One Good Point (Show) - Bonding, Season 2

I mentioned previously that I had watched Season 1 of Bonding last year, and enjoyed it thoroughly. The humor was sharp and clever, and the protagonists (Tiff and Pete) were a lot of fun, both individually and in tandem.

During season 2, the Pete storyline and character feel less relatable, and I found myself either not rooting for him, or actively rooting against him. His point of view and outlook came across a lot less sympathetic, and a lot more entitled. I have to admit though, it's entirely possible that my "straightness" is part of what hinders my ability to appreciate Pete's story. I'm sure there are people who found his experiences a lot more relatable, and felt more empathy for how he interacted with the world. 

But the rest of the season was just as good as the first. The humor stays pretty strong throughout, in a way that Harley Quinn had a bit of trouble with. Tiff is an interesting and complex character, and the whole BDSM scene is given a more substantial presence in the second season of the show. There's more variance in the types of D/s relationships that are portrayed, and Tiff especially has a few different forays into exploring improved sexual health. The second season felt like it was maybe a little more responsible and interested in engaging with human sexuality, and that felt like a logical pivot for this show.

I still love the format of 15-20 minute episodes, and although I kind of wish I had another 20 minutes per episode with these characters and ideas, you'd almost always rather have a show be too tight than too loose. Bonding feels like a show that has a thing it wants to say in each episode, it says that thing, and it immediately gets out upon saying it. I'd be happy to see more of it, but Netflix elected to cancel the series after the second season. And in truth, the ending of the second season felt crisp and complete. As the saying goes, part of the story is the end.

Want to watch Netflix's Bonding, but not sure where to find it? We'll set aside your inability to connect ideas in your mind, and offer you this direct link to the show on JustWatch, where you can see where to stream the show today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Darkman

I remember seeing commercials for Darkman ages ago, except I think they were commercials for the associated Nintendo game. I never played the game, nor did I watch the movie, until now!

Ehh.

Look, you can abide a certain amount of cheesiness or inconsistency from older movies (although Jaws is fucking tight). The film-making world of today offers different sensibilities, different styles, and obviously vastly improved CGI and effects options. Some movies age better than others, and that's understandable. But Darkman has a few other issues to go along with that.

First, the good. As Peyton Westlake, Liam Neeson does a good job, when given lines that sound like something a person might ever say. And I thought Frances McDormand was quite good as the love interest. I also liked the premise of the movie in general: a "superhero" but one who mostly follows the same laws of physics as everybody else, and a protagonist whose first instincts upon getting powers are A) check on the love of my life, and B) fuck up the people who fucked me up.

But the actual execution of the movie just doesn't land for me. Part of it is that I think I just don't like what Sam Raimi puts on the movie screen. I've watched a fair amount of his work, the best of which (according to other people) includes Evil Dead, Army of Darkness, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, and I just don't get it. I'm aware that other people like this content, but I just cannot get behind the dialogue in any of these films. It feels so janky and unnatural.

Watch this opening scene from Darkman. It's got five minutes of the most non-human conversation I've ever seen in my life. It's as if the script was written by aliens who are trying to approximate a human conversation, with all the believability of a goo monster writing lines.

The effects are old, and look old, but that's fine, that happens. And in the end, the actual beats of the story are satisfying, and the action is decent. I'm not explicitly upset that I watched the movie, which is a low bar, but hey, it's better than Anaconda.

Anaconda was so bad.

If you'd like to watch Darkman right now, and prove to yourself that Sam Raimi is a genius and Joe doesn't know what he's talking about, click here to check JustWatch and find out where you can stream it today!

One Good Point (Show) - 3 Body Problem, Season 1

Unlike a lot of people, I knew nothing about 3 Body Problem until it came down the pike. I saw it advertised on Netflix once it had been released, and I said oh okay, maybe I'll check this thing out... but probably not. Then I started to hear people talk about it like it's the next Game of Thrones (sometimes using that exact literal comparison), so I felt a bit more compelled to investigate.

One season in, it's a decent show. Game of Thrones, it ain't.

It's a nice little sci-fi show that becomes a massive sci-fi show, as it takes on an interesting idea about how we might encounter beings from another planet. I don't want to go too much into detail about the specifics of the show, because there are a lot of little (and sometimes very big) reveals that you don't want to have spoiled for you. There are some surprising deaths, and some pretty foreseeable deaths, and a couple of massive set pieces that are a spectacle to see.

The characters are... okay? So far I haven't been inspired by any of them, not really. I find that the overall premise is more interesting than the individual character arcs so far, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it puts a lot more pressure on the story. And the story is good, not great.

I will give it this, though. The first season ends with a lot of big moments and a lot of big questions, and it does a good job of piquing interest for future seasons. It's also got two actors who played two of my favorite side characters in the past decade: Liam Cunningham, who played Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones, and Benedict Wong, who played Wong in Doctor Strange (and subsequent MCU properties).

I'll watch more 3 Body Problem when there's more 3 Body Problem to watch. I'm interested to see where the story goes, particularly the Wallfacer idea. And I'm always interested to see where an alien story ends.

