Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Season 4

It's pretty good! Which is good, because back when it began, it was only kinda good, and I remember thinking, "this has the potential to be pretty good!" And now it is! And maybe it got there last season, even. But whatever - it's pretty good! What, is there a better workplace comedy on the air at this point? I think not! But Superstore still has the potential to be pretty good... or at least more than kinda good...

Network television in 2017, everyone!

Jane the Virgin: Season 3

Another solid year for Jane the Virgin, which is just something I never thought I'd be typing in 2017 three years ago for a number of reasons. This season pulled a nice time jump after a big twist that seemed to reinvigorate the series a bit - it sort of felt like it'd begun to spin its wheels early on. Which isn't even a bad thing, a show settling into a nice, comfortable groove, but this one's always been at its best when it's a riff on telenovelas. For what it's worth, Jane has become the show with maybe the most "heart" on television. We're talking Friday Night Lights and Parks and Recreation levels of heart, here. I'm glad I started sticking around when Marissa was watching it a year and a half ago, and I imagine I'm on board until the end at this point. Hooray!

The Tribe

I wanted to like this, but knew it's be an uphill battle. Subtitles are hard enough sometimes, but this movie was straight up dialogue-free. Everyone in it was deaf and communicated through sign language, without subtitles, which inevitably left me completely in the dark as far as what was going on, which meant I paid less and less attention to it, which means the gap only widened, which means I was just reading the plot synopsis line by line every ten minutes or so on Wikipedia, and I really do wonder if I'd have even been able to glean what was happening had I paid full attention from the outset.

But still, that blame's on me, and I'd be at least a little annoyed with myself if the movie had been any good. It wasn't! It was all sex and violence and arthouse trash. The acting was terrible - and this was in a silent movie where all you need to do is emote well physically, present yourself a certain way, body language, come on folks, it's really not that hard. The whole thing was medium shots, too - where are the close ups? The movie had no interest in even letting us up close for face shots. I'm sure that was intentional - maybe it was meant to add to the distance we were supposed to feel from a group of people who communicate in a language we (presumably) don't understand. But come on, a two-hour silent movie about fucking and fighting, and I couldn't find a shit to give about any of the characters. Plenty of late night Netflix fodder bores or underwhelms me, but usually I can give it the benefit of the doubt. This was just bad.

Bob's Burgers: Season 7

What's left to say about Bob's Burgers seven years in? I guess I'll say this - for a show I long thought to be unnecessary and inconsequential, it just keeps creeping up my year-end rankings lists. Still nothing amazing, mind you, but hat an enjoyable, fun, and unique show, even all these years in. Wow!

Brockmire: Season 1

Oh wow - it's not that I forgot I finished watching the first season of Brockmire six days ago - it's that I straight up had no idea I'd just witnessed the season finale at all. Which kind of says everything you need to know about how invested I was in this IFC comedy starring Hank Azaria and Amanda Peet.

But here's another paragraph anyway. The show felt tailor made to be right up my alley - Azaria plays the titular Brockmire, a former baseball play-by-play announcer whose tendency to drink in and overshare personal details from the broadcast booth led to an infamous meltdown back in the '90s or so, a proto-viral sensation, and Brockmire's immediate firing. Flash forward to the present day, where a struggling minor league baseball team needs some sort of spark to stay in business; Peet's character, the operations manager, reaches out to Brockmire and hires him to do play-by-play and color from the PA booth. It's a hit, obviously, and Brockmire ends up getting an invitation back to the big leagues, and I think that's where the season left that thread dangling? Unsure. Sorry!

I didn't even dislike this. I just think the premise didn't have nearly enough gas to last eight episodes. The team occasionally uses unconventional tactics - how about four morbidly obese batters in a row getting hit by pitches so as to manufacture runs? - and Azaria's always-sarcastic sounding voice mocking the play on the field by merely describing it is, of course, perfect. Brockmire encourages fans to play drinking games with him in one episode in order to spark concession sales - it's all just so, so low stakes - but then, minor league baseball always is, right?

Oh, and Joe Buck shows up. Real life Joe Buck! For a few episodes. And he's completely game to make fun of himself. It was startling, to say the least. Good for him. But yeah, I just can't see myself continuing with this for another season. There's nothing wrong with it, but when you think of all the genuinely good television out there, I just... yeah, sorry.

The Sun Also Rises

Fuck yeah, Hemingway!

I actually struggled a bit with this one. It's a slow starter. Nothing really happens for the first hundred pages or so - but that's kind of the point. We meet the cast of characters, fucking around and constantly drunk in Paris in the 1920s, no cares in the world, but also no real purpose in life. Then the action ("action") shifts from Paris to Spain - specifically Pamplona, during the running of the bulls - and the aimlessness and pointlessness of every character gets thrown straight into a wall of a week-long bull-killin' party. Everyone's drunk as hell, there's nothing to do but get drunk as hell, and our band of merry traveling expats turns on one another, getting into petty, drunken scuffles.

It's a real downer of a book, the central premise mainly being, "man, these people, huh?" and the world-traveling nature of the characters only barely masking their utter haplessness - hard-drinking, squabbling, not really doing anything with their young lives. Here's where the term "Lost Generation" was coined, used to describe this exact type of person - shattered and broken by serving in World War I, just milling around in Europe afterward without ever really giving a fuck about anything or anyone.

It's hard not to make Great Gatsby comparisons - vapid people with empty friendships, pining for something lost - and it makes sense that Hemingway and Fitzgerald, friends with each other and kindred Lost Generation spirits, would explore the same general spiritual malaise. It's maybe a little more overt in Gatsby, maybe a little vaguer here, but they're unmistakably the same disease.

In the end, I liked this book just fine, but it wasn't quite as crisp and boldly written as what I've come to expect from Hemingway after reading The Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms - but then, it's his first novel after all; maybe he needed more time to hone his iconic prose style.

Stan's TV Dump: Spring 2017

Sure, let's take this new gimmick out for another spin.

BAILS:

The Walking Dead: Season 7

What a load off. Sixteen hours a year I'm getting back by dumping this load. That's huge! That's a whole waking day. I can't say I won't occasionally miss The Walking Dead - just three episodes into this season's second half, both Keith and Bridget were independently telling me it had gotten pretty good. But sure enough, a few weeks later Keith was venting about Rick and Michonne's non-believable relationship and all my favorite corners of the Internet were devoid of chatter about the show. At this point it's crystal clear what the show does - a big premiere and a big finale every half-season, with lots of action and deaths and shit, but six filler episodes in between. It's a shame! This was legitimately getting better somewhere around the middle of the fourth season and running right through the middle of the fifth - adding Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene; those dead little girls; Terminus; Bob and "tainted meat;" Beth and Tyreese meeting untimely ends; Morgan hot on the trail - really everything between the Prison and Alexandria, i.e. the calendar year of 2014, was good stuff, which is no surprise since this show has always been at its best when its characters are split up or at least on the move in some way. But Alexandria and Morgan have just felt like the farm and the prison and the Governor all over again, the show repeating its own failures and dragging its feet, and come on, that's just not gonna fly anymore in the seventh goddamn season. You can't just tease future payoffs to current conflicts and call that a season-long arc. I hate this shit. I'm done. No more! (Until enough people inevitably tell me it's gotten "really good" again and I binge my way back to being caught up in a year or two, when the show still has no end in sight. Naturally.)

