TV Review: Krypton (Season 1)

*This review contains minor spoilers*

Click here to watch the SPOILER review on YouTube

“Krypton” unevenly introduces us to a new Superman mythos. High production values and stories involving political intrigue and world-ending threats give the show a “Game of Thrones” vibe with a sci-fi twist. But boring characters and mediocre execution keep the show from reaching its potential.

The weakest aspect of this series it the main characters. While the acting is fine, they just aren’t very compelling. The headliner, Seg-El, is fairly bland. There are no character traits that allow him to stand out. He’s not a great fighter or smooth talker. He’s just a reluctant hero that never stands out from the crowd. In fact, the strongest character is Jayna-Zod. Time-traveler Adam Strange is also a weak link. He’s the catalyst that gets the plot rolling, but does little to push along the narrative. He could’ve left the show after giving Seg Superman’s cape and then left without it hurting the show. The character of Kem seems like he’s going to be the show’s comic relief, but that doesn’t last much past the first few episodes. His main purposed becomes providing someplace the characters can hide when in trouble. She’s a badass warrior, that while duty-bound to Krypton, still shows pride and love for her daughter.

As far as the show’s villains go, it’s a mixed bag. Brainiac is suitably scary, but we’re given a pseudo-Brainiac for most of this season. It’s an interesting choice that doesn’t always work. The Vex’s aren’t too much more than the typical plotting political villains. They make a few attempts to flesh them out, but there’s nothing substantial about them. The secret villain revealed with the plot twist is pretty cool, but the tweak to his origin and the lack of what makes him truly a threat to Superman keeps him from feeling like the character we know and love to hate. Fortunately, his story gains some major traction in the final few episodes.

The plot has major pacing issues. The initial focus on Brainiac doesn’t seem to add up, and the plot twist that’s supposed to rectify that isn’t as strong as they think it is. The show goes for a heavily serialized format. Episodes tend to flow into the next, which makes individual episodes less memorable. And with only 10 episodes to work with, there’s a lack of urgency to keep things moving. Also, it becomes murky on who we should root for. On one end, you want the heroes to survive and save Krypton. On the other, history needs Brainiac to succeed to preserve the future. The show seems to be creating its own continuity that’s separate from any current Superman lore. So, like “Gotham,” it feels like they’re going to do their own thing and we won’t get the conclusion we expect in the end.

They seemed to have spent a lot of money making this series and it shows. The costumes and sets are elaborate, and the special effects are well done. Brainiac’s ship looks amazing. And so does Brainiac, for the most part. The plodding plot and uninteresting characters derail most of their efforts, but next season looks promising to push the limited narrative forward.

Season’s best episode: “The Phantom Zone” (Episode 10): A fairly strong climax, with a solid twist ending.
Season’s worst episode: “House of El” (Episode 2): Not a bad episode, but it starts to get bogged down with a lot of political mumbo jumbo that really doesn’t pay off later.

** out of *****

TV Review: The Flash (Season 4)

*This review contains some spoilers*

Click here for my SPOILER talk on YouTube

Season 4 of “The Flash” goes back to its lighter tone and silver age roots, but overdoes the hokeyness a bit too often. While they do wrap up the cliffhanger from last season quickly and fairly easily, having Kid Flash remaining the only Flash in town wasn’t all that compelling to last more than a few episodes. The plot gets going pretty quickly as Team Flash faces a villain that’s just too powerful to be stopped, at least until the plot decides to change course.

This season’s villain, Clifford DeVoe AKA The Thinker is The Flash’s toughest villain so far, and he’s one that can’t be defeated by speed. His hyper intelligence is written as almost omnipotence. He’s not just smart, he can calculate possibilities to the point that he appears to see the future. This tends to feel like a bit much at times as it implies there’s no way to defeat him because he’s already thought of everything. However, even though he’s thought of everything, he still never sees the critical mistakes that seal his doom. Neil Sandilands brings quirkiness and a bit of menace to the role. Unfortunately, there’s a long stretch where he inhabits other bodies, which means he’s played by various actors. The final form of The Thinker brings back Sandilands, and gives him a cockiness he didn’t have before. This is also the point where all his planning seems to fail him in the homestretch. Assisting him is his wife, Marlize, played by Kim Engelbrecht. Her scheming and manipulating in support of her husband makes her easy to hate. They do eventually make her sympathetic enough to root for her, even though Team Flash seems to forgive her pretty quickly.

Season 4 sees a much lighter in tone Barry Allen. While he still has his moments of depression, they’re not as prevalent as they were last season. Killer Frost/Caitlin Snow’s story arc takes an unexpected turn, but slowly becomes more entertaining. There’s a big loose thread with her origin that will have to wait till next season to be explained. The rest of the team doesn’t have much of interest happening to their characters. Most of new heroes and villains aren’t too memorable outside of their superpowers, and they’re all McGuffins that tie into the final arc of the season. The only major addition is Ralph Dibny, who just never quite worked for me. He’s overly silly, channeling he best Jim Carey impression. This is equally true of his stretchy superpowers that make cause him to come of like Carey in “The Mask.” When it comes time for Dibny to be serious, the acting is up for the challenge and he can be quite compelling.

