Final Fantasy VI

I need to make a confession. I never really beat Final Fantasy VI, one of my favorite games of all time, as a kid. I mean, yes, I poured hours and hours into the game, and on at least one file of mine I beat Kefka in the final dungeon and saw the credits roll. Game beaten, sure. But that was a file on which I used a Game Genie cheat code halfway through the game to boost my whole party to maximum levels, maximum stats, you name it. I was tired of getting my ass kicked by random encounters, you see, and no matter how much I grinded (ground?) I could never reach a point where I was capable of surviving all the random encounters by even the midway point of the game. (In hindsight this is because I was eight years old and mostly just mashing "fight" with every character in every battle, using equipment loadouts that focused exclusively on strength and HP, strategy be damned.) So eventually I said, fuck it, and I used a Game Genie and made all of my characters basically invincible, and still thoroughly enjoyed the latter half of the game and the way it resolved the stories and arcs put in play by the first half.

But I finally did it the right way (well, sort of the right way - still peeped a walkthrough at some points just to make sure I didn't miss anything, whatever, it's 2017) and beat Final Fantasy VI in the honest-to-goodness manner it was meant to be played, on my SNES Classic, about a month ago.

I have a ton of thoughts, and far too many to make one long rambling post, so instead I want to highlight the differences in my perception of the game between when I first played it, back on Christmas Day of 1994 (so, sure, call it 1995) and today. Obviously my memory today of my thoughts in 1995 is imperfect and colored by other thoughts I've had about the game in the, holy shit, 22 years since, but I still think it's an interesting exercise in contrasting the way I felt about this game as a child, when it was one of my favorites of all time, and today, when it remains one of my favorites of all time.

TERRA

1995: She's boring and whiney. Spends the whole game asking people what love is, and what it's like to be in love. Is she some kind of idiot? And what's with this unpredictable morph ability?

2017: A young woman with no real history or family, who's spent her life as an enslaved weapon of the Empire - as an adult, I completely understand her utter lack of confidence and self-awareness, and get why she's so full of regret and an unwillingness to fight in the second half of the game. Plus, morph is an excellent move that makes Terra arguably the greatest fighter in the game. Girl's trending up!

LOCKE

1995: This guy's got a bit of a hero complex.

2017: Yeah, he does. His whole unwillingness to abandon either Terra or Celes when they're in need is admirable, but it also makes him the de facto main character of the second "act" of the story, at a point in time where he's actually one of the worst and weakest fighters. Still a great character with a great story, and it makes perfect sense that, after spending so much time with him in the World of Balance, he's one of the toughest characters to reacquire in the World of Ruin.

EDGAR

1995: He is cocky, which is unbecoming for a king. He is also a ladies' man, and as a seven-year-old, I'm not cool with that.

2017: One of my biggest changes of heart involved Edgar. Even at a young age I knew he was one of the World of Balance's best fighters, thanks to his toolset, but back in 1995 I was completely incapable of understanding that any man, including Edgar, would not actually want to be the king, and that power is a burden, and that Edgar shouldered it willingly in order for his twin brother to have a better life, free from the responsibilities of governance.

SABIN

1995: Oh my God, this is the best character in the game, he is ridiculously potent as a fighter, and as a character he's completely awesome too - just a bodybuilder who lives in the mountains and isn't afraid to throw down anytime, anywhere.

2017: Yes, all this is correct. Now that I'm older than Sabin's supposed to be (27? Ha!) I feel like he's at least a little bit of a musclebound meathead, but so what? What video game wouldn't be better without its own Rob Gronkowski character?

CELES

1995: Locke's love interest, and someone who keeps betraying both sides of the war like some kind of double agent. She's obviously one of the good guys, though, so let's just have faith in her.

2017: I never really appreciated it this way until now, but Celes is almost entirely amoral in the first half of the game. When she double crosses your party in the Magitek Factory, and even when she almost does the same on the Floating Continent, I don't really think she's playing. I think she's legitimately on Kefka's side during those moments, tempted like he is to become powerful and godlike. When you start the second half of the game with no one but her, it's because she's a completely blank slate now that the war has ended; her whole identity was rooted in allegiance and betrayal, to the point where in the game's most famous scene at the Opera House, she's able to put on another personality like a glove. She's no one and nothing until the world ends, and then she's free to just be her, and to find out what matters to her in life. (It's Locke.) There also isn't nearly, at all, a love triangle between her and Locke and Terra like I used to think there was.

CYAN

1995: The formal-talking guy who talks like he's in a Shakespeare production but swings a badass blade. A knight! He lost his whole family, and that's very sad.

2017: Well, he's a samurai, actually, as Doma Castle is very clearly, uh, "Oriental," with respect to the rest of the very European-looking game. And yes - the poisoning of Doma Castle remains one of the darkest and dirtiest plot points in any video game I've ever played. Two countries are at war, and evil old Kefka just goes ahead and poisions an entire water supply. Not cool, bro! Cyan's one of the few characters in the whole dang game who's still older than I am today, and I still can't relate to what it must be like to lose your family and hometown in the blink of an eye. Anyway, as a fighter, his special technique is actually completely useless because it takes fucking forever to charge up and use; you're so much better off just using the charge-free basic attacks he's got. His magic sucks too, which becomes a real hindrance late in the game, and I think his speed is among the lowest in the game. What I'm saying is, he is sneakily and quietly the worst fighter in the game, easily. Absolutely love his music and his tragic story, though.

GAU

1995: Ugh. Just an angry, feral kid who's useless in battle. His backstory is sad, though.

2017: It is a sad backstory, but Gau absolutely is not useless in battle. Just because you can't control him doesn't mean he can't absolutely fuck enemies up. I still think there was no need to have him, Umaro, Relm, and Strago - seems like they used four characters to cover and remix the two or three class tropes of "blue mage" and "berserker" and "mediator," but whatever.

