Fallout 3

So much has been written about Fallout 3 at this point - I mean, holy shit, eight years old, already? - that I can't think of anything to add to the conversation beyond a couple of unfortunate Xbox anecdotes.

The first involves the worst customer service experience I've ever had. A friend of a friend came over to play Rock Band one day and just began wailing on the drums. Because the drum set was an active controller, the individual ended up pressing a whole bunch of buttons on the Xbox 360 dashboard, and before anyone could comprehend what was happening, a ten-dollar DLC pack for Fallout 3 had been purchased. "No big deal," I thought. "I'll just call Microsoft and explain this to them."

Eh, no. Long story short, I spent over an hour on the phone with an Xbox Live representative who wouldn't budge on reimbursing my accidental purchase, wouldn't give me any free DLC codes to make up for it, and didn't seem to care that I'd spent literally hundreds of dollars on Rock Band DLC. Worst of all, he had the gall to say, after about an hour, "come on, it's only ten dollars," which of course is exactly why I couldn't believe he wouldn't reimburse it. Ten dollars isn't much, but it's a lot more to a college kid than it is to fucking Microsoft.

Fuck Microsoft, fuck Rock Band, fuck overzealous drumming, and fuck that guy.

Second - and I know this has happened to virtually everyone with an Xbox 360 - but a few years ago I got the infamous red ring of death. When did I get it? Yep - right in the middle of playing Fallout 3. I took the machine to a repair shop and they charged me $30 to fix it, only for it to red ring again within a matter of weeks. What was it about Fallout 3, a 2007 game, that caused our second-generation Xbox 360 to shit its pants in 2012?

For real, fuck the Xbox 360.

And fuck Fallout 3 by association. Even if it was, all things considered, a pretty good game.

Deadlight

There's probably an official name for it floating around somewhere, but one of the greatest trends in recent gaming occurred from 2008 to 2011 when consoles saw an explosion of high-quality downloadable games. Generally created by independent studios, many of these offerings provided gamers with new and original experiences too bold and risky to find in big-budget games. The importance of this little golden age of indie console games can't be overstated. The idea that ten-dollar, four-hour games could be both critically and commercially successful was an insane one ten years ago, and now it's essentially the foundation of Steam's business model. In fact, many of the most acclaimed downloadable games now available on Steam or iOS were initially exclusive to Xbox Live Arcade (Braid, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, Bastion), WiiWare (World of Goo), PlayStation Network (Trine), or some combination of the three. It was an exciting time for console gaming, and the creative gems just kept coming.

Of course, not every indie title released since then has been an innovative work of art.

Deadlight came out in 2012, and it feels, to put it bluntly, uninspired. It seems like somebody's attempt to replicate the mechanics and other elements of some of the era's best indie games without any of the heart and soul that it takes to come up with something unique and memorable. The game can be described as a "survival horror cinematic platformer," which is a fancy way of saying it's like a poor man's Shadow Complex with zombies. The protagonist is gritty and solemn and haunted by incomplete memories. The game's art style largely just apes Infamous, from the comic book cut scenes to the raspy narration. The story boils down to our hero trying to rescue his family. You can attack zombies with an axe, a handgun, and eventually a shotgun. The game takes place in abandoned towns, abandoned office buildings, inhabited sewers, abandoned hospitals, and a secret military complex. In each of these locations you occasionally need to move boxes and pull switches in order to progress to the next room. You run into a few old friends along the way and make some new ones as well, but they tend not to be as good at surviving as you are.

Doesn't this all sound a little familiar? The story is well-trodden territory, right down to the early reveal that an ongoing government conspiracy is actually far more dangerous than the zombie plague itself, and the main character's intermittent mental breakdowns pretty substantially foreshadow a twist ending that isn't even much of a surprise anyway. Every step of the way during Deadlight, I just had the sense that I'd been there, done that, and seen all this before.