3 Body Problem is a Netflix series, so it's going to be on Netflix. But just in case you live in a weird land where up is down and Netflix is Paramount, click here to check JustWatch and find out for sure!

One Good Point (Movie) - Interstellar

I've heard for years about how good Interstellar was, from people whose movie opinions I respect. Not only that, these people told me that while yes it was an objectively good movie, I would like it specifically. That's a tall order, but from the right people, that's a recommendation you take to the bank (see Justified) (but NOT Justified: City Primeval).

So I finally watched the movie, and for the most part, I'd say their recommendations were...right on!

The movie gives us a near future with humanity on the brink of extinction, due to massive and permanent crop failures. Our story follows Matthew McConaughey's "Cooper" as a widowed father and an exceptional pilot who is called upon to attempt to find a suitable destination planet to which Earth's inhabitants can be transported to start anew. The bulk of the story follows Cooper and the rest of the crew as they explore, facing off against time, space, and inevitably, each other, in the pursuit of the ultimate goal of saving the human race.

The space adventure is excellent, probably the best non-combat space adventure I've seen since Apollo 13, one of my all-time favorite movies. The additional layer of Cooper's family relevance is what sets this movie apart, though. Cooper's relationship with his daughter Murph in particular is something that resonates throughout the film, despite their fairly limited in-person interactions. Every decision Cooper makes is colored by his desire to save the world for Murph, but also to get home to see Murph again. It's an emotional rollercoaster, and one that I wasn't totally prepared for, but was happy to experience.

One striking resemblance for this movie is to a movie that I actually did not enjoy very much at all: 2001: A Space Odyssey. But where 2001 dragged (for example, with a long orchestral sequence simply showing a variety of planetary bodies), Interstellar is able to offer exceptional visual effects while not feeling like you're stuck in a terrible sixth-grade music video project.

Finally, and perhaps completely predictably if you know my love of droids, I absolutely loved the robot characters in the movie. Both TARS and CASE offered interesting logistical considerations as well as the occasional lightness of humor to cut some of the tension. I would watch a whole movie of just Cooper and TARS yukking it up in the great unknown.

Want to watch Interstellar today? Click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can stream it right now!

One Good Point (Movie) - Dredd (2012)

I've always been a pretty big Karl Urban fan, as much as one can be a Karl Urban fan. I loved Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and Eomer was a big part of that. My fantasy baseball team was named the Riders of Rohan for like, fifteen years.

So it's a bit surprising that it took this long for me to get around to watching this movie. It's a fairly straightforward action movie, where the no-nonsense Judge Dredd takes a rookie (Judge Anderson) under his wing for assessment. Things go sideways (of course; it's a movie), and Dredd and Anderson have to fight their way through wave after wave of murderous psychopaths. Lena Headey plays the primary criminal antagonist in the movie, and Wood Harris (another all-time favorite actor of mine) serves in a supporting role.

I enjoyed the movie a lot! I think one of the things I appreciated is that, while the setting is very interesting and potentially offers a robust world to explore, this movie knows what its mission is: to deliver big time action and highlight the titular character. Urban plays Dredd extremely well, as a by-the-book enforcer who also (at least to some extent) understands the complexities of enforcing law and dispensing justice in a near-futuristic dilapidated quasi-war zone. He's not sympathetic to those who break the law exactly, but takes a fairly pragmatic approach to dealing with nonviolent criminals.

I found the story believable enough, in a John Wick sort of way. The violence was great, the gore was appropriate, and Dredd's rapport with Anderson was humorous and endearing in a mentor/mentee sort of way. I never saw the original Judge Dredd with Sylvester Stallone, and apparently according to reviews across society, that's okay. This might be a situation where I don't go back and try to fill the gap in my movie-going history. I'm not saying that I for sure won't do it; you never know what might drop on TNT sometime when I'm stuck without internet. But I'm much more interested in a potential future Dredd project than going backward to the widely panned original.

I watched this movie on Prime Video. Where can you watch it today? Click here to go to JustWatch and find out!

One Good Point (Show) - The Queen's Gambit

You know, I don't know if this is a more recent development, but it seems like there are a lot more female protagonists on shows these days, specifically non-sitcoms. House of the Dragon, Arcane, Ahsoka, countless others. I guess maybe it's just a matter of how many non-sitcoms I watch, which was admittedly precious few when I was in middle school or high school, but still, this does seem like a golden age of women when it comes to entertainment content.

Anyways, Queen's Gambit is another female-led show, starring Anya Taylor-Joy. Her character Beth is orphaned at a young age and finds herself in an orphanage, where she meets a janitor who (reluctantly) teaches her to play chess. The show then follows her as she grows up, endures hardships, and becomes a prolific chess player.

None of this probably sounds particularly interesting, but the story and the characters make it a very enjoyable watch. The child version of Beth is the right balance of damaged and sharp, and I'm a sucker for any sort of wayward souls' home dynamic, a la Girl, Interrupted.

