What are you watching?

[Stumpydave]

About to watch the Marvel's at our overpriced multiplex. For almost £40 it better be good (but I'll settle for better than Secret invasion).

 

[Fenris-77]

About to watch the Marvel's at our overpriced multiplex. For almost £40 it better be good (but I'll settle for better than Secret invasion).

Are you taking your whole house full of dwarves to the pictures then, Snow White? Or are tickets just that much?

 

[rumble]

OK, this was hilarious. Takes a lot to make me subscribe to YT channels these days, but this guy got me.
Also, I'm hungry now.

 

[Fenris-77]

So just a small thing. I'm still watching Killer and I noticed an interesting cut I don't remember seeing before. It's sort of like a passage of time cut where you have a fixed object (a car in the case) and the sun sets or whatever, but in this case it was done in a flash with the car remaining central to the shot. I'm no editing expert or anything but I hadn't seen it done like that before and it was well done.

Edit: the cut is at 50:23 or so if anyone wants to check it out.

 

[rumble]

So just a small thing. I'm still watching Killer and I noticed an interesting cut I don't remember seeing before. It's sort of like a passage of time cut where you have a fixed object (a car in the case) and the sun sets or whatever, but in this case it was done in a flash with the car remaining central to the shot. I'm no editing expert or anything but I hadn't seen it done like that before and it was well done.

Edit: the cut is at 50:23 or so if anyone wants to check it out.

Huh. Without looking, I think that was during "The Expert". I didn't think much of it at the time. But this is the sort of attention and creativity I found lacking during Blue Eye Samurai.

 

[Fenris-77]

Huh. Without looking, I think that was during "The Expert". I didn't think much of it at the time. But this is the sort of attention and creativity I found lacking during Blue Eye Samurai.

If you're talking about the parts of the film its right at the beginning of the The Brute.

 

[Stumpydave]

Are you taking your whole house full of dwarves to the pictures then, Snow White? Or are tickets just that much?

I think tickets are just that much. We've a local fleapit that charges a third of that but the projector is pants so any kind of night scene is just watching a black screen.

 

[chuckdee]

I'm about halfway through the net Netflix pic Killer with Michael Fassbender. So far so good.

Is it on Netflix already? Saw it in the theater and thought it was great on the big screen.

 

[urbwar]

I finished up the final season of Agents of Shield last night. I took some breaks in between, so I forgot a few things, but I liked it. I now need to watch Season 2 of Punisher to finish up all the Netflix/pre-Disney plus shows

I've also knocked out some more of The Gifted, so I'm around halfway to 2/3 through the second season.

 

[carpocratian]

I'm halfway through "The Fall of the House of Usher." So far it is pretty good.

 

[urbwar]

Since today is discount day at Regal Cinemas, I went and saw The Marvels in 3D. Between the ticket and the hot dog I bought (I used my points for a free drink and popcorn), I paid less than 11.50. More than worth it though. I think this was the best Marvel film (not counting the Spiderman films, given they're co-produced with Sony) since Thor: Ragnarock. Captain Marvel actually gets to have a personality in this movie, and I loved the fight choreography. I also like that this film has ties to the first one's storyline, much like Secret Invasion did (but from the Kree side of things, not the Skrulls, though some make an appearance), but done much better than Secret Invasion's story did.

It's too bad Disney pushed too much Marvel out in recent years, because the movie is bombing financially, and if any of the Phase four movies deserves to be a hit, this one is it (imho)

 

[TristramEvans]

MY PREACHER RANT

Gave up on Preacher season 4 four episodes in. I was just not enjoying it, and I knew it was only going to get worse, and I just have better ways to spend 8 hours. I've decided I'm going to get my sense of resolution by rereading the comics instead.

So, season 3 was fun. Not as good as the first time around, only because it lost that tension from the original viewing, but we got one of the best villains of the small screen, it perfectly translated that interestingly adversarial-while-familial dynamic with Jesse's foster brothers, it gave Tulip back a bit of her spunk from first season that season 2 was sorely missing, they gave Cassidy something to do (by expanding on the story from the Cassidy one-shot comic, and created new dynamics between the "heroes" and villains by constantly forcing everyone to team up with adversaries to deal with other adversaries.

Unfortunately, three is also the season where they completely destroyed the character of the Saint of Killers, who went from an unstoppable terrifying force of nature in the beginning to season 3 to a comedy duo with Arseface. Taken in isolation the relationship was amusing, but overall it was a detriment to the series as a whole. And by the end of the season, when you get the Bus ride to Hell that encounters Subway Sandwich Nazis, that for some reason suddenly have access to military equipment (if there was a justification besides "plot convenience" or " wouldn't it be funny if..." I didn't catch it), the whole thing descends into Monty Python territory.

I can't help but imagine how different the season would've been if they'd stuck closer to the comics. First off, if they moved the "Cassidy meets a traditional vampire" plot to Season 2, when they were all in New Orleans anyways, not only would that have given Cassidy something to actually do besides mope that season but it also covers the exact same themes as the evil vampire son arc, which was completely unnecessary and far less entertaining. Then, to isolate Jesse in Angelville while Cassidy gives into his worst impulses and holds Tulip hostage, would have driven up the tension of the season overall, maintaining that oppressive tone while the two characters go through parallel imprisonment arcs (and they could still even redeem the Tulip character by having her be the one to kill Cassidy rather than Jesse). Plus, if they sidelined Saint of Killers until the final season, you wouldn't have this ridiculous Arseface escapes Hell and then is brought back just to immediately escape again spinning wheels of a subplot, and Arseface could even be given his actual story from the comic where he's a satire of 90s pop culture (hell, they could have even updated it to make him an e-celeb. Millions tune into Arseface's Youtube Reaction Channel or Arseface going on 3 hour pretentious monologues about insignificant pop culture fads).

Satire is actually something I want to talk about in regards to the series as a whole, and why season 4 fell so flat on it's face. In an earlier post I compared the last season to Kevin Smith's Dogma, and I think that's apt as it really tried to lean in on the satire to carry (or at least justify) the nonsensicle plot, just as Dogma justified it's existence as a film as a parody of Catholicism. And like Dogma my criticism of Preacher is that the satire is actually really shallow and surface level, like it's done by someone who only knows the most basic Sunday School/Davey and Goliath version of Christian theology and history. It's fine as a background element, but when you ask it to carry the whole plot, well you end up with God basically being portrayed as Grumpy Gandalf, and possibly the most boring and banal version of Hell I've ever come across.

But more importantly that wasn't the satire of the comics, which were satirizing a generally unknown but growing group of pseudo-academics following labyrinthine leaps in logic to connect all these very interesting but stupid historical oddities (as exemplified in the infamous Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and an inversion of superheroes taking so much inspiration from Greek and Roman and Norse Mythology* by applying that to Christian mythology, in a way that was as surface level and hilariously irreverent as Xena: The Warrior Princess. I guess what I'm saying is that Ennis didn't try to provide an actual critique of Christianity, he just was taking the piss out of it to service a commentary on the pretentiousness and machismo that dominated superhero comics at the time. And of course this was all interwoven and in service to the primary theme, which wash the most overt exploration of masculinity in modern literature* that I'd encountered before Fight Club.

What I'm saying is that Preacher is tied very closely to the decade that it came out, and the adaptation went through a very high-profile development hell that landed us in a post Dan Brown world. OK, cards on the table, I think Dan Brown's writing is kinda crap and the movies were big budget turds and maybe Tom Hanks was feeling nostalgic about his seminal role in Mazes & Monsters, but the thing is the conspiracy was , in and of itself, a very entertaining mystery. I love HB, HG. Not because I believe a word of it, but because it is a great conspiracy story, in the vein of Focoult's Pendelum or The Illuminatus Trilogy. And Brown, when I say is a bad writer, I mean that he's on par with like those paperback political thrillers and action serials that became popular disposable entertainment at a time when TV hadn't figured out how to be "Good" on a regular basis yet. So, I can appreciate (or at least understand) the sort of "Doc Academia and the Adventure of the Holy Conspiracy" appeal. But the sad truth is, he's the one who is now forever associated with this great conspiracy story. The Preacher TV series couldn't rely on that to carry the series, and to their credit, they recognized that. So the Grail goes from a parody of something a very small group took very seriously to a Movie The Movie version of Dan Brown's conspirators.

