jc1201's Reviews

Elsbeth (2024– )

5/10

17 May 2024

Elsbeth is a show with a complete lack of subtlety. It's like Law and Order for morons. Like "Poker Face" (a much better show in all respects) the killer is given away in the cold open of every episode, so you always know whodunnit. Apparently the character of Elsbeth is also allowed to see this cold open as she ALWAYS knows who the killer is, immediately. Because she's, like, a wizard or something?

In "Poker Face" at least the hero's super power is somewhat explained... she can always tell when people are lying. This leads to some interesting setups because people lie for all kinds of reasons, they're not always the killer. In Elsbeth she just knows who the killer is and that's that. Why? Who cares! She just does.

None of the supporting cast is interesting in any way. All of their story arcs are pat and ham fisted. The chief's story comes closest to being interesting but it's like a kindergarten version of something from "The Wire".

Literally the only reason to watch this show is for Carrie Preston's performance as Elsbeth which is always delightful, but that's just not enough to hang an entire show on.

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John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in LA (2024)

8/10

It's Comedy Bang-Bang for 2024.

8 May 2024

If you like John Mulaney and you enjoyed Comedy Bang Bang this will be catnip for you.

Oh I guess 500 characters are required. OK. So it's setup like a talk show but the guests to show up randomly and don't really seem to understand why they are there or what's happening. The live show is cut with digital shorts that are frequently hilarious and sometimes just bizarre (Richard Kind tries to score acid? What?). John takes random calls on a big old fashioned phone that fits right in with the bizarre 70's porno set they're working with. These calls are just random people completely unscripted that are treated with deadly seriousness. Why they would do this is unclear.

It's hard to look away and hard not to laugh.

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Stargate: Atlantis: Enemy at the Gate (2009)

Season 5, Episode 20

5/10

An unfortunate ending to a fantastic series

30 November 2023

Warning: Spoilers

For a show with such great character chemistry, consistently good writing, and some of the most interesting sci-fi concepts for the time period this was not a fitting send off.

EVERYTHING is rushed to the point of silliness. As someone else mentioned, this should have been at least a four episode cycle - inventing the wormhole drive (has this EVER been mentioned before? Maybe once? It's the McGuffin required to get the whole city to earth instantly), the wraith building a super ship, stealing the ZPM's from the wraith to power Atlantis (it's finally at full power! Now we've got like, 1 minute to enjoy that!), and then finally launching Atlantis and chasing down the hive, coordinating with earth, etc. 3 episodes minimum, 4 ideally.

What we get is all of that crammed into ONE EPISODE with so many Stargate tropes trotted out it almost plays like a parody of a Stargate episode. A sorry goodbye to an excellent series.

From Wikipedia research it looks like they were banking on a movie that was permanently shelved. After that Joe Flanigan himself attempted to put together funding for another season (he must have really liked playing Jon!) but just when it was about to be green lit for an almost inconceivable "10 more seasons" MGM (the current owner) went bankrupt *sad horn sound*.

Maybe in a parallel universe we got another ten years of (say it in Todd's voice) "SHEPARD."

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Rick and Morty: That's Amorte (2023)

Season 7, Episode 4

7/10

Great episode, bit of a recycled plot

8 November 2023

This is by far the best episode of this season - the voice acting was on-point (IMO) - great to hear more Morty, and Rick continues to be solid but not perfect. It's a back to basics "Rick and Morty have zany adventures because Morty refused to not try to do the right thing" outing.

The spaghetti's origin premise was hilarious with a lot of great visual pay-off, but I found the ending (which was essentially identical to the The Ricklantis Mixup's "Simple Rick" ending) to be a little heavy handed and also, unfortunately, recycled.

Other than that this got me excited for next weeks' to see if they can continue the streak!

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The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)

7/10

Endings are tough

26 October 2023

The fact that Mike Flanagan has directed several Stephen King movies is apt, as his work is so quintessentially "King" in just about every way, and that's a good thing. The bad thing is that he also shares King's issues with editing, and sticking the landing. That's the truth with "House of Usher" as well.

I'd say if this was condensed into a 6-part series it would have been damn near perfect. As it stands the last two episodes are bloated and extremely "talky". There are about four different places where the story could have ended, credits rolled, and it would have been spectacular, but I was basically crawling the walls by the last 40 minutes desperate for resolution.

I will say that Flanagan's knack for framing a scene is almost unparalleled. There are some absolutely amazing set pieces in "Usher", some that I will likely not get out of my head for weeks. The peak of the rave scene, specifically, I'm not sure I'll ever forget.

All in all this is absolutely worth watching, but it's not an unmissable classic like "Midnight Mass".