There’s a lot that works in season 4. The character relationships are strong, and there’s some really nice teamwork. They also plant a few seeds throughout the episodes that don’t pay off till late, particularly with the slow introduction of the mystery speedster. On the down side, the show suffers from an overabundance of corniness at times, and there are too many predictable episodes and short-lived changes to status quo. The also introduce the concept of “Flashtime.” While the concept is pretty fun, it gives The Flash almost godlike speed. The fact that he can move that fast should make him unstoppable. But he’s still constantly too slow to keep the bad guys from getting away, or avoid getting knocked on his ass.

Season’s best episode: “Lose Yourself” (Episode 18): A strong emotional episode that sees the team’s biggest failure against The Thinker.
Season’s worst episode: “Mixed Signals” (Episode 2): Just too corny. Barry and Iris are more involved in couple’s therapy that saving the world.

**1/2 out of *****

Movie Review: Deadpool 2

Still funny and outrageous, “Deadpool 2” somehow manages to feel like the standard superhero adventure. This film doesn’t follow the path you would expect. Although we do get another opening sequence that leads to a flashback, the story takes a shocking turn early on. After that, we settle in for the jokes and fourth wall breaking the franchise does best. Most the jokes work and they have a lot of fun at the expense of everyone and everything. It takes a little while, but eventually the plot begins to become clear and we finally get to some fun action sequences. As usual, Ryan Reynolds owns the role, carrying both the comedy and some moving emotional moments. T.J. Miller, who provided much of the humor the first time around, doesn’t get as much time to let loose here. But, there are a lot of new characters that need servicing. Julian Dennison has a pivotal role, but his character is a bit all over the place and you’re not always sure how you should feel about him. While we only really just get a taste of Cable, Josh Brolin brings enough to the role to make you want to learn more. Domino, played by Zazie Beets, is the best new character. She has some fun action sequences and seems to be having fun in the role. Despite taking a strange route to get there, the film wraps things up nicely. While there is nothing after the main credits, there are several funny moments spread throughout the first part of the credits.

***1/2 out of *****

TV Review: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 5)

*This review contains minor spoilers*

Click here for my SPOILER review on YouTube

“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” season 5 is yet another strong season. While it didn’t progressively improve week after week like season 4 did, this season is a little more consistent with average episodes alternating with above average ones. Last season benefited from the three “pod” story arcs that took advantage of the various hiatuses, but the show is not as successful here with only the one break that forms two “pods.”

This season started off with a fantastic concept, as the team is not truly in space like we thought from the previous season’s cliffhanger, but instead they’re 70 years in the future on a destroyed Earth. While many people were excited that this turn of events would be a tie-in for “Avengers: Infinity War,” the blame for this destruction is instead placed anticlimactically on Quake. Also, the reason for the team being in the future is a bit murky. It seems like it would’ve been simpler to just tell them about the Earth’s destruction instead of them finding out from being in the future and only learning the vaguest clues onto what cracked the Earth in half and how they might stop it. (Although, there are some tantalizing clues that they’re doomed to fail once they return home.) Things begin to click once Fitz is reintroduced, both with his excellent flashback episode, and his undercover role as a mercenary. Unfortunately, the stakes seem a bit low as it’s hard to care about a future society’s wellbeing when the goal is to travel back in time and keep this from all happening. While Kasius and Sinara make quite the impression, most of the future characters are forgotten once the team returns to the present.

The second pod starts off a bit uneven, introducing new characters and bringing back old one. As it turns out, most of them are relatively inconsequential to the end of the season. This season overall featured a lot of callbacks to the first few seasons, and this is especially true of the show’s 100th episode. The concept of a “fear dimension” is one of the more clique sci-fi plot elements “Shield” has ever done, but it works well to celebrate how far the show has come. It’s a beautifully emotional episode, with both the happiest of moments and the saddest. The final leg of this journey ramps things up as the end of the world quickly approaches, and nothing the team does seems to make a difference. And, both the means of the Earth’s destruction, and the reason that the team seems destined to fail, comes out of left field but work extremely and also gives us one of the series’ greatest villains.

There are some strong character moments, especially in the second half of the season. And most of that revolves around Coulson, and his team’s love for him. In particular, May’s repressed romantic feeling for him, and also Quake’s father-daughter bond that allows Chloe Bennet to give some heart wrenching performances. The Fitz-Simmons relationship reaches some dramatic highs and lows, with both characters continuing to evolve more complexities. Agent May also has a separate arc that nicely takes advantage of her history and gives her a glimpse of the motherhood that she thought she would never have.

The fifth season of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” is above average overall, with great episodes balanced by good episodes. They do an amazing job of tying up multiple loose ends, and even including some of the events of “Avengers: Infinity War.” However, this causes the show to miss the mark in the season final when they ignore the most crucial aspect of the recent Avengers film, while using a bait and switch to lessen the impact of a gut punch moment. Overall, the strong character moments propel the series along, even when the plot loses its way, and the long-awaited villain they must face off with is surprisingly tragic.

Season’s best episode: “Orientation, part 1 ” (Episode 1): The new status quo, and the exhilaration the viewer feels while learning of what is going along while the team does, gives the season an exciting start and quickly set the high stakes.
Season’s worst episode: “Orientation, part 2” (Episode 2): The new future quickly loses its luster, and the reveal that it was Quake that destroyed the Earth and not Thanos or something more interesting is a letdown.

**** out of *****