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Star Trek: Lower Decks: Moist Vessel (2020)
Why is Mariner even in Starfleet?
It is hard to not have preconceptions of what a Star Trek show should be about. It's even harder to write comedy in these confines without stepping off the transporter pad.
There has been some great moments in past episodes, but in Moist Vessel we are repeatedly reminded on how out of place Mariner is. The comedy comes from her being the exact opposite of a good crewman and not respecting anything that makes a good Starfleet representative.
She's a Mary Sue. She can slack off, openly mock people, cause massive chaos and somehow always come out on top. It's annoying and makes you wonder what kind of recruits Starfleet academy is getting, let alone passing the extrance exams.
I do appreciate most of the other cast in the Lower Decks with their personal issues of being too stiff, worrying about being liked by others, or way too into engineering. Unfortunately, Captain Freeman is another horrible example of what a Starfleet character should not be. Having her daughter serving under her and laying out a personal vendetta to create the central motivation of the show feels out of place and it's wearing thin.
There are some shows, comedy or not, that you can repeat watch and get even more from them. Sadly, this is not one of those episodes.
Star Trek: Lower Decks: Second Contact (2020)
Make it fun
As a Star Trek fan, this is one tough show to rate!
Think of it as fast, fun and more fast. Everything in the show moves at warp 9 with very little time to soak into any scene or dialog. This is very different from the typical bridge life of commanding officers and their more focused, deeper motivations and actions to obstacles in the usual fashion.
The gags ARE fun and most importantly, they fit the Star Trek Universe rather nicely. For instance, we all know that one guy, or maybe it's you, that would instantly start swinging a Klingon Bat'leth screaming about blood wine and honor. Which, in reality, would of course lead to a visit to sick bay and a lot of explaining to do.
Or how any engineer worth their tricorder would never pass up a chance to discuss tetryon-emissions or running diagnostics on faulty mechanical equipment, regardless of what might be going on around them.
I feel the lower deck team works well and I can see them thriving off of each other into fun situations into the rest of the season.
It was a fun watch, but sadly I'm going to have to be in the mood to watch this show again. The pace is just a bit much for me and I think anyone who is used to typical Star Trek TV. I can't see newcomers to Star Trek getting into this with so many references and clichés being turned on their heads, but there is some potential for fans who have always wondered about the under achievers that actually keep the ship running.
Also, love that credits font!
The Last of Us: Part II (2020)
The Last of a Good Thing, A Meaningless Story of Revenge
I didn't get excited to watch, "Thanos: The Battle for Perfect Balance," even if I don't totally disagree with the titan's ideals. I went to watch The Avengers, who are not perfect in so many ways, but I've been with them for over a decade and they have noble ideals; so they have become my family.
I beat the first TLoU three times and spent hundreds of hours in Factions, and thus, Joel and Ellie are my family. Being forced by Neil Druckman and Halley Gross to play half the game as the only person with a steady supply of steroids in the apocalypse, Abby, is just beyond infuriating. Somehow I'm suppose to sympathize with one mass murderer over another. Except, one spent years planning and carrying out revenge in the most barbaric of ways to show a truly sadistic mind.
This attempt to sympathize with a new character is completely forced and ill written. Abby is given all the best weapons, the coolest scenarios to fight through, and of course you get to play fetch and pet the dog. Then you have Ellie who has to kill multiple dogs so she can proceed through the story and even a closeup moment of stabbing Abby's four legged furry friend. The only logical next step would be to give Ellie an evil goatee and announce her evil plans for world puppy elimination.
Ellie's face is on the front cover of the game, not Abby. The collector's edition comes with a statue, of Ellie. The most expensive edition is even named, "Ellie Edition."
After they instill the evilness that is Ellie, they even try and pull all of her human qualities and force them back onto Abby nearly one for one.
Ellie has the Dinosaurs and Space museum with dad.
Abby the Aquarium and Zoo with dad.
Ellie deals with Jessie and Dina's love triangle,
Abby with Owen and Mel.
The comparison is so bland and artificial, in the second half of the game I was literally counting the wasted hours through Abby's journey wondering when I could actually get back to where I wanted to be, with my Jackson family. I finally just turned off the game when I was forced to attack Ellie to proceed with the story. It tried so hard to make me empathize with Abby's point of view, but once it forced the path to hurt my family, the game had crossed a line and was done.