I'm going to go on a tangent about Alan Moore here, feel free to skip. I view From Hell, as a literary exercise, as doing the same thing with the Stephen Knight Freemason Jack the Ripper conspiracy, and I always wonder if FH was in reaction to Preacher in some way. I don't recall Alan Moore ever mentioning that in the rather copious behind the scenes discussions and "making of" archives that got released. Let me preface by saying that From Hell was a masterpiece, possibly Moore's best work. However, it didn't have that same feeling of avant garde and fresh and rebellious literature* for the angsty 90's teen feeling as Preacher. And not just because Ennis went out of its way to slaughter a barnyard of Holy Cows in the most base and raw way possible (that was the point, see the Xena analogy). It's also because Alan Moore wasn't the first to jump on that band wagon. There was a popular Sherlock Holmes film "Murder By Decree" two decades prior that any Jack the Ripper fan had no doubt already seen (and probably been rather disappointed by). From Hell is a million miles better, laughably so, but it wasn't first.

Preacher was first, but not the first to reach the general public (reading comics was still not a mainstream activity for adults in that decade). The show had to be made acknowledging the media landscape where they are going to be viewed as a follower rather than innovator. It doesn't matter how much middle aged former Vertigo comics readers tut tut at clouds on Social Media saying "accccccccctually, Preacher did this first" (and then probably tries to talk to them about Books of Magic***).

So the TV series descends further into satire to justify "wacky ridiculous stuff", but the satire has no substance which serves to make it obvious the plot has no substance, and so by season 4 the situation becomes orobourean, and all they can do is try to distract from both with cool set pieces. There are very good setpieces in season 4. In episode 1 the attempt to break into the Grail compound that ends in an epic clifftop duel between Tulip and Featherstone. In episode 2 Tulip's sandstorm rollerderby was hilarious and inventive. Likewise Tulip's completely unnecessary fight in a hospital that maybe was the first time I felt like we got first season Tulip truly back in episode 3. But unfortunately unnecessary is the relative word here, brought starkly to my attention with the Jesse Custer Brothel fight scene. Everything cool that happened in the first four episodes was neither tied to nor advanced the actual plot in any way.

But that last one is why I decided to abandon my re-view. Our protagonist. The person who we're supposed to be empathizing with and caring about his goals enough to follow him through this story. The Preacher who was kinda an arrogant ass with the best of intentions in the first season, here has to be forced to save a child from a pedobear by an NPC, which he not only does reluctantly but ends up getting the child killed, with no repercussions besides the actor looking Very Concerned until the next joke walks in. This by the way, isn't even a digression from the main plot, but a bullshit secondary plot lifted from Close Encounters where Jesse decides he has to immediately go find a mountain he saw in a dream and he had to, for no discernable reason, leave Tulip in order to do this. And in the middle of this there is a really well done fight scene. Like maybe better than 95% of the fight scenes that I've seen in films over the years. But this isn't just unnecessary to the plot, it makes no sense when considering the plot, because at this point Jesse is using the Voice to get people off his back about smoking in an airport lobby. Saving that child would have been literally no harder than ordering at a McDonalds Drive Thru for Jesse, and he not only views it as an inconvenience, but he fucks it up in the worst way possible. Does it work as Black humour? Sure. Maybe a bit out of my personal comfort zone, but it's got the right combination of dark, shocking, and dumb. But to ask me to accept that as my PoV Hero out to save the world from the apocalypse? Well...

OK, I need to go on a tangent about tone. The first season of Preacher is a brilliant exercise in balancing tones. The first season is a bit of a thriller, a bit of a dark comedy, and a bit of a blasphemous over the top theological farce. And it works in large part because you have this living, breathing town and inhabitants that imbue the world with verisimilitude. I realize that the road-trip approach that we entered into season 2 on, the Quest narrative that was meant to drive the rest of the series, required abandoning that for a different approach, but then we are isolated in a New Orleans tenement disconnected from the wider worlds by the end as we get into the cowboy, Grail and vampire subplots, and the tonal balance is never aligned correctly again, except in a few isolated season 3 episodes.

Case in point Cassidy's redemption arc in season 4. I appreciate the attempt. They decided that Cassidy was going to be a "good(ish) guy" (at least relative to the main character), and keep him around for the finale. Fair enough. I don't object to the concept, the actor did a great job and the character was frequently very fun, sometimes the best of the leads. So to instead redeem him makes sense. A lesser series wouldn't have attempted it. But the execution just didn't work. First off, a vampire is imprisoned in a small cavelike prison cell with an angel. As far as conepts go, that one is just farting plot hooks and entertaining conversations left and right like a a kid running to the bathroom after winning a hot dog eating contest.

AND THEY DO NOTHING WITH IT.

The angel is mildly annoying and then sings a song before dropping a macguffin. And you could point at it and say it's just deliberately taking the piss out of that expectation, just like when Cassidy met a Dracula. But then they interject a super-serious harrowing and tragic origin story and goofy torture dialogue, and the whole foreskin joke that was barely humorous as a one-off but they tried to milk three episodes out of, and... well, the comedy doesn't work but it's too comedic to get me to care. Instead of doing one tone well, they do 3 tones in way that's mediocre at best.

You can try to make an audience laugh and care or laugh and not care, and both are fine approaches, but when you try for the first but end up with the second, it fails. By the finale when the show first aired I just didn't care and they couldn't just be funny because they had to wrap up the plot, but since the plot didn't matter, it just felt like nothing in the end mattered. It's the same problem a lot of comedy films run into in the third act, when they have to deal with the repercussions of a plot that only existed in the first place to service the comedy.

FINAL SERIES REVIEW

Should you watch Preacher if you haven't seen it? Only if you've read the comic. If you haven't, give yourself the superior experience the first time around.
The first season is great, the third season is pretty good, and the second season has highlights. There are some single episodes over the course of the serials that are like nothing you've seen before on the screen. But unfortunately, there is no jumping off point that provides an adequate sense of resolution before it completely jumps the shark (like season 4 of Dexter). The end gives you resolution, but not before eroding away any desire for it. If you can appreciate the journey not the destination, there are highs up there with the best of modern entertainment, but you'll have to decide for yourself if it's worth the lows. In the end, I recommend what I'm going to do - watch the first 3 seasons, and then get the resolution from reading the comic again.




*yes, I called a comic book literature - they can be, just like there can be multiple academy award winning period dramas and Call Girl of Cthulhu*** , which are both certainly films. And I also just don't care about that distinction as much as the folks that got really butthurt over an issue of Sandman getting a short story award, or the opposite, the Scott McCloud crowd that desperately wanted comics to be, I dunno, taken seriously by the Literati? To break out of the Pop Culture bubble? I dunno, I lived through the Collector's Craze, and just in general I'm pessimistic about popularity, whatever form it takes. If a person wasn't intelligent enough to see the richness of fodder for literary criticism (meaning evaluation more than critique) in comics like Preacher, The Sandman, or Watchmen because they weren't considered "the right format", then I don't think comics getting a status of legitimacy bestowed upon them is going to create an influx of people with worthwhile opinions on the subjects.**

**Yeah, that's a real film on Prime, and I watched it. I'll probably review it next, but if I don't let me say it is exactly what you're picturing. Total throwback to the sort of perv-comedy-horror dynamic typical in films before the world discovered that there was porn in the computers.

***OMG, I'm going to talk about Books of Magic. But Preacher is a comic book adaptation and this is relevant. You see the Books of Magic film/Netflix mini now/whatever is not only still in the development hell that Preacher just escaped, Harry Potter hit in while the series was still going. And so Books of Magic is suddenly in the same spot as the Preacher tv series regarding Dan Browns books & films, in relation to Harry Potter, and - well I'm not going to spoil one of the best endings in comicbook history (It is maybe the greatest Xanatos Plot executed, to the point where upon rereading the series, what originally felt meandering ended up feeling laser-focused) - but they actually acknowledge and make their own peace with the Harry Potter phenomena (whether you believe that Harry Potter blatantly ripped off Books of Magic or that they both were just manifestations of the same zietgiest I'll leave to you, but I appreciate that the comicbook authors didn't get malicious about it. Meanwhile Dan Brown felt like the elephant in the room whenever Preacher dipped into Grail lore.

 

[Afterburner]

MY PREACHER RANT

Gave up on Preacher season 4 four episodes in. I was just not enjoying it, and I knew it was only going to get worse, and I just have better ways to spend 8 hours. I've decided I'm going to get my sense of resolution by rereading the comics instead.

So, season 3 was fun. Not as good as the first time around, only because it lost that tension from the original viewing, but we got one of the best villains of the small screen, it perfectly translated that interestingly adversarial-while-familial dynamic with Jesse's foster brothers, it gave Tulip back a bit of her spunk from first season that season 2 was sorely missing, they gave Cassidy something to do (by expanding on the story from the Cassidy one-shot comic, and created new dynamics between the "heroes" and villains by constantly forcing everyone to team up with adversaries to deal with other adversaries.