SHADOW

1995: This fucking guy, a silent assassin with no loyalties except to his dog, I am loving him.

2017: I was prepared to hate this character, or at least dislike him a lot, but no - Shadow is legitimately a great character, bailing your party out of more than one tight bind in the first half, and probably dead and gone in the second half if you fell victim to one of the all time greatest traps in RPG history. (When given the choice... WAIT!) I also missed, back in 1995, the way his story ends in the epilogue. It's a subtle suicide, and damn, is it just perfect.

SETZER

1995: Some kind of world famous airship gambler. Not a great option in battle.

2017: Yeah, more or less nailed it back then. I will say, it's kind of depressing that the game's most iconic sequence, at the Opera House, plays out the way it does because Setzer is trying to kidnap a beautiful singer and make her his bride. Like, that's extremely Bowser of him, very rapey, and so on. it also doesn't really make a ton of sense that there's one airship in the entire world and the Empire never tries to acquire it in any way. It'd be like if the only space ship with light speed in Star Wars were the Millennium Falcon. The craziest thing I learned about Setzer this time through is that he is supposed to be 27 years old. Dude is a hard-living airship captain with white hair and a face full of scars. He's a rough 36 at best, and more likely 48. Get out of here with 27.

MOG

1995: Just a weird little moogle critter who wants to hang out and throw down. Good fighter.

2017: More of a "meh" fighter - I think younger me was just deluded by the fact that Mog joins the party at an insanely high level early on - but the description's pretty apt. This dude was '90s cool - chill, really - and also looked like a cuddly little teddy bear with a red pom-pom antenna. Why not?

STRAGO

1995: Crazy old man blue mage.

2017: Nope, that covers it. This time around I did do an optional Strago quest in the World of Ruin for the first time, but honestly... it added nothing to his character or his story. Too bad!

RELM

1995: Precocious ten-year-old girl who... paints pictures of her enemies, that then come to life, and do harm?

2017: Look, maybe 14 characters really is too many. Strago and Relm - and really Mog and Setzer also, and especially the next two characters - join the party too late to have any meaningful impact or interaction with what I'd call the "main" cast of Terra, Locke, Edgar, Celes, Sabin, and maybe sort of Cyan. Cyan's borderline out, Setzer's borderline in, Shadow and Gau are out by deliberate design, but these final five are really just here for no reason other than to pad the character total - something I still appreciate, and respect, but unnecessary inclusions all the same. Relm's a fine character, though. It's just weird to see a group of grown-ass adults decide that, sure, a ten-year-old girl is a good asset for their team.

UMARO

1995: Just a big old berserker sasquatch, hard to find without knowing where to look, who adds nothing to the story.

2017: Again, nailed it back then. I had more fun throwing him in my party this time around, though. Dude can mash.

GOGO

1995: Probably the best fighter in the game because he can use anyone else's ability

2017: Sure, yeah, but his stats are complete garbage. Sabin's Bum Rush is legitimately a one-hit kill on almost any non-boss; Gogo's is a pale immitation at best, and he can't even equip espers. No, boo, pass. All the fan theories about who he might be are interesting, but they're only interesting because there's clearly no corret answer; Gogo is whoever you want him - or her - to be.

Whew! That took a while. Let's move on to just a few more key things, and then I'm done, I swear.

KEFKA

1995: I hate this pesky little clown, and I hate that he becomes an evil god. Such an asshole!

2017: younger me was spot on, but let's take a slightly deeper philosophical dive when it comes to World of Ruin Kefka. What's his deal? What's his motivation? I find him fascinating. Having conquered the entire planet, does he build himself an ornate castle and sit upon an elaborate throne with the world at his feet? No, not at all - he isolates himself in the center of a mountainous tower of garbage and decay, completely free from all human contact, just sort of annihilating cities around the globe one by one. He's pure and unfiltered nihilism - everything is meaningless, there is no hope, and so on - but he's... bored. He's waiting for you to show up, it seems, not actively trying to stop you from doing so. If you don't end up killing him to end the game, I mean, where does he even go from there? It's phenomenally boring and lonely to be truly omnipotent when there's nothing but hatred in your heart, apparently, and Final Fantasy VI at least begins to pull on that thread. And this has always been an overlooked aspect of Kefka, I think. Yes, he's obnoxious in the first half of the game, a bratty, angry white man with no empathy or sympathy, a true sociopath. But in the second half he's... an anti-god. And there's no benevolent higher power in the game to counter him at all - just you, your party of grudge-bearing individuals. You don't even kill Kefka in order to restore order to the world, or to save it - you do it just to give the world hope. I think that's great. I think the whole angle here is awesome.

THE WORLD OF RUIN

1995: I miss the old world, where I knew where everything was and the towns all looked so pretty and peaceful.

2017: This is, of course, the point. If Final Fantasy VI were made today there would absolutely be some shoehorned in option once you hit the second half of the game where you can return to the World of Balance. It'd be some bullshit NPC you find and talk to and she says "for a sall price, I can take you back to the way things were before the change..." and that'd be fine. I'd even use that feature, and go back and make sure to fill out my beastiary, and get all of Strago's lores and Gau's rages, and so on. But that would absolutely destroy the momentum of the game and the impact of that crucial moment when, holy shit, Kefka destroys the goddamn world! I also think I took for granted, as a kid, this notion of there being a "dark" world that came after the "light" world; I'd seen what A Link to the Past had up its sleeve, after all, and in Final Fantasy IV you can go underground and also to the moon for a total of three different world maps. But the World of Ruin was crazy, in hindsight. The showdown on the Floating Continent is meant to feel climactic because you're about to prevent Kefka from destroying the world, only then... you fail! And the world is destroyed! And then there's another whole half of the game where you just recollect yourself, extinguish some past demons, and get back to whoopin' Kefka's ass, finishing what you started. Amazing.