Taylor-Joy's Beth meanwhile is supremely watchable. She's funny, scathing, and complicated, and the way she interacts in a male-dominant world is incredibly compelling. The soundtrack kicks ass, the supporting characters are great, and the pacing in particular is fantastic. I never felt like I was lingering in any one spot for too long; even in the pauses during chess matches, the tension and the little details of the moment keep you in rapt attention.

It's a sports story in every sense, with the troubled origin story, unexpected mentor, nemeses turned allies, and naturally, a final clash against the Soviets. It's a great story from front to back, and I strongly recommend The Queen's Gambit, to any of the eleven people who still haven't seen it.

It's a Netflix original series, so you know where you're gonna be able to watch it, but nevertheless, here's a link to JustWatch, my favorite site for finding out where you can stream various content!

One Good Point (Movie) - The Flash

SPOILERS FOR THIS MOVIE BELOW. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE THIS EXACT MOVIE SPOILED FOR YOU, DO NOT READ FURTHER.

So I listen to a few podcasts that talk about movies and shows, most of them done by The Ringer. I enjoy the Midnight Boys, House of R, and The Big Picture. And basically everybody I listened to talk about The Flash was pretty quick to shut it down. There was a fair amount of anticipation for the movie, and almost everybody to a person was disappointed with the film. But, this was a solid reminder that not everybody likes or dislikes the same stuff.

Now don't get me wrong; there were some very big problems with the movie. The CGI ranged from decent to absolutely abysmal. I don't know what those things were that Barry was saving from the hospital nursery, but they were definitely not human babies. Some sort of gelatinous hypothetical human-slug hybrid, maybe. And the couple of "cameos" at the end of the film that were very plainly CGI inclusions were unnerving examples of the uncanny valley, and someone at some point ought to have put their foot down and stopped all that.

But that said, I actually enjoyed the film.

I'll be the first one to admit that I had big time nostalgia feels when we saw Michael Keaton's Batman on screen, and every needle drop of that old Batman theme song was effective. Sometimes I'm an easy target. But the adventure itself was also pretty decent, a classic superhero story of a hero becoming their own worst enemy. The movie didn't have a single over-arching villain, not exactly, but not every movie needs to follow the same exhausted formula. I liked the characters, liked the journey, and liked the destination.

I'm not sure if it was just the terrible CGI that turned everybody off to the movie, or if people were just predisposed to dislike the movie because of the many problematic encounters that Ezra Miller has had over the past few years, but I think The Flash was a solid film in the end. Certainly not the train wreck that I was led to believe it would be.

Click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can watch The Flash today!

One Good Point (Movie) - Pitch Perfect 2

NOTE: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR PITCH PERFECT 2.

I really enjoyed Pitch Perfect. I like music, I like cover songs, and I like sports movies (and don't fool yourself; Pitch Perfect is essentially Hoosiers). Plus Anna Kendrick is both incredibly talented and eminently watchable. So, it follows that I would watch Pitch Perfect 2 at some point, if the opportunity presented itself.

And so it did.

Pitch Perfect 2 hits a lot of the same notes (haha, pun!) as the original, with a compelling primary story of teamwork and achievement, and secondary stories about coming-of-age, perception-vs-reality, and personal priorities versus expectations. It's all well-written and well-acted, with the trademark humor and needle drops that made the first one such a hit.

One thing I do sometimes is think about what sort of changes I might've made to a show or movie. I'm not sure if it's such a great habit all the time, but someday maybe I'll put forward all the changes I would've made to the last two seasons of Game of Thrones, and you can tell me if it wouldn't have vastly improved that monstrosity.

Anywho, here comes the spoilers!

I thought the ending of Pitch Perfect 2 was good, but in kind of a cheesy, classic sports movie (see?) way.  The Bellas come out victorious as world champions, with a rousing rendition of an original composition, bringing a number of past Bellas onto the stage for the end of the performance. Lovely.

But, what if...

The Bellas finish with the highest score, and the crowd delights in the performance's combination of originality and nostalgia. However, because the performance included singers who are not current members of the Bellas, the team is disqualified, and the Bellas must disband for good. It puts a tight bow on this chapter of these characters, and also gives immediate prominence to Hailee Steinfeld's character Emily as the only? underclassman, and the new steward of the Bellas' acapella legacy. On top of all of that, it's not what people would expect from a sports movie (I'm committed to this bit), so it would be a fun twist.

Anyways, if you've read all the way down here, one more note. There's a scene where Chloe and Beca are laying super close to each other late at night, and Chloe tells Beca she wishes she had done more experimenting in college. There's a whole other Pitch Perfect movie that I would watch the hell out of that starts right at that moment.

Ahem. Anywho, fun movie!

If you'd like to watch Pitch Perfect 2 right now, click here to see where you can stream it on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Movie) - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I'd heard years and years ago about how this movie was a calamity, and the specific reason that most people brought up was the lack of realism about the ability to survive a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. While I can't speak to whether or not that's particularly realistic, I also am not too sure about the realism of the Ark of the Covenant burning away the bodies of the unworthy, or the realism of a hundreds of years old Templar protecting the Holy Grail.

