Reviewing with My se-elf
Although I know no one is reading, I’m enjoying writing for writing’s sake, so today we’re having a review entry. So there.
iZombie
So if your’re the kind of person who know what any of the shows below are, you’ll be wanting to watch iZombie. The story is of a driven up-and-coming heart surgeon who breaks the habit of a lifetime and goes to a wild party on a boat. Unfortunately, this is where the zombie outbreak takes place.
These aren’t spoilers as they encompass what is basically the title sequence. Anyway, we find ourselves with a fully cogent zombie, Olivia "Liv" Moore, played by Rose McIver. She’s working in the police morgue and gobbling up the brains of murder victims whenever she gets the chance to stop her ‘going all George Romero’. When she eats a brain, she gets flashes of the dead person’s life and… you see where this is going.
McIver is a delight to watch, and stands as one of the few leading woman who is never overshadowed by her supporting men. It’s all about Liv, her journey and how the people around her (both ignorant and in the know) affect her journey. It’s an amazing bit of telly, and although it’s a different genre, massively outclasses The Walking Dead in everyway. A must-watch.
Agents of SHIELD
Series one of Agents of SHIELD was a drag. Everyone knows it, but not everyone will admit it. Like many Joss Wheadon TV shows, it takes a while to get up to full speed as characters and their relationships are developed and presented. That having been said, the relationships (particularly FitzSimmons) are beautifully layered and heartrending as you might expect, so it is well worth sticking with.
Come season two (or rather, everything after the Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier crossover they were clearly waiting for), everything goes to hell. Characters turn, are injured, show their true colours while their whole world falls apart. Season two is largely the aftermath of this as the show really finds its footing and its own voice — allowing itself to take a couple of steps away from the Marvel movies and do it’s own thing.
Every episode has character moments aplenty to take a real emotional toll on the viewer. Beyond that, we have a lot of action, intrigue and mystery. The best thing for me, however (comic book nods aside), is the fact that no character remains static. We’ve got injury, alteration, betrayal and death. There’s no Simpsons or X Files -like return of the status quo at the end of every episode. This is doubly true in season two and it takes my breath away every time.
Agent Carter
Following on from that, I want to talk about Agent Carter — the Agents of SHIELD/Captain America spin-off that got a lot of press a couple of months ago. Hayley Atwell returns to her role as Captain America’s beautiful, kick-ass (British) love interest. We rejoin her after the War is over and she’s working for SSR — what we know in the future timeline is proto-SHIELD — and she’s getting coffee and filing as only a 1940s woman can.
I know it sounds like I’m being flippant, but that really is the central thrust of the show. Peggy Carter taking things into her own hands despite the inherent misogeny of the age is one of the true joys of the show. She kicks ass, is ahead of the men in solving the mysteries, and isn’t bogged down with a gratuitous romantic storyline as you might expect with a female-led show like this (although there are hints that things might go that way with one character in future outings).
There are other joys to be had, of course. We can see Walt Disney/Howard Hughes in Dominic Cooper (another British actor)’s Howard Stark — the 1940s equivalent of Tony Stark and representing the character’s 1960s origins rather neatly. Speaking of which, the costume and set design is just beautiful and entirely on par with the quality we’ve seen in the Marvel movies. Everyone looks totally at home in a perfectly realised 1940s New York. It’s just wonderful to behold.
There are only a few episodes right now (which slotted nicely into the Agents of SHIELD mid-season break), but I can see it moving into multiple seasons in the future. A perfect companion piece to the MCU and AoS, but also as a show in it own right, not relying at all on anything that came before it. Even Captain America: The First Avenger is mentioned only in passing and with enough explanation that seeing the movie isn’t 100% neccesary to enjoy this show. Agent Peggy Carter is her own woman.
Gotham
I just don’t know about Gotham. Don’t get me wrong — I am really enjoying it, but the weird change of tone from gritty Nolanesque corruption stories to a West-era Nygma posing riddles in the police station while Jada Pinkett Smith hams it up as a Crime boss.
All these elements work individually, but the juxtaposition makes for slightly uncomfortable watching. Then again, I suppose that is the point. Batman does have the rogues’ gallery with the most mental illnesses, so that discomfort does give things kind of a Hannibal Lecter feel.
The thing is, I come back to Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter and others with pure enthusiasm, while I enjoy Gotham once I’ve started watching it. Robin Lord Taylor’s Penguin is magnetic while Ben McKenzie’s Gordon is an upstanding boy scout with just enough righteous anger to keep him from being Cyclops/Superman dull.
I don’t know what it is that makes me hesitate or procrastinate before watching each episode, but when I do I love it. There’s no one element I’m not a fan of. Maybe it’s just the noir cinematography that makes me pause — I don’t watch dark or depressive* stuff on the whole, and the image in my head is that, even if the show isn’t.
Whatever. This does get a recommendation from me, even if my instincts are a bit ambivalent. I can’t wait for The Riddler to make the turn into villainy, and the almost-joker stories are the ones to look out for.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
This, the newest Netflix Original Series, got me hooked thanks to lots of chatter on my Twitter feed. I enjoyed Ellie Kemper on the latter series of The (US) Office as the naive new receptionist, and its seems at first like she’s pulling out the same game in a more central role. However, it soon becomes clear that this new show — silly and light on the surface — has a bit more Tina Fey SNL bite to it.
The central conceit is that four women have been trapped underground by an end of the world cultist for fifteen years, and now the titular character has decided to make a new life for herself in New York (one of the only three cities in the USA), and must try to lean how to be a person outside the bunker.
The characters seem rather broadly drawn in early episodes — we’ve got the gay musical theatre wannabe, ditsy foreign landlady (from Gotham alum Carol Kane), spoiled trophy wife and even more spoiled teenage daughter — but these characters have begun to broaden. By episode three, we’ve already seen the trophy wife sterotype punctured. Hopefully that pattern will continue to allow the show to expand beyond its simple sitcom ingredients and single core premise.
***
Alright, everyone. Those are my reviews. I hope someone reads them. If not, It killed the first two hours of my work day. ☺
Speak soon!
