Legion: Season 1

So there I was, all set not to watch another superhero show, happily ignoring this one some three or four episodes in, when all of a sudden a friend referred to it as "like something from David Lynch." Fuck. Never mind that I don't love everything David Lynch does - still working through that second season of Twin Peaks at a snail's pace, folks - just the idea of a trippy, cerebral superhero show was enough for me to bite the bullet and jump on in.

And after eight episodes, yeah, Legion was fine. Just fine! Weird and chaotic and confusing, but rarely slow and boring, which is the biggest sin these superhero shows tend to commit. Aubrey Plaza was great. Jermaine Clement was good. Everyone else was just fine. The show explored some cool ideas and followed them to some very generic conclusions. Again - fine!

Watch this if you crave that sweet sweet fine television.

Review: Season 3

God damn - waited a year and a half for the third and final season of Review and it was over in just two weeks. Such a brutal ending, too. Holy shit.

So yeah, the entire series ended up lasting 22 episodes, each of them just half an hour long. Absolutely all of you should seek this thing out. It was, honest to God, one of the funniest shows of the last three or four years.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Freakonomics: The Movie

I liked this book just fine, but what I was hoping for from the documentary was - and why, I cannot say - something completely different. Like, the book had five main chapters, each covering an interesting topic. And then the movie turned out to be five brief segments, each covering one of those five topics. Damn! Why didn't I see that coming? Eh, whatever, there are worse hour-and-a-half movies to fall asleep to.

Train to Busan

Oh hell yeah. Guys, see this movie. It recently got to Netflix and it's zombies on a high speed train in Korea.

Yes, I know. Zombies. Ugh. What is this, 2012? But no, really. This was very good! This was zombies done right - they're fast as hell, the infection spreads fast as hell, and by containing most of the action in a train the whole thing plays out like a video game, a nice mix of violence and stealthiness - can our ragtag group of survivors advance, car by car, to reconvene with one another? Will their crazy death train ever make it to Busan? Plenty of tropes here - the single father, the little girl, the pregnant lady, the noble strongman, the high school sweethearts, the timid employees, the homeless man, the old ladies, the rich top-notch asshole who literally throws other people into the paths of the zombies to save his own skin. There's even a high school baseball team on board, which means everyone's got a baseball bat, and not for no reason. Smart! This doesn't reinvent a thing, but it's as good an execution of "zombies! ahh!" as I've ever seen.

Snakes on a Plane was dumb as hell, but it kind of worked, right? This works in the same ways, but without the ridiculous premise. Fair warning: subtitles. But your eyes will be on the screen anyway.

Really though, see this. It was a ton of fun.

The Place Beyond the Pines

Bah. I'm tired. Here's the gist.

Act One - Ryan Gosling as a motorcycle stuntman robbing some banks because he's down on his luck. It's like Drive meets Hell or High Water. It's very good!

Act Two - Bradley Cooper as a rookie cop in a corrupt-as-hell district just trying to do the right thing. Also he's full of regret over something he did in Act One. This one's a slow-burn, but it's still pretty good.

Act Three - Shitty teenager takes center stage, and [long, drawn out fart noise]. It's not good.

And really, the structure is just about that distinct. I'm not saying the characters don't appear in each other's "arcs," but the way they all connect, they could have a lot more.

This was fine. It's a high 6, low 7. It's worth a watch if you can find it on TV or something, and I think HBO only has the rights for a few more days.

I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore

Nothing to see here. Just a Netflix snoozer I had higher hopes for. Damn!

Humans: Season 2

Somewhere between Humans and Westworld there's a very good TV show. Humans explores in great detail the idea of artificially intelligent androids ("synths") becoming self aware. It takes place in a world very much like our own, except with robots doing all sorts of domestic and manual labor. This makes it a relatable show, not only with plenty of actual human characters, but with several actual synth characters as well; once they're self aware, they have their own, consistent personalities, many of them brought on by how they were treated and what they went through before they "woke up" or whatever you want to call it.

All of this stands in contrast with Westworld last season, where the robots ("hosts") take on any and every personality depending on what piece of software they're running, where nothing happening took place in a recognizable real world environment, and where character relationships and developments were an afterthought to sex and violence.

But. But! Westworld was, ultimately appointment viewing. It felt important and meaningful, even if I didn't really appreciate it. Call it the HBO factor or thank the higher production value, I don't know, but something about Westworld just plain mattered week in and week out; Humans was much less investment-worthy, and if I'm being honest it's been a bit boring for me ever since around halfway through its first season way back in 2015.

So we've got two shows about robots becoming self aware and the people around them being sort of kind of fucked. One's better at actually making you give a shit about its characters and its story, but the other's the cooler, sexier, undeniably bigger show. Again - somewhere between them or among them or in some sort of combination there is a good show about self aware artificial intelligence. They both occupy that weird "on the cutting block" space where I want a reason to keep going, but worry I won't find one. Eh, we'll see!

Baskets: Season 2

Don't have a ton to say about this one. This show is now two for two at having seasons that start out kind of meek and forgettable, but that also pick up just enough emotional catharsis to rekindle my interest in time for a satisfying conclusion. I probably overrated this last year, which set my expectations even higher this year, and, yeah. I dunno. It's probably one I could stand to bail on, as it's barely compelling enough to get by on interest alone most weeks and seldom funny enough to watch as a low-stakes source of laughs. But then, hey, at half an hour, it's really no sweat to sit through ten episodes a year, and when it works it works, as Louie Anderson's Christine is legitimately one of the saddest and most fascinating characters on television and Martha Kelly's Martha isn't far behind. I dunno. The whole thing's tough to describe. It isn't exactly depressing, or mining for sadness even - it's a comedy, really. It's just the type of comedy that, well, look at the poster above. It's the "sad clown" of half-hour comedies. Actually, wow, that's perfect. Ye,s it's all coming back to me - I've read this before, but FX has called Baskets a "slapstick drama," a show where "the comedy is very dumb, but the emotions are very real."

Yes, you've just seen me come back around on Baskets over the course of one paragraph. Season 3, here I come. In ten months. At least.