GAME LENGTH AND PACE

1995: I mean, I'm lying if I say I ever clocked it back then, but I'd say I took my sweet ass time on this one. I used to grind a ton right out of the gate, like a good little boy, training up for the bigger fights sure to come down the road; little did I know this was useless, because the game is designed to allow you to get through the first third of it or so without any grinding whatsoever. In fact really the whole game is designed that way, and by merely doing every side quest you'll be more than capable of taking down big bad Kefka by the end of the game. Anyway, I'm rambling; I'd have called this a 40-hour game if you asked me in 1995.

2017: It's a 30-hour game, and I wish it were longer. Seriously, I know falling in love with a game is a rarer and rarer thing as you age, but even re-playing this thing, I couldn't shake the notion of, "wait, that's it? I'm done? There's really nothing left to do but take on the final boss? Well, okay then." I was also stunned by how quickly the game moves early on. There's understandably a lot of script to get through, but man, the end of the "first act" I've referred to a handful of times can take place after like, five or six hours. The famous opera scene happened seven hours into my game this time. I guess JRPGs are, by design, very story-heavy early on and very gameplay-heavy later on, so most of what happens in any of them probably happens early on temporally speaking. But yeah, the third "act" (of three) has probably fewer lines than either of the first two, and unfolds completely nonlinearly via tons of optional sidequests, and it still took up more than half of my gameplay time.

Gah. I love this game. Have for twenty years, and always will. I could write about it all day, if only the day wouldn't feel wasted for doing so. This is as good a point as any to stop, but holy crap, check this one out if you haven't yet. It's so fucking good, guys. Just so goddamn good!

Stan's TV Dump: Fall 2017

One last time, here are my bails, fails, and tales from the weird and wild world of Peak TV.

BAILS:

Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party: Season 2
Novelty only lasts for so long.

Bajillion Dollar Properties: Season 3

Man. In this day and age, where there are a thousand TV shows and a dozen ways to watch them, it blows my mind that there are still shows that get caught up in copyright limbo or whatever. Seeso shut down earlier this year, and once it did, all of the shows on it just sort of disappeared right along with it. Bajillion Dollar Properties was one of these, and probably one of the better ones. Some of the Seeso orphans were quickly picked up by other networks, which is why a show like HarmonQuest had a second season elsewhere. But Bajillion Dollar Properties? It's just gone. It doesn't exist on the Internet anywhere, but no one can upload it anywhere either, because it's copyright-protected, even though, again, no one is currently selling it legally on the Internet. Mind-blowing! Baffling! I mean, I do get it, I think - the rights holders are waiting for the right offer, or they're contractually restricted from offering it on another streaming service for a certain amount of time. But still - this is a show I'd gladly pay a small amount of money to see, so why can't I see it? Gah! The first episode of the third season of Bajillion Dollar Properties was available on YouTube, so I went ahead and watched it, but I'm bailing. This isn't on me, or on the show - it's on friggin' Seeso, or NBC, or whoever has this but will not release it. Oh well!

FAILS:

Dynasty

It's a reboot of that 1980s nighttime soap I'm sure you've all heard of but never seen. (The one that wasn't Dallas.) Brought to you on the CW by the makers of The OC and Gossip Girl, which I respectively loved and barely tolerated. When Marissa and I saw the very first promo of the show - a catfight ensues when a young woman's new boss says, with a sneer, "call me Mom" - we were all in. And then I actually watched five or six episodes, and then I backed way the hell back out. Marissa's still in, as this campy glitzy trash ride fills some sort of hole for her that Gossip Girl left behind. Me - I wanted more camp, more absurd rich-people-are-just-the-trashiest flavor, more men and women in $5,000 outfits trying to just beta the shit out of each other. Alas, this show seems to be taking itself just, like, ten percent too seriously for me. And it's about twenty percent too bad to pull off what it's trying.

Lore
Lots of hype for this one! Apparently it's a respected and beloved podcast about some real weird shit from history. Amazon turned it into a six-episode TV show for Halloween, which makes perfect sense. I threw the show on my enormous backlog and thought little of it. But then I heard someone say it was a terrible show. And then I asked Keith about it, and he agreed that the show did the original podcast no justice. And, suddenly, excited by the prospect of watching what was allegedly a terrible show in order to justify cutting it from my backlog, my watchlist, whatever you want to call it - this was a very enticing proposition! And that's exactly what I've done now. (It's possible I have a problem!) But, yeah, the show stinks. You can't just take an existing popular podcast and intersperse it with some shitty acting and overlay it with bland visuals and call that a television show. Otherwise every podcast would and could just become a TV show. No! Let's not do that!

Future Man
The premise and the cast of this Hulu original were enough to grab me, but one half-hour episode in it was clear to me that it wasn't going to be worth it to stick around for thirteen more. There's this big old loser playing the world's hardest video game - a game no one has ever beaten - and then when he finally does beat it, surprise! It was a test! A test sent back in time by some super-soldiers who wanted to find out the person from the past most capable of helping them win their war against- no, fuck it. This needs no description. The whole thing is completely stupid, and doesn't make any sense, and it's not even funny. Seems like a show that maybe Hulu stole right out from underneath Adult Swim, somehow.

Knightfall
Nothing to see here aside from an extremely bad medieval show about the persecution of the Knights Templar by the King of France after the Crusades. Look, I figured this was going to be a dumpster fire going in, but I made it through two seasons of History's Vikings and it wasn't even bad. There was a chance this was going to be good! It wasn't. Two years ago I called Kurt Sutter's Bastard Executioner the worst show of 2015. This was only barely better than that Flamin' Cheeto dump.

Runaways
I actually made it a decent way into this one, and didn't hate it - by far the best Marvel show of all time! But at a time when I'm disgusted by how much television I watch, there aren't many easier cuts to make than an hour-long show I like but don't love, you know?

