepy complainers.  It's particularly irksome because one of them, Andrea, is one of the most capable characters in the comic.  On the show, she's whiny and suicidal.  But some things are actually handled better in the TV series.  The affair between Shane and Lori actually plays out much better on TV, IMO.  Shane was killed off very early in the comic, and his presence on the show almost works like the butterfly effect - that one little change makes the entire plot play out in different directions.  I like to think of the comic and the TV show as existing in the same continuity, until Shane's death splinters the timeline.  It's almost like one of Marvel's "What If" comics; you could call the show, "What if Shane had never been shot?"