And So It Begins

The fall television season, that is.  Sure, a lot of new fall shows have already started - Hell, I've already started doing reviews for Gotham, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., South Park and Family Guy - but this week starts the Fall out in earnest.  While the last few weeks have featured no more than one show a night, yesterday had two (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Flash) and tonight has three (Arrow, American Horror Story: Freak Show and South Park).  In two weeks, Constantine will be added to that roster and in January, so will Agent Carter.  The time for taking things easy has finally come to an end.

The DC Fall TV lineup: Arrow, The Flash, Gotham and Constantine.

Since my Unreality article on Friday is going to be a review of the Flash's premiere episode, even this week isn't as busy as it could have been.  Before the month is out, however, I will be faced with reviewing seven different shows over the course of the week, five of which fall on the same two consecutive days.  And with the possibility of a new job on the horizon, keeping up with it all looks like it'll be a pretty daunting prospect.

It is, however, a prospect that I feel confident in meeting.  While it may take me a few weeks to fully work out all of the kinks, I am steadfast in my aim to review all of these shows every week.  It may be that I'll have to stagger the days where I post my reviews - I know for a fact that I won't be able to fit in three reviews on Wednesday evenings - but I will work something out so that they continue to be the same high-quality, timely reviews that I've been meting out over these last three weeks.

So it's time to dig in my heels, because Arrow is coming.  And American Horror Story.  And South Park.  All three tonight.  The plan is to hammer out two reviews this evening - Arrow and Freakshow - and to take care of South Park tomorrow morning.  After tonight, we should have an idea about how much - or little - can be managed in just one night.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. S2 E3 - Making Friends and Influencing People

In which I review the most recent episode of Marvel's Agens of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agent Simmons has been busy since leaving Clouson's team: working her way up through Hydra's ranks as a double-agent an gathering what intelligence she can from inside their organization.  Since S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most recent encounter with them, Hydra has set their sights on bringing Donnie Gill - the ice-powered dropout from S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy last seen in Seeds - who has resurfaced in Casablanca.  But when Hydra orders Simmons to bring Gill into the fold, she risks losing her cover as well as her life when S.H.I.E.L.D. attempts to intervene.

Hail Hydra.

 After teasing Simmons' defection for the first two episodes, Making Friends and Influencing People delivers everything that Shadows and Heavy Is the Head promised.  While I never believed that Simmons' move to Hydra was earnest, I did believe that it was done without Coulson's (nor the rest of the team's) knowledge of her deception and because she needed to tap into Hydra's considerable scientific resources in an attempt to hasten Fitz's recovery.  The actual reasons for it - that Coulson needed a double agent within Hydra specifically because of their considerable scientific resources - was far better than my over-complicated predictions

Simmons was without a doubt the perfect character to throw into this scenario, specifically because her inability to convincingly lie has been addressed throughout the series' first season.  The Hub showed a normally eloquent Simmons hopelessly bumbling through Agent Sitwell's questions about why she's in a particular hallway accessing a particular wall panel.  Her obvious lies drew his suspicion and, panicking, she shot him with an Icer.  She is by far the least likely spy that Coulson could have implanted into Hydra, and yet her intelligence, personability and dedication to her true cause makes her deception work and her role in it convincing.

Agent Simmons shoots Agent Sitwell in The Hub.

A second highlight of this episode was Fitz discovering that Agent Ward was being kept prisoner in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new base: right underneath his feet.  Fitz defended Ward long after everyone else had resigned themselves to his allegiance to Hydra.  He had to be a triple agent working for S.H.I.E.L.D. or have a retinal bomb like in Eye Spy or something.  He believed in him up until Ward threw him and Simmons into the ocean, resulting in the brain damage that Fitz has struggled with all season.

His reaction to finally confronting the man that he had thought was his friend - the man who shattered his confidence and destroyed his capacity to contribute to the team - is utterly devastating.  His decision to take the oxygen out of Ward's cell - to show him what he had to endure because of him - as he rattles off what happens to the human body when deprived of oxygen is easily the darkest direction that the character was ever taken in.  His inability to go through with it, though, proves to be his greatest personal triumph: one worthy of an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

"You need to accept the truth, Fitz.  He doesn't care about us or about anything."