The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" is, for my money, one of the greatest short stories in American literature. You might have read it back in school a time or two. It's about this smart house, or at least a proto-smart house that could be conceived back in 1950, in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. The house rings alarms, announces calendar events, prepares meals, keeps itself clean, and plays music and reads poetry, completely unaware and uncaring of the fact that it has been uninhabited for years. The story's as clean and efficient as they come, taking you from "what's going on here?" to "oh no" to "yeah, this all seems like a fairly logical conclusion" in the span of, like, eight or nine pages. It's as simple as a Dr. Seuss allegory but the images it depicts without explicitly spelling them out - like the horrifying death of millions of people in a fiery blaze, or a mangy dog being torn to shreds by robotic mice - are the kinds of horrifying things that'll stay with you forever. (I think I was seven or eight when we first heard this in school. Understood it, but couldn't grasp the urgency and foreboding of it. Read it late in high school and it hit closer to home. Could probably revisit it in my old age and lament how little things have changed in a hundred years.)

Anyway, I bring up "There Will Come Soft Rains" because even though it's a complete story that stands alone perfectly, it hints at this global disaster that you can only really imagine. The Martian Chronicles, one of those novel-like collections of tightly knit short stories, fills in a few of those gaps, but only barely; most of the action takes place on the planet Mars as humans attempt to colonize it and, after succeeding, do their best to live there without making the same mistakes they'd made on Earth. But the long and short of it, well, yeah, "There Will Come Soft Rains" is the second-to-last story in the collection. This was not an inciting event that led people to flee for Mars; this was the conclusion of a human race that had already made it to Mars. (The last short story focuses on the few people remaining on Mars after, we are left to assume, everyone on earth is dead. It's bittersweet but hopeful - the perfect note to end on.)

So, yeah. This is a cynical and glum portrait of humanity, albeit not an especially deep or profound one. In fact the criticism here is subtle. Not present are the wacky one-dimensional characters of, say, Kurt Vonnegut, nor is there any judgment or humor in the tone of the narration; everything is told in third person without any flair or humility.

The rest of the stories in the book touch on all kinds of warts found throughout human history - colonialism, genocide, folly, hubris, tribalism. Blink and you might miss it, but maybe the biggest tragedy of all is that toward the end of the book, a thriving human population on Mars ends up wiped out not Mars is engulfed in any warfare, but because to a man they almost all decide to return to Earth once nuclear war breaks out there. Idiots!

Last note, more of a side note, I always love going back to these seventy-year-old science fiction stories and seeing what aspects of the future these authors got right and what they totally biffed on. I mean, yes, sure, these are allegories that belong in their own times and aren't necessarily attempting to predict anything, but it's amazing to see that Ray Bradbury essentially predicted a smart house (although he wasn't alone in doing that - isn't that essentially what the Jetsons live in?) but not, say, communication advancements that would allow Earthlings and Martians to communicate with one another by any means faster than handwritten letters. And the gender and racial dynamics in these stories from another time are always something to behold. Still, does this hold up? This absolutely holds up.

Okay, actual last note, way more of a side note, I couldn't pick up this book without singing this old chestnut in my head:

Yeah, remember that one? You do now.

Easy: Season 1

Chalk another one up in the "shit I didn't get to in 2016" column. Netflix, as so often seems to be the case. This is an eight-part anthology series about a bunch of different couples and relationships in modern-day Chicago. You've got the power mom and the stay-at-home dad trying to navigate their gender roles and how that affects their sex lives. You've got the girl trying to impress her new vegan girlfriend by going vegan as well, to terrible results. You've got the couple trying to spice things up by inviting their baby's sing-along group leader over for a threesome.

None of the eight stories depend on the others for any context, save for the last one, which serves as a second part of sorts to the third. Instead you've got a bunch of loose little half-hour stories. They were all over the map for me, some of them total duds and some of them pretty entertaining.

All in all, I can't say there's any real reason to look into this one, but if you do, it's only four hours long. So.

Love: Season 2

I didn't love (ha!) the first season of Love, but it was a passable, low-stakes, well-made Apatow comedy that felt perfect for Netflix. (Two seasons in, I can't imagine watching this show any other way than a few episodes at a time over the course of a week or so.) I liked Season 2 a little more, even if it started out stronger than it ended. The show's about a blossoming relationship between two very different people in Los Angeles - one a nebbish and sort of neurotic guy working as an on-set tutor for the child star of a shitty CW-esque series, the other a messy and free-spirited self-described "sex and love addict."

The first season mostly existed to show us who these people were, and why they really shouldn't be in a relationship with one another (or possibly with anyone at all) but ended with the pair of them making out in a gas station parking lot as if to say, yes, sure, let's do this. The second season sort of continues down that road, repeating some of the same beats in a stronger way by making it clear that these two need to take some time apart before the season ends with them making out once again, committed to being a long-term exclusive couple.

If it sounds like it moves slow, well, holy shit, it does. But that's okay! This is also largely an LA hang-out comedy and it's very easy to watch these two and their misadventures like a fly on the wall. There's an episode in Season 2 where the two of them just trip on mushrooms with another couple. No zany camerawork or CGI; the trip is seen entirely from a third person perspective, and it's low-key hilarious stuff, just listening to their insane babblings.

I dunno, it's Apatow. Every single one of his movies has been about half an hour too long, so isn't longform TV storytelling a perfect venue for him? I think - and I'm not positive, but I think - that only like three months have passed so far in the show to date. But I'm content to ride this one for a while. It might be slow, but it feels deliberate and carefully planned, unlike something like Modern Family that just feels like its spinning its wheels year after year so its actors can collect their millions. There's a story here, and there are some characters, and I'm invested now, dammit.

Get Out

Finally saw this and liked it a lot. There's a lot to parse here if you go in ready to dig into an exploration of race relations, obviously, but even that's just gravy if you want it to be; on a shallower and more basic level this is just a very well-made horror movie. A little better at the beginning than at the end, but aren't they all? Kudos to Daniel Kaluuya for shouldering the load here so well; almost everything takes place from his increasingly frightened and unsettled point of view, and he crushes it. Kudos as well to Jordan Peele, because holy shit, this is a directorial debut? And lastly, small-time kudos to Allison Williams, who between this role and playing Marnie on Girls is just so willing and able to play the worst characters imaginable.

But yeah, see this one at some point. It is pretty good.

Workaholics: Season 7

Workaholics just finished up its seventh and final season, and not a moment too soon. I think this show has struggled for years now. Of course, this begs the question - was it always really not so funny and pretty stupid, or did I simply outgrow it? I think the problem is that the show didn't grow alongside me, so to speak.