Modern Family: Season 8

Fitting that I'm axing this and The Walking Dead at the same time; both are shows I've previously given up on and then come crawling back to, and both have been around longer than most shows dream of lasting. If Modern Family deserves credit for anything these past few seasons, it's keeping kids - actual kids, not teenagers and college kids - in the picture by having, say, 40-year old Sofia Vergara and 70-year-old Ed O'Neill make a baby. Yeah, that would happen! This cast just keeps growing and spreading out, which has only exacerbated the same problem it's always had - that there's no realistic way to get this extended family together in one place every week, but that keeping them separated leads to really stale and simple sets of seven-minute stories where half the cast still ends up in the margins in any given episode. It's just not very good anymore! Punting it hardly feels necessary, but with so much damn television out there, why waste more time on this over-aged mess? Maybe for a farewell season or something, but otherwise, so long!

The Last Man on Earth: Season 3

Some of these bails are "good riddance!" cuts that feel freeing and relieving. Others come with more of a regretful "aww..." and a crocodile tear or two. This falls into that latter category. The Last Man on Earth is dumb, fun, and unique! But it isn't... very good. Or even kind of good. Don't get me wrong, when it has its moments it's a riot - this season's premiere, in which Jon Hamm shows up just to get gut-shot by January Jones (ha!) within two minutes comes to mind - but moments like that are few and far between, it seems, with tons of filler and stalling in between. In a weird way this show shares a problem with The Walking Dead, which is that it's set in some sort of post-apocalypse with no real hope for humanity. The Walking Dead leans into this, and it's exhausting; The Last Man on Earth mostly ignores it, and the result is something nihilistic but not necessarily funny. What's the point of any of it? At best, this is a show that could run for a few more seasons, bringing in (and killing off) guest stars like it's been doing. But it never quite seemed to fully realize its potential, and after a necessary course correction in Season 2 that made its main character likable instead of loathsome, there haven't really been any improvements. Keeping up with it just because I like some of the actors involved would be like a weird form of TV hoarding; the cuts must go on!

Homeland: Season 6
If there's a running theme among all my bails in 2017 so far it's been that "because I've come this far" is not an acceptable answer to the question "why am I still watching this?" (Unless the end's actually in sight - Hi, Workaholics.) So it goes for Homeland, which went away for all of 2016 before popping back in with a storyline about a controversial female president-elect and a load of fake news conspiracies. Yeah, Homeland, the thing about ripping stories from the headlines is you've got to get your predictions right for your stories to stick. I'm not suggesting Homeland jumped any sort of shark here or got noticeably worse - I only saw one episode in Season 6, and frankly, the show hasn't been great since Season 2 - but in an ever-more-crowded TV landscape, and with the actual shitshow going on in Washington right now, I'm just not all that invested in seeing how this arc plays out. (And it doesn't help that I was without any access to Showtime for three months.)

Twin Peaks: Season 2
Consensus has always been that the first season of Twin Peaks - eight episodes long - was a beautiful masterpiece of weird, creepy melodrama, surreal and unsettling but fascinating and out-of-nowhere funny. Consensus has also been that the show flew off the rails in Season 2, getting more and more schlocky and silly after resolving the pilot's mystery that it had perhaps already dragged out too long - who killed Laura Palmer? Just three short months ago I said, in my post on Season 1, "with a revival slated for later this year on Showtime I'm interested in seeing [Twin Peaks] through. Hey, worst case, this becomes another X-Files experience that I throw on in the background and pay half attention to. I can swing that for 22 episodes, no question." Ha! What a stupid, young, naive fool! No question? Oh, you dumbass. You had no idea how busy life would get, back to work in the real world, did you? And you had no idea how little you'd care about Twin Peaks even before the Laura Palmer murder mystery wrapped. So, yeah - I still want to check out the third season on Showtime, especially if the reviews are good (and also kinda sort if they're terrible) but I'm also ready to call it quits on Season 2 after dragging myself through nine episodes. The finale is apparently excellent, but so what? That's not worth devoting another ten or more hours of my time to, right? The prequel movie that came out a year later, on the other hand... stay tuned.

FAILS:

Taboo

So, Academy Awards be damned, we all know the best part of The Revenant was Tom Hardy, who just fucking goes for it in whatever he does. That seems like the only reason Taboo even exists - it's Tom Hardy playing another violent, crazy asshole in the early 1800s. This one also had the High Sparrow from Game of Thrones and... it didn't hold our interest whatsoever. I think we made it through three episodes but I was mentally checked out after one. Even a shortened eight-episode season couldn't save this for me. We let a nice backlog of episodes build up and just never checked them out - and then a surprise second season order was the final straw. No way we'd be coming back for that one, so why bother seeking closure on this season?

Powerless

I really wanted this NBC comedy to work out. I gave it five whole episodes. It's got Danny Pudi and Ron Funches, two guys I always want to see succeed. But, blech. There's just nothing here. Even the premise should be interesting. This takes place in the DC universe and focuses on the little people, the regular joes, folks like you and me, just trying to get by and survive in a world full of superheroes and villains. (Get the title now?) I mean, that's an inherently interesting idea for a show in 2017, when  there are, oh, a dozen shows and movies every year about goddamn superheroes. Why not take a moment to focus on the plebes? Problem is, it doesn't really work - at least not the way Powerless is set up, which is at a tech company that specializes in inventions like umbrellas for skyscraper debris and Superman-proof windows. It's just flimsy. You could make jokes about a company so focused on its bottom line that the city routinely falling apart around it has no ill effects, but Powerless isn't interested in being that kind of show; it's just a silly, straightforward office sitcom about a new team lead or project manager or something (Vanessa Hudgens) struggling to connect to her employees and earn their mutual respect and friendship. You might say that despite being the boss she's... powerless! (Ha! See what they did?) But no, this was pretty bad. It was also, predictably, canceled shortly after I stopped watching it.

Casual
A few years ago, Hulu was showing the first episode of Casual for free. I watched it, didn't love it, and happily moved on. Flash forward to now, when I went ahead and got Hulu (at least for a month or two) in order to see The Handmaid's Tale. As much as I dug The Handmaid's Tale, I figured, hey, shit, while I've got Hulu, might as well check out some more of their original content. So I watched the second episode of Casual. Didn't love it once again. And you know what? Two is plenty. Whatever it is these guys are selling, I ain't buying! This family rom-com (no, not like that) just didn't do much for me. The premise is too bland and the cast too vanilla for anything to stand out here. And that's fine! But, yeah - no Casual for me.