My point being, I don't come to Indiana Jones for aggressive realism. I come here for fun, and that's the most important meter for measuring the quality of this particular movie. So, was Crystal Skull fun?

Yes!

While I'm not particularly sold on Shia LaBeouf as "the next generation of Indiana Jones," the movie overall is a success. It's got the same classic framework of pursuing some legendary treasure, assorted unsavory foreign authoritarian regimes (Soviet-era Russians this time) pursuing the treasure with less discretion, and investigating a combination of urban and wilderness environs in pursuit of clues.

For me, the first 40-45 minutes of the movie were absolutely top-notch Indiana Jones content. Harrison Ford's performance is pristine, purely Indy, and every supporting character, scene setting, and line of dialogue hits just exactly right. LaBeouf's character falls a little flat for me personally (in a Marty McFly sort of way), but not so much that it makes the movie unwatchable. And the film has the right number of callbacks to give you some nostalgia bumps without falling completely into "he said the thing!" territory.

Watching the movie also reminded me just how much fun a good Indiana Jones story can be. So in the time since I watched it, I've also re-watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I'm fully ready to tune in for Dial of Destiny soon. Who knows, maybe that'll be one of the additional movie reviews I'll write up before the end of the year?

If you've been waiting around forever like I have but want to finally watch Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, click here to go to JustWatch and find out where you can stream it today!

One Good Point (Show) - Twisted Metal, Season 1

I know, I know, I said I was moving back to movies, and now this is two more shows in a row. Well guess what, you sons of bitches, there's more shows coming, too. Just buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Speaking of riding, Twisted Metal! I was excited to see the existence of the series; my brother and I played the hell out of Twisted Metal: Black, and before that, I played a fair amount of Twisted Metal 2 and 3 back in the PlayStation days. I'm not much of a racing game guy, and honestly Super Mario Kart never really did much for me, but a demolition derby? Yeah, I can get into that.

As I mentioned when talking about Mad Max, we've got another post-apocalyptic wasteland full of ridiculous, over-the-top characters who have sort of a casual relationship with right, wrong, life, and death. And honestly, during the first two episodes, I wasn't sure if the show was going to hit. Even the first time we meet Sweettooth, perhaps the essential character from the games, he strikes as a little outlandish for outlandishness' sake.

But somewhere around episode 3 or 4, I realized that the show had hit its stride. It finds a good balance of levity, violence, sexuality, and heroism between a wide variety of characters. You find yourself appreciating and rooting for not just a single protagonist (or two protagonists in this case), but a bunch of different folks, people who are trying to get by in this brutal world while still holding onto some semblance of their humanity. The action, the humor, and the character connections are all really compelling and highly watchable, and the cast is really well chosen.

The end of season one leads directly, aggressively into a season 2, which has been confirmed thankfully. I'm ecstatic to see the next season, and unlike a lot of stuff I've watched, this will be a show that I do watch right when it comes out. I can't wait for more murder-on-wheels with funny, sexy, insane people. What more could you want??

Twisted Metal was released by Peacock, so you'd better believe you can watch it on Peacock. Where else? Check JustWatch to find out!

One Good Point (show) - Harley Quinn, Seasons 1-4

Technically I started this show last year, but I didn't review it in my end-of-year stuff, so I'm reviewing the full series to date right here, right now. And I also just discovered today, as I wrapped up season 4, that there'll be a season 5 starting this November. Will I watch it on time? I think you can say with some certainty that I will not. But on the off chance that I do, I'll post my little review thingy right when it ends.

But for now, we talk about the content we've got!

Season 1 of Harley Quinn was an absolute tour de force. It was everything I hoped it would be, from the action and humor and subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) shit-talking of dumb people. There are shows that hit with too heavy a hammer when it comes to "woke" ideals, but somehow this show managed to be completely irreverent and confrontational in an unapologetic way, while utterly avoiding the cringy sort of content that bogs down some newer shows. The first season was legitimately one of the best seasons of television I've ever seen, animated or otherwise.

Season 2 was good, it draws on a lot of the same ideals, and continues to build the characters that it established in season 1. It doesn't quite hit on all cylinders in the same potent way, but still a very solid season.

Seasons 3 and especially 4 seem to have sort of lost their way a bit, though. By the time we got into the middle of season 3, it seemed like the show was more focused on trying to advance a spiderweb of storylines, and not as focused on being entertaining. The jokes feel a little more "sprinkled on top" rather than a natural part of the characters' interactions. I'm hoping that season 5 gives us some more of those clean, early-season interactions, but based on the cliffhanger from the end of season 4, I'm still expecting lots of story focus, so we'll see.

One last thing. I like Bane a lot, and he's got some awesome lines in this show, but his voice absolutely kills me. I get that it's an animated series and a little bit sillier than what you'd get in a live-action product like The Dark Knight Rises, but the voice actor does like a clownish impression of that Bane voice, and it's just a mess to me. Other people might like it, it wouldn't be the first time I was the only person who hated someone's voice (I'm looking at you, 2000's jam band O.A.R.), but I stand by my opinion.