Workaholics debuted in 2011, the same year I was a year out of college and into the workforce, and I absolutely related to the hijinks of three slackers in their twenties treating professional life like a dead end. What's the work week, after all, but the time that passes between the evenings and the weekends? The series peaked early with a Season 2 episode called "Old Man Ders" in which Anders - the oldest of the trio - turns 25 and, sensing that he's getting old, spends the day drunk and making an ass out of himself at a Chuck E. Cheese knockoff, much to the anger of a father there for his own young son's birthday. It's one of the show's funniest episodes, but it also pokes at something deeper - this idea that, at 25, Anders is too old to be acting like a college freshman drinking booze for the first time. "Grow up."

But the show never really did; that Season 2 episode is the closest any of the guys came to accepting, embracing, and adapting to the idea that life can slow down a little as you approach thirty. And don't get me wrong - a show about three roommates who watch Netflix after work and feel like crap after too much pizza and beer would be a terribly unfunny show. But the older these guys got - and the older I got - the sadder it was to see them living like frat bros.

This final season at least started out like it was going to reflect that. The boys' boss calls them out for being in their thirties and still acting like idiots constantly, and a new batch of fresh-out-of-college kids show up as if to really drive home that "you're gettin' old" point. But the newcomers are dispatched in one episode, and the rest of the season unfolded like any other Workaholics year - occasionally funny, always unnecessary, generally lazy. This wasn't as bad as, say, The League got in its final season, when the entire cast and writing staff went full-blown "who the fuck cares?" and burned everything to the ground. But there was no uptick in quality here at the tail end of Workaholics. Oh well! That's Comedy Central for you.

This Is Us: Season 1

Here are my personal five stages of watching the first season of This Is Us:

1. Early fall, 2016

Watching ads and thinking "wow holy crap they made Mike and Molly but as an earnest melodrama about how painful it is to be fat as hell."

2. Late fall, 2016

Hearing from multiple people that, no really, this is a decent show despite all the cheese, so really, why not give it a go?

3. Christmas break-ish, 2016

Taking the dive and doing the catch-up binge, agreeing with friends and family that this really is an enjoyable show, by no means a cool or trendy new show, but something to put on and enjoy and feel feelings about, at least.

4. Winter, 2017

Straining more and more to care each week now that the rush of the binge is over, and starting to wonder if they'll ever give Kate something to do that doesn't directly deal with her weight, and wondering how much longer the flashbacks will hold my interest given that we know where everyone in the family ultimately ends up, and oh boy does this seem like a one-season wonder that everyone is just going to turn on viciously next year, but it's still not... bad?

5. Post-finale, 2017

Oh fuck that. I'm out.

The Selfish Gene

So here's a book. A book! And a nonfiction book at that. Hell, it's the second-oldest book in my backlog! Checking a lot of boxes today, yessir. This is a pretty famous one for popular science, as it's Richard Dawkins' first book and the one in which he developed or at least popularized the gene-centric view of evolution.

It's got a misleading title, so let's start there. This isn't about a gene for selfish behavior. Rather, on the contrary, it's about the idea that each gene "cares" more about its own propagation through a population and future generations than it does about whether or not its own "host" lives or dies; in that sense, it is "selfish," willing to sacrifice the particular creature it inhabits in order to allow more copies of itself to survive. Basically, it's a biologically consistent rationale for altruistic behavior, like when mothers sacrifice themselves for their young, or how brothers are more loyal to one another than cousins, who are more loyal than distant cousins, and so on. You might as well call the book "The Selfless Gene" - or as one of Dawkins' contemporaries suggested, "The Immortal Gene."

Take, for example, when a bird gives off an alarm call to indicate that a predator is nearby. This individual bird is putting itself at a slightly higher risk of being killed, but it's drastically lowering the flock's overall chance of losing a member. Thus the gene for this sort of altruistic behavior, as much as it exists, is more likely to survive than a gene for selfish behavior would in a similar population.

The meat of Dawkins' theory is played out in nonzero sum games and computer simulations, which I enjoyed a lot. "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" is a win-win, assuming it takes more effort to scratch your own back than someone else's back. Of course, the biggest win would be to have someone scratch your back without you returning the favor. Dawkins plays out all kinds of simulations to find the ideal stable population models with different simple behavior patterns (strategies) like "cheater" (never returns a favor) and "sucker" (always returns a favor) and "forgiving" (stiffs a cheater once or twice, but then resumes trusting) and "grudge-holder" (never returns a favor to someone who's cheated him in the past) and "wild card" (either scratches or doesn't scratch at random). This is all just an expansion of prisoner's dilemma game theory, and what Dawkins found was that stable strategy distributions will have most individuals acting altruistically and fairly, with a few cheaters in the mix - mostly mirrors reality, no?

There's also plenty of "relatedness" math at play that sounds like the trolley problem - is it better to sacrifice one of your own children, or two of your own brothers? - with entire chapters related to the subtle ongoing power balance between children and parents, hosts and parasites, and males and females of the same species.

The book was written in 1976 (though my own edition is from 1989 with a small expansion) and it still holds up after more than forty years (or almost thirty), albeit with a few very dated computer analogies and some very old fashioned language and perspectives in the "Battle of the Sexes" chapter.

The book's not without its detractors, whose rebuttals mostly focus on how the book doesn't give enough credit to the many other factors responsible for evolution - environmental factors, inter-species and intra-species competition, gene expression, and so on - but I didn't take the book to be a be-all, end-all take on evolution boiled down to 260 pages. That would be a crazy thing to do!

Oh, and lastly, and how did I almost forget this - memes! Right here in this book, Richard Dawkins invented the term "meme" to serve as a behavioral analogue to a gene. A gene mutates and propagates down through future generations; a meme spreads through populations too, with the best memes outlasting the worst ones in their own "survival of the fittest" competition. For instance, there is nothing "genetic" about the idea that priests should be celibate - how could such a gene propagate through children? But the "meme" that priests shouldn't have sex - a rule, a law, a custom, a practice - is one that we've collectively and consistently found sensible enough to continue to propagate. On the other hand, a meme like, I dunno, disco music? That meme boomed and then almost disappeared, like an algae bloom that has immediate short-term success but burns out just as quickly. The forms of disco that flourish today are bastardized, mutated forms, like R&B. (This is my own example; Dawkins wrote this in the 1970s, before disco even was a meme, let alone a dead one.) But that's Dawkins' point - that some memes are trends while others are mainstays, and some are these long unchallenged traditions that will struggle to adapt to radical changes (look at social views on gay marriage, for instance). Hell, even the idea of what a "meme" is has mutated from what I've just described to "a recurring JPEG or GIF on the Internet." Ha!