Harlots
Another Hulu show, another big fat fail. Womp! This one's a period piece about prostitutes in 18th century London. That one sitting dead center in the poster? Yeah, that's Lady Sybil. Loved her in Downton! Swoon. Anyway, turns out this is an hour-long drama rather than a half-hour sitcom. Maybe I should have known that going in, but I didn't! And if I had, hey, I might not even have checked this out. It wasn't even bad, really - I almost feel bad calling it a fail - but while a 1700s comedy could have been rife with potential - shit, I watched Another Period for two seasons - I just don't need to throw a 1700s drama onto my backlog right now. One season of AMC's Turn was enough to poison that well for quite some time. In another life, perhaps...

The Hotwives
Yup - it's another Hulu fail! I saw, like, a thousand ads for this last summer when I was watching all those Seeso shows. Which is weird, because Hulu and Seeso aren't owned by the same parent company or anything. Anyway, it's a Real Housewives spoof as you could probably imagine. The cast is talented and familiar enough - I wanted to get a kick out of this, really - but it just wasn't for me. Probably because I've never seen any Real Housewives and never will. Not even in another life!

TALES:

Property Brothers S10 E11: "Fixer-upper For Dog Lovers"

We stayed at my brother-in-law's place back in March for a good old Vermont weekend, and as Saturday night wound down and the pizza and beer pushed us into couch-based lethargy, I sat through - and was even sort of invested in - an entire episode of Property Brothers. This one dealt with a $600,000 house in what we think we deduced was downtown Nashville, and it had all kinds of flooding problems. (Credit to anyone who tackles a real fixer-upper, but multiple generations of neglect and poor choices just aren't something I can ever see myself signing up for. A project is one thing, but a home should be another!) Anyway, I remain unmoved by Property Brothers and unclear on what the appeal is. What makes this different from the fifty-seven other HGTV and HGTV-adjacent shows that have come out in the last fifteen years? Lines are open, I'll take my answer in the comments section, thanks.

Full Frontal S2 E6: "April 5, 2017"

Marissa went ahead and started recording this show. I've got nothing against Samantha Bee, but I'm just barely hanging onto John Oliver at this point, and if anything I could probably stand to watch fewer "liberal bubble" Daily Show spiritual successors. But sure, this was funny enough. There's a very different rhythm to this one than there is to the aforementioned HBO Sunday night show; Oliver's got production value and a desk-based Weekend Update-style set-up with long-form informational deep dives, whereas Bee is doing much more of a proper Daily Show thing with segments and correspondents (or, at least one correspondent, I should say). It made for a nice change of pace and I'd easily and readily watch more of her, but again, I'm just not looking to add more helpings of this specific genre to my plate at the moment.

iZombie S3 E5: "Spank the Zombie"
About a month ago, someone somewhere on the Internet posted a list called something like "every CW show ever, ranked." Exhaustive ranked lists are my bread and butter, so I gave it a shot and was delighted to see that Jane the Virgin and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend led the way in first and second place respectively. In third place, though? Not Veronica Mars (5) or Gilmore Girls (8) or Everybody Hates Chris (10) or Gossip Girl (15) or - sorry, Marissa - Hart of Dixie (16), but rather - yes, of course, you've guessed it - iZombie, the show about a medical student who becomes a zombie and works at a morgue in order to eat brains in a not-a-threat-to-society way. Except when she eats these brains, she takes on the personality of - and begins to experience flashbacks of - the people the brains belonged to. So sometimes she uses the brains to solve murders, I guess? I dunno, that's the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, but I decided to jump in for a closer look. I mean this thing just sounded awful - like Tru Calling meets Bones, plus zombies - but third best? Of all time? Even on the CW, that's saying something! But enough with the preamble - an entire paragraph dedicated to "no, no, I have to explain why I watched this, you guys!" - how was it? Eh. Fine, really. But also a lot like Bones meets Tru Calling. The episode I saw seemed to have a straightforward and self-contained A-story, but with at least one B-story (and possibly two?) that felt like a mere chapter from something much bigger. The main character was charismatic and compelling, but I think a lot of the appeal here is in watching her try on different personalities week in and week out. The rest of the performances I could take or leave. Oh, and Ken Marino was here as some kind of humorously amoral lawyer figure - is he recurring, or was this a one-off spot? I'll probably never know! So yeah, I get the appeal, I think, but iZombie was a long, long way from being Jane the Virgin or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in my book.

Alright - that's plenty for now. I'll be back in a few more months with another dump, I'm sure!

Kirby Super Star

Hey now, "8 games in one!?" What is this, some sort of proto-Mario Party? Eh, no. Not really. Not at all, in fact. Have a seat. We have a lot to discuss.

Kirby Super Star is a beloved SNES game, routinely appearing on "Top 20" lists for the system. Friend of the blog and one-time contributor B-Town, a Kirby enthusiast, considers it one of his all time favorite games. And until last night it'd been one of the biggest blind spots in my own SNES experience. So I fired it up on my Wii - still slowly making my way through Kirby's Dream Collection - and sat down expecting to experience six to eight different minigame-type experiences.

Ha! Why would I do such a thing?

There are six "games" within Kirby Super Star and two minigames, alright, but the six games all run on the exact same engine and only one of them manages to be noticeably different from the other five and the two minigames are truly minuscule - like 1-2-Switch level microgames. Let's break it down.

Spring Breeze

It's the first game in the collection! Okay, this is classic Kirby - a platformer with all the familiar elements and enemies and wait a second, this feels so familiar. Oh, hey - that's because this game sis just a simplified remake of Kirby's Dream Land, which took me less than an hour to beat a year or two ago, and this remake's done in, no joke, twenty-five minutes. Cool, fine, a nice little appetizer. What's next?

Dyna Blade

Oh, okay. This... is more of the same thing. Some levels, some bosses, a neat little sotry, and the exact same gameplay. Took another half hour. No biggie.

Gourmet Race

Here's the lone really "different" game in the bunch - and it's also far and away the shortest and slightest. In this one you race against King Dedede across three different levels, collecting food as you go. Race? Yes, race! With the exact same mechanics present in the rest of the game - run, Kirby, run! And fly. Fly, but quickly! And run!

The Great Cave Offensive

This is something much bigger and more sprawling than either Spring Breeze or Dyna Blade - it's a straight up Metroidvania-style Kirby game! That said, it's still a Kirby game in which you absorb powers, traverse levels, and fight bosses. And it's not a true Metroidvania in the sense of there being any significant backtracking or powering up before revisiting old areas. Even something as minor as occasional health bar increases could have gone a long way here. Oh well!

Revenge of Meta Knight

Oh hey, it's... yeah, it's more platforming adventures with Kirby. This one's five or six more levels. But there's a twist! The twist is that each level has a time limit. A time limit I never once came even close to hitting. Yeah, yeah, Kirby games are for children and all, but still. Why bother?