Unfortunately, three is also the season where they completely destroyed the character of the Saint of Killers, who went from an unstoppable terrifying force of nature in the beginning to season 3 to a comedy duo with Arseface. Taken in isolation the relationship was amusing, but overall it was a detriment to the series as a whole. And by the end of the season, when you get the Bus ride to Hell that encounters Subway Sandwich Nazis, that for some reason suddenly have access to military equipment (if there was a justification besides "plot convenience" or " wouldn't it be funny if..." I didn't catch it), the whole thing descends into Monty Python territory.

I can't help but imagine how different the season would've been if they'd stuck closer to the comics. First off, if they moved the "Cassidy meets a traditional vampire" plot to Season 2, when they were all in New Orleans anyways, not only would that have given Cassidy something to actually do besides mope that season but it also covers the exact same themes as the evil vampire son arc, which was completely unnecessary and far less entertaining. Then, to isolate Jesse in Angelville while Cassidy gives into his worst impulses and holds Tulip hostage, would have driven up the tension of the season overall, maintaining that oppressive tone while the two characters go through parallel imprisonment arcs (and they could still even redeem the Tulip character by having her be the one to kill Cassidy rather than Jesse). Plus, if they sidelined Saint of Killers until the final season, you wouldn't have this ridiculous Arseface escapes Hell and then is brought back just to immediately escape again spinning wheels of a subplot, and Arseface could even be given his actual story from the comic where he's a satire of 90s pop culture (hell, they could have even updated it to make him an e-celeb. Millions tune into Arseface's Youtube Reaction Channel or Arseface going on 3 hour pretentious monologues about insignificant pop culture fads).

Satire is actually something I want to talk about in regards to the series as a whole, and why season 4 fell so flat on it's face. In an earlier post I compared the last season to Kevin Smith's Dogma, and I think that's apt as it really tried to lean in on the satire to carry (or at least justify) the nonsensicle plot, just as Dogma justified it's existence as a film as a parody of Catholicism. And like Dogma my criticism of Preacher is that the satire is actually really shallow and surface level, like it's done by someone who only knows the most basic Sunday School/Davey and Goliath version of Christian theology and history. It's fine as a background element, but when you ask it to carry the whole plot, well you end up with God basically being portrayed as Grumpy Gandalf, and possibly the most boring and banal version of Hell I've ever come across.

But more importantly that wasn't the satire of the comics, which were satirizing a generally unknown but growing group of pseudo-academics following labyrinthine leaps in logic to connect all these very interesting but stupid historical oddities (as exemplified in the infamous Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and an inversion of superheroes taking so much inspiration from Greek and Roman and Norse Mythology* by applying that to Christian mythology, in a way that was as surface level and hilariously irreverent as Xena: The Warrior Princess. I guess what I'm saying is that Ennis didn't try to provide an actual critique of Christianity, he just was taking the piss out of it to service a commentary on the pretentiousness and machismo that dominated superhero comics at the time. And of course this was all interwoven and in service to the primary theme, which wash the most overt exploration of masculinity in modern literature* that I'd encountered before Fight Club.

What I'm saying is that Preacher is tied very closely to the decade that it came out, and the adaptation went through a very high-profile development hell that landed us in a post Dan Brown world. OK, cards on the table, I think Dan Brown's writing is kinda crap and the movies were big budget turds and maybe Tom Hanks was feeling nostalgic about his seminal role in Mazes & Monsters, but the thing is the conspiracy was , in and of itself, a very entertaining mystery. I love HB, HG. Not because I believe a word of it, but because it is a great conspiracy story, in the vein of Focoult's Pendelum or The Illuminatus Trilogy. And Brown, when I say is a bad writer, I mean that he's on par with like those paperback political thrillers and action serials that became popular disposable entertainment at a time when TV hadn't figured out how to be "Good" on a regular basis yet. So, I can appreciate (or at least understand) the sort of "Doc Academia and the Adventure of the Holy Conspiracy" appeal. But the sad truth is, he's the one who is now forever associated with this great conspiracy story. The Preacher TV series couldn't rely on that to carry the series, and to their credit, they recognized that. So the Grail goes from a parody of something a very small group took very seriously to a Movie The Movie version of Dan Brown's conspirators.

I'm going to go on a tangent about Alan Moore here, feel free to skip. I view From Hell, as a literary exercise, as doing the same thing with the Stephen Knight Freemason Jack the Ripper conspiracy, and I always wonder if FH was in reaction to Preacher in some way. I don't recall Alan Moore ever mentioning that in the rather copious behind the scenes discussions and "making of" archives that got released. Let me preface by saying that From Hell was a masterpiece, possibly Moore's best work. However, it didn't have that same feeling of avant garde and fresh and rebellious literature* for the angsty 90's teen feeling as Preacher. And not just because Ennis went out of its way to slaughter a barnyard of Holy Cows in the most base and raw way possible (that was the point, see the Xena analogy). It's also because Alan Moore wasn't the first to jump on that band wagon. There was a popular Sherlock Holmes film "Murder By Decree" two decades prior that any Jack the Ripper fan had no doubt already seen (and probably been rather disappointed by). From Hell is a million miles better, laughably so, but it wasn't first.

Preacher was first, but not the first to reach the general public (reading comics was still not a mainstream activity for adults in that decade). The show had to be made acknowledging the media landscape where they are going to be viewed as a follower rather than innovator. It doesn't matter how much middle aged former Vertigo comics readers tut tut at clouds on Social Media saying "accccccccctually, Preacher did this first" (and then probably tries to talk to them about Books of Magic***).

So the TV series descends further into satire to justify "wacky ridiculous stuff", but the satire has no substance which serves to make it obvious the plot has no substance, and so by season 4 the situation becomes orobourean, and all they can do is try to distract from both with cool set pieces. There are very good setpieces in season 4. In episode 1 the attempt to break into the Grail compound that ends in an epic clifftop duel between Tulip and Featherstone. In episode 2 Tulip's sandstorm rollerderby was hilarious and inventive. Likewise Tulip's completely unnecessary fight in a hospital that maybe was the first time I felt like we got first season Tulip truly back in episode 3. But unfortunately unnecessary is the relative word here, brought starkly to my attention with the Jesse Custer Brothel fight scene. Everything cool that happened in the first four episodes was tied to or advanced the actual plot.

But that last one is why I decided to abandon my re-view. Our protagonist. The person who we're supposed to be empathizing with and caring about his goals enough to follow him through this story. The Preacher who was kinda an arrogant ass with the best of intentions in the first season, here has to be forced to save a child from a pedobear by an NPC, which he not only does reluctantly but ends up getting the child killed, with no repercussions besides the actor looking Very Concerned until the next joke walks in. This by the way, isn't even a digression from the main plot, but a bullshit secondary plot lifted from Close Encounters where Jesse decides he has to immediately go find a mountain he saw in a dream and he had to, for no discernable reason, leave Tulip in order to do this. And in the middle of this there is a really well done fight scene. Like maybe better than 95% of the fight scenes that I've seen in films over the years. But this isn't just unnecessary to the plot, it makes no sense when considering the plot, because at this point Jesse is using the Voice to get people off his back about smoking in an airport lobby. Saving that child would have been literally no harder than ordering at a McDonalds Drive Thru for Jesse, and he not only views it as an inconvenience, but he fucks it up in the worst way possible. Does it work as Black humour? Sure. Maybe a bit out of my personal comfort zone, but it's got the right combination of dark, shocking, and dumb. But to ask me to accept that as my PoV Hero out to save the world from the apocalypse? Well...

OK, I need to go on a tangent about tone. The first season of Preacher is a brilliant exercise in balancing tones. The first season is a bit of a thriller, a bit of a dark comedy, and a bit of a blasphemous over the top theological farce. And it works in large part because you have this living, breathing town and inhabitants that imbue the world with verisimilitude. I realize that the road-trip approach that we entered into season 2 on, the Quest narrative that was meant to drive the rest of the series, required abandoning that for a different approach, but then we are isolated in a New Orleans tenement disconnected from the wider worlds by the end as we get into the cowboy, Grail and vampire subplots, and the tonal balance is never aligned correctly again, except in a few isolated season 3 episodes.

Case in point Cassidy's redemption arc in season 4. I appreciate the attempt. They decided that Cassidy was going to be a "good(ish) guy" (at least relative to the main character), and keep him around for the finale. Fair enough. I don't object to the concept, the actor did a great job and the character was frequently very fun, sometimes the best of the leads. So to instead redeem him makes sense. A lesser series wouldn't have attempted it. But the execution just didn't work. First off, a vampire is imprisoned in a small cavelike prison cell with an angel. As far as conepts go, that one is just farting plot hooks and entertaining conversations left and right like a a kid running to the bathroom after winning a hot dog eating contest.

AND THEY DO NOTHING WITH IT.

