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Reviews
The Rookie: The Hammer (2024)
Tim Did Nothing Wrong
In the last episode's conclusion we had Tim and Lucy fighting about a conversation in which Lucy blamed him for all of her anxiety and negativity while also saying he undermined her. Tim was desperately trying to say and do the right thing for Lucy who was constantly freaking out about her test but at every turn was thwarted by Lucy. At the very end she blows up on him and he simply removes himself because what she's accusing him of is the opposite of everything he's tried to do for her today.
Flash forward to this episode where things are still on the rocks for these two until midway through the episode Tim sets up a polygraph for Lucy to grill him with. Things are going fine until she asks him if he's ok with her becoming a detective to which the machine lights up like a Christmas tree signaling that Tim is lying. There's many problems with this but one of the biggest being that Tim himself didn't even know that he was lying. Now I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure if the person in the machine doesn't know it's a lie that the polygraph won't detect it which is one reason why they're not some silver bullet truth teller that Hollywood likes to portray. Not only that but in no way was Tim doing the things she accused him of last episode and it's even mentioned "maybe you're projecting some because of your own issues Lucy?" But no apparently he's the problem even though it was very much self inflicted and not Tim's fault.
The reason the writers have done this is seemingly to set up some epiphany moment where Tim gets over the baggage he's carrying from Isabell. They weren't subtle and you're beaten over the head with this idea multiple times. I understand wanting to show and do this idea but the way it was approached was done very poorly. I really dislike how she went after him for nothing that he did when all he was doing was trying to support whatever path she chose. Instead we make it Tim's fault subconsciously in a major reach by the writers. The rest of the episode was good sans Celina going off on her own to save some drug mule and getting captured, but this Tim and Lucy plot felt egregious.
Hazbin Hotel (2019)
There's Better Out There
The concept of reforming evil people through song isn't new though maybe it just hasn't been animated before. Personally I don't even like the art style or color scheme of the show which if it's animated is already a major strike against you. The idea is fine but the execution was awful. Characters speak a mile a minute where every other word is a swear. If you've ever been a Call of Duty lobby with a 10 year old it's pretty much the same structure of dialogue here too. If you want a show about all kinds of different figures from heaven and hell struggling in the world and trying to grow I suggest you watch Lucifer instead. It's a genuinely good series that has plenty of bad characters to root for them to turn their lives around and get the happy ending they deserve. With a whopping 6 seasons (just skip the last half of season 6 though because it gets really weird and unnecessary) it's got plenty to chew through and it sports the dashing Tom Ellis.
DC Showcase: Constantine - The House of Mystery (2022)
Meh, it's whatever
Overall it's pretty average, not too good not too bad. It started strong and took a nosedive from there. The Constantine portion of this "film" has the perfect setup and bills itself as an epilogue to Apokalypse War with the same art and voice acting. Perfect! Sounds amazing and sign me up! City of Demons was great and the animation of the DCAU is lightyears better than what they're currently using. Then it takes the nosedive once that setup is done. John wakes up in the House of Mystery with all the good quality animation (and ideas) drained from him! Oh no! He opens a door to everyone he's ever loved in a room saying it's his birthday complete with his own kids he had with Zatana. Then everyone dies like always. John goes through this again and again...and again and again and again and; is this too much? Yeah it felt the same in this too. They show John in a hell loop of average proportions many many times to obviously pad out the episode. Eventually we see the demons he's sold his soul to come to collect and he uses them to break out. Only to come face to face with Specter who put him there in the first place. Wouldn't you know it this wasn't hell it was just made that by himself, whoops! But now the universe has come to collect and nobody can save him. The end. Yeah it wasn't satisfying to watch either, it didn't scratch the itch I had for more Constantine and more quality animation from the DCAU. It was a 25 minute episode of an anthology you didn't know was an anthology till you happened to catch the description after you clicked play. If you like Constantine and the movies he's featured in, you probably should skip this one. I don't have a problem with the themes presented in this but the execution of them was average to maybe even below average. Maybe someday they'll bring the live action show starring Matt Ryan back to a streaming platform and we can enjoy that again. Until then we'll just have to watch the other Constantine films again.