Milky Way Wishes

The last game in the collection is the biggest one and it's - you guessed it - more of the same. The catch here is an interesting one, however - Kirby doesn't copy enemies' abilities by inhaling them this time around; rather, he collects "copy essences" throughout the game that become permanent selectable options for the rest of the game. Kind of like Mega Man. But you know where this would have been awesome? Back in the Great Cave Offensive, that Metroidvania-style game. Here it just felt like a wrinkle for the sake of a wrinkle; there it might have made sense thematically!

Samurai Kirby

Oh, right. The microgames. Okay, in this one you wait for a "draw!" or a "go!" and the instant it appears you press a button. It's quick draw. That's all it is. There's nothing else to it. I'm reiterating this in order to take up some space; I'm not underplaying the insignificance of this game, which i should point out can be played against either the CPU (talk about an unfair advantage) or a human opponent. But no, for real, that's all this is.

Megaton Punch

Compared to the last game this one's complex as hell. Also can be played against a human opponent or the CPU. Here the objective is to punch a bigger crack through Planet Popstar than the other guy. There are three parts. In the first, a meter slowly fills up. Press A when it's full! Second, two sets of crosshairs drift apart and back toward each other. Press A when the overlap! Finally, a pendulum-like thing goes back and forth across a center circle. Press A when it's in the circle! And that's it. I played this nine times (no idea why) and never lost to the CPU. It's basically the kicking meter in a Madden game. Or maybe the free throw meter in a basketball game. That's all!

So yeah - Kirby Super Star was a total mixed bag. "Eight" games (six), and the only highlight was one that didn't even exist - I'm referring of course to the hypothetical and theoretical Great Cave Offensive with the permanent power-up mechanic from Milky Way Wishes. I really expected more diversity here. Oh well! The music was pretty good, I guess.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Cue the trumpets. My first game for gametimebro's Scatterglory has finally been completed! WiiU says I put in over 400 hours on this game, which can mostly be attributed to keeping it on overnight several times, but... BUT! I do believe my quest to half-heartedly 100% the game certainly brought me across the 50-hour threshold.  

So here I am, reflecting on having recently completed the Zelda franchise's latest -- and arguably most ambitious -- game in the series. What do I think?

This is a damn fine game. However, this is not the best Zelda title. For me, at least.

I'm sure this is going to spark some controversy as a lot of people immediately recognize Breath of the Wild to not only be the best Zelda title, but perhaps one of the greatest action-adventure games ever made. Well, here are my two cents. Let's talk about what I loved first.

The design. At a time where games are becoming more and more ambitious about the worlds they create, the pressure seems to be on developers and creators to give us games we can truly immerse ourselves in. Breath of the Wild has accomplished this beautifully. With a map size that rivals other legendary sandbox titles like Skyrim, The Witcher III, and GTA V, you have this enormous land that's completely accessible to you (permitting you have the strengths or attributes in your favor to reach them). And while you're exploring one mountain peak to the next, there's beautiful sceneries across various environmental landscapes for you to soak up. Incorporating an art style that felt a little Miyazaki-like, I've got to say that over the hours I played this, this gorgeous, vast world never felt stale. 

Complementing the game's aesthetics was a magnificently minimalist musical score (my, my... those are many m's to mind). Perhaps one of the most famous element's to any Zelda game is its music. From the grand main theme that calls you into adventure to the tranquil serenity of Zelda's lullaby, the music composed in these games is so beloved that there's even a Nintendo-licensed orchestra that travels across the world playing a medley of different Zelda tracks. In Breath of the Wild, they took the music in a slightly different direction. More times than not, the only instrument recognized were the subtle, soft notes of a piano. The notion of "less is more" comes to mind as these blissful melodies carried me through my adventures.   

That leads me to the gameplay. I feel like the largest complaint people would have with Zelda is that it's become too formulaic. "Oh, we go to the first temple. We get an item. We beat a boss. Then we repeat the whole process with a new temple until the game is over." The formula works, in general, but you can't blame folks who've played through this franchise for years and years now not to feel the fatigue from the same rigmarole.

Breath of the Wild, well, frankly, breathes whole new life into this stale gameplay. Gone are the days of linear progression from one temple to the next. Now you wake up in a this gorgeous, expansive world; are given a collection of items you'll use throughout the game; and then are sent on your way to figure shit out. And when I say you are sent on your way, I mean you are left to beat the game however you damn well choose. You want to say "fuck you" to the main quests and run straight to the face Ganon at Hyrule Castle with nothing but a stick and your underwear. Power to ya!

A rare example of one person who just wants to watch the world burn -- just because they know they can survive it.

I mean you'll likely get slaughter using this technique, but the game won't hold you back from playing it how YOU want to play it. And that's my point. The game is loosely non-linear and adapts to any play style. There's one clear finish line to end the game that you're introduced to almost immediately. After that, it's up to you to decide when you're ready to cross it. This gameplay design was thoroughly satisfying.

Ok, enough of the good. Now onto the bad.

The characters. And to a larger extent, the voice acting. I can't remember if Skyward Sword had voice acting, but this game does... and boy, is it bad. Some of it's passable, but other times, yeash... it can make cut scenes cringe-worthy to watch. The biggest offender, by far, is Zelda. Whomever made the decision to make Zelda a whiny, soft-spoken British girl should really re-think some of their life's decisions. Not only did I feel like the voice acting completely missed the mark. Zelda's character was unsatisfying. I won't give away too much  in terms of spoilers, but you piece together her story by running around the map and finding "memories" of your times with her prior to the first big battle with Ganon. These memories do little to build a rich character development. They more just paint a vague picture of what happened in the past. I never felt like it fed into the larger story well, or... make me give a shit about the character at all or the conflict she's trying to overcome. Mostly, Zelda's just a whiny, confused princess in this game when should could -- and should -- be so much more.

The other character I had a beef with was our time-old villain, Ganon. Sorry to spoiling anything else here, but Ganon is once again your nemesis. I should make note that it's actually Calamity Ganon in this game... just because. I think what you should really takeaway from this is that there's no Ganondorf. And that's a shame. Not because I really needed to see Ganondorf back in action someplace else besides Smash Bros., but because I feel like Ganondorf at least has some personality behind him. Calamity Ganon is nothing more than a smoky Dragon draped in black and red fog who menacingly circles Hyrule Castle as a beacon for your final battle. When you do engage with Ganon for the final fight, you'll have a fun time. And depending on how stacked up Link is, you could have a very easy time beating him. But that victory lacks any cathartic triumph like I felt with Ocarina of Time. You don't feel like you finally conquered an evil that's been taunting you since you hit the power button. You more feel like, well... I've said it once already, you just feel like you've crossed the finish line at a marathon. As great as that sense of accomplish can feel, it lacks a much needed emotional depth that should have come with it. For a series that has been able to do that in the past, it was a bit of let down to not see it here. 