The game's ending doesn't even tie things up neatly. Instead, the narrative just kind of stops. The fates of certain characters are left unresolved, but not in a thematically intentional way. It's one thing to leave things ambiguous; people still debate what was really happening in indie darlings like Braid and Limbo to this day. But those games had intentionally minimalistic narratives. Deadlight isn't reaching deep by leaving its questions unanswered; it's just leaving its story unfinished.

The shame of it all is that, in spite of all my complaints, Deadlight is technically a pretty sound game. Between the puzzles and the combat and the very small deviations from linearity that could sort of constitute "exploration," there are enough elements in play to make for an enjoyable video game. Deadlight was about four hours long and appropriately challenging, and I can't say I ever felt bored by it. The controls weren't quite tight enough for the game to get away with the two or three time-sensitive escape-based segments it attempts, and the ensuing checkpoint loading times were long enough to irritate me after dying several times over on each such scene, but otherwise the game wasn't very frustrating. Axe combat was cumbersome and at least a little bit annoying, but the gun mechanics were quick, fluid, and actually a lot of fun.

In the end, Deadlight's only big flaw is that it brings nothing new to the table. There's no compelling reason to try it out. It's not a waste of time by any stretch - it's just not clear that it's worth your time, either, especially with so many stronger downloadable games out there.

Banjo-Kazooie

Here's one I've been working on for a while now, intermittently. I never had an N64 back in the '90s, but at friends' houses I had plenty of opportunities to play all the multiplayer classics like Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros., GoldenEye 007, and Perfect Dark. I also had many a chance to witness friends playing the one-player classics - though I never played them myself. I've taken steps to amend that over the years, and my latest N64 conquest was the much-beloved Banjo-Kazooie.

I don't have a ton to say about it, really. This was a solid early-3D platformer that ranks right up there with Super Mario 64 for me. Super Mario 64 was an objectively bigger game with more levels and enemies and things to do in general, but that's no knock on Banjo-Kazooie, which may have been a more endearing and memorable game. I'm looking forward to the sequel, but with 60 games left in my backlog I'm in no rush at this point.

Also, wow, this is the 2000th post to Back-Blogged. It's been a great six and a half years! I doubt we'll ever make it to 3000 posts, but that doesn't matter. I'm just impressed that this is still going semi-strong. Thanks everyone!

Professor Layton and the Last Specter

I already wrote up a piece for this game over at gametimebro.com, so I'll keep things brief here. Bottom line, another Professor Layton game, no better or worse than the previous three. The most notable thing about this one that set it apart from the previous three was the introduction of Emmy, a pretty enjoyable character who serves as Layton's assistant - as opposed to Luke, who becomes Layton's apprentice in this game. (Oh yeah, this game is a prequel to the other three.)

I've now played Professor Layton games in 2008, 2011, 2013, and 2015. It seems like I've got a low but constant appetite for the series, which means I'll likely get around to the fifth game in, oh, 700 days or so. Looking forward to it!

Sharp Objects

Here's Gillian Flynn's debut novel from 2006. I've now read all three of her books over the last eight months, each within a couple of days, which should say plenty about what compelling reads they are. And I'm not even that big on murder mysteries!

Yes, this one is a murder mystery, and a particularly dark one at that, just like Flynn's other two novels. And it's also set in Missouri. And it also contains some absolutely cold-blooded and nasty girls and women. And it also plays with the themes of wealth and privilege. Flynn's got her trademarks and signature elements fairly well established at this point, but there's a fine line between being known for certain storytelling quirks and falling into a formulaic rut. I'm not suggesting Flynn is in any danger of becoming stale and boring, or anything. Just that, as was the case a month ago when I read my third Khaled Hosseini book, recurring patterns have begun to jump out at me.