But yeah - great book. Dense reading, but easy reading - it;s a slow 260 pages, but it's also only 260 pages. And I should really read more of Dawkins' stuff in the future, having already enjoyed (even more than this) The Ancestor's Tale back in college.

O.J.: Made in America: Season 1

First things first - fuck the Oscars, this is a damn TV show and I've tagged it as such.

Okay, second things second - was it the twentieth anniversary of the verdict that made 2016 the year we revisited the O.J. trial wholesale? I was six for the Bronco chase, seven for the verdict (yeah I'm dating myself here) so most of the grizzly details of the case weren't things I was aware of the first time around, but still - I've spent more time in the past calendar year learning about this case through documentaries and dramatizations than I had in the twenty years prior. And I'm sure I'm not alone in that. What the hell?

Third thing - yes, what a story. Worthy of a seven-hour documentary for sure. So many things made it such an interesting case, but it's the context surrounding the case that has become the real story, obviously, the race relations in America and in Los Angeles in particular in the '90s, and come on, of course this still rings true today. In some regards, it's worse.

Fourth - the most fascinating part of the miniseries for me was the fifth and final installment, which spans from the trial verdict to the present day. Here's the lowkey fall from grace, from O.J.'s neighbors turning on him, to his loss in civil court, to his bankruptcy, to his eventual arrest for just the dumbest Vegas heist where he stole his own memorabilia back after losing it in his financial ruination. One thing the docuseries never quite touched on that I'd be fascinated to know is whether or not his own kids ever turned on him for, you know, murdering their mother. (Gotta be a horrible situation to be in. Can't even imagine it. Respect their privacy, no question. Still! I wonder...)

Last, and certainly least, my own two cents on this whole damn mess. Of course he did it. The prosecution fucked up on a few big things. It's almost like Hillary and the election - do you blame the electorate and jury for Trump and "not guilty," or do you roll your eyes at the opposition for biffing on such a slam dunk? Ito is Comey in this metaphor, making things harder but by no means improbable, let alone impossible. And black anger in Los Angeles here parallels white anger in rural America, sort of. Okay, election metaphor over. Let's talk real politics. It's possible to see O.J.'s trial victory as an individual miscarriage of justice that also metaphorically serves as a victory for a black community that had just endured the Rodney King verdict and riots in stunned sadness. This is, of course, the most tepid take I can imagine having. It's a shrug and a "let's change the subject, this bores me." But to bring it back to Trump and Hillary - Jesus, will I be doing this forever? - I can see how the Trump win was a weird victory for the disenfranchised white people of Middle America even if Trump doesn't do a damn thing to help them. It's not so much "yes, this is the best thing for everyone involved" as much as a big old middle finger and a "fuck you" to the existing establishment. And that's maybe what the O.J. verdict was.

But again - not a movie. Not at all. And that's what's really important here!

Once Upon a Time in the West

Hey, it's a Blu-ray viewing! I took an actual physical disc out of its case, popped it into my PS4, and navigated my way through a brief menu in order to play this film. Imagine that!

This is how I know I'm not a film geek, but rather just a bored guy who likes watching movies. True film geeks lose their shit over this thing. No joke! It has a 4.4 out of 5 on Letterboxd, where all the film geeks go, and where I just pretend to fit in, doing my thing, hoping not to get called out for, say, not popping a big old boner for this Spaghetti Western. That's higher than the 4.3 held by Star Wars, The Shining, Casablanca, and Alien - hell, The Godfather only even has a 4.6. I don't think I've seen a 4.7. Whatever - my point is, nerds go apeshit for Sergio Leone. (Also a 4.4? The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.) Even Wikipedia says, "The film is now generally acknowledged as a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made." High praise!

What I'm driving at here, in case you couldn't tell, is that I just don't see it. I liked this movie plenty - like to the tune of a 3.5 or maybe even a 4 - but I'm not fully understanding the "greatest western of all time" praise. What gives? Someone, please - Trev? - enlighten me! Is this one of those cases where I need to take a hard look at everything that came out prior to 1968 in order to fully appreciate what I just saw here? I mean, I won't lie, the final showdown, the payoff, is real fuckin' great. The way Ennio Morricone's score swells to this climactic crescendo before going silent, the way Bronson and Fonda stare each other down with this ridiculous tension - I get it. It's awesome. But that's ten great minutes in a two-and-a-half-hour movie. A two-and-a-half-hour movie full of silence and staring. Ambience? Sure, but man, there's a limit to how much stress you can milk out of a series of tracking shots.

It also bugs me - I'm just gonna say it - that some of the actors here are clearly speaking Italian or something else and that they've been dubbed over in English. Grinds my gears. Same thing happened with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Alright, so maybe my nitpicks are only nitpicks.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

Jesus, time has a way of slipping away from you. I thought I played through Oracle of Seasons just a year ago. Nope! That was The Minish Cap. Okay then, must have been in 2015. Nope! Went Zelda-free that year. We're looking at a full two and a half years, folks. Yowza!

I've got the same complaints and faint praise for this game as I did for that one. Amazing that these were co-developed as frankly they're probably the "fullest" games on the Game Boy Color, Pokémon notwithstanding. But they're also just Game Boy Color games, which means switching between items was agonizing and the dungeons could only be so varied. I saw a set of Zelda rankings recently that had these two games tied for third on the list, and that's admittedly a head-scratcher for me. Why? How? There's nothing exceptional about these. They are eminently forgettable. Before starting Ages I had to double-check just to make sure that what I'd already played was in fact Seasons. Maybe it's easy to shrug these off in 2017, and perhaps I'd be much more impressed playing through them when they actually came out - I did already say I thought they were among the best games on their handheld, so there's that. But yeah - just nothing to love here. Three stars out of five here. That Minish Cap followed this pair just a couple of years later is astonishing, and if anything makes me like that game even more. (These, by comparison, didn't feel like a huge step up from Link's Awakening graphically or otherwise, and that game came out eight years prior.)

Oh, lastly - if I had to pick between Seasons or Ages, I'd say Ages holds the slight advantage. I liked what it did with two time periods more than I liked what Seasons did with its four environmental tweaks.

Anyway, Four Swords Adventures aside, this leaves me all caught up on Zelda games through the early days of the Wii. Why not bust out an ill-thought and very preliminary ranked list?

1. Twilight Princess - It's everything you all think you loved about Ocarina with less of the tedium and fewer design flaws and control issues.

2. The Wind Waker - Light on dungeons, but still possibly the best-looking Zelda I've played, and holy shit, nothing's like that feeling of taking to the high seas.