More than anything else, Making Friend and Influencing People proves how to write female characters well, something that I recently complained about Gotham being incapable of doing.  It's not about making them over-the-top warrior women, reformed lesbians nor former (possibly current) junkies.  It's about making them people: convincingly human, whose presence and actions matter.  It's not enough to just give them some screen time and a back story.

With Making Friends and Influencing People, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to prove why they are without a doubt the best comic-inspired show on television.  And yes, it's even better than Arrow.  Fitz and Simmons turn out to be equally engaging apart from one another as they have proven to be together and Ward's interrogation are fast becoming my favorite part of the new season.  I give the episode a solid 8.5 out of 10.

We may have just found out.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Gotham S1 E3 - The Balloonman

In which I review the latest episode of Gotham.

After last week's child trafficking case, 'Cat' has been helping Gordan with his investigation of the Wayne murders.  His sleuthing is interrupted, though, when a vigilante that the press name the Balloonman begins executing Gotham's corrupt elite by handcuffing them to weather balloons and releasing them into the atmosphere.  Convinced that justice only exists with law and order, Gordan sets out to stop the Balloonman before he can kill another public official.

The Balloonman strikes again.

The Balloonman is further proof that Gotham has finally found its footing as a series.  Bullock and Gordan have finally eased into their begrudging good cop / bad cop partnership: a union that works precisely because Bullock can get the information that Gordan can't and Gordan can keep Bullock from crossing that crucial line between upholding the law and taking it into his own hands.  I don't think that Cat's short lived turn as Gordan's star witness has quite come to an end yet, and her escape frees her to go look in on Bruce and Alfred (a character dynamic that, as I mentioned last week, has innumerable interesting possibilities to explore).  Barbara Kean's rocky relationship with Renee Montoya is finally revealed - a serious lesbian entanglement that dissolved over drugs.

While the overarching story seems to be progressing nicely after three episodes, it's starting to become apparent just how inept the show's writers are at handling their female characters.  Between Barbara, Renee, Fish and Cat, only the latter is doing any real legwork.  Barbara exists only as a counterpoint to Gordan: as a domestic end-game.  For all of her huffing and puffing, Renee has functionally done nothing over the first three episodes; she threatens, investigates and even manages to sneak in a few cloak-and-dagger conversations with Barbara, but she doesn't actually do anything substantial.  Having Renee and Barbara as ex-lesbian, ex-junky lovers only gives the semblance of character development, when it seems more likely that it's a way for Fox to sex-up the show while giving ultimately minor characters something to do when the men go out to commit and solve crimes.

Fish Mooney is easily the worst-written of the lot.  She is petty, conniving and shockingly ineffective as a leader: always shut in her club, never getting directly involved in her own criminal works.  When her pride is wounded by Falcone - who beat up "her latest boy toy" to keep her in line - she pettily orders an underling to mug his girlfriend and fires her broken-spirited lover for "bringing down the mood."  Falcone foiled her attempt to kill Gordan and Bullock, Gordan foiled her attempt to kill the Penguin and seemingly everybody has seen through her blundering job of killing off the Waynes - all in just three episodes.  She has essentially become the pre-Gotham Penguin: so boring and inept a villain that it makes us wish they'd just used somebody else in her place.

Despite the stupidly named vigilante that was the episode's focus and the continually disappointing use of the show's female characters, The Balloonman delivers an ultimately decent, if easily forgotten, case for Gordan and Bullock to solve.  Its direct connection to Selina Kyle prevents the series as a whole from feeling overly episodic.  While it's great that the best part of the show - Robin Lord Taylor's Penguin -is back in focus, I would have much preferred to watch him scheme his way ahead on the streets for a few more episodes.  Overall, I would give the episode a 6.5.

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The Weekend Review: The Equalizer

In which I review a selection of last weekend's entertainment.