My only other beef has to do with collecting all the armor and needing Amiibos to do so. I mean, come on... Either give me the opportunity to get everything I need in the game, or fuck off. But don't force me to buy over-priced pieces of plastic just so I can look like Link from Ocarina of Time. That's a small, small gripe, though. 

All in all, this is a fantastic game totally worth the praise it's received. However, it's from the lack of any riveting character development and the weak build of its story that left me wanting more... and left me feeling confident that both N64 Zelda titles still stand as the magnum opuses to this franchise. 

Feel free to start chucking any Deku seeds at me. 

  

Super Mario Galaxy 2

No other place to begin here than by saying, unabashedly, that Super Mario Galaxy was (and still is) one of my favorite video games of all time. It's hard to quantify these types of things, but I've played, according to my own backloggery page, 485 video games in my lifetime. Forty-seven of them warranted a 5-star rating from me - about one in ten. But Super Mario Galaxy could very well be in my all time top five. Which makes it, to the rest of my five-star ratings, what my five-star ratings are to every other game I've played.

Eh, like I said, quantifying it doesn't really begin to do it justice. I played Super Mario Galaxy from December of 2007 through January of 2008. Winter break, from my sophomore year, a time of my life where I was dealing with some combination of existential dread, some engineering workload-based depression, and the pangs and realities of adulthood weighing down on me. Super Mario Galaxy just plain blew my socks off, this beautiful, then-innovative platforming game, bombastic music, a joy to play - a challenge, especially late, but the best and most rewarding challenge where brief moments of frustration were completely counterbalanced by the accomplishment of, say, finally landing that elusive star after an hour of failure and anger.

It'd be melodramatic and inaccurate to say something like "Super Mario Galaxy saved me," or something similarly stupid, but it was absolutely the lone bright spot in a four-to-six-month period that was one of the darkest of my young life. So when I got Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Christmas a couple years later, my instinct wasn't to jump right into it, but to hold off. To save it for another rainy, cloudy time where I needed a pick-me-up.

Of course, that's not really how life works. That's not how sadness and despair work, either. I went through some more, uh, "times" between 2010 and today - many much darker and rougher and, well, realer than the sophomore slump seasonal depression, and at no point during any of them did I think, "gee, you know what might cheer me up? A Wii game!" No - just because the first one, with hindsight, represented a bright point in a rough year did not mean its sequel would be some kind of cure-all for any ensuing rough patches.

What motivated me to finally start playing this, a month ago, wasn't any sort of sadness at all. Nor was it a nostalgia kick. Instead, it was a growing awareness of the game's possibly diminishing shelf life. I mean, this thing's just been sitting on my shelf for six years and change - I wouldn't want to stop playing video games altogether before finally getting around to it. Life's too short, you know?

So - okay, life stories aside - how was it!? It was excellent! I'm happy to say that I genuinely, greatly, totally enjoyed playing Super Mario Galaxy 2. The atmosphere and the music completely hold up - there's nothing in any other platformer quite like whizzing through space, collecting twinkly shiny objects just by pointing a Wii remote at them, all while Mario yelps his occasional "wa-hoos" and "ha-wahs."

As I said, I've been playing the game for a few weeks now, whenever I've found (well, made) the time to do so. Mostly this has consisted of two-hour sessions late at night after Marissa's gone to bed. I approached this game with a completionist's attitude (sort of - more on the green stars a bit later) which meant rather than whizzing around from level to level and world to world like I had adult-onset ADHD, I went over every level with a fine-toothed comb from the outset, minimizing any sense of wandering or backtracking. This meant the game got steadily and progressively harder, which left me whizzing through levels collecting extra lives early on but dying all over the place late in the game. It's hard to remember any specific highlight levels - they were all wonderful, really, impeccably designed and wonderfully imaginative - but a few levels definitely stand out in my memory as exceptionally challenging in a frustrating way - and almost all of them involved Yoshi.

Look - I love Yoshi. And as a rule I love his inclusion in Super Mario games - he lets you run faster, jump higher and farther, and he's even a built in damage buffer of sorts. But so many aspects of his gameplay mechanics in this game were a nightmare. For one, using his signature "stick out tongue, grab bad guy" move involved pointing the Wii remote at the screen and pressing B on enemies. Worse, there were often flowers in bubbles suspended in mid-air that Yoshi could fling to and from, always by sticking his tongue out and grabbing them. Do you know how frustrating this was? Do you remember how shitty the Wii remotes are at actually pointing to the screen n a steady, fluid manner? Worst of all, some levels made use of a Yoshi power-up in the form of a spicy pepper that made him run around at insane speeds, almost impossible to control. My God, this one level from fairly early on in the game will forever haunt me...

Otherwise, I can't really complain. I have a couple of gripes about the way the camera work made it very difficult to control or understand the movements of Mario - another PTSD-type level killed me some two dozen times in part because the view kept changing from above Mario to beside Mario to below Mario, all while riding on one of those platform-snake things and avoiding ghosts in a haunted house level. Oof. Oof. No thank you! But occasional shoddy camerawork is a small price to pay for a game where you spend so much time just flying through the air, flinging yourself from planet to planet, marveling at the goofy physics of it all. I loved this game! I really did.

Oh, right, the green stars! So. You only need to collect something like 70 regular stars, and you don't need to beat every level by any stretch, in order to face off with Bowser and ostensibly beat the game. Doing so opens up a seventh, special world - "World-S" in that weird Japanese video game parlance - and beating every level in this world (trickster comets included) and all other worlds nets you 120 stars. This is similar to how the first game worked. But in the first game, once you got every star, you could collect 120 more stars while playing as Luigi. I never did this! I thought it was unnecessary padding, just a spin on replaying the game - and this was, again, one of my all time favorite games! I thought Galaxy 2 would have a similar second "half," but it turns out it's pretty different. Once you get the 120 regular stars, you unlock these things called green stars, which, contrary to their name, are not merely stars to collect as Luigi. Instead, they're just hanging out in all the worlds and levels you've already beaten in hidden or hard to reach places. Collecting 120 of these - two or three in every level - gets you to 240 stars, which opens up a final world, in which there are two more regular stars to collect, giving you a grand total of 242 for "completion."

I'm sorry - I'm not doing this! I've already seen and played through every level, every challenge in the game. What remains strikes me as a glorified collectable hunt - something I'd use a walkthrough for in order to expedite the process, which would suck most of the fun out of it anyway. I love you, Galaxy 2, I really do - but I'm not going to finish you off on your own terms. We're done. We had a blast! I'll remember you fondly, but as far as I'm concerned, I played you fully and completely from start to finish. And how many games can I say that about these days?

Golden Sun

I've said it before, but it bears repeating - one of my favorite aspects of the Wii U was its impressive back-catalog of Game Boy Advance titles. Used to be I'd have to have bought a GBA and a physical copy of this thing in order to play it, which would have run me like a hundred dollars. Not worth it! But thanks to the Virtual Console? I dunno, maybe six bucks? Maybe it was even free. I don't remember.

