My July Wrapup: Guess I Watch Television Now

Hey Whores, July has been an interesting month to say the least. I had four different catering events cancel on me and if it wasn't for my line cook job coming in clutch I would be seriously fucked money wise. So if your reading this Ash thank you seriously. 

Outside of my constant consumption of media I managed to make the various liqueurs that I been wanted to try. Namely my Nocino, Slivovitz, (note: technically its like the Generic Rakia or Tuica but get off my dick), and of course Orahovic. We serving slavic spirit realness hunty. 

In other news I have finished my First Gay Kiss watchlist, finished reading The Celluloid Closet, and am very very fucking close to watching ONE THOUSAND MOVIES. Thats Feature length bitches. I counted. Anyway me and my bestie are going to watch Pink Flamingos to celebrate. To see what we're been hanging out and watching check out my In the Weeds LB list. 

Anyway this month had a lot of unfulfilled moping so I watched a fuckton of tv shows this month so LETS GET INTO IT!!!!!!

Podcasts

Case 63

So Case 63 is a Spotify Original Sci-Fi podcast produced by Gimlet Media, which if you haven't read my review for Sandra, should know are known for there high audio production. 

The podcast itself is set up as a kind of found audio format consisting of the audio recordings of a psycological evaulation, similar to works like The Bright Sessions. 

In the show Dr. Eliza Knight (Julianne Moore) is tasked with interviewing the Titular Case 63 (Oscar Isaac), a man who after being found buck naked in an airport reports that he's actually from the future and only you one miss Dr. Eliza Knight can help him save the world. 

As the story progresses whats real and whats fake and also what counts as a appropriate doctor/patient relationship begins to blur. 

Ultimately I had a lot of fun with this podcast. I don't know if it manages to be at the same height of similar works like The Bright Session or Within The Wires but If you ever watched 12 Monkeys or the Umbrella Academy and said hey what if this had a hot Mulder/Scully dynamic then yes this is for you.

Unfortunetly this has a bit of the Netflix curse to it because even through it ends on a cliff hanger there is no garauntee that there will ever be a second session and I fucking hate that. 

 Sin Embargo, para mi espanol oraderes, hay un espanol-idiomas podcast originales, Caso 63. Que corrio para tres estaciones. 

Rating: Yes

Crooked River

Crooked River is a historical fiction procedural crime drama Created by Dave Beazley and Casey Wells. It was produced by REALM. 

Crooked River follows two timelines. The bridge narrative of two cops in the 50s interviewing one of the detectives of the cases and the original murder run in the 1930s. The story is told mostly through flashback in an evocative stream-of-consiousness style that the ad-copy calls immersive and I'd have to agree. 

The writing is not always the strongest, there is a rather absurd moment in the pilot where one of the cops literally recites his middle school social studies paper on the local geography verbatim but I will forgive info dumping if it is interesting and hey what is true crime if not a wordy discussion of social-economic factors of 1930s America? 

The rest of the show manages to deliver on its prod crime trappings with gruesome murders, corrupt cops, and for added flare prohibition nonsense led by one Elliot Nash, yes that one. 

It's quite an enjoyable podcast and while season two is in some kind of hiatus if your into noir, true crime, or procedual crime dramas this one is differnetly up your alley. 

Rating: yes

Shows

We the People (2021)

Produced by Barack Obama, (yes that Obama), this is a modern twist on the Schoolhouse Rock method attempting to be a lesson in civics through fun and cosmopolition music videos. It very much gives making a rap song for a social studies project in a traditional white school. 

There is a lot to feel about this show. One, as a filthy SJW of course I want to see the multi-culteral pandering that is people of all different kinds of races, creeds, abilities, and religions all getting together as a brotherhood of man and I will state that at the end of the day it's never a bad thing to casually have people of differing ability just exist visual in a medium. However that liberal mindset ends there. 

Because ultimately when we discuss this need of representation it is one small part of a larger more subversive praxis. It is not simply that I as a leftest desire to see or recognize people different from myself. To promote the visability of difference but rather that in our society we accomadate other people. That we normalize the political and social needs of different people not that there visable in the public eye but visable in the legal and social level. 

Ultimately, you can't say that you are here for women, bipoc, or queer people and then support systems that work against them. This representation without praxis is ultimately capitalist commodification the act of taking on the aestetics of politique while leaving out the actually subversion of it. To be clear the action is pandering. 

