Gotham, wizard wars,walking dead.
We’re so close to the end of the season and Gotham is still going strong. I never cease to love this program. What I’m finding interesting about this episode is the heart of the series, the idea that so many of the cops are corrupt here. We always suspected that Bullock had done something scummy, but this is the first time it’s been trotted out and shoved in out face. I’m really loving the protrayal of Flass here. he’s just as slimy as he is in Frank Millers year one, it’s an almost perfect portrayal except he’s got just a teensy bit more class . In fact it’s that attractive quality, that sophistication that makes him even more dangerous. Comissioner Lobe to, is far more sophisticated in this TV series then he appears to be in year one. We have done away with the idiosyncrasy of collecting pop culture memorabilia although I still really really want to see Catwoman rob him. I just wanna see Selena ransacked that office of his ! I guess what I’m getting at, the real thrust of my point here, both Lobe and Flass are really well realized characters in this TV show, in fact the TV series has taken these fairly flat one note characters that Frank Miller created and made them far more interesting, and in fact a bit more threatening as well.
It’s interesting to see the compromises that Gordon is willing to make. I almost wanted to cheer with everybody else on the screen when they announced his candidacy for president of the policeman to union .Great stuff.
I’ll stand by what I said last week about liking how the walking dead is sticking close to the comics. Whats interesting however, is that I’m watching this with my wife who hasn’t read the comics. She’s actually just started on the second volume which puts her out about issues seven or eight, so to hear her and her friends talk about where they think things are going, how they think that Rick and his group are going to take the Community, it’s really fascinating to hear. It’s like watching it to somebody else as I do, I get to experience it all over again. I still don’t know what to think about the fact that the mayor is a woman, I almost think we’re going to sidestep the lecherous aspects of the character, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Then again if they apply this to her, making her sort of a cougar,I also don’t know how I feel about that. It’ll be interesting to see where we go with this.
Wizard wars was a lot of fun this week. One of the elements they had to use this time around was a guitar and man I was so hoping for a feat that I could duplicate. It’s well known that I play guitar and to mix that into magic, seems like it would be a lot of fun much the way that I have mixed computers into magic. But it’s actually the sign of some very good contestants, both managed to stumped me. I don’t know how 
these feats were handled and I really enjoyed watching the routiens. There is one that in particular I’ve got an idea but still not really sure, where they pass guitar straight out of a guitar case . It’s similar to an effect you do with cards make your card vanishing in a card box but not really. here is also a great bit where they take an acoustic guitar and pull something out of the hole in the center but then a moment later the guitar is solid, the hole becomes just a sticker on the front. It’s really something I wanna figure out how to do. At one point they have Penn and Teller sign a pic as a proof. You know, the signed card tricks always get me too, I’ve never figured that technique out. With Penn and Teller it a little different though, thiersignatures are easy to observe, I can do a Google search for autographs or even walking to my library and see their autograph. It would be easy enough to pre-create an autographed pic so that you can vanish the real one and then make a fake one appear and still possibly fool the audience.
I also love that they were using dominoes. I think this is something more magicians should do, dominoes instead of cards. They are wonderful manipulateable objects and I think it’s a great idea.
For the second challenge there is a 70s theme and it comes off a little cold for me period maybe it’s to kitschy, maybe it’s not kitschy enough but it just doesn’t work quite as well for me.
It was a good week for television for me period I like that things are slowing down and I suspect I’ll be watching more movies as the weeks go on that rather than television, which means you may start seeing more movie reviews up here and fewer TV spots!
As average as the last few weeks of TV has been, television this week really went itself up.
of course we have the series finale of Agent Carter. This series is just always so much better when Howard Stark is around. AIt’s always so much better when we have that firm Captain America connection like the shield that we saw tonight. It didn’t feel like everything is wrapped up but enough was taken care of that I left feeling satisfied.
Gotham has gone crazy. Remember how I said last week those commercials were looking incredible? Well this week certainly lives up to it. It’s really a standard story, a face from the past infiltrates the mansion ect… but the sheer amount of jawdropping moments it was just incredible. There is a great moment of that idiot Barbara trying to convince Selena that her beauty can be used as a weapon….and the rejection that Selena gives her… but funny, you can see Ivy in the background and she’s learning these lessons very well. Watching fish money and the bit with the spoon just made my wife’s jaw drop. Mine too. Not to mention Jeffrey Combs, I just seriously wish they’d just go ahead and call him Herbert West. how awesome would that be? Finally the fate of Alfred is just amazing. I warmed up to Sean Pertwee in this role amd I can see how he could still grow into the Alfred we know and love. To see him struck down was nothing short of astonishing.