3. Ocarina of Time - The classic's a classic for a reason, and I loved it too, and I ain't here just to stir shit up with baldly controversial takes! I'm sure the 3DS version is even better.

4. Majora's Mask - I've come all the way around on this one; was an early adopter of the "it's actually better than Ocarina" mindset but in spite of its darker, cooler, deeper vibes it was still a pain in the ass to play. Same 3DS comment holds, though.

5. A Link to the Past - I always want to jack this one higher up my list, but there's something about it that always left me just the tiniest bit cold. Can't put my finger on it. 

6. The Minish Cap - Latecomer here, but what a beautiful fucking game! Mixes the gameplay of Link to the Past and all the other top-down games with the bigger vibe and feel of Ocarina and nails it.

7. A Link Between Worlds - Feels so much like an updated port of Link to the Past that it loses some credit for unoriginality; I actually had more pure fun with this one than anything but the top two or three, but story and memorability matter, and this lacks both.

8. Spirit Tracks - The rails were annoying but this was plenty of fun. Never had the same issues with the pan flute the rest of you seemed to struggle with.

9. Phantom Hourglass - Honestly can't distinguish between this and Spirit Tracks all that well, but I know I preferred Spirit Tracks to this one - could be the central dungeon gimmick that annoyed me a bit.

10. Oracle of Ages - See above.

11. Oracle of Seasons - Likewise.

12. Link's Awakening - Definitely the Zelda game I remember the least. That's my fault and time's fault, not its fault, but still.

13. Four Swords - Is this canon? Four Links? Whatever - made for an easy fun evening a year ago that I still remember fondly. Wait - [checks] - okay yeah, whew, only a year ago.

14. The Legend of Zelda - Iconic status in gaming history aside, we all agree that this is a nightmare to play now, right?

15. The Adventure of Link - Legitimately a mediocre game, even for its time.

Those are my takes. Come at me with yours! (Yeah, I smell a Rank & File alright.)

Mighty No. 9

Oh hey shit yeah, a video game! Too bad it wasn't any good. Womp!

Of course, everyone warned me this wasn't any good. They were right. But ten dollars and a few hours of my time felt like a worthwhile flier for a game I'd been excited about for years on end.

You know, in hindsight, I only ever really even loved one or two Mega Man games; this might have been as good as half of them. At least it was something different - but then, shit, all we wanted was an old school Mega Man knockoff. Can't win with us petulant gamers, can ya?

The biggest issue here was the gameplay. It wasn't bad or broken, but it added this weird emphasis on speed to a side-scrolling shooter platformer. Why? Mega Man wasn't exactly a slow game, but at its best-designed it made you think about your plan of attack as you wound through levels and increasingly difficult obstacles. Mighty No. 9 had this weird combo-power-up system that emphasized rushing in blindly which doesn't really make sense when you can't see the layout of the level ahead of you.

It just never really clicked for me! Or anyone else, apparently. Oh well. Like I said - an easy flier. No harm done.

Santa Clarita Diet: Season 1

Timothy Olyphant and Drew Barrymore in a ten-episode Netflix comedy about a zombie virus. What's not to like? This was short and silly and, honestly, more fun than I expected it to be. It's like a cross between Dexter and Married - Barrymore's become a zombie, and it's given her a new attitude on life, and her marriage improves because of it as she and her husband (Olyphant) find and kill people for her to eat. What's sort of impressive is that this was, in spite of everything, a self-contained and well-formed first season of a story I'd happily continue watching. If I have any complaint here it's that Olyphant, although he's funny, is just too hammy by a hair here. But otherwise, I'm good - this is a really easy watch. By no means necessary, but what really is these days?

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Season 2

A month and a half back when talking about Season 1 of this show, I said something to the effect of, "This will be an uphill sell, so I won't bother, but here, please check out these four or five video clips." Not sure how many of you did, but I do know Sweeney and Katie gave the show a shot... and almost promptly dropped it. Danielle did the same thing a year or so back when giving the show a chance long before I did. The consensus - and I get this, definitely - is that it's "a bit much" and "uncomfortable to watch." It's true - the pilot is more cringeworthy than funny, with the show making sure to nail the "crazy" in its title before worrying about the humor or the heart.

But as with so many other shows, it gets better. I was skeptical after the pilot, but ended up liking Season 1 plenty. Granted, I didn't love Season 1. I liked it, but the songs that popped up two or three times per episode were easily my favorite part of the show.

Here now, after Season 2, I can safely say that I love this show. Season 2 was only thirteen episodes long (and Season 1 was eighteen, so really, this isn't a typical network hour-long commitment) and while watching it I was no longer merely looking forward to the songs, but actually invested in these characters, their lives, their conflicts and friendships.

But I still know it's an uphill sell! And I know in the age of #PeakTV we all need to be wary of oversaturating our watchlists, and that checking something out and deciding to bail after one episode is, hey, very responsible, actually. But let me double down on my recommendation of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend after Season 2. This one's going to end up pretty high on the year-end list.

Trev's Movie Dump: February 2017

John Wick: Chapter 2

John Wick is shaping up to be Harry Potter... only instead of wizards, we've got assassins. John Wick: Chapter 2 expands the Wick-universe by showing how assassins are everywhere, hiding in plain sight with "fun" disguises. And I love that idea -- a world of merciless contract-killers surrounding us non-assassin muggles. Bound by strict ethics and rules that bring some sense of order to an otherwise chaotic career choice, this Wick-universe is a fascinating place to explore.

All that said... this movie is fun. Just plain fun. It's everything I want from a gut-busting action film. If you're even somewhat into action films, the Wick series is completely worth a watch. Catch up on them before the teased third installment comes out.

Jason Bourne

Did I hear anyone clamoring for another Bourne film? Didn't we say all that there had to be say with the last three movies? Bourne traces his scattered memories all the way back to Project Treadstone, gets back to America, meets his maker, and confronts his demons. We're done, right?

Wrong. Bourne is still a deeply troubled soul, apparently battling more troubled memories.  (How convenient it is for another memory to pop-up with every new film?) This time a memory of his deceased father from a life before Bourne is enrolled in Treadstone emerges. 

Now, if what you're looking for is Bourne running around, staying one step ahead of the enemy, while the CIA (or whatever) shouts orders from a command room surrounded with satellite images of the world... then maybe you'll get behind this. 

I didn't. It's basically a visual rip-off of the rest of the movies with one half-way decent car chase at the end. The only good thing I can say is that I didn't have to endure Julia Style's shitty acting for long. (That's a bit of a spoiler that might actually help you get into the movie.)