Civics does not have to be partisan. While you can never truly make a non political statement civics should ultimately be axomatic. It should be impersonal and about things we can all agree about. For instance Civil Rights can be partisan, (because people are gross), but most Americans can agree we should have them. Because the notion that there are "equal and unalienable rights" is axiomatic. Everyone is liberal in that sense that we're not royalists or feudalists. We have accepted as a society that that is non-negationable. At least if your the right kind of person. 

And therein lies the rub. This show ultimately wants to be a kind of non-partisans feel good civics lession. Have a rapper talk about taxes, have this R&B group talk about voting. but bitches. 

You can't make a cosmopolition show about this shit. Cast a predominately black voice cast of musicians and then pretend that we can be hunky dory about the institute. The one that does all the racism. 

Because ultimately this desire to promote civics promotes the statis quo; we are not shining a light on grass roots organizing; On the power of unions; On the importance of voting. Things that are actually part of a healthy demoracy. The aspects of direct action and being involved with the process. We are simply pointing a finger at the idea of civics. Saying, hey here's taxes, here's voting and ultimaly saying nothing with it. Not nothing subversive, nothing didactic. Ultimately the music becomes pablum and beautiful noise because the show demands that it not take a side nor question the system. The flawed system. Instead these singers who sound like they have a gun to there head for half the tracks have to talk in circles around there actually points, there actually desire to discuss this. Falling back quickly over and over again on the lines, "hey thats just an opinion" "It's something that everyone thinks something about". and its fucking depressing. 

Because this both-sidesism is destroying the ultimate message. This show is not impartial enough to give an actually civics lession, we are not learning anything about the U.S goverment, we are being given neo-liberal platitudes about military spending. Neither is this speaking truth to power, rather it is co-opting subversing art, co-opting black voices, as a way of neutering a more subversive political message.

Propaganda and not even good propaganda at that. 2/5

 

Drink Masters (2022)

Well Let's take a step back from the soap box and talk about that one show where the guy boiled an egg. 

So Drink Masters is a competition show where twelve mixologists get together to compete for the ultimate title of THE ULTIMATE DRINK MASTER. 

So ok we understand the competition formula by this point. You have a bunch of people with fun personalities. A couple judges hopefully with different biases and a fun amaciable host who brings a touch of common taste to the affair. 

It's hard to have anything definitive to say about the show. It's very compentantly produced. The competators are fun and interesting, and its low of the messy drama spectrum. The subject matter is handled really well and as someone who likes to cook and enjoys alcohol. (read the bit about the slivovitz again), there is a lot of cool stuff to learn from this show. 

Were dealing with mixologists. Essentially the drinks side of Molecular Gastronomy so watching these bartenders play with dry ice, fat-washing, and distillation and rapid infusing is really fucking intersting. There popping there pussys out here and giving us fucking gormet drink experiences and how fucking dare I not get to try any. 

That being said while I might watch this show again for the subject matter it hasn't become an instant favorite like Next in Fashion, Blown Away, or Glow Up. Solid 4/5

Metal Shop Masters (2021)

So I was reading reviews of Metal Shop Masters written by actually talented people who are good at this. Heres One and Another. The reason for it is that I honestly don't remember much from this show. 

Um theres the texas chick and the one with the hat and they're both pretty hot?

Sorry there names are Ivan Iler and Rae Ripple. They're cool check them out. 

ok I guess I have to actually review this show. 

MSM is yet another competition show that picks a creative field and makes people compete by doing art pieces. Honestly I'm surprised that there isn't more Metalworking shows. Forged in Fire ran for 9 seasons theres a market bitch. 

So there are a lot of issues about this show. As I have brought up before a good competition show allows you to play at being a judge. It gives you a taste of good taste and with that it also makes you feel smart by sharing what this art form is. A good competition ultimately is a love letter to the craft and many shows accomplish this by giving us insider knowledge or explaining techniques its very much the ace cam in poker. 

MSM does no such things. We get the occasional explanation of a technique, an occasional discussion on different styles of wielding but unlike other shows which force contestants into unfamaliar niche genres of there craft, this show relies on rather basic concetes. There are some standouts. The mobile episode comes to mind, but overall it fails to translate a lot of the bredth and scope of the genre. 