It seems like every major production company with money to spare is trying to make an authentic 80s action movie for the twenty-first century.  What started out as a seemingly bad joke with The Expendables has become an immensely popular movie trend.  The Last Stand, Escape Plan, Grudge Match and Red have all capitalized on the same thirty-year-old genre formula.  The latest entry into this cinematic vein - The Equalizer - is the first to not rely on nostalgic casting choices to cultivate an audience: choosing traditionally dramatic lead Denzel Washington over genre favorites like Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stalone.

Retired CIA operative Robert McCall thought that he had gotten out of the game for good, content to work at Home Mart, help a security trainee pass his qualification exam and read through "the 100 books you should read before you die."  But when his teenage friend Alina is nearly beaten to death by her pimp, he has no choice but to settle the score.  The man he kills, however, is no common pimp, but a high ranking member of the Russian mafia.  Now hunted by an ex-spetsnaz mob enforcer with everything to lose, McCall realizes that he will have to take down the Russian mafia if he is to ever return to his peaceful new life.

In a surprising turn for a blockbuster action movie, the first quarter of the film plays out like a dramatic character piece.  There are no car chases through the opening credits, no inside look into McCall's last black ops mission, not even a scene of him faking his own death.  Instead, we see him shaving at dawn as his alarm clock cries in vain from the other room.  We slowly go through his day with him, watching as he playfully deflects the younger employees' guesses about his previous line of work, coaching an overweight security trainee through healthy eating and exercise, solitary dinners at home and midnight runs to the local diner for some tea while he reads through his latest classic.  By the time McCall decides to kill Slavi in order to ensure Alina's safety, we know exactly what he is giving up in order to do so.

McCall and Alina in a local diner.

The Equalizer is the perfect permutation of the violent movies of the past.  It combines the "one man can make a difference" vigilantism of Death Wish, the police corruption and apparent mob omnipotence of The Departed and one-man army protagonist of Rambo, Die Hard and Dirty Harry.  The climax - a violent, guerrilla-style take-down of mafia hit men in booby trapped Home Mart - is a near-perfect adaptation of Jim's single-handed slaughter of the soldiers in 28 Days Later.

What the film loses in originality, however, it makes up for with its irreproachable execution.  While Denzel Washington is the only exceptional actor in the film, the rest of the cast provides the necessary support that allows him to carry the film.  Martin Csokas, who has made his fledgling career from supporting roles in larger action movies, provides a serviceable edge to the film's on-the-ground villain.  Chloe Grace Moretz gives the kind of earnest performance that her career thus far has lacked: toning down Carrie White's nervous energy into something far more intimate.

Although not without its issues - such as over-using of its lead, its needlessly grandiose scope and the entirely superfluous inclusion of the Plummers as spewers of exposition - The Equalizer is an entertaining callback to a time where men were men and action stars didn't wear spandex.  It's a refreshingly low-key take on the action genre: putting characters first and explosions second.  While not the best action movie ever, it is one that fans of the genre should never-the-less enjoy.  I give it a solid 7 out of 10.

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Unreality Companion: Why Blumhouse Productions Is the Only Real Name in Horror Right Now.

In which I develop on the content of my weekly Unrealitymag.com article.

As I mentioned in this week's Unreality article. Blumhouse Productions - the minds behind Oculus, Sinister, The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, Insidious, The Purge and their sequels - is the only real name working in the horror genre these days.  While other companies are more concerned with remaking, rebooting and churning out sequels for decades-old franchises that have been limping along to increasingly little fanfare, BH Productions has been revitalizing the genre with original, inventive and incredibly high-quality horror films.

The death of the horror franchises of the eighties has largely been a matter of time.  When a series markets itself around a single iconic character - Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Chucky, Pinhead - it automatically puts itself on a clock, tying the life of the franchise to the vitality of its antagonist.  Robert Englund did a fantastic turn as Krueger when the character debuted in A Nightmare on Elm Street, but after playing the same character for twenty years, the nearly sixty-year-old actor lacked the same sinistral energy that he had in 1984.  Doug Bradley was full of malice and sophisticated savagery in 1987's Hellraiser, but had grown so tired and unconvincing over the following two decades that he was replaced in Hellraiser: Revelations.