TALES:

Great News S2 E1: "Baordroom Bitch"; S2 E2: "Squad Feud"

Just a few months back, I said of the first couple episodes of this show, "This wasn't awful, but God, who has the time or patience to stick around and wait for big network sitcoms to figure their shit out anymore?" Here's the good news - Great News has apparently figured its shit out! And all it took was bringing in Tina Fey to play what's essentially the female version of Alec Baldwin on 30 Rock - the all-knowing, insanely wealthy and powerful wonder-boss. But no, from what I saw, Great News also seems to have realized that the very concept of a cable news network is a fruitful territory ripe for lampooning here and now in our era of - sigh - "fake news" and "heightened discourse." The show seems to have pulled way, way back on the mother-daughter workplace embarrassment as a well for laughs, and it's all the better for it. This is even the type of show I could see myself really enjoying - it fills a 30 Rock hole that Kimmy Schmidt just plain can't - but, alas, who has the time for more television?

The Last Man on Earth S4 E1: "M.U.B.A.R."

After bailing on this show as the calendar turned, I came back for the season premiere just to see Jack Black get shot one second into his cameo appearance. That's comedy gold, folks. I didn't think Jon Hamm could be topped. The next time they do this, they should just have a big name guest star straight up play a corpse from the start. But the rest of this show is still the dumbest mess, I'm happy to say. I don't miss it! But I wish it well.

I Love Dick S1 E5: "A Short History of Weird Girls"; S1 E8: Cowboys and Nomads

As you may recall, I tried two episodes of this bizarre and unique Amazon series in the summer. It just didn't stick with me, which was a shame, because I really wanted to enjoy it. Then the TV critics' year-end best lists started coming out, and "A Short History of Weird Girls" was on one critic's list of the best TV episodes of the year, so I gave it a shot. I liked it fine, probably even a little better than the first two episodes of the show. And then I realized if I watched the finale it'd kind of be like I watched the whole season even though I only watched half of it - it's not like I was following the plot threads through two episodes, so maybe, sure, let's see where and how this thing ended. And I didn't care for that episode at all. So, smart bail, after all. Not for me! I love that a show as quirky as this exists, but this just wasn't my cup of tea. Sorry, Jill Soloway! I'm still in on Transparent.

Taboo S1 E8: "Episode 8"

So I'm collecting input for my big old collaborative year-end TV rankings, and what do you know, two people include Taboo on their lists. And they don't just include it; they each rank it third overall. Wow! I mean, I hated Taboo. That's maybe too strong a word - there was always decent production value and acting, I just couldn't muster up two shits to give about the story. I bailed after three of eight episodes. So I decided, much like I did with I Love Dick, to go ahead and skip right to the finale, watch it, see if there was anything I was missing here. And... no! There wasn't! Same old shit! Ugh. What a waste. What a depressing way to spend one of my last two hundred hours or so of 2017. Womp! But at least I'm confident all over again that this show sucks. Tom Hardy - you're better than this!

Okay, cool! I don't think I'll do this again next year, these dumps where I talk about all the junk I'm not actually watching whole seasons of. It's been fun! But there have to be better avenues for posts like these. Eh. We'll see. Happy 2018, all of you!

Fuller House: Season 3

I'll give Fuller House this much - three seasons in, and I'm still fucking watching it. Why? How? I mean, I cringe so much harder at this show than anything else on television, by a mile. Will I finally shake it in 2018? It's as clear as day that this thing will never, ever be canceled until and unless Candace Cameron is caught doing racism at a traffic stop and it goes viral. Only I can pull this plug, it seems. Time will tell!

But seriously, fuck this show with the entire Golden Gate Bridge.

Insecure: Season 2

Dammit. One year ago, I said I was cutting this one, and I did cut this one, all the way up until there was one week left in the year, and now here I am, and I watched the second season of Insecure - a season a ton of critics absolutely loved, including plenty who were lukewarm at best on the first season - and it's still just not for me! Like, I can acknowledge that it's a good show, a well-made show, an important show, but I also need to acknowledge that it isn't necessarily a show made for me to enjoy. So be it! I won't rule out watching a third season - shouldn't have ruled out watching the second - but we'll see.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Plenty to say here, but it's all been said elsewhere. I'll be brief!

I really enjoyed this. I know taking the anti-nerdfan stance isn't exactly a difficult thing to do, and I acknowledge that this movie had all kinds of imperfections and flaws and issues, but I mean, who gives a shit, it's Star Wars. This is the ninth movie in the dang franchise, and literally most of them have been deeply imperfect and flawed. There's an argument to be made - and I'm not saying I'm making it, just acknowledging that it can be made - that The Last Jedi is the most emotionally gratifying movie in the whole silly series. It's almost certainly, at least, the most competently made and best-written movie in the series - but that's not saying much when almost all of the others were written and directed by George Lucas, is it?

Anyway, after The Force Awakens, I can't say I was really excited to see what happened in Episode VIII. But after The Last Jedi, I'm very, very curious to see where J.J. Abrams goes with Episode IX. Probably nowhere good, given that it's J.J. Abrams, but still - I'm excited! Thanks for that, Rian Johnson.

Easy: Season 2

Oof, so much TV to squeeze in under the radar in 2017! This? This was maybe not worth the effort.

Don't get me wrong, Easy is a fun little show from Joe Swanberg, an anthology series just taking these short little bite-sized looks at a bunch of different couples figuring out their relationships in our blessed, cursed, modern era. But even at its very best, Easy is just sort of mildly enjoyable. Worth four hours of my time? Sure, I guess - but if I'm going to cut back on TV in 2018, holy shit is this an easy cut to make. Sorry!