If anything the show is decent despite its format. The competitors are really talented artists who make amazing works of art but besides that there is very little interest. As Stuart Heritage points out in his guardian article the pilot episode starts with two contestants dramastically misunderstanding the rules of the challenge and having to restart there entire project. which is insane and sucks and that lack of clarity in both the rules of the competition and the judging critiria makes for a pretty shitty competition. Like on a surface level. I went to culinary school. I have been judged for a creative trade. Having an exact rubric and criteria for judgement is important so if I had a dish rejected for arbitary or subjective reasons I would be pissed. It also circles back to the love of the craft aspect. If the audience isn't given the language to think critiical about a piece then they also fail to be able to truly understand and enjoy it.  A good competition show ultimatly needs to teach the language of this craft. 

I also found the host and judge banter to be rather annoying padding. Not as much as that awful leftovers show but still pretty bad. 

Hey I ain't going to stop you from watching it but just know this show kinda sucks. 1/5

Beef (2023)

I was literally so bummed that none of my co-workers had seen this show. wack. 

So if you haven't heard of beef then I'm sorry you don't have cool friends so let me break it down for you. 

Beef is an A24 mini-series following Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, two very lost people who are brought together by a moment of rage and animosity. There titular beef is what drives the film and as slight after slight stack up the damage, there self-hatred brings more and more people into the event horizon. I'm gonna shut up before I give away any of the third act it gets wild. 

Theres a lot to enjoy about beef. The acting is fantastic, the characters and drama are complex and layered. Theres a real focus on like trauma and anger and forgiveness that honestly hits a little close to home and at the end of it I like that this is yet another super nuanced super specific asian-led story. 

The class difference is oddly remeniscent of another Ali Wong vehicle Always Be My Mayber (2019) but this show leans much futher into its themes of class having Wong embody a very specific kind of L.A New Age Bougieness. The snark and wit of this show is part of the charm. 

Overall I just love Beef it is just one of the best dramas I've seen in a hot minute and it deserves all the hype it gets. 5/5

Centeur World Season Two (2021)

Oof. Well that happened. 

So the original Centeur World is amazing. It is an obnoxious, low-brow, tacky, comedy world that looks like a Lisa Frank Acid Trip. Its a paint-by-number adventure show much in the same vein as The Hollow (wait what do you mean they have a second season?). It is also essentially a complex opera about the nature of love and trauma. It is fun and sad and maudlin and overall just ties in its juvenile humor and silly world building with just a great sense of emotional depth and I fucking loved it. I binged the whole thing when it came out and was so ready for season two to come out. 

Well it did... yep.. thats definetly a season. 

So we start out with a rather ho-hum pilot centered on Horse visiting The Centeurs™, a posh and snobbish high society of half-man half horse creatures. The rich bitches obvious don't want to join a war but there get a calvary of trash creatures who felt stirred by civic duty or something. 

Oh should I explain the plot?

Basically Horse has to raise an army in this magic fantasy land that has never heard of war to defeat the evil demon lord. You've seen an isekai you get it. 

Ever episode follows a similar pattern. Horse meets a new random and quirky group of people who are two busy being weird and quirky to fight a holy war jeez ugh and there are brought onto there side through lies, deceit, and somebodys elses help because Horse is a comically bad orator, poltician, and general. They could not raly water out of a damp paper bag. 

This season feels like it wanted to flesh out the worldbuilding. try to answer some of the big questions which it does but something feels lost in translation. What made this show good is its ability to tell a deeper story using this veneer of frivilousness and comedy. This season looses its head. Rationaly it wants to start telling a darker more impactful drama. Lean into these grimdark aspects, feel the power of war. What it actually does is leaning into the silly bullshit sheninigans. theres nothing to temper the comedy. Nothing to balance it. The music in turn becomes incresingly frivilous loosing a lot of the meaning and intention behind it. Its no longer a story thats told partically through song. its a story where sometimes people are singing. 

Giving the high note the first seasons ends off on, this final season is rather a let down. At least we figured out what that Nowhere King trapped in an pocket demension thing was about. 2/5

 Lockwood and Co (2023)

Netflix the next time you decide to cancel a show after one season feel free to suck my dick. 