BH Productions, however, does not have this problem.  Its growing number of franchises are built around premises, rather than poltergeists.  Try to name Oculus' antagonist.  It's not the father: he was the first victim.  It wasn't the mother, nor the brother nor the legion lurking behind the looking glass.  It was the mirror itself.  The Purge's was society itself, not any one person.  Sure, Rhys Wakefield was the perfect gentleman butcher to antagonize the Sandin's, but he is no worse than the vast multitudes on the streets purging themselves of their vices; it could have been anyone, but just so happened to be him.  And while Sinister does have Bughuul, he's just the silent partner of the children he influences: anybody could play that sinistral mute under heavy caked makeup because he never does anything that would give him away as any one specific actor.

Unlike the increasingly charicaturish horror franchises of decades past - which view the metric of any good horror movie through its body count - Blumhouse's releases focus on unrelenting tension and internally-consistent atmosphere as their primary means of terror.  Shadows pooled in the corner of an empty room , restlessly meandering cameras stalking the protagonists and neo-Gothic set-design replace blood spatters and rusted knives that has defined the previous generation of horror.  Their slow, methodical pacing is completely out of character for a genre that has been dominated by fast cuts and jump scares for the last three decades.

Not suprisingly, BH's films have all had incredibly low body counts.  Paranormal Activity only killed off one character.  Oculus' malevolent mirror only claimed one victim.  Sinister dispatched a single family of three.  Absolutely nobody dies in The Conjuring: the Warrens and the Perrons - eleven people in all - walked away unscathed.

What's truly remarkable about Blumhouse Production's accomplishments, however, is not that they've secured A-list talent, but that they've secured the right talent for their purposes.  Like Marvel choosing Community directors Anthony and Joe Russo to helm the Nolan-esque Captain America: The Winter Soldier, they've proven that doubtful choices are often the right ones.  James Wan - who rocketed to genre fame with the intensely unsettling Saw - has helmed no less than four films for the company: Dead Silence, Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2 and The Conjuring.  Annabelle director John Leonetti began his work at BH Productions as the cinematographer of Dead Silence, Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2 and The Conjuring.  The consistently under-rated Ethan Hawke starred in both Sinister and The Purge while relatively unknown Patrick Wilson starred in The Conjuring, Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2 and the upcoming The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Poltergeist.

While there are certainly great horror movies being made today outside of this one production company, no other production company has shown to be as consistently effective at the genre this century.  Their concentration of talent, effectively mounted tension and relatively low-tech scares have rapidly outpaced their splatter-gore competition.  Their brand is so effective that they have somehow turned Annabelle - a blatant Child's Play rip-off - into what I can unashamedly call the most anticipated horror film of the year.  As long as they continue to develop interesting films with their proven method, they will continue to terrify a new generation of movie-goers.

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Piece of the Puzzle: Gotham S1 E2 - Selina Kyle

In which I review the latest episode of Gotham.

Since the Wayne's murder last week, Gotham has become a much more interesting place.  After beating a confession out of the Penguin, mob boss Carmine Falcone realizes that he can no longer trust Fish Mooney.  While Bruce resorts to self-harm in the wake of his parents' death, a desperate Alfred turns to Jim Gordon to reason with the boy.  All the while, homeless children like Selena Kyle are being abducted off of the streets and sold to a mysterious over-seas buyer known only as the Dollmaker.

From the start, Selena Kyle feels like what we can expect from the rest of Gotham's first season.  While the overly-rushed Pilot was basically stumbling over itself just to make sure that it checked off everything that was important to the series, this week's episode took its time to choose which narrative alleyways it wanted to wander down.  Ivy and the maybe-Joker were both absent, Nygma was rushed on for a brief cameo and Penguin's story was mostly just to remind people that he'll be back in Gotham before too long.  This was Cat's episode.