All in all, this was a solid and satisfying read, and at just 250 pages it's a pretty quick one, too. If I had one issue with the novel, it would be how a few seeds were planted early on to suggest that we were dealing with an unreliable narrator - conflicting memories, hallucinations, frequent vivid dreaming, and so on - only to amount to absolutely nothing. Not in a way that felt like a red herring, but in a manner that felt fairly unintentional; by the time the book had ended, I never felt like I was supposed to have doubted the main character's sanity or narrative honesty at all. It's not a huge deal, but it made the ending seem a little more obvious and the arcing mystery more crackable.

One passage that stood out to me came right in the middle of the book, in a random conversation the protagonist was having with a date. When her date suggested that a drunk girl had been raped by four men, the narrator - an otherwise progressive woman - jumped into a pretty vigorous victim blaming session, insisting that the girl allowed the sex to happen when she chose to get as drunk as she did. When her date began to argue with her, as I know I would argue with someone who shared the same opinion, she shut him right down by suggesting that it was anti-feminist of him to conclude that the rape victim became unable to give her consent for the acts just because she's been drinking a lot. The character's take was basically that if we really wanted to empower women, we'd allow them to get obscenely drunk and make poor decisions without victimizing them afterward. It's an interesting point; it's not one I'm sure I agree with, and I'm not even sure if the author believes it, but it was something I'd never really stopped to consider. By sharing the opinion that a substantially drunk woman has temporarily lost the ability to give her consent to potential sexual partners, am I being anti-feministic? I don't think so, but, look, it made me think about it, at least. Provocative!

Lastly, since I compulsively rank things, here's a quick ordering of Flynn's bibliography so far. First and best, by a hefty margin, was Gone Girl. If you haven't read it or seen it yet, check out Gone Girl. It's almost a toss up between the other two, but Sharp Objects comes out a hair ahead of Dark Places for me. Here's hoping for a fourth book soon enough, and also for the best one yet.

Independent People

One thing I like to do when I travel far away is read a book about the place I'm going. My thought process is always that I'll read the book to learn a bit about the place and its culture, possibly right there on the flight over. Invariably, I end up starting the book before leaving and then putting off the rest of it until I return home. That's what happened when I dared to attempt James Michener's Hawaii on a trip to Hawaii, and it's what happened just recently when I tried to tackle Halldór Laxness's Independent People.

I had never heard of this book or its author until I went to Google with a string of queries like "best Icelandic book." Suffice it to say, this book almost universally holds that distinction - though many kind people from the Internet also recommended the medieval Icelandic sagas. Turns out, Laxness is a Nobel laureate and Independent People is by far his most acclaimed novel. Some people have called it one of the greatest books of the twentieth century. So what makes it so special?

The book was written in the early 1930s and takes place roughly from 1895 to 1920 or so. It's more or less the story of a stubborn farmer named Bjartur who believes that the greatest thing you can be in life is independent - self-reliant, so to speak. Keep in mind, this is Iceland in the early 20th century, one of the poorest and most desolate places on earth. Bjartur lives a lifestyle that would put any deep woods New Hampshire libertarian to shame. The man staunchly refuses any favors or gifts offered to him by neighbors and other would-be creditors. He suffers profusely, toiling away on a rocky, shitty farm, trying to keep his sheep fed and uninfected by parasites. His house is a one-room hovel. He scoffs at the idea of getting a cow, since sheep provide more meat relative to how much grass they consume, and also wool. Early on in the novel, Bjartur spends several days out in a blizzard looking for one lost sheep. He's pretty much insane.

Now, all this would make for a good comedy, in which we all laugh at Bjartur for his steadfast refusal to make any decisions that aren't in his best economic interest - and it often does. But the book is also darkly tragic. Bjartur has a wife to care for, after all - and then a second wife, once the first one dies of malnutrition. He's got lots of kids, too, though most of them die within their first year, and the sons that make it to early adulthood tend to bolt for America as soon as they can. His pride and his principles are literally killing his own family, and none of them can do anything about it.