My Brother, My Brother, and Me: Season 1

Here's one that only really came to my attention once my friends' year-end rankings started pouring in. At six episodes, half an hour each, it's another really, really easy show to watch. It comes from a long-running podcast, in which three manboys - truly "large adult sons" in every sense of the word - answer listener questions and give (presumably comically bad) advice. The show is set in their West Virginia hometown of Huntington, and guys, I dunno, but to me this whole thing just oozes with every bad "suburban white people" trope you can find. These guys are funny, no doubt, and talented at improvising and goofing with each other and performing various bits and gimmicks. But they're maybe the three biggest failson goobers who've ever had their own TV show. Most episodes involve them dropping in on the mayor's office, and filming his reactions to their outlandish ideas and requests, and since the mayor knows their family really well and since the boys are arguably the biggest three celebrities in the town, the mayor suffers it all with a smile, as do the police chief and the high school principal and teachers.

I'm being too hard on this. It's funny! And its heart is in the right place. But it is really truly nothing more than three chucklehead grown men, between the ages of 29 and 35, doing shenanigans around their town. And like, not even without breaking into giggling fits half of the time. It's like, in one corner you have Nathan Fielder, enduring the most cringe-inducing and awkward conversations with total strangers without ever so much as cracking a smile... and then on the complete other end of the spectrum are these three, the McElroy "boys," whose show includes, like, entire minutes-long segments of them trying to call Ellen DeGeneres to invite her to be on their show, only they can't even get past "Hi, I'm looking for-" without breaking into gigglefits.

Weirdly enough, it's still a very well made and immaculately crafted show. They're going for a very specific sort of laid back tone here, where the world is already perfect and utopian, where America's biggest problems are dorm roommate disputes and married couples being unable to agree on whether or not to get a tarantula. It's just absolutely a show that exists in a bubble - an upper middle class, white, suburban American bubble. And there's nothing wrong with that! Literally hundreds of television shows exist these days, and to say that none of them can or even should be about vanilla-bland hometowns full of almost exclusively white people paying no mind to anything of even a thematic or symbolic importance is, you know, ridiculous. There's just a ceiling here, is all, when you make a TV show about nothing more than being silly in the absolute comfort zone of your hometown in which you are friends with the mayor. Oh well! I'll still probably be back for a second season if they are.

Gunpowder: Season 1

On the one hand, I had absolutely no surface-level interest in "Jon Snow makes a BBC/HBO miniseries about the Gunpowder Plot of 1605," especially not this late in the year with so much other good television to catch up on in such a short amount of time. But on the other hand, this was only three episodes long, and HBO generally doesn't sign off on shitty, half-assed movies or miniseries, so I gave it a whirl. (Even with HBO dreck like Entourage and Ballers, the problem isn't that the shows are executed in a low quality manner; it's that there isn't any meat or substance to them to begin with. I have no doubts that Westworld, which I generally hated, was not the exact version of itself that it wanted, and chose, to be.)

So yeah, we've got Kit Harrington as the main character here, which surprisingly isn't Guy Fawkes. It's Robert Catesby, the chief architect of the failed plan to blow up the anti-Catholic King of England and his House of Lords. He's... pretty much Kit Harrington, really. Not quite as sullen as Jon Snow, but still all weary looking, still ready to sacrifice himself for a greater good. Liv Tyler is also here along with a standard smattering of half-recognizable British faces and names.

The thing I'll always remember about Gunpowder isn't the story of the actual plot and its failure, but the brutal torture scenes it included. Make no mistake - people are horrible to their captives and prisoners, and they used to be even more horrible. The earliest and worst of these torture scenes comes when an old woman is executed in the public square for the crime of harboring Catholic priests. She is stripped naked and tied down to the floor before several enormous weights are dropped onto her one by one until her spine cracks. Holy shit! Then one of the priests is also slowly and painfully killed; he is hung from the neck, but before he can die he is dropped to the ground and then disemboweled with a hot knife. Then his arms and legs are all hacked off by an axe before finally, mercifully, so is his head. It's all some real harrowing fucking shit, I tell you!

I go back and forth on this kind of torture porn in historical docudramas. Part of me agrees than in order to best understand what would motivate a guy like Robert Catesby to conspire to commit regicide, it's important to see the heinous and horrible acts endorsed by King James I. But another part of me agrees that, holy shit, this is some really, really off-putting stuff, enough to turn a lot of people away form an otherwise mildly interesting and important history lesson.

Still, ultimately, the torture scenes were what'll always stick with me from Gunpowder, an otherwise fairly forgettable footnote to television this year where there's no happy ending, and the good guys just sort of lose and lose horribly and go down in history as the bad guys. 2017, everyone!

Search Party: Season 2

Yeesh, I am running behind on these write-ups as I cram in my year-end stuff. Shame on me!

Search Party is a good show, and maybe even a great show. It's been described as "noir Scooby Doo" and "millennial Nancy Drew." This second season was more like "millennial Alfred Hitchcock." You see, in the first season, a bored-as-hell twenty-something with nothing going on her life decided to investigate a missing person mystery, dragging her two self-absorbed friends and loveless boyfriend along for the ride. I won't spoil how it unfolds or ends - and really, it's worth checking out - but let's just say that this season takes a whole new direction. It was a great season, and if anything, it felt way too short for me - that's a compliment, for a ten episode season, of course. (Leave them wanting more, right?)

I'm not sure whether or not I liked Season 2 better than Season 1, but they're very much "of a piece," so it doesn't really matter. Season 1 might have taken me longer to get into, but Season 2 feels so much more incomplete. Eh. You be the judge.

Missions: Season 1

In a year in which I watched way too much TV, this was easily the most obscure and unnecessary show I watched. (And yet, I'm glad I did!) This is a French science fiction thriller drama that takes place on Mars across ten episodes. Do you know what my favorite part about it was? My favorite part about it was that the episodes were all, like, twenty minutes long. Easy and breezy - it's a winning strategy in 2017 and beyond!