As with a lot of these series, this is a show specifically created for a streaming service, so you're almost certainly going to see Harley Quinn on Max and nowhere else. But for all you completionists out there, here's yet another link to the show's page on JustWatch, still one of my favorite sites for finding where to watch movies across my many streaming services.

One Good Point (Movie) - Mad Max: Fury Road

Okay, back to movies!

This is another of those "modern classics," the movies that everybody talks about, that pierced popular culture and that gets referenced nonstop, with memes and references and nostalgia. And now I'm finally caught up! Over the course of 2 hours, I "got" like seven hundred jokes from the past ten years. Most of them were about "bait," but still, worth it.

So how was this as a movie, outside of memes? It was pretty good! The characters were eccentric, entertaining, and over-the-top violent, basically exactly what you would expect out of post-apocalyptic characters these days. I've played enough Borderlands to know that in general, human life is minimally valued, and explosives are the name of the game. I enjoy Tom Hardy a lot just as an actor, and he did a great job of being kind of on the edge of sanity for most of the movie, although sometimes his maddened mind settled almost too much, enough to form calm, coherent thoughts, but again, in the wastelands, you expect people to be a little bit nuts...or a lot nuts.

One thing that didn't work quite as well for me were the moments where they seemed to speed up the action slightly, accentuating the frantic-ness but in an unnatural way. I found those spots a little bit jarring, and they took me out of the fiction for a brief period. Ultimately they weren't enough to fully detract from the movie experience, but it's a little ding for me.

The prequel Furiosa came out this year, and Max is constantly shoving it in my face as a recommended movie to watch, so it's possible I'll crank that up before the end of the year. Anya Taylor-Joy is supremely watchable, and I'll watch most Marvel alumnus in stuff, so the inclusion of Chris Hemsworth is a positive as well. We'll see! The queue remains... massive.

To find out where you can watch Mad Max: Fury Road these days, click here to go check out its entry on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Show) - Gen V, Season 1

Remember all those middling comments about season 4 of The Boys, how it was a little much sometimes, and the various stories felt like they weren't really tied together, and the characters felt incomplete? Yeah, so Gen V isn't like that at all.

Gen V fucking rocks.

I actually did watch Gen V before I started season 4 of The Boys, which was mildly important. Gen V introduces a couple of small-time characters that show up in The Boys, and while you don't really need to know the full extent of their backstory, it does help to give some explanation as to why these two random attractive super-powered people showed up here, what their powers are, and why they would side with Homelander in all of this. But that's not what makes Gen V worth watching.

Gen V takes place largely at the Godolkin University School of Crimefighting, a perhaps overly self-described college setting where aspiring young heroes try to prove their mettle and become fully established "heroes" (as much as anyone in the mainstream becomes a hero in the world of The Boys). The protagonist is a young woman named Marie Moreau, who has the power to control blood, and who has a predictably horrifying backstory. But admirably, from this trauma comes a desire to do good in the world, something that's not so easy to come by in the world of The Boys, and something that sets her against some powerful forces.

While Gen V does a good job of creating questions about every character's... well, character, those questions make the heroism of the protagonists even more impressive. There are the customary betrayals and turns, and some of the worst folks at the beginning of the show end up as some of the folks you're rooting for at the end, but it all feels so naturally written that these characters do exactly what you believe they would do. One problem a lot of shows have is that people do things that make no sense. A betrayal happens because it's "entertaining," but when a betrayal isn't earned, it just feels like a way to get a cheap, short-term pop. It's the difference between season 3 of Game of Thrones and season 7 of Game of Thrones, full characters versus fragments. Gen V has full characters.

The show isn't perfect, as there are a few characters who feel kind of flat, too flat for The Boys universe. But then you get a scene like the one where Sam attempts to evade capture from a military response team, and you know this production team knows exactly what they're doing. I won't describe it any further than that, to avoid any sort of spoilers, but if you've seen the show, you know the scene I'm talking about. It's just perfect.

I'm looking forward to the second season. The writing for these characters is I think at least as strong as any season of The Boys, and I'm hopeful that a second season can keep up that prolific performance.

Click here to see where you can watch Amazon's Gen V! (Spoiler alert: It's gonna be on Amazon Prime Video)

One final tragic note: Chance Perdomo, who portrayed Andre Anderson, one of the main protagonists in the show, was killed in a motorcycle accident in March of 2024. The character won't be recast. I don't really have any other notes on that, I just felt like it would be weird for me to not mention it in this article.

One Good Point (Show) - Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Seasons 7 and 8

So for starters, I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed Brooklyn Nine-Nine. From the little previews and clips I saw online, the show looked too absurd for me to really enjoy; I like sitcoms as much as anybody, but there's a level of silliness that sometimes I find off-putting. And while 99 gets pretty silly here and there, it's actually a gentler sort of silliness than you might expect.