Manchester by the Sea

This is a beautiful movie that my love for has only grown with time (albeit, it's only been a few weeks). Within two weeks, I watched it twice... and I think I like this film more than I want to admit. Just watching this guy struggling with an impossible guilt and grief that's forced him away from home, finds that another tragedy will give him another chance to return home.

I'm curious how others view the ending of this film? For me, I thought it was a very happy ending. Just the right amount of optimism for me to hope (maybe even know) that things are going to work out for the best in due time. And that lasting image just makes me feel all mushy inside -- a big accomplishment considering there are points in the film where I feel like I couldn't be any sadder at such tragic events.

While this wasn't my top pick for the best film of 2016, it was our group's collective #1 film of the year... and I'm fine with that. 

Alice Through the Looking Glass

I think if I had been stoned and watching this on IMAX... I might have enjoyed it purely for all the CGI visual effects. Instead I watched it sober on my tiny bedroom TV. Needless to say, it was painful to sit through loaded with many eye rolls at Johnny Depp's Mad-Hatter performance. This franchise must be dead by now. 

Moonlight

Sometimes I wish I was more on top of my movie-game so I could enter into films without any preconceived notion on whether this is an amazing film or not. I didn't have that luxury with this movie. I came into Moonlight hearing nothing but positive things -- listening to it by constantly praised by film-buff podcasts, seeing it ranked consistently at the top on Internet polls, etc. This is a movie I expected the world from... And it delivered.

The story about a boy who's an outcast in a community that doesn't accept him in a world that doesn't accept his community. And then that boy growing up and figuring out who he really is. It's some powerful stuff.

The one aspect I applaud the most are the performances. Three different actors playing the same character at three different points in his life. I totally bought this was the character growing up. Not because all three actors looked similar, but because they embodied the character just so perfectly. 

Oscar post-mortem: I would have hands-down given director Barry Jenkins best director instead of Damien Chazelle -- who's other film Whiplash is arguably better than La La Land. Instead it got best picture (which I believe is the alt-category for best director... because, really, what's the difference between praising a movie, or praising the main person who's vision was responsible for making the movie what it is?).

Hacksaw Ridge

Confession time: This is the first Mel Gibson movie I've seen from beginning to end. Sure, I've "seen" Braveheart as much as I've seen most of the scenes of the film over the years that I can essentially piece together the movie in my mind. But Passion of the Christ... fell asleep in the first 10 minutes, and Apaclypto... never saw it. 

That said, this was an OK movie. It's a movie I liked, but never loved. I think it's biggest praise was the second-half of the film that was nothing but war scenes. Those action shots were so intense, it's probably the most horrific war scenes captured on film since Saving Private Ryan. It literally felt as though these soldiers were wandering into Hell, which is quite an appropriate analogy considering there was such a heavy emphasis on Christ/redemption/ascension in this film. 

Speaking of the heavy-handed Christ metaphors peppered all throughout this film, was that an interesting subject choice for Gibson's return to the limelight? I'm not saying yes or no... just connecting the preverbal dots here. 

High-Rise

Stan praised this. I loathed it. This was pretentious piece of bullshit. I arguably felt less for these characters then they felt for themselves as they lost their self-identities in favor for their need to be apart of the caste system contained in a... High-rise. 

Some compare this to Snowpiercer, a movie I also disliked. However, I think I hated Snowpiercer more just because it was loved by so many (something I still can't understand). This film, however, looks to have fairly lukewarm reviews. And that makes sense. While I can see some people really liking it -- like Stan -- I couldn't see everyone liking it -- such as myself. And that brings me comfort that I'm not some weird outlying who feels like they're taking crazy pills!

O.J.: Made in America

First off... this is not a documentary. It's a mini-series. Albeit, a documentary mini-series, but not a fucking movie! However, the fine folks over at ESPN figured out how to cut through all the red tape the Academy Awards puts up to distinguish what films are worthy of their consideration. And their effort was not in vain as this "film" won an Oscar for best documentary.

All that aside, it's truly deserving of the accolade. This is a fucking engrossing documentary that explores the life of O.J. Simpson. How he started out as a football all-star, then transitioned into an actor and L.A. celebrity, then, of course... his tragic relationship with Nicole Brown. While the trial of O.J. does fill up a significant part of the documentary -- a 7-fucking-hours-long documentary -- there's plenty of footage that explores his life after the trial. After he loses millions in civil court. After he's forced to move away from L.A. After he establishes a different identity and life in Miami. And then, after he gets caught for trying to steal back his own sports memorabilia in Las Vegas -- which ultimately sends him back to the clinker for 30-something years.

Now, while O.J.'s story is fascinating/horrifying... that's not where this documentary really shines. What it does best is giving you context for where society was at the time this whole things was going down. How mistreated the black-minorities of L.A. were going back to the Watt's Riots up till Rodney King. Time and time again, losing their day at court. Then when you had one of black communities most prominent celebrities get under fire, you begin to see why there was a such a strong support for O.J.'s defense. I don't think this documentary seeks to definitively state whether or not O.J. did murder Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman (although I certainly believe he did), but I does lend understanding to why things happened the way they did. Why he won the trial. Why the people loved him. Then why he was later shunned away from the aristocratic community he fought so hard to be a part of.

I heard there was something like 80 hours of interview footage they had to cut down to a "lean" 467 minute final runtime. But some of those subjects they got... impressive. No, O.J. doesn't have a direct interview here, but there are people who serve on the LAPD during the trail, the prosecution, the defense, Mark Furhman (the guy accused of planting the infamous glove), two jurors, the helicopter pilot who filmed the L.A. riots and O.J.'s car chase, and a slew of O.J.'s friends/colleagues from each stage of his life.

The documentary paints a really interesting tapestry of where America was leading into the early 90's and helps add context to a story that was way over my 8-year-old head at the time when it was occurring. 

There's a lot of great films I managed to squeeze in this month. Many worth seeing. This one, while the runtime can be intimidating, is definitely something that's worth a watch. Right now I know it's on Hulu in three-parts. Give it a go!

Man Seeking Woman: Season 3

When it began, Man Seeking Woman was a show about, obviously, a man seeking a woman. It was more clever than funny - though still usually plenty funny - with all kinds of common phrases and feelings turned into bad puns and played out to absurd conclusions. It's hard to describe. It's kind of like a sketch show, but not really.