Sadly, I also don't remember a ton about Golden Sun, a game I played a significant portion of two years ago and then just sort of abandoned. Gah, never a good sign! I did like this. Mostly. It was fairly unique among JRPGs in that it had a lot of field map interaction with objects in order to navigate dungeons, towns, and terrain. Not a platformer by any stretch, but a JRPG with some platformer-inspired mechanics, for sure.

Problem was, nothing here pulled me in. Or rather, nothing kept me invested beyond the first few hours. Once the novelty of the field map mechanics wore off, they were actually a bit of a pain. Burn this, levitate that, and so forth and so on. The combat system was also a little wonky and imbalanced. You found these little things called Djinn (plural) throughout the world and attached them to your characters, almost like equipping espers or guardians or whatever. And your characters' move set was based on which Djinn - namely, which combination of Djinn colors - you had attached. But using a Djinn in battle would temporarily extinguish it, which meant that your characters own abilities and moves would vary throughout battles. I understood and adequately abused this mechanic, but it never really sat right with me. And the story was... fine, at best. Nothing grand, epic, or sweeping - just a standard JRPG "save the world from evil" deal.

Actually, all in all, it sounds like I didn't like Golden Sun very much. But I did! Maybe my disappointment stems from wanting to love it, and merely liking it instead. Let's call it a textbook example of "three stars out of five" and move on.

Steven Universe: Season 4

Binge-watching Steven Universe, one eleven-minute episode after another, three or eight or fifteen at a time, was a very enjoyable experience. Sitting around waiting for Cartoon Network to release eleven minutes of Steven Universe at a time with no regularity, on the other hand, has been a real pain in the ass. No, seriously - this show has no time slot. Every few months, Cartoon Network will drop a "Steven Bomb," which means it will air new episodes of Steven Universe every night for a whole week at, like, 7pm or so. And then also every now and again, Cartoon Network will decide to schedule new episodes on a weekly basis - last time, Fridays at 8pm, oof - for two or three weeks at a time. And on top of all this, they'll have episodes scheduled to go, and then on the day of, they'll just kind of disappear. It's maddening. It's unlike any other show I've ever tried to watch with regularity and consistency. Granted, in the age of DVR (and really, now, more so, the age of streaming shit online), this really isn't a big deal. The episodes will air, eventually, and I'll see them. But still!

Okay. Anyway. Season 4. (Oh, the show also doesn't even have actual seasons. They'll just kind of declare one episode a season finale. Season 3 finished on a Wednesday and Season 4 began the next day. It's insane. Okay, okay, I'm done, I promise.) Season 4 was a bit of a mixed bag for me, as all the seasons have been, really. One episode we'll be diving into some deep mythological explanations - this thing's like Lost in the way it keeps adding as many new questions as answers - and then for like four straight episodes we'll just follow Steven around town, having fun with a friend or two, learning a lesson or two, none of the Crystal Gems in sight. It's an interesting issue unique to 11-minute episodes - you really don't have time to split a story into an A-plot and a B-plot, so instead you just constantly mix up the focus and the intensity of the various episodes. I get it! It just makes for wildly uneven seasons sometimes.

All in all, I'm still having fun with this, enjoying it a great deal in the macro sense. The highlight this season was probably the series of episodes in which Steven and the Gems ended up on the Homeworld. Interesting stuff, great mythology building, plenty of emotional stakes. And Season 4 has ended in a manner that should allow Season 5 to start out strong, too. (When, though? No one knows!)

Girlboss: Season 1

Oh wow. In spite of my apprehension, I kind of really loved this. Netflix puts out a new season of television every week at this point, really, so it's no surprise that a lot of them fly under the radar or get panned or ignored by critics. This one just kind of popped up one day on Netflix, and with my newfound sense of trying more shows and quickly axing them as needed, I decided to give it a go. I thought I'd watch an episode or two, laugh at it (not with it), and whip up a quick :they can't all be winners" paragraph in my next TV dump post.

But - no! I liked this. And I think I've figured out several reasons why.

It's a half-hour show based on a true story.

Biopics are a dime a dozen. Television biopics are a bit more rare. But TV biopic comedies? Yeah, this is something novel, certainly. Closest thing I can think of is Aziz Ansari's Master of None very loosely being based on some of his life experiences - but that show was a collection of episodes whereas this one's an actual story, progressing from a beginning point to an ending point.

The title's a complete misnomer.

When you hear "Girlboss," you might cringe a little, picturing something between a Hillary Clinton empowerment ad, Beyonce's Instagram, and thousands of millennials screaming "yaaaaass quaaaaaaayn!" in tandem. This, I assure you, is nothing like that. It's about a girl (a woman? a young woman) named Sophia who, in 2006, decides to start flipping vintage clothes on eBay. She's no one's boss but her own, up until the very end of the season, and the "boss" in the title has more to do with her take-no-bullshit attitude than with her actual position in any company.

The main character is endearing without being likable.

One of the main criticisms of this show has been that Sophia is kind of an unlikable asshole. And her actress, Britt Robertson - great performance, by the way, capturing the fire and spunk and despair and huffiness and ego and fear of a 23-year-old flipping vintage clothes for profit - has apparently had to defend the character and the show by saying that you aren't supposed to like Sophia. Personally, I'm calling bullshit on both of those attitudes. Sophia's all kinds of fiery and spunky and, shit, I know this kind of runs counter to the idea of female empowerment, but half the time I just found her to be adorable. I found happiness in her joy, I laughed at her anger - you know what I mean? There are plenty of true "bad people" on television, people you wouldn't want to hang out with or work with, and I just don't think this isn't one of them. I wanted her to succeed, not fail. That's not always easy!

It's a feel good show.

And she does succeed. Mostly. Intermittently. This is, weirdly, despite its title, kind of a bootstraps-conservative type of show. Cite white privilege if you want - not sure how much it matters when it comes to building an online business, really - but Sophia succeeds because Sophia works her ass off at what she does. And it's all just enjoyable to watch!

It's full of mid-2000s nostalgia.

Sometimes it even feels shoehorned in, but, fuck it. Give me that Modest Mouse. Give me episodes based on a spat between two friends over whether or not they're in each other's Top 8. Give me references to Lost and to The OC. Let me soak in the glory of pre-Twitter web design.

It's got plenty of familiar faces in small roles.

Dean Norris, Jim Rash, and Norm Macdonald all appear in multiple episodes each.

The episodes are, truly, episodes.

This is more of a given with the half-hour format, but Girlboss was not, whatsoever, one long movie chopped into thirteen pieces like so many modern dramas say they are. Each episode focuses on a different aspect of Sophia's journey from hapless, directionless, penniless angry girl with an eye for fashion to successful burgeoning businesswoman.