But no, this was kind of a mess, and I had all but completely lost the thread by the halfway mark. (That it was subtitled - and then suddenly largely not subtitled - didn't help.) The story begins with a crew of eight European astronauts about to land on Mars, the first manned mission to do so. But then, three days away from Mars, they receive a transmission from Mars, from a rival company that has overtaken them and already landed on Mars, and these people are of course doing the classic, "OH GOD, TURN BACK, DO NOT COME TO MARS." And then of course the European team lands on Mars. And of course, they lose their captain in the process. So now you're thinking, okay fine, this will be a classic space horror thing, and the crew will die one by one. Except... that's not at all what happens, and by the end of the second episode they've met up with a Soviet cosmonaut from 1960 or so - a guy who crashed and presumably died, on earth, sixty years prior - and then a few episodes later there's a NASA crew arriving, and suddenly half the show is in English, and seriously, what the fuck is going on?

Anyway, this is nothing you need to seek out.

Mr. Robot: Season 3

Listen. I'm shocked - shocked! - that I'm posting about the third season of Mr. Robot aside from underneath a big old "BAIL!" heading, but here I am. Mr. Robot was actually maybe better than ever before this season, and the fifth episode of the season was one of my favorites of any show this year. (It's an action-packed one-take, entirely commercial-free, that transitions between two points of view and goes up and down multiple staircases and elevators.) I don't want to oversell this thing - it's only a USA drama, after all - but if you swore the show off after the first two seasons felt like convoluted messes more worried about supplying twists than a compelling story, I mean, so did I, and yet here I am, promising you that Mr. Robot is good again, or maybe for the first time ever, or at least that it feels confident and comfortable here in Season 3.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Season 1

What a pleasant little year-end surprise! Never saw a single episode of Gilmore Girls, but if this snappy, witty dialogue is just what Amy Sherman-Palladino does, then hey, I get the appeal. There's almost nothing not to like about this show. It's a quick-hitting gut-buster, eight episodes long and light on its feet, wonderfully period-appropriate in a way that fills a nice little void I never realized Mad Men had left behind. I liked it! I really, really liked it, and I only liked it more and more the further it went on. Interestingly, I think it makes for a great pairing with Crashing, another eight-episode show about a struggling young stand up comic. Wait, did I ever make a post on Crashing? Hang on... Yes, I did. Okay, cool. We're done here!

Prevenge

Snooze. Pregnant woman goes nuts and murders the seven members of a climbing expedition who left her husband for dead. Is the baby possessing her, telling her to kill, kill, kill? Of course her unborn baby is possessing her. British, which adds no charm, but means it's necessarily of shittier quality. Nothing about this did anything for me. So it goes!

Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor

Some could say that in high school I may have had an unhealthy relationship with the Evil Dead movies. I'm not totally sure why? Sure, I named my childhood dog Raimi, and I drove all night one Thanksgiving to visit the ruined remains of the first Evil Dead cabin in Tennessee, and  I've went to see Bruce Campbell speak on several occasions over the course of only a few years (once even flying from Boston to Baltimore only to sadly realize Campbell's meet-n-greet was sold out forcing Paulie and myself to finagled our way into a costume contest he was judging instead). But these are normal activities of any healthy teenager, right? 

Ok, so I may have had an unhealthy fanatical obsession with these films and their creators. But these films had such a positive impact on my life. They helped me form certain friendships, encouraged me to go to film school, and inspired me to achieve the career I currently have (OK, writing commercials might not be my dream career, but it's a start dammit!). 

While I'm not as ravenous of a fan of Evil Dead or Bruce Campbell as I used to be (meaning I'm not staying up until 2am on a school night to tape a late night showing of Mindwarp on VHS), these films/creators still hold a very dear place in my heart. So when I heard word that Bruce Campbell's latest memoir came out this past fall, I was all in on it. 

First, let's rewind the clock to 2001. 

Campbell's first book was called If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, and it was an excellent memoir. In it, he mostly discusses his rise into becoming an actor and all the work that went on during the early parts of his career -- in this case, mostly the Evil Dead films. It was really interesting to hear tales from what went on making those movies. The innovation used to create a cult-favorite horror film with no money. And it's even more interesting to think that so many people who worked on these seemingly insignificant films are now creative leaders in Hollywood. Who knew?!

Now let's skip back to the present.

Campbell's third book (second memoir) comes out called Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor. Here I would think we would have tales about what it's been like now that he's a well-established actor. Or what it's been like to watch Sam Raimi grow up to helm the Spider-Man films and break box office records or do a seven-season stint on Burn Notice or return as Ash in the new Evil Dead TV show. And, yeah, that stuff is all there. But not covered in the same depth that I would have hoped for. 

The fact is, this book skips around pretty quickly throughout the second half of his career and fails to capture all the stories and anecdotes that I loved from his first book. It's not bad, mind you. Just different than what I expected. Hell, nearly a third of this book talks about life as a homeowner in rural Medford, Oregon. Parts about him harvesting lavender or learning how to spread gravel on his dirt road kind of seemed a little unnecessary. Campbell's wit is still interwoven even through the non-acting parts of his memoir -- like discussing the burdens of homeowners ship and trying to get a second phone line installed when you live in the middle of fucking nowhere -- but you can't help but feel like he's holding out on you. 

By the time I actually get to the content I'm truly excited about (reconnecting with Raimi, bringing Ash back to life, etc.), the stories feel incredibly rushed. (Shrug.) It's not bad. Just not what I was hoping for. I know there are more stories there, stories that would likely come out when you go see him do a Q&A somewhere, but I just need to find a way to be satisfied with what I got. 

Unless you're a ravenous Evil Dead and/or Bruce Campbell fan, I wouldn't bother with this book. BUT, I would recommend If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor for even someone with a faint interest in film. Make of that what you will. 

Version Control

It's been about a month since I finished this novel that circles around the idea of time travel, but it's totally not a story about time travel! I think a month has been enough time to let dense story marinate in my brain. 

I'm not going to dance around it. I found this book boring. 