Anyway, here in the third season the showrunners wisely decided, "Hey, know what? Our hapless idiot main character can't stay single forever, and we've already dried up that well. So let's give him a girlfriend already." And that's exactly what they did, and they spent these last ten episodes visiting new territory and doing the same thing to "man finds a woman" that they used to do to "man seeking woman."

This has never been my favorite show or even close to it, but it's always been a show I've rooted for and enjoyed. It's original and relentless with whatever it sets its sites on. Some episodes over the years have completely tanked for me, but at least they aren't afraid to go all out for it, you know? Pivoting tone and joke alike sometimes two or three times per episode. So if this ends up being the last season of Man Seeking Woman I'll be sorry to see it go, but impressed that it lasted for three straight seasons of all-out absurdity. (And it ends with a wedding, and its got miserable ratings, so really, why not? Where do they even go next? Having kids? That's an entirely different show for an almost entirely different demographic.)

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 12

By the time a show hits twelve seasons there really isn't that much left to say. Sunny has been kind of hit or miss for me for, oh, six years now - half its damn life - but when it hits, it hits, and I do think this season was heavy on the hits. Good!

In fact, I think I've finally been able to put my finger on what makes a great Sunny episode for me. It's a lack of gimmicks. It's when the gang just sort of makes terrible decisions, either together or against each other, and reaps the rewards. My favorite episode of this season was probably the second one, entitled "The Gang Goes to a Water Park." Three plots, all of them involving our favorite group of five excitedly making bad decisions out in public in the pursuit of something as simple as having a blast at a water park.

But that's just highlighting one gem in a season full of them. And let's not ignore some of the monumental payoffs to gags that have run for, literally over a decade. Mac? Finally out of the closet! Charlie? Finally banged the Waitress! (And was immediately over her.)

Rumor has it that Glenn Howerton is leaving the show after this season. I'm absolutely fine with this. It's been twelve years, Dennis has always been my least favorite character, and I'm sure the show could make absolute hay out of rolling in a series of guest stars as potential Dennis replacements to "run the bar" who are immediately horrified and scarred by the gang, or even just by elevating its own supporting players - Cricket! The McPoyles! Bill Ponderosa! Uncle Jack! Ben the Soldier! Why not?

Another rumor is that Sunny might go on an extended hiatus before returning for the already contracted thirteenth and fourteenth seasons. Again, fine - this is just what, like, half of the shows on television seem to do now. (And most of the good ones!)

Either way, I'm very happy with how Season 12 unfolded. Only a year ago, I said of Sunny something like, "can we just put this old dog to rest?" And then along came these ten episodes. Nothing like a solid, bounceback year from an old favorite.

Schitt's Creek: Season 2

I realized that last time I posted about this low stakes bingeworthy comedy, I didn't describe the premise whatsoever. Ready? A wealthy family gets screwed out of their entire fortune by a corrupt business manager and has to "rough it" out in Middle America (actually Middle Canada I think but who cares) while they await... actually, I'm not sure. They're just kind of there. The situation feels neither permanent nor temporary.

Like I said last time around, it's not great. But Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are here, doing their thing as well as they do it, and Eugene Levy's son Dan is here too, definitely the breakout star insofar as there is one. Oh, and Chris Elliott's here too! Doing his thing, playing Roland Schitt, the mayor of Schitt's Creek. Your mileage may vary - apparently he's a lot of people's favorite part of this dang show - but man, have I never been one for Chris Elliott.

I dunno. I've come this far - I might as well catch up with the current season of Schitt's Creek - the third one - but I can't pretend that this is above-average viewing. Good enough, easy enough, sure - and hey, sometimes a quick and easy comedy makes for wonderful DVR fodder, like that "clubhouse guy" in the locker room, you know?

Okay here's a thought that might adequately summarize how I feel about this show. I think the best parts of a lot of episodes are the cold opens. Does that sum it up? That might not sum it up. I'm sorry.  Forget we had this conversation. Carry on.

Victoria: Season 1

I said - at least I think I said - back when I reviewed The Crown a few months ago that it was sliding right in as a Downton Abbey replacement for people who loved themselves some noble British melodrama. I wasn't wrong, but now we've got an even better Downton Abbey replacement in Victoria, which aired Sunday nights on PBS from January through early March after debuting in the UK last year to - wait a second, this absolutely is the Downton Abbey heir apparent.

This one's about the young Queen Victoria, which places it somewhere in the 1830s or '40s. It's such easy bubblegum viewing, the conflicts pitting a headstrong young queen against a one-dimensionally villainous old patriarchy, mostly embodied by a bitter old uncle figure who feels like he was passed over for the monarchy even though the law's as clear as day and has been for centuries when it comes to British heredity. Vicki marries her first cousin, and it's NBD, even though his name is Prince Albert (tee-hee). She rides horses and throws parties and goes dancing and thinks late-term pregnancy is just so goddamn boring. Even when she survives an assassination attempt, she's not all "Mr. Bates is a murderer" about it; she just breathes a little heavily for a little while and then wishes everyone would get over it already. What a gal! And she has the cutest little Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, too!

But seriously, this is take-it-or-leave-it viewing at its finest, a show that knows exactly what it is so far and doesn't strive to be anything else. The Crown takes itself far more seriously, which means it's got a higher ceiling but a much bigger fall should it stumble; Victoria is - so far at least - Downton Abbey at its happiest, maybe without all the sass. Like imagine if Lady Mary had Lady Ethel's attitude. Scratch that. Just imagine Lady Sybil. Swoon.

Lethal Weapon 3

Okay - this is perhaps the most embarrassing and infuriating blog-related anecdote I have ever shared in eight years on this blog. And it ends with a weird lesson I haven't really fully parsed out yet. Bear with me.

I have never seen Lethal Weapon. It came out before I was born and I just never got around to it. But its reputation precedes it, and through the years I'd say I'm at least familiar with the movie. It's Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, and they're cops, Gibson being the brash young hothead and Glover being "too old for this shit," and they're partners, and it's widely regarded as the greatest "buddy cop" movie ever made, and Shane Black wrote it, and everyone loves it, and even It's Always Sunny has devoted multiple episodes to shitty fan-made sequels in the franchise.

Anyway, for a while I've known I had to correct this and see Lethal Weapon. I also needed a "prestige movie" hiatus after barreling through so many Oscar contenders in February. What better palate cleanser than a 1987 action comedy movie? And lo - there it was, listed as free on demand in the very small and shitty and limited Verizon Fios library. And the movie's thirtieth birthday is this weekend! Why not? I pressed play and gave it a watch. Lethal Weapon. Verizon, On Demand. Lethal Weapon.