Even away from the story, the clickers and human enemies have become so much easier to deal with in this sequel. In the first game shivs were precious because of their rarity, and alerting enemies was a challenge. Here, even on Hard, I can just work my way through almost any encounter with unlimited stealth takedowns and a bit of decent headshot aiming with very little fear of consequences. The only new clicker is just a bullet sponge with all the rest being identical to their previous version. Been there, done that.
On the plus side, the polish on the game's visual and physical mechanics is one of the absolute best examples of the PS4 generation. The programmers at Naughty Dog deserve much more praise than I could ever give. I just hope their talents are not wasted on another ridiculous story with a forced narrative next time. Yes, the story is ridiculous. It's trying to show you the horrible ramifications of revenge from a mass killer's mindset when at the end of it all, nothing fundamentally changed. No amount of guitar mini games is going to save that.
Locke & Key: Family Tree (2020)
Hard to recognize Kinsey in this episode
Overall, this has been a fun series so far and I am enjoying it. Then we get into this episode and Kinsey has transformed well beyond someone without fear, and into a teenage brat with malice for anyone who disagrees or crosses her.
What happened exactly?
Well, Kinsey is a shy teenage girl who has issues with her mother, but has never shown any aggressive or mean spirited actions. In a previous episode she removes her fear, which makes her more direct and an interesting turn of events.
Then she rips into her brother when he says to show restraint, he took advantage of one of the keys but the meaning of his words make sense, and then stupidly brings the music box they argue over to school and in front of Scot and practically the whole lunchroom begins to use it. She then even explains it to the boys around her how it works, letting Gabe repeatedly humiliate Eden.
You have a mysterious woman causing fires in your kitchen and kidnapping your younger brother and now she's just being a brat taking vengeance in public? Who the hell is this character? Even with the lack of fear, this isn't just brash, it is horribly irresponsible. I felt it did not match her at all, and immediately lowered my appreciation of the episode, and the show.
La casa de papel: 5 minutos antes (2020)
Super John McClane is here.
This season has been a little shaky, but this episode went feet first into the toilet and flushed itself. It's a stinker.
Gotta talk spoiler points.
First and foremost, we have a John McClane, better known as Gandia, in a panic room made specifically for the Governor of the bank. When someone is obviously hiding in that spot, the Governor would be the absolute first person I get to tell me where it is. Instead, The Professor's camera controls are taken offline so he is blind and everyone is put into a panic that our John McClane is going to come out of the air vents yipping and kayying.
So Gandia sets up this plan to throw a grenade into an elevator, which could be a decent scene, but miraculously this doesn't kill the two idiots talking about bare feet and their ex's. The gang rushes in to help, multiple people talk about Gandia being close by, but no one pays any attention and we get a shootout.
Not a regular shootout, we get one person in all black versus four red jumps suits with automatic weapons. The hallway is decimated with bullets but our little John McClane only gets shot in the bullet proof vest and MIRACULOUSLY suffers no injuries. Four people shooting at one person. Thousands of round of ammunition ... and he just walks away back into the Governor's office.
Two people follow him into the office and he's already gone. From McClane to world sneakiest ninja. Not only that, but in just mere seconds, he was able to enter the vent, cover it back up, and CRAWL across the floor into the restroom and find Narobi all by herself.
What a freaking pile of crap.
This whole sub plot with Gandia has been mediocre at best and this episode just sold it with the sound of the flushing toilet. I'll try to finish the rest of the season, but with writing like this, I am not in any hurry to see how the keep making it worse.
Captain Marvel (2019)
The MCU Movie We Don't Need
You can feel some talented people put quite a bit of effort into this movie, but you can't feel any lasting satisfaction.
This is our introduction to Captain Marvel, and we get a checklist of characteristics that feel inflated and generic. There is a story here that slowly unravels and tries to keep you guessing what the source of the movie's suspense comes from, but it delivers next to nothing about Marvel herself and why I would want to care about her.
What you do get in the end is a few hollow laughs typical of a big budget movie, some character origin stuff for Shield that doesn't give any new insight, some pretty good CGI that's a bit over the top sometimes, weak character links to other MCU movies, and Marvel herself becoming so ridiculously powerful I was rooting for the other side to take her down a notch so it could actually get interesting.
There was nothing to gain from this movie other than realizing how hard they tried to play up Marvel as this feisty rogue who should inspire you to believe in yourself. That's the problem, there's nothing to care about in Captain Marvel and this side step in the MCU added nothing but an annoying delay in the regularly scheduled destination we all really want to go to.