Quick rundown of the other shorts:
Kamandi: it was ok but not my thing. They were all trials to show you that even you too can exemplify the qualities of the lost Man of Steel. Animation was still pretty bad and uninteresting and it felt rushed.
The Losers: no relation to the live action film also on HBO that shares the same name, though equally bad. The animation was the worst of all and honestly so was the plot. I love dinosaurs and even that wasn't enough to save this short. The plot is about an unexplained machine ripping time open and the Chinese agent trying to get her hands on it with the help of the Losers. It's about as well written as that description so that's all you really need. Also a warning, the dog dies. It ends with more of a whimper than a bang by not even showing the other side of the rift.
Blue Beetle: I actually enjoy 50s style Batman and old Scooby Doo that this was clearly modeled after. It's cheesy but if that's what you're into it's fun but the shortest of them all. Plot is as basic as it needs to be for about a 15 minute episode but it gets the job done I guess. It's what honestly earned a point to take this from a 4 out of 10 to a 5 out of 10 for me.
The Orville: Twice in a Lifetime (2022)
Unnecessarily Cruel and Villainous
This episode was good and well done up to the end where the crew became so overly cruel to Gordon. The team discovers the secrets to time travel but of course this bleeding edge technological advancement goes horribly wrong. They get attacked by the Kaylon who want to steal the invention and use it to undo their losses and Gordon in his valiant attempt to go scuttle it so they can't gets zapped to the past. He predictably goes and finds the girl who's phone he was almost creepily obsessed with last season and starts a family with her. The crew find a way to follow him in time but whoops they didn't have enough gas to get all the way to his temporal coordinates and it's been 10 years for him here. He takes them to his home and shows them his family but they want to take him back because it's the law. Only problem is, as Gordon points out, that the Union has no idea how terrible and insufficient their temporal laws are. On paper they make sense but in practice they're agonizing to follow, which to his credit he tried to do for 3 years while waiting for his friends to find him. He gave up and moved on while assuming they'd never make it or died in the assault that sent him here.
While all this goes on the halfway insufferable Charlie and Isaac are forced together in order to retrieve the substance that would help them get home. This subplot isn't that interesting tbh and Charlie makes no actual growth as a character here so it just feels useless and lacking. This is only made worse once the end comes and they use the substance they extracted for cruel purposes.
Meanwhile LaMarr and Tala have sex. That's literally all that happens in their scene together other than she gives him a massage with her fingers but she's super strong so it's like a deep tissue massage. It's really out of place and feels weird looking back at the episode. What purpose did this serve?
Gordon tells his wife everything about himself and she's somehow fine with it. Ed and Kelly aren't happy Gordon won't return with him so they bring Tala as muscle to force him to go. He refuses even pulling his old Union weapon on them and threatening them with it though he won't kill them. He tells them he'll stun them and they'll never find him and his family again. So what do the crew do when asked by a desperate man to bring them all with him including the baby that's growing in his wife? Why they'll just go back to 2015 and take the Gordon who wants to go of course! Thereby erasing this timeline from ever existing and effectively murdering his 2 children! As Gordon points out before they leave that they're all about doing no harm through their temporal laws but are just fine with murdering the life he has here and his children for some script adherence to laws that can never be tested in practice. How can you effectively test your temporal laws when they force people to live the rest of their days in seclusion and never getting back into their right time most likely. This is the absolutely evil plan the "good" guys concoct and waste all their gathered substance for instead of getting back home. But wouldn't you know LaMarr discovers they don't need it to get back to the future so they're rewarded for their absolutely cruel and evil actions while rigidly adhering to laws while just the episode before doing everything they could to break other laws. So you'd think as punishment Ed, Kelly, and Tala would be haunted by their actions for the rest of their lives right? No of course not! They tell Gordon what they did who then comforts them and says they did the right thing! He says that he's glad they saved him from such a life, because it totally looked bad right audience?! This episode was overly cruel at the end and then makes the perpetrators feel good for it. They deserved none of that and should've left Gordon alone where he was.
Quantico (2015)
The Beautiful to Poorly Drawn Horse Meme
Like the title says have you ever seen the meme of an amazingly detailed and well drawn back half of a horse and then it continues to be basically a stick horse at the end of the drawing? That's basically this show in a nutshell.