It makes sense that they would turn Batman's anti-heroine love-interest into child, given Bruce's age in the series.  In doing so, they also opened themselves up to wide range of increasingly interesting narrative possibilities, especially in how they relate to the adult Jim Gordan.  Her interactions with Gordan play out exactly like how a strong-willed, independent girl who thinks that she's more adult than she really is would speak to an grown-up that she begrudgingly respects.  Gordan is forced to navigate between treating her like a thirteen-year-old orphan that he's obligated to send to child services and the intelligent, manipulative witness to the Waynes' murder.  And, given that she's kept tabs him and the surviving Wayne, I can't wait to see how the future interactions between her, Alfred and Bruce will play out.

While Michael Caine will always be the definitive cinematic Alfred in my eyes, Sean Pertwee gives a refreshingly different portrayal of the Waynes' loyal butler.  Rather than stodgy and reserved, he's gruff and hard-edged: reprimanding rather than compassionate.  He obviously was not hired as a child's caretaker, but for his ability to efficiently run a household; it honestly wouldn't surprise me to find out that he had a military background.  He is as grievously over-his-head in raising Bruce as Bruce is in dealing with his parents' murder, and has absolutely no idea how to reach the boy when Bruce starts "testing" himself by burning and cutting himself.

If the episode raises any concerns, it's its insistant focus on the young Batman-to-be.  This isn't a Batman show.  This isn't a sixteen episode remake of Batman Begins where Bruce will emerge as a fully formed Batman in the season finale.  It's about Gotham - a corrupt, mob-run city that breeds crime and insanity - and has more in common with police procedurals than superheroics.  While I appreciate the direction that they're taking Bruce and Alfred in, they should not be as much of a focus of the show as they have proven to be so far.

It's great to see that after a sloppy start, the series has rapidly started to find its footing.  If the show continues to develop its characters and storylines as methodically as it has in this episode, it could easily top Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as my favorite comic-inspired TV show.  With plenty of room for imrpovement in the coming weeks, I give the episode a solid 7.5.

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Piece of the Puzzle: South Park S18 E2 - Gluten Free Ebola

In which I review the latest episode of South Park.

After last week's failed business venture, Eric, Stan, Kyle and Kenny dejectedly return to school, only to find that everyone is mad at them for how they told them off when they left.  In order to win everybody back over to their side, they promise to host the greatest party in history: with pizza, cake and Lorde.  But when Mr. Mackey convinces everybody that gluten is poison, the USDA begins quarantining those exposed to it, threatening the lives of everybody in South Park.

"We're the USDA.  Without us, people would be eating dirt and... chairs!"

It's utterly staggering to me how certain health circles insist that Gluten causes seemingly every malady in the 21st century.  Gluten causes intestinal trauma.  Gluten causes ADHD.  Gluten causes Type 1 Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, Schizophrenia, Epilepsy and Autism.  When droves of parents inexplicably believe that an ex-Playboy Bunny with absolutely no medical training cured her son's Autism by putting him on a Gluten-free diet, you know that something's gone terrible wrong in the American eduction system.

When the Onion was awarded the 2009 Peabody Award, it was noted that their parodies were "not infrequently hard to distinguish from the real thing."  It could have just as easily been applied to South Park's parodic brand of comedy.  When Gluten is labeled as some form of hyper-toxin that causes every medical affliction known to man, is it really so far-fetched that it could make your dick fly off?

Yes, your dick.

South Park took public ignorance and paranoia toward Gluten to what is sadly its most logical extreme.  Gluten is a disease for which there is no cure.  It must be contained at all costs.  Concerned citizens must inform the authorities of suspected Gluten users.  Those who have been exposed to the "toxin" must be indefinitely quarantined to prevent its spread.

Gluten Free Ebola is an excellent follow-up to last week's season premiere, taking on another social concern with the same irreverent audacity as it did crowd sourcing and the Washington Redskins.  While every joke may not have been a success (such as Randy singing in drag while pretening to be Lorde), the central parody is spot on.  The episode exposes the absurdity of the USDA's constantly-changing dietary standards and the public's slavish devotion to them regardless of what common sense dictates.  I give the episode an 8 out of 10 and eagerly look forward to what in-the-news topic the series will lampoon next week.

"Chicken nuggets... breading.  Burritoes... full of wheat.
Ice cream... no Gluten.  Ice cream's healthy!

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