Those are just the cliff notes; this is is a deep book with plenty more to offer. It's also complex. Sometimes it seems like Laxness thinks Bjartur is deeply noble and altruistic, and the practice of Icelandic shepherding is rustic and charming and good. Other times, it's plainly clear that Bjartur is a proud fool; his morals are deeply and scathingly satirized, and the sheep farm is depicted as a miserable and terrible place to carve out a living. Laxness was a socialist, and Bjartur clearly isn't, but does Laxness take pity on Bjartur as a victim of materialistic tendencies, or does he see him as an emblem of everything wrong with the concept of capitalism in the first place? Or is it a little of each? The story is ultimately a tragedy, and despite its setting and period, it's a timeless one; its ending easily serves as a direct analogy to the 2007 housing market crash.

Some have called this book the Icelandic Les Misérables, and that makes sense; it's an epic, decades-spanning tale of misery with bits and pieces of history and culture interspersed. Others have called it the Moby-Dick of sheep-farming. That fits too; both books are about obsessive men who ultimately doom everyone around them with their own hubris, and Independent People has plenty of passages on the mundanities of various sheep parasites. At the very least, Independent People does seem to be the quintessential Icelandic novel. There's pride, there's dry humor, there's misery, and there are sheep. It's a long and dense book, clocking in somewhere around 210 to 240 thousand words (Moby-Dick has around 208 thousand) and on top of its length, I can't say it was an easy read. It's not something I'd rush to recommend to many people I know, but I'm glad I read it all the same. Maybe I'll revisit Laxness again some day; there's no way the rest of his books can be this long!

Mega Man Zero 4

One interesting thing about the Mega Man Zero series is that it's the only series in the sprawling Mega Man franchise that has reached any sort of conclusion. The classic series will likely exist in perpetuity, with new "vintage-feel" releases every few years or so. Mega Man X was meant to conclude with its fifth installment, but instead got all the way to Mega Man X8, which ends on a cliffhanger. Even smaller series like Mega Man Legends have had sequels announced and canceled recently enough to presume that there could be more milk to squeeze out of those cows. But Mega Man Zero lasted for four games, all of them released in four consecutive years on the same platform. And it ended pretty neatly, with proper closure.

There's little left for me to say about Mega Man Zero, but it warrants mentioning that Mega Man Zero 4 was easily my favorite game in the series. That's also impressive, since so many other Mega Man series - and really, so many video game franchises in general - linger on and on and on, getting worse with each installment.

For one thing, Mega Man Zero 4 finally brought back the Mega Man X tradition of facing off against eight robot bosses in any order. It also let you decide the weather pattern in each stage you were about to attempt, which sort of mimicked Mega Man X's "order of operations" feature where you could make certain stages more accessible or less hazardous by beating other stages first. I was also, finally, okay with cyber elves in Mega Man Zero. Here, the cyber elves were treated like a standard level-up system in an RPG. Train, advance, and unlock new skills. Simple!

All in all, I enjoyed my time with the Mega Man Zero Collection. It was better than plenty of the later Mega Man X games, even if it never came close to being as good as Mega Man X or X2. It was also a pretty quick experience, lasting just under eight hours for me. (I have "easy scenario" mode to thank for that, no question.) The experience, in total, is one I would recommend. But not before playing Mega Man X. Start there.

Mega Man Zero 3

Three down. This time, let's talk about the story and the characters - an underrated aspect of the Mega Man franchise.

First things first. The original Mega Man series really didn't have much of a story arc to it. A scientist named Dr. Light creates a robotic lab assistant (Mega Man). An evil scientist named Dr. Wily starts acting on his plans to take over the world, and Mega Man is repurposed into a combat robot in order to defeat Dr. Wily and his robotic henchmen. The classic series establishes the framework and gameplay standards for the many sub-series that would follow, but from story standpoint it's extremely bland and basic - which is fine, since this was the case for every single other NES title.