Lockwood and Co is based on a series of YA novels of the same name and adapts the first two books in the series. So heres the skinny. 

Basically this is set in an altenate universe where england is beseiged by The Problem. So ghosts exist, if they touch you, you die, (well your like in a coma forever but whatevs), and oh yeah also only child can see them. The answer to the problem? ummm child soldiers I mean Adolscent Ghost Hunters of course. 

We follow Lucy Carlisle, a moody punk from a small town whose escaping from a bad situration that she was blamed for. She moves to London and after being rejected by every ghost hunting outfit in town finally finds an ad for a small fly-by-night operation, the titular Lockwood and Co. 

What follows is a incredible fun romp as this teenage led ghost hunting orginization deals with conspiracys, bueracarcy and grief along with there midnight visitors. Theres a lot of charm and its a show that manages to give us a rather fleshed out world without losing the heart that the teen-led story provides. Sucks that Netflix banished it to the shadow realm. 4/5

Alice in Borderlands Season Two (2022)

Can People just make like fifty tv shows where people be smart about games?  They took No Game No Life off of CruncyRoll so I'm starving here. 

New Season New Game. The original Alice in Borderlands shows us a game-saavy neet whose thrown into a mysterious world filled with fucked up games who has to use his wits to solve and stay one step ahead of being killed. As the season progresses and as more and more pip cards are collected he finds himself with a group of friends who are all stuck in the same system. 

Season two continues the revelation that the finale ended with. There are game masters behind it all and the face cards have made there appearance, all of nothing battles against the "Citizens" of the borderlands that push our characters to the brink. 

Overall this season is really well made. We get a lot of what makes the first seasons great, (the games and the characters flashbacks ALA Lost) but the difference in scope and the more action oriented segments help add a freshness to the fomula. This is Gambling Anime energy to the max and it does it well. 

Honestly I can't wait for season three because I need more of this in my life. 4/5

Stuff I Didn't Finish. 

So there where two tv shows I didn't finish this month. The first as you can see is Sweet Home. 

Sweet Home is a korean-language survival horror show based on the manhwa of the same name. We follow Cha Hyun-soo, a depressed neet that finds himself trapped in a tenemant building as the outside world is filled with psycho-sexual monsters made from the darkest inner desires of the people who have been infected. Oh also he's been infected. Yass half monster half man moment love that. 

What follows is a pretty cut-and-dried Survival story where the characters all of who have there own backstories and needs are pitted against the physical monsters outside and the metaphorical monsters that line there halls. 

Ultimately I have two big issues with this show. One the actually politics of the characters is not terrible involved like in the grandfather of the genre Lost. The lack of focus on realistic survival needs as well is rather a dissapointment. One of the big things in the genre is conflict arising out of neccesity. Running out of water, running out of food, security issues all of which are only briefly dealt with. Having it be a larger focus of the show especially in the early episodes would have been an approvment. Sometimes genre convention is there for a reason. 

The other big issue is the monsters themselves. The monsters can't die for the most part which makes it differcult to write a traditionally structured comic. In Shonen work you often have monster-of-the-week type stories but what makes this work interesting is the fact that each monster has its own unique challenges and the fact that the monsters tend to get stronger as the warrior does. Its a logical lateral progression of events and keeps stories fresh when done right. This show can't do that because the monsters don't die. There not contained or incapacitated and so while more and more monsters are added to the plot theres no way of resolving them. 

The other way of writing monsters especially in asian horror is the Junjo Ito route. Monsters as Psycho-Sexual Manifestation, which is what this show kinda aims towards. However with Ito and most likely the original comic as far as I can tell, those stories work because of the intimate and specific nature of the stories. Ito's monsters work because we understand the fears the characters are having, we understand the emotional impertus of this manifestation. Which works for some of the monsters in this show, (the monsters that come from characters we know) but don't help against the many random monsters that wander around and are only there for a few scenes. Those are just window dressing. 

Perhaps its just me but the emotional side of the story never truly connected for me in this show and about 2/3s of the way through I realized that i simply didn't want to finish it and given the fact that I have so so much random bullshit on my Netflix Watchlist I decided to DNF.

The other show I didn't finish was The Sandman. 

So The Sandman is a TV adaptation of the famous Neil Gaiman comic, (famous to me because I'm cool and you suck), and thats the issue. 