The movie plays. It's a little cheesy right out of the gate, but in a way that boasts a certain confidence in its characters, in its writing, hell, even in its audience. Here are Riggs and Murtaugh defusing a bomb, cracking jokes, Murtaugh worrying, Riggs completely reckless. Murtaugh is, right from the outset, counting down the days until his retirement. There are only seven left! (Ha! Is this the movie that made that into a trope?) The best thing I can say for the movie is that it's instantly comfortable in its own skin. It almost feels like a parody of itself, with smooth saxophone playing over and between action scenes, with Riggs and Murtaugh riffing on each other in a way that leads the audience to assume that they're long-time partners. But I mean, I've seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Other Guys, and weird, frantic plots are kind of Shane Black's thing. None of this is coming as a surprise to me. Shane Black's movies often seem to feel a little bit like self parody - maybe he was just a bit duller in his first effort. That shouldn't be surprising, right? Plus, it's the eighties - everything was duller, blunter, dumber back then. 

So when Joe Pesci showed up, playing a caricature, like Joe Pesci does, I didn't bat an eye. And when Murtaugh kept making jokes about Riggs trying to sleep with his daughter even though the two hadn't even interacted, I didn't think twice. Still, the whole thing felt like... so much less than what I was expecting from an all-time action comedy classic. The eighties weren't that bad. Nostalgia isn't that powerful. But I trusted the masses and the conventional wisdom and convinced myself that what I was watching was, sure, pretty good, when viewed through the right lens. I was all set to give it a three and a half out of five on Letterboxd, even though it felt like more of a two and a half or a straight three, because I really had been hoping for and expecting a four.

And then I'm on Letterboxd, ready to log the movie, and I notice that Gary Busey has third billing. And I'm like, "wait, what? I didn't recognize Gary Busey at all." And then I see that Joe Pesci doesn't appear anywhere among the cast. And I'm like, "but I swear that was Joe Pesci." And then suddenly it hits me. Despite what Verizon On Demand had said - Lethal Weapon (1987) - and despite the poster art saying the same, I had not actually just watched Lethal Weapon.

I had just watched Lethal Weapon 3.

And suddenly it all made sense. Immediately comfortable in its own skin? No shit, it came after two movies of groundwork establishing these characters and their relationship. Murtaugh just a week away from retirement? Ha - a payoff to the idea that he's been getting too old for this shit! The idea that it was all a little dumb and not very clever? Well, no shit - Shane Black had nothing to do with it at all. Riggs having some sort of history with Murtaugh's daughter? Entirely plausible as a callback to a previous incident rather than random dad fear played for jokes!

Wow. I will now field some of your questions.

Seriously? You had no idea? You thought you were watching Lethal Weapon the whole time?

Seriously! I had no idea! I thought I was watching Lethal Weapon the whole time!

But there was no Gary Busey.

I know! But I didn't know Gary Busey was supposed to be in the first Lethal Weapon.

But Murdaugh was retiring.

Yes, and we've been over this - all I knew about the character was that he'd been getting "too old for this shit!" It fit!

But that line's not even in the movie.

Yes - and in hindsight, maybe I should have noticed that it was missing. But for all I knew, it came from one of the sequels!

Seriously, you confused the half-ass sequel for the original? You couldn't tell, based on how bad it was?

Okay - it wasn't that bad! As I said, two and a half or three stars out of five. Totally passable. And for all I knew, that's all the original Lethal Weapon was! I already said, it never quite struck me as this iconic, quotable gem of a movie - and now at least I know the consensus happens to agree with me.

Okay, but the opening titles. Did Lethal Weapon 3 not pop up on the screen right at the beginning?

I went back and checked the opening credits on YouTube just to make sure I wasn't losing my mind, and they're done in this very fiery motif, and when the movie title finally comes in, Lethal Weapon is written in an actual typeface and the Arabic numeral 3 is made out of flames, which, again, had been the background and motif for the entire opening sequence. In hindsight, it's as clear as day to anyone knowingly watching Lethal Weapon 3 that the title says Lethal Weapon 3. But when you think you're watching Lethal Weapon - which I was - I promise you, the 3 is more subtle.

But yeah, like I led off with up top, the whole thing is embarrassing and infuriating. Like, how did I not know? Fucking Verizon...

Which brings me to that last point, the weird little lesson I haven't fully parsed. It has something to do with hype and expectations, but it cuts both ways. Lethal Weapon 3 wasn't a great movie, but I was able to convince myself it was at least a good movie, briefly, because I didn't want to be "the guy" who hates on Lethal Weapon, which is what I thought I was watching. But at the same time, maybe - maybe! - Lethal Weapon 3 is a fine little movie that gets over-criticized by people who loved (and expected) more of the first movie. I wasn't tired of these characters or their schtick, nor did I have previous, more well-defined versions of these characters to compare them to in an unfavorable light.

This also serves as a stark callback to a time (the early '90s) when movie sequels were made without it being expressly assumed that audiences had seen every previous installment in a franchise. This movie works just fine as a standalone. It doesn't work all that well, but it does work! And I don't think that'd be the case with something like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter.

Bottom line, draw what moral you will from this story - I had myself convinced this might have been a great movie mostly because I didn't want to hate on Lethal Weapon, but that sort of means I cratered and let the masses dictate my own reaction to something, so boo on me, but also let's not ignore that this sequel "passed" fully convincingly for the original, so maybe the things the rest of the world cherishes and loves about the original aren't what made it a great movie in the first place, if it even was one, which, hey, this jury's still out.

Fuck. What a gaffe!

Chewing Gum: Season 1

Here's a British import available on Netflix. Nice and short at just six episodes long, this one. It's a lot like Fleabag, with a heroine awkwardly sharing the details of her sex life and other insecurities directly to the camera in an overt fourth wall break. The premise is that a 24-year-old woman breaks up with her long-time super-religious boyfriend, and they've never had sex or even so much as kissed, and so now she's both willing and able to do some overdue exploring - both outwardly and inwardly, know what I'm saying? - and that leaves her ready for all kinds of predicaments and situations and hijinks.

It works! The tone's a little zanier than you might expect from a British comedy, and the whole thing's maybe not quite as clever. Still, for my money, Fleabag is the better show - both funnier and deeper and also a British import that's only six episodes long, so hey, maybe give that one a shot over on Amazon Prime. I can't strongly recommend Chewing Gum but I enjoyed it just fine and I'll probably be back for the second season later this spring.