Zero's story begins in Mega Man X. At some point between the end of the Mega Man classic series and the Mega Man X series, Dr. Light creates a highly advanced fighting robot that can think and feel and make his own decisions. This is Mega Man X. Dr. Light seals him away for several decades, figuring that the world is not yet ready for a weaponized robot with such an advanced A.I. Meanwhile, Dr. Wily is also finalizing his final creation, a ruthless and aggressive fighting robot called Zero. When Zero proves to be disobedient and violent, Dr. Wily seals him away as well.

There's plenty more backstory for anyone interested, but in order to expedite this post I'll just suffice it to say that, as Mega Man X begins, both X and Zero have been awakened, and Zero has been rehabilitated (reprogrammed?), and they're fighting on the same side against a group of robots called mavericks. Zero is a mentor to X, who the player controls for the first three games in the series, and it's easy to marvel at Zero's capabilities. Eventually, Capcom allowed players to play as Zero (briefly in Mega Man X3, and then for the entire game in X4 and X5. Eventually, it's clear that the dichotomy between X and Zero is more than just the former being the latter's weaker protégé. Zero may be more capable in battle, but he still admires X's restraint and hesitation - particularly as Zero's own recklessness and aggression allow him to make poor decisions and hurt the people (well, robots) that he cares about. Mega Man X5 - originally intended to be the final game in the Mega Man X series - even ends with Zero sacrificing himself to save humanity. It's as much a suicidal release for Zero as a genuinely good-natured deed, but, still - that's character growth!

Anyway, fast forward to Mega Man Zero. Another hundred years or so have passed. Zero's body is found by a human scientist named Ciel, and he's booted back up in order to save society from... no... how... from X himself! Look, the four games that make up the Mega Man Zero Collection are full of twists and reversals and all kinds of backstory-altering plot exposition. That's fine - so were all the Mega Man X games. But what's most interesting to me is that the Zero you control in these four games really does feel different from the Zero you came to know from Mega Man X. He seems rehabilitated here, more or less taking on X's personality entirely. And I can't tell if that's a good thing or not. On the one hand, it makes sense that he'd end up here, mentally and emotionally, after the events of the Mega Man X franchise. On the other hand, he's a robot! Can his personality really ever change? To a certain degree, it's awesome that Capcom is even flirting with exploring this kind of philosophical question. There's also at least one instance of a robot's "data" being downloaded onto a new body. Mind-body dualism, y'all! But Capcom never really goes anywhere with this, and never really focuses on Zero's redemption, either. That's all fine and good - these are Mega Man games, after all - but it leaves the player trying to extract more meaning from some of the scenes and moments in these games than is made readily available by the developers.

Stan's TV Dump: Summer 2015

Summer traditionally presents a lull in the TV calendar, but it seems like I watched more TV this summer than I have in a long time. Most of it was streamed on Netflix or Amazon Prime, which probably explains a lot of the sheer volume here. Anyway, here are a bunch of seasons of television that I've gotten around to checking out.

Orange is the New Black: Season 3

This is one of the most widely watched and discussed shows out there at this point, so there's very little I feel any need to say about it. I really enjoyed Season 3. I actually think it was my favorite season yet. And with big changes coming in Season 4, Orange is the New Black is showing no signs of growing stale or slowing down.

Bob's Burgers: Season 4

I'm guessing that in a few weeks when Season 6 debuts, Netflix will begin streaming Season 5. And from there it's only a short time until I'm all caught up and watching live. As far as Season 4 goes, I'm not convinced it was noticeably better than Season 3. That's fine - it was easily just as good - but it does mean the show has hit a plateau of sorts. Will Season 5 prove me wrong? Will Season 6? Time will tell!

Black Mirror: Season 1

I finally got into this show - or miniseries, I guess - and holy shit, was it something. There've been two seasons so far, each just three episodes long, and a Christmas special too because the British love watching their favorite TV shows during Christmastime, months after seasons - sorry, series - have otherwise concluded. Anyway, this one's been described repeatedly as a Twilight Zone for the 21st century. That's apt, but I've seen The Twlight Zone, and this show goes so much deeper and gets so much darker than that one ever did. It's speculative science fiction, I guess, as each episode considers some sort of advanced technology and some of the possible repercussions it could have. The tone of the episodes varies, and ranges from dark comedy (terrorists have demanded that the Prime Minister has to livestream himself having sex with a pig!) to bleakly dystopian (in the near future, people pedal bikes for electrical power all day long, occupying themselves with bland cell-phone-style games and TV shows). Just great stuff.