The angel is mildly annoying and then sings a song before dropping a macguffin. And you could point at it and say it's just deliberately taking the piss out of that expectation, just like when Cassidy met a Dracula. But then they interject a super-serious harrowing and tragic origin story and goofy torture dialogue, and the whole foreskin joke that was barely humorous as a one-off but they tried to milk three episodes out of, and... well, the comedy doesn't work but it's too comedic to get me to care. Instead of doing one tone well, they do 3 tones in way that's mediocre at best.

You can try to make an audience laugh and care or laugh and not care, and both are fine approaches, but when you try for the first but end up with the second, it fails. By the finale when the show first aired I just didn't care and they couldn't just be funny because they had to wrap up the plot, but since the plot didn't matter, it just felt like nothing in the end mattered. It's the same problem a lot of comedy films run into in the third act, when they have to deal with the repercussions of a plot that only existed in the first place to service the comedy.

FINAL SERIES REVIEW

Should you watch Preacher if you haven't seen it? Only if you've read the comic. If you haven't, give yourself the superior experience the first time around.
The first season is great, the third season is pretty good, and the second season has highlights. There are some single episodes over the course of the serials that are like nothing you've seen before on the screen. But unfortunately, there is no jumping off point that provides an adequate sense of resolution before it completely jumps the shark (like season 4 of Dexter). The end gives you resolution, but not before eroding away any desire for it. If you can appreciate the journey not the destination, there are highs up there with the best of modern entertainment, but you'll have to decide for yourself if it's worth the lows. In the end, I recommend what I'm going to do - watch the first 3 seasons, and then get the resolution from reading the comic again.




*yes, I called a comic book literature - they can be, just like there can be multiple academy award winning period dramas and Call Girl of Cthulhu*** , which are both certainly films. And I also just don't care about that distinction as much as the folks that got really butthurt over an issue of Sandman getting a short story award, or the opposite, the Scott McCloud crowd that desperately wanted comics to be, I dunno, taken seriously by the Literati? To break out of the Pop Culture bubble? I dunno, I lived through the Collector's Craze, and just in general I'm pessimistic about popularity, whatever form it takes. If a person wasn't intelligent enough to see the richness of fodder for literary criticism (meaning evaluation more than critique) in comics like Preacher, The Sandman, or Watchmen because they weren't considered "the right format", then I don't think comics getting a status of legitimacy bestowed upon them is going to create an influx of people with worthwhile opinions on the subjects.**

**Yeah, that's a real film on Prime, and I watched it. I'll probably review it next, but if I don't let me say it is exactly what you're picturing. Total throwback to the sort of perv-comedy-horror dynamic typical in films before the world discovered that there was porn in the computers.

***OMG, I'm going to talk about Books of Magic. But Preacher is a comic book adaptation and this is relevant. You see the Books of Magic film/Netflix mini now/whatever is not only still in the development hell that Preacher just escaped, Harry Potter hit in while the series was still going. And so Books of Magic is suddenly in the same spot as the Preacher tv series regarding Dan Browns books & films, in relation to Harry Potter, and - well I'm not going to spoil one of the best endings in comicbook history (It is maybe the greatest Xanatos Plot executed, to the point where upon rereading the series, what originally felt meandering ended up feeling laser-focused) - but they actually acknowledge and male their own peace with the Harry Potter phenomena (whether you believe that Harry Potter blatantly ripped off Books of Magic or that they both were just manifestations of the same zietgiest I'll leave to you, but I appreciate that the comicbook authors didn't get malicious about it. Meanwhile Dan Brown felt like the elephant in the room whenever Preacher dipped into Grail lore.

 

[hawkeyefan]

MY PREACHER RANT

Gave up on Preacher season 4 four episodes in. I was just not enjoying it, and I knew it was only going to get worse, and I just have better ways to spend 8 hours. I've decided I'm going to get my sense of resolution by rereading the comics instead.

So, season 3 was fun. Not as good as the first time around, only because it lost that tension from the original viewing, but we got one of the best villains of the small screen, it perfectly translated that interestingly adversarial-while-familial dynamic with Jesse's foster brothers, it gave Tulip back a bit of her spunk from first season that season 2 was sorely missing, they gave Cassidy something to do (by expanding on the story from the Cassidy one-shot comic, and created new dynamics between the "heroes" and villains by constantly forcing everyone to team up with adversaries to deal with other adversaries.

Unfortunately, three is also the season where they completely destroyed the character of the Saint of Killers, who went from an unstoppable terrifying force of nature in the beginning to season 3 to a comedy duo with Arseface. Taken in isolation the relationship was amusing, but overall it was a detriment to the series as a whole. And by the end of the season, when you get the Bus ride to Hell that encounters Subway Sandwich Nazis, that for some reason suddenly have access to military equipment (if there was a justification besides "plot convenience" or " wouldn't it be funny if..." I didn't catch it), the whole thing descends into Monty Python territory.

I can't help but imagine how different the season would've been if they'd stuck closer to the comics. First off, if they moved the "Cassidy meets a traditional vampire" plot to Season 2, when they were all in New Orleans anyways, not only would that have given Cassidy something to actually do besides mope that season but it also covers the exact same themes as the evil vampire son arc, which was completely unnecessary and far less entertaining. Then, to isolate Jesse in Angelville while Cassidy gives into his worst impulses and holds Tulip hostage, would have driven up the tension of the season overall, maintaining that oppressive tone while the two characters go through parallel imprisonment arcs (and they could still even redeem the Tulip character by having her be the one to kill Cassidy rather than Jesse). Plus, if they sidelined Saint of Killers until the final season, you wouldn't have this ridiculous Arseface escapes Hell and then is brought back just to immediately escape again spinning wheels of a subplot, and Arseface could even be given his actual story from the comic where he's a satire of 90s pop culture (hell, they could have even updated it to make him an e-celeb. Millions tune into Arseface's Youtube Reaction Channel or Arseface going on 3 hour pretentious monologues about insignificant pop culture fads).

Satire is actually something I want to talk about in regards to the series as a whole, and why season 4 fell so flat on it's face. In an earlier post I compared the last season to Kevin Smith's Dogma, and I think that's apt as it really tried to lean in on the satire to carry (or at least justify) the nonsensicle plot, just as Dogma justified it's existence as a film as a parody of Catholicism. And like Dogma my criticism of Preacher is that the satire is actually really shallow and surface level, like it's done by someone who only knows the most basic Sunday School/Davey and Goliath version of Christian theology and history. It's fine as a background element, but when you ask it to carry the whole plot, well you end up with God basically being portrayed as Grumpy Gandalf, and possibly the most boring and banal version of Hell I've ever come across.

But more importantly that wasn't the satire of the comics, which were satirizing a generally unknown but growing group of pseudo-academics following labyrinthine leaps in logic to connect all these very interesting but stupid historical oddities (as exemplified in the infamous Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and an inversion of superheroes taking so much inspiration from Greek and Roman and Norse Mythology* by applying that to Christian mythology, in a way that was as surface level and hilariously irreverent as Xena: The Warrior Princess. I guess what I'm saying is that Ennis didn't try to provide an actual critique of Christianity, he just was taking the piss out of it to service a commentary on the pretentiousness and machismo that dominated superhero comics at the time. And of course this was all interwoven and in service to the primary theme, which wash the most overt exploration of masculinity in modern literature* that I'd encountered before Fight Club.

What I'm saying is that Preacher is tied very closely to the decade that it came out, and the adaptation went through a very high-profile development hell that landed us in a post Dan Brown world. OK, cards on the table, I think Dan Brown's writing is kinda crap and the movies were big budget turds and maybe Tom Hanks was feeling nostalgic about his seminal role in Mazes & Monsters, but the thing is the conspiracy was , in and of itself, a very entertaining mystery. I love HB, HG. Not because I believe a word of it, but because it is a great conspiracy story, in the vein of Focoult's Pendelum or The Illuminatus Trilogy. And Brown, when I say is a bad writer, I mean that he's on par with like those paperback political thrillers and action serials that became popular disposable entertainment at a time when TV hadn't figured out how to be "Good" on a regular basis yet. So, I can appreciate (or at least understand) the sort of "Doc Academia and the Adventure of the Holy Conspiracy" appeal. But the sad truth is, he's the one who is now forever associated with this great conspiracy story. The Preacher TV series couldn't rely on that to carry the series, and to their credit, they recognized that. So the Grail goes from a parody of something a very small group took very seriously to a Movie The Movie version of Dan Brown's conspirators.