Season 1: started off great and keeps you guessing up to the reveal. It even does well with the shift from when Alex is a student to when she loses at Grand Central and the fallout of the protagonist taking major losses. It even ends with a good setup of the next antagonist in Caleb's mom. Pretty good season I'd say a 7.5/10
Season 2: starts off well enough but completely scraps the plot of making Caleb's mom the villain for a blatant pro Hillary for president message. To the point I believe they even made his mom president which everyone was magically fine with. She even became the victim to the obvious Trump foil of the season in the present day plot. We reuse the past and present shifts from the first season but they don't work as well because they aren't as novel now. We make a pretty much whole new cast of suspects for a similarly set up crisis which fair enough can't use the same ones forever. Mostly it feels like it's trying to do season one again with a new cast and it just doesn't work as well here. It isn't terrible writing but it isn't the best either, I'd say 6/10 at best.
Season 3: it's just awful tbh. It feels like nobody wanted to make this season but they were forced to and it shows. The plot has no direction or overarching crime/crisis to solve. The cast is some new and some old faces and the crimes they do thwart don't feel fulfilling. Suddenly there's an Irish crime plot that takes the wheel and forces you to focus on it but it too is really badly done. Nothing is very well done and it's sad to watch because it shows the hubris of entertainment just forcing things to go on when they shouldn't. It's a 4/10 and I think that's generous after what I sat through to get to the end.
Leverage: Redemption (2021)
Not Even Close
When I heard this was getting a sequel I immediately rewatched the original with my girlfriend so we'd be ready for it. We loved the original and somehow it like many other shows were just so good during that time.
This is not that show nor is it even close to being as good as that show. They cut Nate and Hardison out of the show almost entirely and it's painfully apparent in every episode. The chemistry of the old crew is almost entirely lost during this show somehow and some terrible decisions are made for the team by the writers. At the end of the original series we saw Nate pass the torch of mastermind to Parker saying she is every bit capable of filling that role and retiring with his new fiancé.
This series starts with his sudden and unexpected death and the grieving widow Sophie (who we still aren't using her real name but that's a nitpick really). She gets together with the old crew and gets talked into doing a comeback tour of a new con. The setup feels mostly familiar if not a bit rushed but it's fine. They eventually run into the first of two new characters, this one played by Noah Wyle. He's enjoyable enough though he's written as the brand new kid on the block in terms of additions to the crew and skills. This was where their issues started and never got better.
Why bring a greenhorn into the fold of established con artists when he has no role he fits in at all? The idea was clearly to do the whole "teach a new generation of crew" but it's well established that Leverage went from a national (if not usually just local) crew of conmen to an international operation. We're told that they run 13 crews counting themselves around the globe that get involved in who knows what, all conveniently running through Eliot's food truck business. So if we've already trained a dozen teams of the new generation, why do we need Wyle or the second new character; Brianna.
Brianna is introduced to us as the new Hardison because she's his little sister and is as good as he is. She's also the attempt at getting any Gen Z viewers to easily relate to someone on the cast list and injects the "modernity" of current society into the show! Yeah nobody should be sold on her and she's just so insufferable. She's constantly whining about how things are ran or if she's not doing that she's being godly at hacking and somehow written like she's smarter and better than her brother. There's consistently times where she solves problems that she shouldn't really have any expertise on at all and it's very odd. She also consistently ruins plans because of her brashness or impatience. She's also of course the "activist" character here to preach to us all about her morals and ideology that nobody asked for. It wouldn't be a modern show without one of these right? The issues don't stop there though.