It stands alone perfectly, but there's plenty of room to grow.

The first season ends with - minor spoilers - Sophia successfully launching her own website, finally free from the restraints of eBay, having overcome some issues in her personal life. It's a complete story, but there are plenty of places to take a second season. How does Sophia actually handle being a boss? How does her relationship with her father evolve? Where does her love life go from here? What about her standing with her best friend? Does she turn into an even bigger asshole, success getting to her head? Does the pressure of running a business wear on her? Let's see! No, really, let's see a second season. Come on, Netflix, you guys renew anything and everything.

Feels like I'm the only person on the Internet who enjoyed this, and I'm a 9-to-5-workin' straight man approaching thirty. Huh.

The Fate of the Furious

Holy smokes, I plum dang forgot to make a post about this movie! A movie which, yes, obviously, I saw on opening night. And which, yes, obviously, I had a blast with. (If it matters, I did spend a little over a week writing up this thing: https://medium.com/@steve.stanvick/the-definitive-ranks-of-the-furious-f7b873f516df)

Okay, so - this poster kind of sums it up. Who's dead center? It's not Vin - it's The Rock! You know why? Because this is his franchise, now. There's Vin though, over on the left side, looking kind of tired. It's not his fault! He does turn fifty this year. But then, so does Jason Statham, who's right over there on the other side of The Rock, with almost equal prominence to Vin.

I made a similar observation in my rambling post, linked above, but there's a tragic irony here for Vin. The franchise begins, Vin's hot shit, won't come back for the second movie. The franchise struggles - so does Vin - and they reunite in the fourth movie. Saves them both. Enter The Rock, movie five. Franchise explodes. Two more insane over-the-top movies, drawing even bigger stars and making even more billions of dollars. And now the same series Vin was brought back in to save? Yeah - it's outgrown Vin. Which, hey, fine! What a run! Thanks for everything! But when I hear things about Vin getting all wrinkly-nosed at the idea of The Rock and Statham taking things from here or at least doing their own spinoff, I gotta side with Rock and Statham on this one. Vin, don't get in the way of the most charismatic wrestler of all time and one of the greatest action stars of our day collaborating on making your own franchise a better one. Come on!

Lastly, I'll say this - I went into this one a bit skeptical and wary. Reviews weren't great, with a couple of critics specifically saying things like "this franchise has lost sight of what it's fans loved about it," and, "the characters' motivations don't make sense this time around." I have to say, this is one of the biggest disconnects I've ever felt between fans and critics - is this how all the DC fanboys defending Suicide Squad felt? I mean, what are they even talking about? What fans love about these gloriously over-the-top action movies is how gloriously over the top they are. When Dom utters a line or two about family, fine, but we emphatically do not love these movies for being some sort of rich, feel-good familial and fraternal bonding stories. We watch them in order to see cars rain from the sky and take on nuclear submarines and shit. And when have the characters and their motivations ever made sense? All of them are criminals and terrible people - but these are superhero movies, so who cares?

Trev's Movie Dump: March – April 2017

Another dump. Another dollar.

Get Out

At the release of Get Out, critics went fucking nuts. In a good way. Nearly everyone and their mother praised this film for being both fun, scary, and an insightfully new way to examine racial discrimination problems in America. Not only that, this film currently sits as the third highest-grossing horror film ever (I believe The Exorcist and Hannibal sit as #1 and #2, respectively), and Jordan Peele the first black filmmaker to have a +$100 million debut.

Needless to say, there's a lot going for this film and we're nowhere close to award season. 

I guess the question is, how did the film resonate with me -- a self-proclaimed horror film lover. I liked it plenty, but can't say I loved it. At least I didn't love it in the sense of how the general critic community seems to love it. 

As a horror film, it's OK. I mean it's a lot of fun and definitely has some intriguing moments, but it never really felt that scary. It never left any mental scars on me or had me ruminating on the film for days afterwards. To me, it was just a fun romp at the theater -- a popcorn film, if you will. Then again, am I the right person to be scared by this? I am white after all. If I was black (or another minority race), would this film affect me any different? 

Obviously, I can't say. It was interesting to hear Peele during an interview (think it might have been his NPR chat with Terry Gross) where he explained there is a real sense of fear when a black person enters into a predominately white community here in America. I certainly don't doubt that. But that leads me into a different area of the film. One that really confused me. Basically my issue is:

Were the villains of the film racists? 

We know the villains are most certainly lunatics of the mad scientist variety. Definitely some fun fodder for spooky film, but were they racists out to subjugate the black-American community. 

I honestly don't know and am sort of divided on the matter. 

On one hand we have a these maniacs who are solely pursuing blacks and doing this whole body-snatchers technique where they put the minds of their white cronies into the bodies of these innocent victims. OK, that seems fairly straightforward. Even when our main character is paraded around the gathering of potential buyers, you get the feel like it's a modern day slave auction. But instead of these white folks wanting to solely imprison them, they also want to become them. I don't know where to go from here. It's like all these 1%-ers see the black community as something for them to use and abuse. Something for them to play with. It's such an interesting take. I don't know what to make from it?!

There was one issue in particular in the film that confused me. It pertains to the villains' grandparents.

It's insinuated that the grandfather is the man behind this brain swapping technique that the whole film hinges around. That would presumably make him the patriarch of this family -- which I thought was going to be a big reveal at the end when our hunches our confirmed that the two black aides at the villains' house are in facf... duh, duh, duuuuuuh... they are the masterminds behind the whole thing!

Sadly, they aren't. In fact, they kind of seem like they were maybe the beta version of this whole experiment. I mean, the grandfather's randomly running around at night. The grandmother can't seem to keep her thoughts together. They're clearly not all there, mentally speaking. However, the film never explains any of this, and that bothered me. 

I'm not going to nitpick the film to death. It was a blast to watch and I'll definitely be standing by for whatever Peele throws out next. I'm just not ready to praise it as much of the critic community has. 

Skiptrace

This movie was complete garbage. If I had the chance to revisit my rankings for 2016 movies, this would be at the complete bottom. I'm not even going to bother writing a review. Jackie Chan, you're better than this. Johnny Knoxville, you are not. 

Logan

There's no question about it. I have an affinity for superhero/comic stories shown on the big screen. It's just a great medium to tell these stories. That's not to say that all comic films get a pass by me (hell, there are two comic films that I consider to be among the worst films of 2016 -- get your shit together WB/DC!). So, I don't give all these films a free ride. Logan, however, wow... what a great movie. 

Ever wonder what would happen if you dropped the Wolverine into a Cormac McCarthy western story? That's Logan. I understand it was based on the comic Old Man Logan, that basically spells out the end of Logan's days, but I can't say too much.

I know not everyone is going to love this movie as much as I did, but considering how many stories I've read that have tried to do away with our heroes (whether it's in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? or R.I.P. Batman), I felt this one gave a proper goodbye that I sorely wanted. 