I'm going to go on a tangent about Alan Moore here, feel free to skip. I view From Hell, as a literary exercise, as doing the same thing with the Stephen Knight Freemason Jack the Ripper conspiracy, and I always wonder if FH was in reaction to Preacher in some way. I don't recall Alan Moore ever mentioning that in the rather copious behind the scenes discussions and "making of" archives that got released. Let me preface by saying that From Hell was a masterpiece, possibly Moore's best work. However, it didn't have that same feeling of avant garde and fresh and rebellious literature* for the angsty 90's teen feeling as Preacher. And not just because Ennis went out of its way to slaughter a barnyard of Holy Cows in the most base and raw way possible (that was the point, see the Xena analogy). It's also because Alan Moore wasn't the first to jump on that band wagon. There was a popular Sherlock Holmes film "Murder By Decree" two decades prior that any Jack the Ripper fan had no doubt already seen (and probably been rather disappointed by). From Hell is a million miles better, laughably so, but it wasn't first.

Preacher was first, but not the first to reach the general public (reading comics was still not a mainstream activity for adults in that decade). The show had to be made acknowledging the media landscape where they are going to be viewed as a follower rather than innovator. It doesn't matter how much middle aged former Vertigo comics readers tut tut at clouds on Social Media saying "accccccccctually, Preacher did this first" (and then probably tries to talk to them about Books of Magic***).

So the TV series descends further into satire to justify "wacky ridiculous stuff", but the satire has no substance which serves to make it obvious the plot has no substance, and so by season 4 the situation becomes orobourean, and all they can do is try to distract from both with cool set pieces. There are very good setpieces in season 4. In episode 1 the attempt to break into the Grail compound that ends in an epic clifftop duel between Tulip and Featherstone. In episode 2 Tulip's sandstorm rollerderby was hilarious and inventive. Likewise Tulip's completely unnecessary fight in a hospital that maybe was the first time I felt like we got first season Tulip truly back in episode 3. But unfortunately unnecessary is the relative word here, brought starkly to my attention with the Jesse Custer Brothel fight scene. Everything cool that happened in the first four episodes was tied to or advanced the actual plot.

But that last one is why I decided to abandon my re-view. Our protagonist. The person who we're supposed to be empathizing with and caring about his goals enough to follow him through this story. The Preacher who was kinda an arrogant ass with the best of intentions in the first season, here has to be forced to save a child from a pedobear by an NPC, which he not only does reluctantly but ends up getting the child killed, with no repercussions besides the actor looking Very Concerned until the next joke walks in. This by the way, isn't even a digression from the main plot, but a bullshit secondary plot lifted from Close Encounters where Jesse decides he has to immediately go find a mountain he saw in a dream and he had to, for no discernable reason, leave Tulip in order to do this. And in the middle of this there is a really well done fight scene. Like maybe better than 95% of the fight scenes that I've seen in films over the years. But this isn't just unnecessary to the plot, it makes no sense when considering the plot, because at this point Jesse is using the Voice to get people off his back about smoking in an airport lobby. Saving that child would have been literally no harder than ordering at a McDonalds Drive Thru for Jesse, and he not only views it as an inconvenience, but he fucks it up in the worst way possible. Does it work as Black humour? Sure. Maybe a bit out of my personal comfort zone, but it's got the right combination of dark, shocking, and dumb. But to ask me to accept that as my PoV Hero out to save the world from the apocalypse? Well...

OK, I need to go on a tangent about tone. The first season of Preacher is a brilliant exercise in balancing tones. The first season is a bit of a thriller, a bit of a dark comedy, and a bit of a blasphemous over the top theological farce. And it works in large part because you have this living, breathing town and inhabitants that imbue the world with verisimilitude. I realize that the road-trip approach that we entered into season 2 on, the Quest narrative that was meant to drive the rest of the series, required abandoning that for a different approach, but then we are isolated in a New Orleans tenement disconnected from the wider worlds by the end as we get into the cowboy, Grail and vampire subplots, and the tonal balance is never aligned correctly again, except in a few isolated season 3 episodes.

Case in point Cassidy's redemption arc in season 4. I appreciate the attempt. They decided that Cassidy was going to be a "good(ish) guy" (at least relative to the main character), and keep him around for the finale. Fair enough. I don't object to the concept, the actor did a great job and the character was frequently very fun, sometimes the best of the leads. So to instead redeem him makes sense. A lesser series wouldn't have attempted it. But the execution just didn't work. First off, a vampire is imprisoned in a small cavelike prison cell with an angel. As far as conepts go, that one is just farting plot hooks and entertaining conversations left and right like a a kid running to the bathroom after winning a hot dog eating contest.

AND THEY DO NOTHING WITH IT.

The angel is mildly annoying and then sings a song before dropping a macguffin. And you could point at it and say it's just deliberately taking the piss out of that expectation, just like when Cassidy met a Dracula. But then they interject a super-serious harrowing and tragic origin story and goofy torture dialogue, and the whole foreskin joke that was barely humorous as a one-off but they tried to milk three episodes out of, and... well, the comedy doesn't work but it's too comedic to get me to care. Instead of doing one tone well, they do 3 tones in way that's mediocre at best.

You can try to make an audience laugh and care or laugh and not care, and both are fine approaches, but when you try for the first but end up with the second, it fails. By the finale when the show first aired I just didn't care and they couldn't just be funny because they had to wrap up the plot, but since the plot didn't matter, it just felt like nothing in the end mattered. It's the same problem a lot of comedy films run into in the third act, when they have to deal with the repercussions of a plot that only existed in the first place to service the comedy.

FINAL SERIES REVIEW

Should you watch Preacher if you haven't seen it? Only if you've read the comic. If you haven't, give yourself the superior experience the first time around.
The first season is great, the third season is pretty good, and the second season has highlights. There are some single episodes over the course of the serials that are like nothing you've seen before on the screen. But unfortunately, there is no jumping off point that provides an adequate sense of resolution before it completely jumps the shark (like season 4 of Dexter). The end gives you resolution, but not before eroding away any desire for it. If you can appreciate the journey not the destination, there are highs up there with the best of modern entertainment, but you'll have to decide for yourself if it's worth the lows. In the end, I recommend what I'm going to do - watch the first 3 seasons, and then get the resolution from reading the comic again.




*yes, I called a comic book literature - they can be, just like there can be multiple academy award winning period dramas and Call Girl of Cthulhu*** , which are both certainly films. And I also just don't care about that distinction as much as the folks that got really butthurt over an issue of Sandman getting a short story award, or the opposite, the Scott McCloud crowd that desperately wanted comics to be, I dunno, taken seriously by the Literati? To break out of the Pop Culture bubble? I dunno, I lived through the Collector's Craze, and just in general I'm pessimistic about popularity, whatever form it takes. If a person wasn't intelligent enough to see the richness of fodder for literary criticism (meaning evaluation more than critique) in comics like Preacher, The Sandman, or Watchmen because they weren't considered "the right format", then I don't think comics getting a status of legitimacy bestowed upon them is going to create an influx of people with worthwhile opinions on the subjects.**

**Yeah, that's a real film on Prime, and I watched it. I'll probably review it next, but if I don't let me say it is exactly what you're picturing. Total throwback to the sort of perv-comedy-horror dynamic typical in films before the world discovered that there was porn in the computers.

***OMG, I'm going to talk about Books of Magic. But Preacher is a comic book adaptation and this is relevant. You see the Books of Magic film/Netflix mini now/whatever is not only still in the development hell that Preacher just escaped, Harry Potter hit in while the series was still going. And so Books of Magic is suddenly in the same spot as the Preacher tv series regarding Dan Browns books & films, in relation to Harry Potter, and - well I'm not going to spoil one of the best endings in comicbook history (It is maybe the greatest Xanatos Plot executed, to the point where upon rereading the series, what originally felt meandering ended up feeling laser-focused) - but they actually acknowledge and make their own peace with the Harry Potter phenomena (whether you believe that Harry Potter blatantly ripped off Books of Magic or that they both were just manifestations of the same zietgiest I'll leave to you, but I appreciate that the comicbook authors didn't get malicious about it. Meanwhile Dan Brown felt like the elephant in the room whenever Preacher dipped into Grail lore.

All that and no comment on the new ear they grew for Starr?!?

I agree with most of what you said though. Season 4 feels like they just gave up in a race to the end.

 

[TristramEvans]

All that and no comment on the new ear they grew for Starr?!?

It was gross, stupid humour, but that was par for the course with the simultaneous foreskin plot. I don't think it lasted past a few episodes though, at some point I recall God giving Starr his wish and making him "beautiful" again, which was kinda hilariously just him without makeup in a bad blonde wig.