So then, seasons 7 and 8! Well, the show continues the same general format: diverse but slightly over-dramatized police work, occasional silliness, occasional heartfelt moments, and overall satisfying conclusions. Season 7 is pretty eventful, lots of character progression, people have babies, classic guest stars return, and it's all very entertaining and very much what you would expect.

Season 8, however, is a whollllle different animal. Season 8 debuted in 2021, after Covid, and more importantly for this particular show, after the George Floyd protests. Plenty of shows, especially sitcoms, could've just gone about their business and done another standard season of episodes, with the standard police-related hijinks that the first seven seasons offered. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine did something pretty daring. They acknowledged the importance of George Floyd's death and the aftermath, and the evolving public perception of police, and they did so in a way that was true to the show while still being pretty responsible.

Rosa leaves the police force to become a private investigator, specifically focusing on improper police behavior. Jake wrestles with the classic concept of being "one of the good ones," and is confronted with his own bad behavior, even while doing "good things." The series hits on the ideas of ally-ship, mortality, identity, and (as all good final seasons ought to do) turning the page on a part of your life.

There are a ton of emotional moments in the final season, and the two-part series finale is saturated with them (possibly over-saturated with them, but that's how it goes with TV). The jokes are good, but I found the social commentary to be a refreshing way to buttress the final season. Sometimes at the end of a run, a show can get too attached to old jokes, tropes, repeat guest stars, and overall less creative content. Brooklyn Nine-Nine stayed compelling to the end, in different ways perhaps, but compelling to the end.

And R.I.P. Andre Braugher. Holt was the best character on the show.

You can click here to find out where you can watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine right now on JustWatch!

One Good Point (Show) - The Boys, Season 4

ALERT: This review has some major SPOILERS. Usually I try to avoid them, but this show in particular feels like it needs some specifics. So, you have been warned!

If you know me (and if you're reading this, chances are you do; I don't get a lot of widespread appeal over here), you know that there are things about The Boys that aren't going to hit quite right for me. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate violence and gore, and brutality and villainy, and sexuality from all angles. 

But The Boys has a habit of taking those sorts to the extreme, sometimes to the point where you wonder, is this a thing that advances the show at all? Or is this just to give people something to talk about the next time they see each other? A certain urethral scene from a previous season comes to mind when I bring up this point.

This season of The Boys was no different in that regard; there were multiple extended scenes in multiple episodes that just felt unnecessarily crass, even if you forego my own general lack of appetite for such content. The scene with Hughie impersonating Webweaver and getting himself into a sexual abuse scene with Tek Knight went on way too long, with way too little story relevance, and way too many punchlines. And then the entire episode at the farm felt like someone's personal fan-fiction idea given way too much air.

But despite these (in my opinion) missteps, The Boys has historically been a show that has been able to appeal to a broad group of fans, myself included. Some fans enjoy watching superpowered beings blow each other up (or just blow each other), some fans like the modern pop culture references, and most fans enjoy the wild adventures, dangerous heroics, and compelling, three-dimensional characters engaged in four-dimensional storylines. This season, however, failed to deliver on that last key component.

The characters this season felt almost dumbed down, and not just to make Sister Sage look good. Each member of The Boys felt like their story had gotten a little less interesting, and pieces of the story dragged so much from episode to episode. Frenchie spent like four full episodes agonizing about having murdered his new lover's family. Then he goes to the police to admit his crimes, goes to jail, and then... is released. And that's kind of the end of it. Like, what? Why did we spend so much time with Frenchie's agony over that situation to have it just brushed aside in the end?

I'm fine with the things that happened at the end of the season (Victoria Neuman's demise, Butcher's turn, Sage's reveal), but it felt like half of the characters could've been left out of the season, or (preferably) given storylines that had more relevance to everything else. The characters felt much more like they were having individual stories this season, instead of the interweaving of numerous stories into a single, cohesive narrative.

The acting was still spot-on, and Karl Urban remains a must-watch talent for the small or large screen. Ever since he took off his helmet in The Two Towers, I've been a big fan. That reminds me, gotta add Dredd to my list of movies to watch. It never ends.

The Boys has built up enough goodwill with me that I'm still excited to see the final season of the show. And I'm hopeful that the stories that felt less important or unresolved from this season will come to a head in that final season, and it'll all feel worth it. We shall see.

The Boys is an Amazon show, so you can see it on Prime Video. But if you'd like to add it to your JustWatch lists, or see if it might be available anywhere else, click here to have a look at its JustWatch entry!

One Good Point (Show) - Cowboy Bebop (Netflix)

This show started off with such tremendous promise. I'd seen a few episodes of the original anime series, and enjoyed it well enough, but not so much that it kept me engaged beyond those first few episodes. There's something about anime that seems to get in the way of my enjoyment, something about the visuals maybe. Regardless, the show didn't resonate with me.

However, somewhere in the first fifteen minutes of the live-action version of the show, I found myself completely enthralled with the whole... everything. John Cho as Spike Spiegel was great, equal parts brutal and pithy, and the explosive violence, reckless gunplay, and the intermittent clever quips made for a fun, outer space, wild west experience. Then when Daniella Pineda gets brought on board as Faye Valentine, I was riveted. The characters felt fun, dynamic, and unpredictable.