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Rick and Morty: The Jerrick Trap (2023)

Season 7, Episode 2

8/10

A huge step up from last week

23 October 2023

I'm shocked that after so much vitriol and calamity levied at this show after Justin Roiland's ousting that they wouldn't have started this season with it's best foot forward, and last week's mid-to-poor outing had me VERY worried. If that was the best they could do now, I guess Rick and Morty's over, right?

WRONG, thankfully - this episode was a fantastic true to form sci fi tour de force that, aping Star Trek Voyager's abomination "Tuvix", maintains a level of hilarity and jokes per minute that rival excellent episodes from seasons of old. The two new voice actors bring their a-game to this (especially Rick, who's uniformly spot on) - if you transported this back four years and shoved it into season 4 there's no way I would have noticed the change.

Let's hope the rest of the season is more like "The Jerrick Trap", and light on poopy buttholes.

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Ms. Marvel (2022)

4/10

GREAT first episode, downhill from there.

10 July 2022

I had high hopes for this show after the absolutely incredible first episode. The art style, animation, incredible color and camera work and the sheer inventiveness of the combination hand-drawn scenery and real world antics come together in a gorgeous and exciting way. After that episode ended my immediate thought was "Wow, how are they going to top that??"

The answer is they don't. Like, not even close. The rest of the episodes in the series feel like they were put together by a completely different team with a totally different vision for the show. Gone is all of the interesting "Imagination meets reality" style, gone is all of the vibrancy and hyper kinetic pacing, gone is what I'd call the soul of the show. Instead it becomes a pretty generic origin story with an interesting look at Pakistani culture which almost makes up for the lackluster pacing (I had never even HEARD of "The partition" for instance, which is a pretty big freaking deal) and it was fascinating to learn more about that culture, but it's all at odds with the pacing of the story and as a result the show kind of drags to a halt by episode 3.

Not to mention it's pretty clear they blew the production budget on episode 1 because the effects just look..... bad. Her powers specifically look like something from the late 90's somebody would whip up on a video toaster (the 3D rendering tool of the time). Think all polygons and shinyness. Ugghhh.

Also the villian's motivation makes very little sense. I'd go into why but I don't want to hit the "spoilers" button.

Anyway, very disappointing after a strong start.

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Girls5eva (2021– )

9/10

Get your 30-rock / Kimmy Schmidt fix here!

29 June 2022

Clearly this show has the same writer's room as it's got that hyper-rapid insane jokes-per-minute thing that those two shows share and that makes future re-watches rewarding because you're pretty much guaranteed to have missed at least half of them.

Also - the girls are all super talented (especially Dawn), the songs are catchy as hell - there's not much to not like. I can guarantee the bad reviews here are from the folks don't like the fire hose of over-the-top surrealist pop-culture jokes being fired at you.

Renée Elise Goldsberry is doing a perfect "Jenna from 30-rock" impression in a lot of ways. It's sometimes jarring to be looking elsewhere and hear her voice and think "Jenna!" then turn around and see Renee. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, big thumbs up from me!

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Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

6/10

Suffers from one major flaw that I found too distracting to enjoy the film...

29 August 2020

Warning: Spoilers

The major dispute in the movie is moving 800 people from a PLANET because they want to mine the planet's radiation for medical use. Ummm.... that's 800 people, on an entire planet. Is this planet like, a mile around? In the wide shots it sure as hell looks like a normal sized planet... why not just... you know, leave them there?

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American Dad! (2005– )

10/10

One of those shows you can watch over and over...

5 June 2020

I never expected to fall in love with American Dad - for the first few years I watched it passively and enjoyed it, but somewhere around the 4th or 5th season I realized I was looking forward to it every week. Now I'm on my third watch-through of the entire 15 season series and I still can't get enough. Even the third time through little things continue to jump out and surprise me, which I can't say for most shows.

Even now somehow AD manages to walk the tight wire every week of managing to stay relevant, hilarious, unexpected and somehow FRESH even into it's 15th season. Roger the alien is easily in the running for the funniest character on TV, ever. At least in the top five. People should be throwing Emmys for "best voice actor" at Seth McFarlane wherever he goes for that performance alone. There are even a few episodes where Roger is doing impressions of the other family members, so it's Seth doing an impression of other Seth characters AS the character, which manages to be one of the most impressive vocal tricks I've heard.

Bottom line - it may take a while to warm up to, but once you're caught up in it's weird blend of irreverent, surrealist humor and furiously paced joke-per-minute dialogue you won't be able to get enough.

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The Greatest Showman (2017)

9/10

About that critic in this movie...

11 March 2020

There's a scene in this movie where the "theatre critic" confronts Barnum and claims his "circus" lacks intelligence and class, and Barnum's response is "Have you seriously forgotten how to have FUN at the theater? A theater critic who can't have fun at the theater is very sad."