 

[urbwar]

I watched a few more episodes of The Gifted last night; I think I've got 4 left. I also started Season 3 of Titans, and got through the first 2 episodes. I then went ahead and checked out the debut episode of NCIS: Sydney. Given I love NCIS, and I've seen more than a few Aussie crime dramas, the two mixing are an interesting match. Plus, it stars Olivia Swann, who I loved as Astra on Legends of Tomorrow. Her new character has some of the same snark Astra did too. I think I'm going to enjoy this one. Makes me wonder if we'll see some crossovers with the main show and Hawaii (or even bring back some of the LA cast for guest appearances)

 

[chuckdee]

I watched a few more episodes of The Gifted last night; I think I've got 4 left. I also started Season 3 of Titans, and got through the first 2 episodes. I then went ahead and checked out the debut episode of NCIS: Sydney. Given I love NCIS, and I've seen more than a few Aussie crime dramas, the two mixing are an interesting match. Plus, it stars Olivia Swann, who I loved as Astra on Legends of Tomorrow. Her new character has some of the same snark Astra did too. I think I'm going to enjoy this one. Makes me wonder if we'll see some crossovers with the main show and Hawaii (or even bring back some of the LA cast for guest appearances)

Thanks for cluing me in on NCIS: Sydney... I'll have to take a look

The Gifted is one I wish could have gone on. Titans was nice because it existed and because of the casting. The execution... well it was a guilty pleasure.

 

[urbwar]

Thanks for cluing me in on NCIS: Sydney... I'll have to take a look

The Gifted is one I wish could have gone on. Titans was nice because it existed and because of the casting. The execution... well it was a guilty pleasure.

I read an article that it was set in the timeline Wolverine changed in X-Men: Days of Future Past, so it would eventually be erased. The people behind it had certain limitations (such as never outright naming Magento as Lorna's father), so they chose to set it in that timeline to help set it apart from the films.

The thing that really gets to me is how dark Season 2 was getting towards the latter half of the season. A lot of deaths (both on and off screen) has taken place. The desperation some characters are feeling really pulls you in.

 

[TristramEvans]

Binged Outer Range on a whim. I liked it a lot. The cinematography was beautiful, on par with a Wes Anderson or Coen Bros film, and the acting was fantastic. I really like Josh Brolin. The combination of almost-Lovecraftian cosmic horror with Lynchian Neo-Western noir works well.

 

[Giganotosaurus]

John Carpenter and Kurt Russel laughing at The Thing.

 

[Voros]

John Carpenter and Kurt Russel laughing at The Thing.

I have this on blu, the Milius and Arnold commentary for Conan is hilarious as well. I think Arnold is stoned.

 

[Raleel]

Just got done with season 4 of the wire. Some of the hardest tv I ever watched. Really tough for me.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Just got done with season 4 of the wire. Some of the hardest tv I ever watched. Really tough for me.

It’s an amazing show. Lots of brutal moments throughout, but seasons 4 and 5 are rife with them.

 

[Raleel]

It’s an amazing show. Lots of brutal moments throughout, but seasons 4 and 5 are rife with them.

Yea, with season 5 being that way, might be a slow roll on that. 4 hit a sore spot with me for sure. Really good show but wow

 

[Voros]

Yea, with season 5 being that way, might be a slow roll on that. 4 hit a sore spot with me for sure. Really good show but wow

The final season's ending isn't as harsh as one would think from the rest of the series.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The final season's ending isn't as harsh as one would think from the rest of the series.

I don’t know… there are some real heartbreakers in there. There’s probably a bit more optimism in some areas, though.

 

[Voros]

I don’t know… there are some real heartbreakers in there. There’s probably a bit more optimism in some areas, though.

Compared to the ending of The Shield it's positively optimistic!

For me, in the end nothing in The Wire doesn't happen every day in life, so I don't find it anymore depressing than life itself. A lot of things are tragic in life but most popular culture wants to avoid that fact.

Reminds me of when I saw the great Russian film Leviathan and someone said to me following the screening how depressing it was and I said 'what do you think it's like for the people who have to live it?!'

 

[hawkeyefan]

Compared to the ending of The Shield it's positively optimistic!

For me, in the end nothing in The Wire doesn't happen every day in life, so I don't find it anymore depressing than life itself. A lot of things are tragic in life but most popular culture wants to avoid that fact.

Reminds me of when I saw the great Russian film Leviathan and someone said to me following the screening how depressing it was and I said 'what do you think it's like for the people who have to live it?!'

Giving it some more thought after my last post, I think the last season really strikes a balance between good and bad. Almost deliberately so. I don't want to elaborate and risk spoiling anything for Raleel or anyone else who may be reading who has yet to finish it.

You're right though, in that the bulk of what's depicted in that show is going on all the time.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

Disney/ABC finally got around to remastering the 1980s television show Moonlighting to HD and put it on Hulu a month ago. I watched it as a preteen with my parents back in the 1980s and I remember enjoying it a lot. I caught it on reruns on I think the Lifetime channel back during my college days in the 1990s. I hadn't seen it since.

I've been slowly going through it, and I'm almost finished through the fourth season. Let me tell you, the first three seasons of the show are fantastic, and they really do a bang up job capturing the essence of the 1980s. The witty banter and rapport, the bickering, the chemistry between Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd are top notch. The writing is mostly really well done. I like the fourth wall breaking as the show progressed.

The fourth season and now what I'm remembering of the fifth season though... hoo boy. It really went downhill, and from what I remember the end of the fourth season and beginning of the fifth season were tragically depressing and quite a turn from what the show started out as. I've been reading up on the show over the past month, here and there, and filling in my memory's blanks. Between Cybill Shepherd's pregnancy/newborn children and the fourteen hour days she had to put in five days a week for the show, and Bruce Willis' budding Hollywood movie career, both of them wanted out of the show by the fifth season and it really showed.

Watching the show is also reminding me a lot about the 1980s. Boats for cars, pay phones, indoor smoking, the fashion, the music, the politics of the 1980s, the introduction of the pager, how the telephone company criminally charged for long distance telephone calls...

The show is definitely worth a watch if you have Hulu, especially the first three seasons. For nostalgia, if nothing else, but it's worth it for more than that.

 

[Giganotosaurus]

 

[Lofgeornost]

On or about Veteran's Day I saw part of Twelve O'Clock High, a 1949 film about USAAF bombers in Britain during the early period of the daylight bombing campaign. I'd seen the whole thing on disc a while back, but it was definitely worth revisiting. I was struck by its clear-eyed view of the nature of warfare and I wondered if this was at least in part a result of when it was made. Films made during World War II itself had to emphasize heroism and sacrifice, for obvious reasons, whereas by the 1960s or 1970s the wound had healed, to some degree, and later generations that had not experienced the war could romanticize it or use it as a vehicle for nihilism. In the immediate post-war period the film-makers and the audience both would have been aware of the cost and the cruelty involved but also the arguments of utility on the other side of the equation. So the view is more balanced, so to speak.

 

[Afterburner]

 

[3rik]

Afterburner Stewart Copeland is the reason I started to incorporate elements of reggae in my pop, rnb, funk, rock and hiphop drumming in the 1990s. I'd always loved reggae drums, especially the roots stuff. IME reggae was about as untrendy as it has ever gotten in the 1990s and fellow drummers would always be perplexed at WTF I was doing when I played it. Mind you, we're talking mid level drumming at best, this wasn't the pro scene where people would have had no trouble recognizing it/figuring it out. Still, lots of even quite skilled drummers will not manage to get the reggae feel quite right and even Copeland plays it in this rather punky, new wavy, kind of "uptight" way, perhaps more like British ska. I've notably never seen a reggae drummer play traditional grip, by the way.

I concur with Stewart about Charlie Watts, who was not a particularly impressive drummer, and never claimed to be, but at the same time the greatest, most fantastic and fun Stones drummer ever.

Copeland and the traditional grip were brought up before on the forum:

The Punk thread

De raggende manne?

www.rpgpub.com

What are you watching?

Doing situps and watching an episode of About to start So4E10 The Loss :)

www.rpgpub.com

What are you watching?

Like many of you, I also recently watched the second season of Umbrella Academy. I tend to watch TV with the subtitles on, and one thing I appreciated was that the when a song came on in UA, the subtitles would specifically identify the title and artist, rather than just saying "song plays" or...

www.rpgpub.com

 

[Voros]

Disney/ABC finally got around to remastering the 1980s television show Moonlighting to HD and put it on Hulu a month ago. I watched it as a preteen with my parents back in the 1980s and I remember enjoying it a lot. I caught it on reruns on I think the Lifetime channel back during my college days in the 1990s. I hadn't seen it since.

I've been slowly going through it, and I'm almost finished through the fourth season. Let me tell you, the first three seasons of the show are fantastic, and they really do a bang up job capturing the essence of the 1980s. The witty banter and rapport, the bickering, the chemistry between Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd are top notch. The writing is mostly really well done. I like the fourth wall breaking as the show progressed.