Well, it had a relatively boring plot. But peppered in between the main story arcs were really interesting and insightful commentaries on society, human interactions, and how advancing technology is shaping these elements of our lives (relationships, dating, education, etc.). These insights were the carrot on the end of the stick that helped me get through this book, as I think they are likely to be incredible accurate in terms of the world we're headed towards. Or already in.

As for the main storyline, well... it's just not for me. This is a book that is more of a slice of life kind of story. A story that follows a girl fresh out of college trying to figure her life out, and in the process of doing so uses a data app to find a man (a scientist) that will eventually become the father to her child. During this time period, we ruminate on the minutiae of  life, often times from the perspective of characters that don't even matter that much to the main story (e.g., the security guard). Version Control takes its sweet time fleshing out its characters, often pouring at lot of attention into parts of the story that I think could have easily been cut. But it's also in those sections that allow the author to add that social commentary that I found the most valuable during my reading.   

Here's the thing. When I read I story, I want conflict. Excitement. Suspense. Drama. And this book... this is really not the story where you're going to get all that. Or certainly won't find it on each of its 500 pages of content. 

If I had my way, this would have been a story about a mother who tragically loses her child, and in a desperate attempt to save her son, she breaks into a secret government facility  and steals her husband's top-secret time machine (er, sorry... Causality Violation Device) to go back in time and right the wrongs that were made. Sure, that might seem like low-hanging fruit. The path of least resistance in making this story, but I can't help it if that's what I'm drawn to. 

But author Dexter Palmer has a different story to tell. (Or maybe a different way of telling it.) It's possible this is one story that I'll find years from now had a much larger impact on me that what I currently believe it does. (I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that were true.) However, for now, I leave Version Control with a relief that it's over, and the gratitude that I've experienced it. 

Kuso

One of the weirdest and grossest and dumbest movies I've ever seen - and intentionally so, like an Adult Swim project that tries to ape David Lynch and only ends up as this interminable hour-and-a-half of messy, shitty, anxiety-inducing garbage. Which begs the question - is this art? There's no real plot or story to follow, aside from a few recurring characters existing. I think it's anti-art. I think this entire movie is a giant middle finger to highbrow art cinema - I just don't think that makes it better than absolutely terrible in its own right.

I feel pretty confident in saying that this is far and away the worst 2017 movie I've seen. But I plan on squeezing in a Pottersville viewing before the year wraps, so, who knows? Wide open race, folks!

Always Shine

This wasn't even on my radar until David Ehrlich's "Top 25 Movies of 2016" countdown, and I haven't heard anyone say anything about it since then, either. But sometimes an Ehrlich nod is good enough for me; it took me a year, but I finally gave this a whirl. It was decent! Quick and easy, which I love, a simple little thriller about female friendship gone wrong (and ultimately violent). Not for everyone, barely even for me, but whatever, glad to have crossed it off my list at least.

Godless: Season 1

Liked this, didn't love it. Here's a take. I think if Godless comes out, as is, as recently as 2014, and airs over 7 weeks on HBO or AMC or something, it's one of the most noticed and beloved shows of the year - by critics, by the masses, by me. But here in 2017, released without fanfare by Netflix the day before Thanksgiving, it feels like it barely registers. This is a phenomenally made show, pristine and pretty and tightly written enough with tons of memorable and multi-dimensional characters - and yet I can't shake the feeling that it's completely irrelevant in the bigger picture in 2017. I'm not suggesting that an immaculately made western miniseries has no value, provides no entertainment, or anything like that. But with so, so many shows pushing the envelope in a format sense, or a point of view sense, and with so many different stories out there, and with such a high variety of quality television, I just don't see the value a solid Western miniseries is bringing to the table in 2017. I still dug it, and especially liked the finale, but that's about as warm as I can get for this thing.

South Park: Season 21

There were maybe two or three episodes I genuinely liked here in the latest season of South Park, and yet I can't bring myself to quit the show. Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been two of my favorite creative voices out there for like, twenty years now, but I just can't help but wonder if they've run out of things to say. Where South Park was once the sharpest and most brutal satire of, well, everyone and everything out there, today it feels dull and tame by comparison. This season - a season which takes place in 2017, of all years - premiered with an episode whose gimmick was, "white people love home renovation shows." Yikes!

Still not something I'm deleting from my DVR anytime soon. But, come on, South Park is better than this! I'll chalk the weak season up to the Fractured But Whole video game commitments and hope for another rebound in 2018.

Broad City: Season 4

Oof, I'm way behind on my posts. (Does it matter? Does anyone read these?) Anyway I'll make this one quick.

When Broad City first came on I immediately recognized a Workaholics bent to it - no two shows are identical, but the misadventures of Abbi and Ilana, two twenty-somethings just living and existing in New York, felt a whole lot like Ders and Blake and Adam just spending their twenties fucking around at a telemarketing job. And just as I eventually thought Workaholics wore out its welcome as its characters grew older and older - and their situation in turn got sadder and sadder - I'm starting to feel that way about Broad City. In its fourth season the show was still churning out laugh lines now and again, but it also struck me as stale and uninspired for the first time.

It's reductive, but it also makes a certain amount of sense to just look at where a show ranks in my year-end rankings to get the gist of how I felt about it year after year. In Broad City's case, that would be #24 of 43 in 2014, #23 of 60 in 2015, and #25 of 80 in 2016 - remarkably consistent, and "getting better" in an average or percentile sense every year. Now? I'm still working on my 2017 rankings, but for the moment it's all the way down in the 70s (of nearly 100). Clearly the bottom fell out of this one. Oh well! Here's hoping for a bounceback in 2018.

The Red Shoes

Korean cinema's got a higher batting average than most in my book, but that makes it all the more disappointing and deflating when I catch something I just don't enjoy. This one goes off the rails quickly, starting out as at least something resembling an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale by the same name, but devolving quickly along messy J-horror lines. Uninteresting in every regard, cheaply made, batshit plot - there's just not a lot going for this one.