The Fate of the Furious

Can I just say one thing? During our podcast post-Furious 7, we called out the name its sequel. Only I imagined it being called "F8 of the Furious." I guess we can't get all that we want.

What's to say? The Furious films know exactly what they are and they deliver while being tonally consistent. Is it a critically amazing film? No. But they're not trying to be that. Their goal is to make an over-the-top, crazy, car-chasing ride with big name stars that have great big screen presence. And they're slowly going the way of Dragonball, in that as time passes, some villains become friends and some friends become villains. It's hard to believe that Dom's gang would so easily welcome Deckard into their group -- much less Dom letting him save his baby -- but you'd be surprise how many things you allow to slip when you're distracted by ALL OF THE CARS IN NY BEING CYBER-HIJACKED TO CAUSE A METAL-RIVER OF MAYHAM! 

An excellent addition to the series. Any takes on where the next films will go? I'm still waiting for the day we see Dom driving a car in space. Mark my words... it will happen. 

Split

So far, the films of 2017 have been good to me. Not a stinker yet. 

Split was a delightful surprise to me. I'm glad M. Night seems to have found his groove again after what felt like a decade a god-awful movies. I don't want to ruin anything about this one, but I love his semi-grounded take on the superhero story.

Can't wait to see where the next installment will go!

Republic

Oof. Been working on this one in stop-and-go fashion for a while now. It's not a long read, but it's a very dense one, the whole thing a conversation, and every line putting forth a new proposition that's either agreed upon or rebutted. The very rigid prose doesn't make it a breezy read and there are logical fallacies everywhere acting as speed bumps besides.

The main question Socrates seeks to address here - yes, it's written by Plato but the main character here is Socrates, so let me know which one I should credit here - is, "What is justice?" From this relatively straightforward question comes an entire utopian society and plenty of philosophical discussion beyond, regarding the importance of education and rational thought. It's easy to see why this thing's a classic.

But! What a mess. What Socrates (Plato?) concocts as a hypothetically utopian just society essentially amounts to this proto-fascist state. It's a society of specialists who all "know their role" and don't stick their nose into business that doesn't concern them. For instance, the farmers shouldn't concern themselves with how they're being governed, the merchants don't need to worry about warfare, and so forth. Media censorship, insofar as it exists back then, should be tight and rigid, with the youth of the state indoctrinated with virtuous stories, no cynical or immoral ones, so it can be made sure that young warriors don't fear death. Plato (Socrates?) also doesn't think, for instance, that doctors should be burdened with caring for the chronically ill - so basically he's building Paul Ryan's America. It's a decidedly non-democratic vision, considering that Greece back then was the birthplace of democracy.

It gets weirder, bigger, grander. He advocates for common families, in which copulation is performed as a ritual and never otherwise, and all children born in any generation are said to be children of all the adults who were sexually active with each other nine months prior. In this way all the adults can be said to be parents of all the children, and all the children siblings with each other. Feels very similar to that "takes a village" proverb, and I know there've been many societies throughout history that successfully used this approach for hundreds of years or more. Plato also bans poets form his grand city (so, artists and creative types, in the modern sense?) because they pretend to know everything but in fact know nothing. (Whoa.) Oh, and the ruling class can't own anything. That's important. Because if you allowed rich people to rule, they'd seek only to protect their riches. So it's sort of like communism and priesthood, in that way.

Ideally, says Plato, the rulers of such a society will be philosopher-kings - basically these proto-Jedi wisemen who have no passion, no lust, and are content to rule with and be ruled by logic and reason. It's as idealistic and fantastical a notion today as it was 2400 years ago, before "absolute power corrupts absolutely" was ever uttered. But Plato seems to realize this! Toward the end of Republic, after building up this intricate utopian society so thoroughly, Plato outlines the state's inevitable decline into tyranny. He predicts that even the most just philosopher-kings, being human, will err in selecting and training their own replacements. This will lead first to oligarchy, in which the rulers begin to amass riches and the rest of society becomes impoverished, then to what sounds like a Marxist revolution, or at least the French one, in which the masses revolt and drive the kings away and decide that every man has the freedom and license to do as he pleases. This is all chaos and no order, with no one occupying the right roles, and it ultimately leads to tyranny, as an opportunistic, crafty, political few will amass wealth and power, rising to the top and enslaving everyone else. (I mean, this sounds to me a lot like the original utopia for the lower classes - the farmers are just going to farm either way, right?)

Granted, it's not clear what exactly Plato is doing, writing this whole dang thing. Taken literally, it sounds like he's constructing (and then lamenting the inevitable decline of) an ideal society. But perhaps he's being willfully obtuse, sarcastic, ironic. He quickly admits that his own utopian society is doomed from the start, after all. And remember, the entire book and conversation are meant to be an exploration of justice - is it possible the entire city-state is a metaphor for the human soul? Maybe we, as individuals, are best off when we use our brains to reason our way past succumbing to our lustful desires. When we let our bodies become democracies, with each vice and desire weighing equally on our actions, do we not end up acting and behaving unjustly? There's a whole late chapter dedicated to exploring the tyrannical man - not a tyrant who rules a dystopian city, but an everyday man who lets animal instincts rule him, turning into a lecherous and violent glutton. Is such a man actually happy though? Here's the crux of Plato's argument - no. No, he is not.

I can see why this is such a classic for both historians and philosophers, and its value has everything to do with how it has shaped Western thought for millennia. That said, as a contemporary read, holy shit, this thing is a disaster. It's loaded with leaps in logic, contradictions, and circular reasoning. It's possible these are translation issues across several languages and thousands of years, but this reads like a guy just spitballing, thinking out loud, churning out these half-baked ideas like a high school senior designing society from scratch. Now, that's okay if the point of Republic is to defend and promote philosophical navel-gazing. If there's one main takeaway, perhaps it's not "this is how society should be," but instead, "this is why thinking long and hard and questioning everything is very important." But man, the thought process on display here is staggeringly incomplete. The whole thing predates the scientific method; claims are made and accepted with no regard for pragmatics or outcomes. Every claim here is subjective or unfalsifiable, and even a smart child could probably poke a few dozen holes in the path Socrates takes to defend some asinine claims. There are too many barely coherent examples to choose from, but for instance, here's how Socrates or Plato ultimately defends the idea that justice is good and worthwhile, paraphrased of course:

"You would agree that there are three types of men. Those who love the truth, those who love honor, and those who love profit."
"Yes, of course."
"And only a man who has loved all three can lay claim to knowing which love leads to happiness."

"Naturally."
"And only the philosopher has attempted to do this."

"Sure. Go on."

"So the philosopher alone can say whether truth, honor, or profit leads to happiness."

"Certainly."
"And the philosophers all agree that loving truth leads to the most happiness."

"Okay."
"Therefore the pursuit of justice is its own reward."

"I'm sold!"

Centuries of Westenr policy, based on the ramblings of a madman. Human nature, everyone!