I love the original comic and more importantly I have read past the point the first season ends. 1. I will say that I would love to know how they would deal with the entire wandering jew segment of the comic in todays culteral climate and 2. What and how they decide to adapt the show is confusing. 

So let's talk anime. Many anime are adaptation from mangas and light novels and one of the reasons for that is that there is a traditional a short turn around time for anime realises, (every 3 months) as opposed to traditional western television, (fall and spring releases), which means that already having a pre-written work can save on a lot of writting and production woes. You already have a garenteed fan base and a general outline. That being said the faster turn-around means that its not as common for anime shows to run multiple seasons its a lot of limited series in that sense which means that if your going to adapt a show and you might not get a seocnd chance to finish the story where do you cut it off. Some shows find a reasonable place to leave it open ended. Some stories are short enough to abridge into a single season and some, (often more longer form Shonen adaptations), make the wild decision to fit hundreds and hundreds of chapters into a single season. Causing for a fastpaced and often unpleasant viewing experience. For clarity the reverse of this adaptation question is a faithful slower paced adaptation which is where you get stuff like One Piece having 20 seasons. 

What I'm saying is the Sandman is like those longwinded shonen shows except Sandman has a really obvious stopping point. 

Ok sandman spoilers. in the original run of the comics there are a race of beings known as The Endless, a group of immortal gods? who control a domain of reality. you get it. One of them Dream, (like what happens when you sleep), gets imprissoned for almost a century and his tools and weapons are stolen and lost to the sands of time. Dream being immortal is patient and finally breaks free and goes on a quest to find his lost mantles of power. 

What follows is a classic rule of three. Dream has three objects to retreve and each one takes him on a larger quest that introduces the rules and setting of the world. At the end of this larger quest there is one small chapter introducing his sister death as he wonders what else to do. This amount of the plot fits perfectly into the first trade paperback of the comic Preludes & Nocturnes which covers the first eight chapters. 

This would in my mind a reasonable place to stop the comic. The show ends the first season on chapter 18. For reference thats halfway throught the third collection of the comic. For clarity imagine in front of you approxiametly 500 pages of richly illustrated comic book panels, telling a complex, etherial, and oftern deeply cerebal and internal story set in the DC universe while incorperating an absurd amount of world mythology, Now imagine that the TV show is adapting multiple chapters of this epic per episode to fit to a strict mini-series length when they could have very very easily stopped hours ago. 

Now you might say ryen your dumb and wrong. If they adapted this much maybe those chapters weren't as detailed as you thought and no, your wrong. The original arc of the comic is incredible detailed each section is essentially its own fully fleshed out story with the heros journey and all that bullshit and there fitting entire branches of world-building and backstory and poltics into a ambridged cliff notes dark fantasty. When I say that the more then rubies storyline is complex. I mean its ultimately an epic trilogy with a broader wraparound story not that its a dimestore three act structure with differnt set dressings. 

The other issue besides scope is that the world of the comic is not well defined. The original comic is increidble dark and messy in the way that post-bronze age comics manage to be. Its a comic with a lot of dark fucked up shit and body horror. This is not an easy comic to read sometimes and the medium leans into to how fucked up some of it is. 

The show doesn't It is not giving us that good good body horror and thats what fucks with me is that there are no nightmares in this show. The vision of the comic is lost almost as much as those god awful Junjo Ito Adaptations. News flash Peabrains. If your going to take a comic that has body horror elements you better be either giving it to Cronenburg or Decourneua because I want Flesh. 

Here's Some examples. 

Like for real look at this shit. Why is John Dee who is an imancipated fucking corpse in the orignial. Who doens't even look human at that point in the comic played by some sad dilf whose just started to bald. I'm sorry but I want fucking filth in my indie horror psychosexual comic adaptation made in the fucking 80s. and everytime I read another fucking apologia over how wah-wah this increidble dark comic is a little too tasteless for a modern audience I just want to fucking scream because its not meant to be palatable to the hoi-poila, its the closest thing to an underground comic that DC could ever make and I am too much of a fan of the work to enjoy this barebones Milquetoast adaptation of it.

Anyway Whores thanks for getting through this late blog post. I've mostly been grappling with some job anxiety so if you enjoy my work feel free to donate to my ko-fi. It would definetly help out.