Black Mirror: Season 2

Most people preferred the second season of Black Mirror tot he first one. I actually think I disagree, but it's silly to even make such comparisons; each season is just a set of three unrelated and independent episodes, and if anything it makes sense just to rank them all individually. Having said that, the second season contains the darkest and most messed up episode of the series to date - the quintessential Black Mirror episode, if you will - and if you're looking for an episode to try out, consider "White Bear." That one still haunts me, months after seeing it - though so do most Black Mirror episodes, to be honest.

Catastrophe: Season 1

Here's an easy little low stakes six-episode comedy from Amazon Prime. It stars Rob Delaney - yes, from Twitter! - and Sharon Horgan. They hook up a whole bunch during a one-week business trip, and all of a sudden, hey, presto, Sharon's pregnant. They opt to keep the baby and, furthermore, get married, and the series largely features them just breaking this news to people and preparing for an impromptu life together. It's all funny enough, but it's over before you know it, like so many other Britcoms. (Is that still a term people use?) I'll likely be back for Season 2, but more out of convenience than enthusiasm.

Other Space: Season 1

I would have had no idea this existed if I hadn't been inundated with promos while watching Community on Yahoo. But you know what? I loved it. It's a low-budget no-stakes sci-fi sitcom where six people and two robots are lost in space. It's goofy and light-hearted but not intentionally campy or anything. For whatever reason, Other Space just hit me in all the right ways. Give it a shot! There's been no word on a Season 2 pick up, but I'm holding out hope.

Alpha House: Season 1

I have a coworker who was absolutely raving about this show. She has a good sense of humor and a decent taste in books and movies, so I figured, hey, why not check it out? Meh. The premise is that four Republican congressmen co-inhabit the same house while they're in DC. For me, the humor was just a little broad and lazy. Republicans are such low-hanging fruit right now, and in the four main characters here we've got four pretty flat stereotypes. There's the utterly incompetent boob, the morally bankrupt guy, the suave young maverick, and then John Goodman as the moderate and well-meaning one who doesn't understand how his own party became so messed up so quickly. The show grew on me slowly, and by the end of the first season I could say I didn't dislike it, but that's no ringing endorsement. Season 2 has been out for some time; we'll see if I get around to it.

Bojack Horseman: Season 2

Over the course of its first season, Bojack Horseman went from being a so-so adult cartoon on Netflix to an oddly touching and pretty solid show. Here in Season 2, it's become one of the best thigns on television. Few shows are as consistently funny or clever, and still it's deep and profound and willing to explore what it is to be depressed or directionless or lonely. It's just so good, and the sooner I stop gushing about it, the sooner you can go watch it!

Sense8: Season 1

This one comes from the Wachowskis, and it's just all over the place. Eight people scattered around the world are connected, both mentally and emotionally. Over the course of the season they learn how to harness and control their ability to switch places with one another. (It makes about as much sense as it sounds like.) I didn't love this one, and it felt a lot like another Lost or Heroes ripoff - a distinct genre I thought we'd left well behind in the last decade. I'm not really looking forward to the second season, but this isn't bad enough for me to ditch yet; it's just nothing special.

Humans: Season 1

This one exceeded expectations. AMC hasn't boasted the best track record ever since the one-two punch of Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but Humans roped me in pretty quickly. The premise is tried, true, and even a bit stale by now; in the near future there are humanoid robots with artificial intelligence - but can they feel things? This was a slightly choppy season of television that managed to find some satisfying ways to explore that question and its many ramifications. I'm skeptical about whether this can turn into a truly great series, but it was enjoyable and easy to get into, at least in this first season.