And yes, the shoes are pink. Go figure.

Don't Think Twice

Here's a smaller movie from 2016 I've been meaning to get around to. It's about an improv group and the way their close-knit family starts to fall apart as different members start to see different levels of success in their careers, which makes it a drama about comedy, really.

It was cute enough but inconsequential and forgettable - the type of movie I waffle between giving 2.5 or 3 stars on Letterboxd. (Settled for the three, but like with so many other movies, I could see myself readjusting it downward in hindsight.) But one thing did jump out at me, and in a very bad way.

Holy shit. Improv sucks.

I've been to an improv show or two, and I've seen plenty of it on TV, and I've run into "improv people" at parties. I don't hate it! I enjoy it, I understand it, I even think I'd be pretty good at it if I wanted to do it. (I can do impressions, I have a quick enough wit, and I know when to pull out a callback - what else is needed? Okay fine, maybe I'm not high energy enough. Fine! Crush my dreams, already.)

But holy shit, watching scripted improv was painful and cringey in a way I never knew watching improv could be. And I'm not sure that this movie intended for that to be the case. In fact I think this move has an affinity for improv, a love for the artform. I think maybe that was part of the problem - this movie wanted to show how much fun these guys are having doing improv, and it set out to make imrpov look like this wistful, enjoyable way to bond with friends. But again, it's a drama about comedy, I guess, and not really a comedy at all. So maybe I shouldn't hate it for not being very funny. But still. It's about improv comedians. It should have been funnier than this.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Season 9

So Curb Your Enthusiasm came back, after a fairly lengthy hiatus of six years. It's a weird length of time to be gone, six years. On one hand, its nowhere near the length of time that shows like The X-Files or Will and Grace were off the air before getting their reboots, and Curb has taken multiple-year breaks for half of its run now. On the other hand, the world moves very quickly, and the landscape - both TV and political - that Curb came back to in 2017 was very much not the one it left in 2011. It's always been a show that lacks the mass appeal Seinfeld had, but it was also an iconic trendsetter of sorts in the 2000s. This is, and always has been, a show about an upper-middle-aged rich guy with an assload of opinions and no social graces, no verbal filter. It's about a man who is constantly being berated by people for the actions he's taken, and in turn screaming right back at them. Everyone on the show is an asshole, much like on Seinfeld, and I find myself siding both with and against the Larry David character in equal measure. The show has always been heavily improvised, lending it an air of authenticity that helps carry it through some of its more outlandish and farfetched plots.

That said, I think this is a classic example of when a show (or a band, or a video game, or a screenwriter or director or whoever) becomes an instant and iconic success early on, but then eventually no longer fits into the new world it helped usher in. This happens all the time - look again at The X-Files reboot. That six-episode run was by and large maligned by fans and critics last year, but you know what? I don't think it was really all that different from the X-Files show that went off the air fifteen years ago! I didn't see it or anything, but I did watch the first three seasons of The X-Files a couple of years ago, and man, what a cheesy and underbaked and one-note show that was. I don't doubt that it was iconic and revolutionary in, like, 1993. But the same X-Files tone and pace and creativity that blew people's minds in the '90s felt woefully silly in 2016.

All of this is to say - I still liked the ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's a show I was glad to have back, even if only out of familiarity and comfort. But the once-unique tone and wittiness of Curb have been aped and expanded on and tweaked and surpasses by like a dozen other shows in the past decade. This season just felt a little bit stale by comparison. The same old beats were here, and it just didn't play as well for me in 2017 as it did in, like, 2006. Part of that I'm sure is just me being older and having moved on and grown, but also part of it is that there's so much less appeal in seeing rich old white people screaming at each other in 2017 than there was in 2006. And I mean - look, it's impressive as hell that Lin-Manuel Miranda, arguably the guy with the most options in the world in 2017, chose to come to Curb Your Enthusiasm for a three-episode arc. It speaks to Larry David's influence and pull, absolutely. And it's maybe even more amazing that he was willing to make himself look like a huge asshole - something you just have to do on Curb, whether you're Lin-Manuel Miranda or Ted Danson or Julia Louis-Dreyfus. But at the end of the day, it all felt very familiar, a lot like a "Greatest Hits" album, almost. Larry disrespects the troops by forgetting to thank them for their service. Larry breaks up two engaged lesbians because he tells them they have the bride-and-groom roles backwards in his eyes. Larry gets a fatwa put on him by the Ayatollah for mocking him on a late night talk show. (Okay, fine, that last one's something new in scope - and it's also the impetus for this ninth season. But still!)

I guess at the end of the day, I can't help but notice how the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm barely registered. Part of that is that there's just too much television these days, but there are other shows whose returns would feel a little more momentous and meaningful, I think - looking at (for?) you, Arrested Development Season 5.

Crashing: Season 1

Sween told me about this one all the way back in, like, February, and said I'd enjoy it if I gave it a shot. He was right! This is an easy watch, both quick and hopeful rather than long and dark and dour. It's the semi-autobiographical story of Pete Holmes, one of those guys who've definitely seen before even if you've never really heard of him. He's an aspiring standup comic and a religious, fairly sheltered person. One day his life just sort of falls apart when his wife - who is also his only source of financial support - leaves him. Homeless and broke and with no real career to speak of, Pete never or at most rarely allows himself to get all down and mopey - no, he keeps grinding away at sad night clubs in front of empty seats, trying to make his dream come true.

The show feels like a bit of a love letter to standup comedy, a behind-the-scenes look at the completely unglamorous lifestyle of crashing on people's couches, touring twenty cities in three weeks, begging strangers on the street to check out your show that evening. It's at least a little unrealistic - within the first three episodes or so, Pete has befriended both Artie Lange and T.J. Miller - but the added star power obviously only helps in a show about being an aspiring standup comic. There's a refreshing earnestness here, and I feel pretty good about coming back for the second season in a month or two.