Noah Wyle does the best he can with what he's given in his role as Mr. Wilson, but in all honesty he's given way too little. His character further exemplified the main problem with this show: the hole Nate left. Whereas Brianna was a new hacker and meant to be her brother's "temporary" replacement and her role is clearly defined, Wyle's role is not. It's such a glaring issue that it hits you in the face after the first episode and is always there like a glowing neon sign. If you're going to make a sequel series at least make choices based on what the original left you, instead the show lacks a mastermind the entire season. The finale attempts to solidify the mastermind as Sophie not Parker (odd choice but sure I guess) but it's literally the last scene of the last episode. Multiple cons are done with different characters in this role. Sometimes it's supposedly Parker (though she really doesn't take the lead this season even though multiple cons it's mentioned "this is Parker's job this time"), sometimes it's Sophie, and sometimes it's one of the other crew. What it isn't is almost never Wyle. "Oh but he pulls in clients and gives info on former clients to the team that's integral to some jobs" you might say, which is true dear reader. But a mastermind that does not make, and he's explicitly written this way too. They had three choices for the mastermind of this show: Parker as was established, Sophie out of respect for Nate, Wyle to prove how good he is and that he deserves to be on the team but the show picks none of the above. He has no ties to or credentials from anyone on the team at all therefore he has the most to prove. Wyle does well in his role but feels set up for failure because of these choices made by the writers.
There's also something to be said about how overtly and boringly political this show is. The original had its moments of criticism of the system it operated in (even having an entire episode within the bureaucracy of the United States government) but it was very fair in how approach to me. It wasn't too in your face about what it wants you to believe and if you don't then what it wants to force on you. The show literally has an episode where they make Elon Musk into a LITERAL Nazi who has white nationalist thugs and commits a hate crime and environmentally poisons a gay couple. The show is as politically subtle as a baseball bat to the face from the thugs of the real world ideology it's preaching. I'm all for well done sociopolitical issues being highlighted in entertainment media; but the original series had grace, tact, nuance, and subtlety while this sequel has the equivalent of those in a political debate on Twitter.
One last major problem the show has is the blatant mischaracterization of the crew themselves. There's multiple times where Parker's "clumsiness" gets them into hot water. Parker, the master thief who also just happens to be clumsy and lets something fall onto a pressure sensitive floor she knew about. Or Parker the one who just runs around screaming weird things at points because of reasons I guess. Then there's the constant issue the team takes with Wyle about him having represented bad people in court. Sophie in particular is always keeping him on a razor's edge because of the fact someone they're conning is related to his former law firm. The only thing Wyle has to offer is intel from his crooked lawyer days which basically lands him the role of glorified secretary to bring in clients and you're going to make this a problem? How is he supposed to remember every client he's ever represented and recall that info on command the moment a job starts? And even if he could why does it matter to his continued work on the team? Everyone knows he did plenty of terrible things and represented the worst of the worst, why do you care so much? The show is basically subtitled after him and his search for redemption but there's 4 or 5 times where you almost toss him out? What? Eliot has murdered scores of innocent and guilty people but you're just fine with him on the team. You don't need a list of every person he's killed do you Sophie? The show has a good idea of handling this with a "Mr. Wilson redemption list" but even after that fact is revealed to the viewer we still do this forced conflict two or maybe even three more times. It's like they had no clue how to write any kind of conflict for the show itself or how to write the characters within it.
TLDR: the series has sequelitis and is such a bad representation of the torch the original passed on. From terrible new and modern characters and ideologies forced into it, to not properly writing the old characters, to the fact the show doesn't even feel like it has cons anymore; it's just average braindead TV all around. I'm massively heartbroken they've made such a bad product when the original was such top quality TV that handed them the world. It shouldn't have been made if it was going to be this bad, I guess I just need to watch more mid 00's TV I missed instead. Clearly it's the superior era of entertainment.
The Flash: Negative, Part One (2022)
End the Suffering Flash
This entire season has been nonsensical and without any focus or arc really at all. This episode here though is what has pushed me to say this show should've ended probably two seasons ago. I've loved this show for a long time but it's been getting worse and worse. Between the reveal that the forces we've been interacting with have been evil ones all along (someone get them evil goatees) and the true sacrifice is revealed the show hasn't had gas in the tank for a while. Forcing Barry to kill Iris is the biggest middle finger to the character and the Reverse Flash reveal was weird for pure shock value. I'm so done with Thawn and I've enjoyed most of the Wells we've had but I'm honestly done with them too. To bring him back into the fold as Thawn isn't very fair to the original actor who could've been given the role to play for a while. I think we all would've liked that as well instead of the terribly done skin peel effect that looked like a rubber Halloween mask. Flash, please, for the love of all of us don't continue. It breaks my heart to say it but it's true.