The fourth season and now what I'm remembering of the fifth season though... hoo boy. It really went downhill, and from what I remember the end of the fourth season and beginning of the fifth season were tragically depressing and quite a turn from what the show started out as. I've been reading up on the show over the past month, here and there, and filling in my memory's blanks. Between Cybill Shepherd's pregnancy/newborn children and the fourteen hour days she had to put in five days a week for the show, and Bruce Willis' budding Hollywood movie career, both of them wanted out of the show by the fifth season and it really showed.

Watching the show is also reminding me a lot about the 1980s. Boats for cars, pay phones, indoor smoking, the fashion, the music, the politics of the 1980s, the introduction of the pager, how the telephone company criminally charged for long distance telephone calls...

The show is definitely worth a watch if you have Hulu, especially the first three seasons. For nostalgia, if nothing else, but it's worth it for more than that.

Most Hulu stuff shows up on Disney+ in Canada so I'm looking forward to revisiting this show and seeing what I think as I really liked it as a teen. Although I recall like a lot of shows all the air going out of it once the romantic tension was resolved.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

Most Hulu stuff shows up on Disney+ in Canada so I'm looking forward to revisiting this show and seeing what I think as I really liked it as a teen. Although I recall like a lot of shows all the air going out of it once the romantic tension was resolved.

Yeah. But that was more of a side effect than the cause. The causes were, at least according to Curtis Armstrong in an interview about ten years ago:

• Cybill Shepherd became pregnant with twins at the end of the third season.
• Bruce Willis' blossoming Hollywood career.
• Between the two, Cybill Shepherd's and Bruce Willis' characters were cities apart and filmed separately for most of the fourth season. That seriously lowered people's interest in the show.
• Slowly, over the course of the show, Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis started strongly disliking each other IRL. By the third season, they couldn't stand one another. From things that I've read, it sounded like Cybill became jealous of Bruce's Die Hard success.
• As Bruce Willis' Hollywood career began to bloom, he no longer wanted to do the gags and funny stuff that the writers wanted to do and the audience loved. Like there was one scene where he was asked to put on a woman's dress. Bruce refused to do it, he wanted to become more of a serious actor. That's one of the reasons why the show started pushing Curtis Armstrong's character the last two seasons, because he was willing to do the gags and funny stuff that Bruce Willis would no longer do.
• In addition to Bruce Willis, Cybill Shepherd strongly disliked Moonlighting's creator and head writer, Glenn Gordon Caron. The feeling became mutual. At the end of the show's fourth season, Cybill Shepherd refused to come back for a fifth season unless ABC fired Glenn Gordon Caron. They did. As a result, the fifth season's writing suffered even more than the fourth's.

In the end, it came down to egos killing Moonlighting. Both Bruce Willis' and Cybill Shepherd's. It wasn't really the result of David Addison and Maddie Hayes hooking up, it was just a coincidence of timing.

 

[EmperorNorton]

MY PREACHER RANT

Gave up on Preacher season 4 four episodes in. I was just not enjoying it, and I knew it was only going to get worse, and I just have better ways to spend 8 hours. I've decided I'm going to get my sense of resolution by rereading the comics instead.

So, season 3 was fun. Not as good as the first time around, only because it lost that tension from the original viewing, but we got one of the best villains of the small screen, it perfectly translated that interestingly adversarial-while-familial dynamic with Jesse's foster brothers, it gave Tulip back a bit of her spunk from first season that season 2 was sorely missing, they gave Cassidy something to do (by expanding on the story from the Cassidy one-shot comic, and created new dynamics between the "heroes" and villains by constantly forcing everyone to team up with adversaries to deal with other adversaries.

Unfortunately, three is also the season where they completely destroyed the character of the Saint of Killers, who went from an unstoppable terrifying force of nature in the beginning to season 3 to a comedy duo with Arseface. Taken in isolation the relationship was amusing, but overall it was a detriment to the series as a whole. And by the end of the season, when you get the Bus ride to Hell that encounters Subway Sandwich Nazis, that for some reason suddenly have access to military equipment (if there was a justification besides "plot convenience" or " wouldn't it be funny if..." I didn't catch it), the whole thing descends into Monty Python territory.

I can't help but imagine how different the season would've been if they'd stuck closer to the comics. First off, if they moved the "Cassidy meets a traditional vampire" plot to Season 2, when they were all in New Orleans anyways, not only would that have given Cassidy something to actually do besides mope that season but it also covers the exact same themes as the evil vampire son arc, which was completely unnecessary and far less entertaining. Then, to isolate Jesse in Angelville while Cassidy gives into his worst impulses and holds Tulip hostage, would have driven up the tension of the season overall, maintaining that oppressive tone while the two characters go through parallel imprisonment arcs (and they could still even redeem the Tulip character by having her be the one to kill Cassidy rather than Jesse). Plus, if they sidelined Saint of Killers until the final season, you wouldn't have this ridiculous Arseface escapes Hell and then is brought back just to immediately escape again spinning wheels of a subplot, and Arseface could even be given his actual story from the comic where he's a satire of 90s pop culture (hell, they could have even updated it to make him an e-celeb. Millions tune into Arseface's Youtube Reaction Channel or Arseface going on 3 hour pretentious monologues about insignificant pop culture fads).

Satire is actually something I want to talk about in regards to the series as a whole, and why season 4 fell so flat on it's face. In an earlier post I compared the last season to Kevin Smith's Dogma, and I think that's apt as it really tried to lean in on the satire to carry (or at least justify) the nonsensicle plot, just as Dogma justified it's existence as a film as a parody of Catholicism. And like Dogma my criticism of Preacher is that the satire is actually really shallow and surface level, like it's done by someone who only knows the most basic Sunday School/Davey and Goliath version of Christian theology and history. It's fine as a background element, but when you ask it to carry the whole plot, well you end up with God basically being portrayed as Grumpy Gandalf, and possibly the most boring and banal version of Hell I've ever come across.

But more importantly that wasn't the satire of the comics, which were satirizing a generally unknown but growing group of pseudo-academics following labyrinthine leaps in logic to connect all these very interesting but stupid historical oddities (as exemplified in the infamous Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and an inversion of superheroes taking so much inspiration from Greek and Roman and Norse Mythology* by applying that to Christian mythology, in a way that was as surface level and hilariously irreverent as Xena: The Warrior Princess. I guess what I'm saying is that Ennis didn't try to provide an actual critique of Christianity, he just was taking the piss out of it to service a commentary on the pretentiousness and machismo that dominated superhero comics at the time. And of course this was all interwoven and in service to the primary theme, which wash the most overt exploration of masculinity in modern literature* that I'd encountered before Fight Club.

What I'm saying is that Preacher is tied very closely to the decade that it came out, and the adaptation went through a very high-profile development hell that landed us in a post Dan Brown world. OK, cards on the table, I think Dan Brown's writing is kinda crap and the movies were big budget turds and maybe Tom Hanks was feeling nostalgic about his seminal role in Mazes & Monsters, but the thing is the conspiracy was , in and of itself, a very entertaining mystery. I love HB, HG. Not because I believe a word of it, but because it is a great conspiracy story, in the vein of Focoult's Pendelum or The Illuminatus Trilogy. And Brown, when I say is a bad writer, I mean that he's on par with like those paperback political thrillers and action serials that became popular disposable entertainment at a time when TV hadn't figured out how to be "Good" on a regular basis yet. So, I can appreciate (or at least understand) the sort of "Doc Academia and the Adventure of the Holy Conspiracy" appeal. But the sad truth is, he's the one who is now forever associated with this great conspiracy story. The Preacher TV series couldn't rely on that to carry the series, and to their credit, they recognized that. So the Grail goes from a parody of something a very small group took very seriously to a Movie The Movie version of Dan Brown's conspirators.

I'm going to go on a tangent about Alan Moore here, feel free to skip. I view From Hell, as a literary exercise, as doing the same thing with the Stephen Knight Freemason Jack the Ripper conspiracy, and I always wonder if FH was in reaction to Preacher in some way. I don't recall Alan Moore ever mentioning that in the rather copious behind the scenes discussions and "making of" archives that got released. Let me preface by saying that From Hell was a masterpiece, possibly Moore's best work. However, it didn't have that same feeling of avant garde and fresh and rebellious literature* for the angsty 90's teen feeling as Preacher. And not just because Ennis went out of its way to slaughter a barnyard of Holy Cows in the most base and raw way possible (that was the point, see the Xena analogy). It's also because Alan Moore wasn't the first to jump on that band wagon. There was a popular Sherlock Holmes film "Murder By Decree" two decades prior that any Jack the Ripper fan had no doubt already seen (and probably been rather disappointed by). From Hell is a million miles better, laughably so, but it wasn't first.