The X-Files: Season 1

Throwback! Trev threw this on one night in the Cape, and while I only saw ten minutes or so before heading out, I figured it was high time for me to finally check out this old cult classic. The first season was twenty-four forty-five-minute episodes long - a nice reminder that TV shows were so much different back when the only way to see them was, well, live, and on television. There were plenty of great episodes and moments here in the first season, and the show's premise is established and built on right away. It's a little unbelievable how flat Scully and Mulder can be when it comes to their philosophical approaches to the unexplained cases they take on; Scully, the skeptic, remains dismissive of Mulder's crackpot theories even after facing down like twenty "monster or the week" cases. Mulder, on the other hand, jumps at the chance to apply a paranormal explanation to every missing persons case and there's a reason nobody else in the FBI takes him seriously. I guess that makes the two of them a great team! Oh, and it's crazy how much young Gillian Anderson is aping Jodie Foster's Silence of the Lambs performance here, but I guess there was only one acceptable way to depict a tough but feminine lady detective in 1993. Will I stick with this show? Tough to say. There are nine seasons, which is just an incredible time commitment, and frankly there are better, newer, shorter shows I could be spending my time on. Still, this is easy enough to throw on when I'm streaming Netflix while dicking around on my computer or DS, so why not?

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp: Season 1

The most impressive thing about Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp is that it includes every last cast member from the original movie. It's just amazing that a collection this large of actors this famous could all make the time to appear in a one-off TV series - presumably for next to no compensation. It tells you everything you need to know about how much fun they had making the original movie, how much they like working together, or how much they felt they owed a debt to the move for helping to launch their respective careers. I mean, it's not a great movie. It's a cult classic, and I love it, and so do plenty of other people, but it's silly and lazy and amateurish and, tonally, it's all over the place. The same is true of this prequel miniseries, which uses everything from bad puns to elaborate in-jokes in order to earn some laughs. The end result is something to behold, but it's probably also only meant for the type of people who enjoyed this whole thing the first time around. Watch the movie, if you haven't. Then, if you enjoyed it, check out this four-hour prequel.

Another Period: Season 1

Here's a real low-stakes offering from Comedy Central. Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome came up with a simple premise - a reality series following an obscenely wealthy Newport family in 1900 - and ran with every possible joke you could make with that setup. It's basically Downton Abbey crossed with Keeping Up with the Kardashians, for whatever that's worth. I'm pretty lukewarm on the show. It's funny enough, and there are a lot of talented people involved in it, but I'm not sure I feel compelled to return for the second season next year.

True Detective: Season 2

More than enough digital ink has been spent bemoaning the highly anticipated follow-up to True Detective: Season 1, so I'll be brief. All the criticisms earn my belated and apathetic co-sign. The season was too long, it started out too slow, there was way too much going on but barely anything happening, and the show went over the top on more than one occasion in search of an emotional payoff it did not earn. Now, all of that being said, I don't think it was a genuinely terrible season of television. It had its moments, for one thing, and it didn't really overstay its welcome at eight episodes. Call it contrived, call it ridiculous, call it boring, and call it disappointing overall, but don't call it one of the worst things on television this year. If anything, its biggest failure was its inability to live up to the standards set by the first season, which had an entirely different story and cast and director. I'm tempted to say that if you took this season of television and aired it on FX or AMC under a different title entirely, people would have enjoyed it a great deal more.

Review: Season 1

I ignored Review last year, dismissing it prematurely as a silly little sketch comedy show with a unique gimmick, and boy did I miss out on something wonderful. There's a serialized and ongoing story in Review in which host Forrest MacNeil completely destroys his own life for the sake of authentically reviewing different life experiences. After a slow start, the first season takes a wonderfully dark turn in the third episode when Forrest is asked to review "getting divorced." Everything spirals downward from there in both completely expected and totally surprising ways and it all makes for wonderful television.

That'll do it for me, for now. September's here and lots more television is on its way.