And then the show got wrapped up in trying to tell a story, and for me, it all fell apart.

The entire storyline involving Spike's history with organized crime just fell completely flat, and while there are a lot of reasons, I think one in particular is that that story didn't work in a ridiculous world. The story was too serious, too unsuited for this unserious world. We're talking about a world that smacks of Borderlands, with its over-the-top violence and outlandish characters. The brutal and utterly humorless tone of the Syndicate feels inappropriate for the show, and it's almost as if there are two completely different shows being made here at the same time.

The most prime example of that disjointed feeling is the character Vicious. We're supposed to hate him for his cruelty, and while he is cruel, and I do hate him, the two aren't really linked. The character is so uninterestingly written that it seems like the actor felt like he had to push the bombast to eleven, and then up, and up, and up again. But when you have a poorly written character and you crank them up, all you get is something even worse. It's like when I find a low-quality song on YouTube. I think that turning it up will make it sound better in my headphones, but all it does is amplify the flaws. Vicious is an incredibly flawed character, and ramping up the volume is just going to give you a headache.

I understand why the show wasn't renewed. I wouldn't have renewed it, not in its current form, with its existing storylines or the full cast. But there was a ton of potential here to do something fun and kooky and action-packed. I'm hearing that the Borderlands movie is a train wreck, so maybe this is just a really hard balance to nail. But somebody's gotta be able to do it. I mean Guardians of the Galaxy happened, right?

If you want to watch the Netflix Cowboy Bebop series, this is gonna blow your mind, but your best bet is to search for it on Netflix! But you can click here just to make sure.

For posterity, you can also click here to see where you might be able to watch the original Cowboy Bebop anime series as well!

One Good Point (Show) - Arcane

So, you've heard me talk about how animated shows and movies don't usually resonate for me. I had that same concern when I started Arcane, even though I generally like the idea of game worlds as a premise for a movie or show. I mean, Dungeons and Dragons was my movie of the year in 2023. But Arcane managed to completely overcome that predisposition against animated content. I absolutely loved this show.

The show was really well-constructed from top to bottom. The different sections of the city felt unique down to their bones, from an aesthetic standpoint of course, but also from the way that characters' behavior changed based on which "type" of people they were around. And you got a distinct difference in the characters as well: their mannerisms, their tone, the way they think about the world around them. And just in general, I love that steampunk magical type setting; it's my favorite type of magic/technology for D&D games, where yes, magic is a thing and it's a source of power, but people can use advanced technology to complement or combat magical prowess.

The first couple episodes focus on the experiences of a band of ragtag downtrodden youths from the undercity of Zaun, and their protective foster father figure, Vander, who is unsurprisingly the character with whom I identify with most: big guy, beard, heroic tendencies. He's not as funny as I am, but hey, we've all got our flaws.

But you can tell right away (even if you weren't paying attention to all the trailers or artwork) that the show centers around Vi and Jinx. And I've got to tell you, this relationship is executed in utterly pristine fashion. The way that this series shows the emotional dependence that Vi and Jinx feel for each other is so incredibly effective. This is one of those situations where sometimes animated series can fall short, but between the expertly crafted facial expressions and just the best voice acting I think I've ever heard, you feel every single moment between them. When things go sideways (that's not a spoiler, it's a TV show, things go wrong), the reactions of each of the characters is so... human. I felt tremendous empathy for Jinx in particular, but both characters are genuine, complex, and incredibly compelling.

Obviously, as you see me writing this now, I didn't watch the show when it was first released. It took me a couple years to come around to it, and this here, this is the onnnnnly situation where I'm okay with there being a longer delay between seasons of a TV show. The two years between House of the Dragon seasons? Fuck off. The like, nine years between seasons of Stranger Things? Get outta here. But this extra time we've had between season 1 and season 2 of Arcane has given me the time I apparently needed to actually watch the show.

And now I'm ready. Season 2 is scheduled to be released on November 2nd of this year. THIS YEAR. When that happens, I'll be watching the episodes immediately.

Can't. Freaking. Wait.

It's a Netflix show, so it's gonna be on Netflix, but just in case you're feeling weird and want to triple-check that, click here to go see the JustWatch entry for Arcane!

One Good Point (Show) - Blue Eye Samurai

So, basically everyone I ever talked to about Blue Eye Samurai was absolutely bananas for the show. "All-time great," "best show of the year," "award-worthy," etc. And...I thought it was good. I found it slow at times, and I'm not someone who's usually impressed by anything accomplished when it comes to animation, so the visuals were just fine, didn't add anything for me. It wasn't distracting at least, the animation quality; that's about as much as I usually hope for when it comes to animated shows/movies.

One of the things that bugged me on several occasions was the number of times that our protagonist Mizu got stabbed. It reminded me of the Punisher series on Netflix, where Frank Castle got stabbed, shot, mauled, hit by a car, blown up, a thousand different potentially fatal injuries, and he just kept going. If you want me to believe in the danger that this character is facing, you can't fake-kill them over and over. By the end of the first season, I was nigh convinced I was watching a superhero show, and not an historical fiction.