Preacher was first, but not the first to reach the general public (reading comics was still not a mainstream activity for adults in that decade). The show had to be made acknowledging the media landscape where they are going to be viewed as a follower rather than innovator. It doesn't matter how much middle aged former Vertigo comics readers tut tut at clouds on Social Media saying "accccccccctually, Preacher did this first" (and then probably tries to talk to them about Books of Magic***).

So the TV series descends further into satire to justify "wacky ridiculous stuff", but the satire has no substance which serves to make it obvious the plot has no substance, and so by season 4 the situation becomes orobourean, and all they can do is try to distract from both with cool set pieces. There are very good setpieces in season 4. In episode 1 the attempt to break into the Grail compound that ends in an epic clifftop duel between Tulip and Featherstone. In episode 2 Tulip's sandstorm rollerderby was hilarious and inventive. Likewise Tulip's completely unnecessary fight in a hospital that maybe was the first time I felt like we got first season Tulip truly back in episode 3. But unfortunately unnecessary is the relative word here, brought starkly to my attention with the Jesse Custer Brothel fight scene. Everything cool that happened in the first four episodes was neither tied to nor advanced the actual plot in any way.

But that last one is why I decided to abandon my re-view. Our protagonist. The person who we're supposed to be empathizing with and caring about his goals enough to follow him through this story. The Preacher who was kinda an arrogant ass with the best of intentions in the first season, here has to be forced to save a child from a pedobear by an NPC, which he not only does reluctantly but ends up getting the child killed, with no repercussions besides the actor looking Very Concerned until the next joke walks in. This by the way, isn't even a digression from the main plot, but a bullshit secondary plot lifted from Close Encounters where Jesse decides he has to immediately go find a mountain he saw in a dream and he had to, for no discernable reason, leave Tulip in order to do this. And in the middle of this there is a really well done fight scene. Like maybe better than 95% of the fight scenes that I've seen in films over the years. But this isn't just unnecessary to the plot, it makes no sense when considering the plot, because at this point Jesse is using the Voice to get people off his back about smoking in an airport lobby. Saving that child would have been literally no harder than ordering at a McDonalds Drive Thru for Jesse, and he not only views it as an inconvenience, but he fucks it up in the worst way possible. Does it work as Black humour? Sure. Maybe a bit out of my personal comfort zone, but it's got the right combination of dark, shocking, and dumb. But to ask me to accept that as my PoV Hero out to save the world from the apocalypse? Well...

OK, I need to go on a tangent about tone. The first season of Preacher is a brilliant exercise in balancing tones. The first season is a bit of a thriller, a bit of a dark comedy, and a bit of a blasphemous over the top theological farce. And it works in large part because you have this living, breathing town and inhabitants that imbue the world with verisimilitude. I realize that the road-trip approach that we entered into season 2 on, the Quest narrative that was meant to drive the rest of the series, required abandoning that for a different approach, but then we are isolated in a New Orleans tenement disconnected from the wider worlds by the end as we get into the cowboy, Grail and vampire subplots, and the tonal balance is never aligned correctly again, except in a few isolated season 3 episodes.

Case in point Cassidy's redemption arc in season 4. I appreciate the attempt. They decided that Cassidy was going to be a "good(ish) guy" (at least relative to the main character), and keep him around for the finale. Fair enough. I don't object to the concept, the actor did a great job and the character was frequently very fun, sometimes the best of the leads. So to instead redeem him makes sense. A lesser series wouldn't have attempted it. But the execution just didn't work. First off, a vampire is imprisoned in a small cavelike prison cell with an angel. As far as conepts go, that one is just farting plot hooks and entertaining conversations left and right like a a kid running to the bathroom after winning a hot dog eating contest.

AND THEY DO NOTHING WITH IT.

The angel is mildly annoying and then sings a song before dropping a macguffin. And you could point at it and say it's just deliberately taking the piss out of that expectation, just like when Cassidy met a Dracula. But then they interject a super-serious harrowing and tragic origin story and goofy torture dialogue, and the whole foreskin joke that was barely humorous as a one-off but they tried to milk three episodes out of, and... well, the comedy doesn't work but it's too comedic to get me to care. Instead of doing one tone well, they do 3 tones in way that's mediocre at best.

You can try to make an audience laugh and care or laugh and not care, and both are fine approaches, but when you try for the first but end up with the second, it fails. By the finale when the show first aired I just didn't care and they couldn't just be funny because they had to wrap up the plot, but since the plot didn't matter, it just felt like nothing in the end mattered. It's the same problem a lot of comedy films run into in the third act, when they have to deal with the repercussions of a plot that only existed in the first place to service the comedy.

FINAL SERIES REVIEW

Should you watch Preacher if you haven't seen it? Only if you've read the comic. If you haven't, give yourself the superior experience the first time around.
The first season is great, the third season is pretty good, and the second season has highlights. There are some single episodes over the course of the serials that are like nothing you've seen before on the screen. But unfortunately, there is no jumping off point that provides an adequate sense of resolution before it completely jumps the shark (like season 4 of Dexter). The end gives you resolution, but not before eroding away any desire for it. If you can appreciate the journey not the destination, there are highs up there with the best of modern entertainment, but you'll have to decide for yourself if it's worth the lows. In the end, I recommend what I'm going to do - watch the first 3 seasons, and then get the resolution from reading the comic again.




*yes, I called a comic book literature - they can be, just like there can be multiple academy award winning period dramas and Call Girl of Cthulhu*** , which are both certainly films. And I also just don't care about that distinction as much as the folks that got really butthurt over an issue of Sandman getting a short story award, or the opposite, the Scott McCloud crowd that desperately wanted comics to be, I dunno, taken seriously by the Literati? To break out of the Pop Culture bubble? I dunno, I lived through the Collector's Craze, and just in general I'm pessimistic about popularity, whatever form it takes. If a person wasn't intelligent enough to see the richness of fodder for literary criticism (meaning evaluation more than critique) in comics like Preacher, The Sandman, or Watchmen because they weren't considered "the right format", then I don't think comics getting a status of legitimacy bestowed upon them is going to create an influx of people with worthwhile opinions on the subjects.**

**Yeah, that's a real film on Prime, and I watched it. I'll probably review it next, but if I don't let me say it is exactly what you're picturing. Total throwback to the sort of perv-comedy-horror dynamic typical in films before the world discovered that there was porn in the computers.

***OMG, I'm going to talk about Books of Magic. But Preacher is a comic book adaptation and this is relevant. You see the Books of Magic film/Netflix mini now/whatever is not only still in the development hell that Preacher just escaped, Harry Potter hit in while the series was still going. And so Books of Magic is suddenly in the same spot as the Preacher tv series regarding Dan Browns books & films, in relation to Harry Potter, and - well I'm not going to spoil one of the best endings in comicbook history (It is maybe the greatest Xanatos Plot executed, to the point where upon rereading the series, what originally felt meandering ended up feeling laser-focused) - but they actually acknowledge and make their own peace with the Harry Potter phenomena (whether you believe that Harry Potter blatantly ripped off Books of Magic or that they both were just manifestations of the same zietgiest I'll leave to you, but I appreciate that the comicbook authors didn't get malicious about it. Meanwhile Dan Brown felt like the elephant in the room whenever Preacher dipped into Grail lore.

I couldn't even get through S2. S1 was fantastic though.

 

[EmperorNorton]

I just finished watching S2 of Loki. Holy hell it was really good and the best final episode a MCU show has done by far.

 

[Silverlion]

I just finished watching S2 of Loki. Holy hell it was really good and the best final episode a MCU show has done by far.

I concur. I was truly surprised by how good it was.

 

[urbwar]

I'm still making my way through Titans S3. I'm not sure I like it that much. I like the some of the subplots (like Starfire/Blackfire and Conner/Blackfire), but the main story, not so much. Also, I feel like they copied Arrow with the use of the Lazarus Pits to bring characters back from the dead. At least with one character, there was a different avenue for their return. Also didn't like the direction they took with Bruce Wayne. I realize it's just an Elseworld (like I consider the MCU a What if? setting), so my dislikes are no big deal. But this is like the opposite of what Stargirl was, which I think was one of the better DC tv adaptations (besides Doom Patrol) that wasn't animated.

 

[Silverlion]

I've not been sleeping much at all (no major anxietry/panic attacks just discomfort, which may be minor anxiety) so I've been watching content lately.

Watched Elemental (Pixar) which was a surprisingly good story dealing with racism, expectations, and the like. I watched the first two episodes of the more recent Teen Wolf TV series, a bit disappointed in the SFX (wanted more werewolf-ish werewolf) but they did a good job otherwise.
Looking for other good supernatural, Sci-fi, or similar shows to watch. Anything with at least three seasons, any suggestions?