...or something along those lines. You really can't get any more on the nose than that - the critics who are panning this movie seem to have that exact problem. Sure it's not the smartest movie in the world, but it's a hell of a ride with some amazing performances across the board, the choreography is absolutely spectacular and if you have a beating heart you'll be smiling all the way through. In an increasingly dark, cynical world this is an absolute gem.

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Mythic Quest (2020– )

7/10

Looking forward to the next season.

10 February 2020

Warning: Spoilers

Mythic Quest is very watchable, often funny, and a great start to something that could be truly amazing. Unfortunately it suffers from some pretty dramatic tonal shifts, a real identity crisis with what type of show it wants to be, and at times some pretty broad comedy that just doesn't land. It's trying to be a searing indictment of the gaming industry, a broad workplace comedy, a deep character drama, and a cerebral "community" style show all at the same time, and it never really works as a cohesive whole. Once they pick a lane or just figure out how to combine those elements less jarringly the show will be infinitely better.

Some things I loved: The idea that a billion dollar corporation is beholdent to the whims of a fourteen year old boy is hilarious, and unfortunately accurate. The "WE GOT 4 B-HOLES!!" line has to be one of the funniest things I've heard, like ever. The "community manager" character absolutely killed me, her unflappable quirky cheer juxtaposed with the overwhelming darkness of her job had me rolling. So many great lines there.

All of the primary cast members are fantastic. The psychotic assistant, the stressed out lead coder, the insufferable creative, the ineffective middle manager, the drunk head writer, everyone's great here. Casting is spot on.

Some nit-picks: The game itself looks terrible. I mean, just terrible. Like, pre-WoW era graphics. No one would play this. That definitely took me out of it. All of the made up video game names - couldn't they just have referenced old REAL games? Gaming nerds would EAT THAT UP.

This is supposed to be a billion dollar MMO and for the first 6 or 7 episodes the QA staff consists of TWO WOMEN IN A ROOM? What? Finally in a later episode somebody offhandedly mentions a whole QA floor but that clearly due to somebody pointing out how stupid that idea was. That whole relationship in particular felt shoehorned in and wasn't all that funny or interesting.

The whole "hacker" thread was especially insulting from the start. As a software developer and a fan of MMOs I can tell you that if an NPC suddenly went off the rails and started vomiting loot or shivving people it would just be a "we should probably fix that at some point" kind of thing it would be a freaking mad-house. Also the hacker turns out to be the only other character in the show we've heard of and it also happens to be the main character's son for some reason? So are all 14 year old streamers also master hackers? Ugggghhhhhhhh. That's just reprehensibly bad writing.

Over all a show with a lot of promise and a few mis-steps. I'm glad it got a Season 2 as it really has a chance to be great.

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Solitary (2006–2010)

10/10

Poor forgotten Solitary

30 June 2019

A friend of mine turned me on to this show when it debuted on the defunct Fox Reality Channel, and I can not thank him enough. The premise is fantastic and leads to some of the most interesting psychology I've ever seen on a reality show.

Basically by the end of these seasons the contestants are for the most part, nuts. They've been without sleep for days, they've been put under extreme mental and physical duress, and still implicitly asked to perform for the cameras. You can watch as they invent entire worlds and personas for their unseen competitors, develop elaborate ideas of betrayal and jealously completely whole-cloth, and just simply straight up lose it like a Season 4 contestant who decided the whole thing was in his head.

The combination of mental tests, "prisoners dilemma" style social experiments, and physical endurance rounds makes this show absolutely fascinating.

Also, EVERYONE should watch this show for Season 4 alone. The absolutely phenomenal transformation of one of the more timid pod-dwellars into an absolute fearsome contender was a wonder to behold, and primarily one of the most genuine human growth moments I've ever witnessed.

... oh and I almost forgot the "evil AI" Val who runs the show is freaking FUNNY.

Seriously, gang, give Solitary a try.

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The League: Rafi and Dirty Randy (2013)

Season 5, Episode 4

10/10

Don't listen to the 1-stars. I've never laughed so hard.

27 December 2018

This was one of my favorite things ever. It's not really an episode of "The League" which is why all of the 1-stars, as it features only Seth Rogan and Jason Mantzoukas in a zany side plot, but I don't know if I've ever laughed harder at anything. There are just so many fantastic one-liners, throw-away gags, and brilliant background antics - it's a comic cornucopia. OMG the birthday party alone was a masterpiece.

Don't miss this one!

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Wormwood (2017)

2/10

If you want just the facts in a much better format watch this instead.

31 December 2017

Got three episodes in then had to turn this snoozefest off... probably around the time the same "shaky cam gas mask dudes" and "purple filter spiders crawling around" vignettes were rolled out to fill another interminable 10 unnecessary minutes of what is, in reality, a very interesting 60 minute story dragged out for 6 freaking hours.

... and it's actually super interesting. Hope that helps someone else!

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