I also didn't love how the villains were sooooooo evil. Part of what we kept getting told by the narrative was how this character, Mizu, was being consumed by their thirst for vengeance. We're asked to question them, is all this bloodshed worth it, just for the vengeance of...being born, I guess? But then when you show me that the person Mizu is hunting is the absolute most despicable, vile, heinous person ever to walk the face of the planet, that conversation becomes less compelling. Yes, revenge makes sense, this guy is an absolute monster.

Don't get me wrong. There were some fun characters, a lot of interesting interactions, and the story was engaging and mature, which I appreciated (not just for the boobs... but I mean, nothing wrong with a few boobs now and then). I just wasn't as wowed as everybody else. Good show, not all-time great show.

One Good Point (Show) - House of the Dragon, Season 2

It occurred to me at the end of the season 2 finale of House of the Dragon that I have this whole second tab on my list of reviews to do that I've been ignoring. The name of that second tab is "Shows." So, buckle up. The next few quick-hitter reviews will all be about various shows that I've watched (or at least finished) this year.

The first season of House of the Dragon was imperfect, but I enjoyed it a lot. I found one of the primary protagonists in particular super compelling, and it's not the one everyone else likes to pay attention to (Daemon), but it is the one you would think I would find surprisingly interesting. Viserys Targaryan, depending on your point of view, could be anywhere from a terrible king, a serviceable king, a fine king, or even an outstanding king. And in fact, over the course of his long reign, he at different times matched each of those distinctions.

Season two begins shortly after the death of King Viserys, as sides are beginning to be taken, and blood is beginning to be spilt. This season begins with a pair of attempted assassinations (one successful, the other not so much), and though the early losses don't involve characters with whom we've established much of a rapport, they do a fair job of rocking the boat. The middle of the season sees greater conflicts with greater consequences, including the biggest non-natural death of the series so far, the first large battlefield clash on Westeros, and the first "dance of dragons," a glorious clash of the massive, terrible creatures, with flame and blood and ruin following close behind.

If I have one gripe about the season, it's that the pacing left us with a finale that felt very incomplete. I found myself checking the timestamp a handful of times during the episode, wondering if there's enough time for some tremendous, season-clinching event to take place. Though I did still enjoy it (I'm a big enough fan of great conversations in elegant rooms), the episode was building and building and building, and as the end credits began, it felt frustrating to know that it'll be YEARS before we get to see the great battles that we anticipate just moments after the final scenes of the finale.

Overall, while I believe the finale was a misstep, I recall most of the season very fondly. The penultimate episode had some tremendous moments, and an incredible ending scene, and the dragon fights did not disappoint. I'm still very much looking forward to the last two seasons of the show; it's been solidified that the show will stop at four seasons, as the story will be told in its entirety by then. Although it's another two years away, I do look forward to next season, and the untold calamity that will almost certainly populate those episodes.

Stay tuned soon for a follow-up post that combines two of my favorite things: Game of Thrones and lists!

The answer is probably going to be "HBO / Max," but in case you want some visual confirmation of that, you can click here to check JustWatch and ask the question, "Where can I watch House of the Dragon today?"

One Good Point (Movie) - Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

So shortly before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness came out, all the talk in my friend group (and apparently in a number of other friend groups) was about this other multiverse movie. Then, after we all saw Doctor Strange, the chatter was all about how this other movie was the better multiverse movie. I resolved to see it... but of course, we don't rush into that sort of thing. So here we are, two years later, finally giving it a shot.

The premise is pretty conventional for a superhero-type movie: mysterious being threatens all of reality; dashing rebel seeks out a 'destined' savior who knows nothing of their fate; adventure ensues, with a revelation that the mysterious being has some connection to the savior; the culmination plays on that connection in an emotionally resonant way.

But really it's not about any of that. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (or EEAAO from now on) uses the idea of multiple versions of ourselves as a vehicle for examining where meaning comes from in our lives. The different lives of the various characters reflect various "levels" of achievement, failure, and connection, and the movie uses those reflections to not just consider all the possibilities that might've happened if one, two, or ten things had happened differently in our lives, but also the way we assess the value of our lives, based on how much of our imagined self-image's potential has been achieved.

I thought the movie was pretty good. The emotional beats of the story were a little drawn out and predictable, but the characters were compelling, and surprisingly realistic, in spite of the absurdity of so many of the situations they faced. My one main dissatisfaction was that the antagonist's mentality didn't resonate as well with me as I think it did for a lot of other people, but that's not terribly surprising. You're intended to feel some empathy for the character, and while I absolutely did feel that, I didn't feel any compulsion to forgive her behavior. I get why the main characters do; it just falls short for me.

Now, to answer the question brought up at the beginning of this review: Was EEAAO better than Doctor Strange 2?

Yeah. Although Zombie Strange was pretty rad.

Want to watch Everything, Everywhere, All at Once right now? Click here to check JustWatch and see where you can do that!