Can I say, I really missed flash this week. I was so looking forward to Grodd and Reverse Flash and to be confronted with a rerun, Arrgh!
Walking Dead…all I can say is I REALLY love how close they are following the books right now. More of that please.
Also, more Wizard Wars please. The series seems to be getting good ratings, and it should. It’s a genuinely good magic show, stumping me more and more often….
Gotham tomorrow, and we’re getting close to the end…
Better call Saul
It’s odd, I seem to be watching more television than I ever have before. At least more than I’ve watched a very long time, and this is in great part due to the fact that my wife is watching a lot of this with me. Ladies you know that saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach? Totally wrong. A way to a man’s heart is by watching his television shows with him. Seriously sit down and watch an episode of Doctor Who with them or catch the football game with him on Sunday and then talk with him about it – I’m telling you it’s almost better than sex. It’s one of the things that my wife does with me that I love the absolute most.
So I watched the premiere of Better Call Saul this weekend, and it has some bad will immediately because of the way AMC tried to shoehorn it in between Walking Dead and Talking Dead (especially considering how emotional WD was this week!) I understand trying to follow a strong popular series with a new series that you’re trying to promote, but to move the Talking Dead (which is basically the documentary on how each episode is made)further back, it’s too late in the night that for that nonsense and you lose momentum. Better Call Saul needed a very strong series premiere to build over come the bad will there.
This was not that strong Episode.
One of the things that made the Saul character work in Breaking Bad is that he was the comic relief.What I was really hoping for in Better Call Saul was a single camra comedy with dashes of drama kind of taking itself seriously but still being funny. This is not what we got, and the character lacks the gravitas to really pull the levels of dram they are shooting for. Saul was always designed as a one-dimensional character in this attempt to go back and retcon him into some sort of layered deep character just doesn’t work. I will not be back for the rest of the series and quite frankly I think the entire conception was a Misstep. I realize we’re following Breaking Bad, but Better Call Saul wasn’t the way to do it. Better Call Saul would be better served as something lighthearted and funny.
Among other things you’re watching this weekis Gotham. There was a real misdirect here, I was looking foreward to the Scarecrow episode and to discove it was his father was a little disappoing. I think the scarecrow could be someone older than Bruce Wayne, in fact I’d love to have seen him actually be one of Wayn’s teachers, however, being homeschooled now kinda puts the kibosh onthat. The biggest misdirect however was the way that Edward Nigma was suspended. I thought for sure this is the beginnings of the Riddler and it would make perfect sense for him to be disgruntled after being fired from the police force, but no, by the end of the episode the status quo was restored and he was back on the force. I’m not sure if that was a missed opportunity or not .
We were also delighted to return with Wizard Wars. This series really engaged me, and I think it’s got to do with the way it’s a competition and also with the stage and parlor aspects of it. I tried watch the show following it on SYFY a sort street magic kind of series which is interesting in itself, but I’m not that into street magic I’ve always been drawn far more to parlor and stage magic, indeed that’s the kind of magic that I do.
Sci-fi did manage to raise my ire however. The series premiered the week previous and I missed it and there’s no way of me watching it on sci-fi without loggin in with some arcane credentials from my cable provider. I used to catch up with Hollywood treasure by watching online and it kind of pisses me off that site is making it so much more difficult to keep up onthier shows. Just another reason to hate the network I suppose.
I enjoyed the flash this week as well. The Flash has really been quite a discovery for me, I don’t think I wanted to like this as much as I do (I suppose a misguided loyalty to the 1990 series) but I caught up on the entire series over he Christmas break and found it to be really well done at whole lot of fun. The return of the series has been no exception. We’re back to monster of the week and in fact this a villian we’ve never seen in the comics, but 
there is also another bit with the Pied Piper. The scene with his implants was horrifying and we can see he can be quite a violent character, and I think actually more interesting than anything we’ve seen in the comics.
Really I think this is where the Flash’s strength lies.
They embraced that this is a comic book, something that superhero shows in the past of really shied away from. Arrow even took a long time to get there.
You can see where they are trying to shoehorn Firestorm in to the series. We’re in full back-door pilot mode, though I can’t really see Firestorm carrying his own series. A miniseries or perhaps even setting up appearances in Justice league? This would be the smartest thing at DC could possibly do. Far smarter then steadfastly trying to separate their television and cinematic universe, but that’s a whole other tangent, we don’t really wanna get into that right now.
That’s it for this week, Gotham is on tonight and I will be seeing in front of the television with my wife seeing where we go with the scarecrow ! Can’t wait. (but since we have to, go check out todays Violent Blue!)
Argo City Comics 