Fear the Walking Dead – Blood in the Streets recap

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

by Thom Yee

fear-the-walking-dead-one

Fear the Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC

2×04: “Blood in the Streets”

Jon Snow lives!!! Also, there was another episode of Fear the Walking Dead…!

“Blood in the Streets” actually starts off with a pretty good hook as Nick made his way to shore, swimming under cover of darkness to the Mexican border, still guarded by border patrol helicopters, presumably now more concerned with the infected than illegal immigrants. We soon find that he’s been sent on a mission from Strand to pick up Luis, a fixer of sorts who’s in league with Strand, and on the way Nick purposefully covers himself in zombie guts so that he can move uninterrupted towards his goal. It’s kind of jarring seeing Nick (or any one of our Fear cast members) on a very specific, mission-focused course of action, and it reinforced my [relative] love of Nick, who’s turned out to be surprisingly good at everything in this world. Continue reading →

Legends of Tomorrow – Leviathan recap

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

by Thom Yee

legends-of-tomorrow-one

Legends of Tomorrow images courtesy of Warner Bros. Television Distribution

1×13: “Leviathan”

And now… the real game begins. Or at least that’s what I thought was happening.

In travelling forward to the one time the legends know they can find Vandal Savage — just before the precise moment they’ve been trying to prevent this whole time — we find a future ravaged by war with only a few refugees of Savage’s population-decimating virus remaining in rundown camps. With danger approaching the refugees, Professor Stein finds himself unable to ignore their plight, taking the entire camp aboard the Waverider while they form their plans for taking Savage down one last time. Continue reading →

Fear the Walking Dead – Ouroboros recap

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in Television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

by Thom Yee

fear-the-walking-dead-one

Fear the Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC

2×03: “Ouroboros”

Early on in “Ouroboros”, only the third episode in this new, 15-episode-long season, Strand tells Madison, and by extension us, that the real danger on the ocean is people. Which… y’know, duh, we just spent an entire season on the parent show building up to the leader of one group beating a member of our group to death with a barb-wire-wrapped baseball bat he named Lucille, so I think we all know a little about people being the real danger in the post-zombie apocalypse if there was ever any doubt. If anything, the real danger for Fear the Walking Dead right now is probably Game of Thrones stealing and and all of the post-Sunday-night television discussion.

Continue reading →

Daredevil (Season 2) review

23 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by in Television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Further proof that ninjas make everything better

by Thom Yee

daredevil-season-2-one

Daredevil images courtesy of Marvel Television, ABC Studios and Netflix

Even in the superhero golden age that we’re now living in (though, admittedly, this precise moment is a bit of an extreme valley, right after Batman v Superman and right before Civil War), the state of broadcast superhero television is still a little disappointing. With the mediocrity of shows like Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. typifying the space, it’s fallen to the Berlanti-verse group of superhero television series (so named after their producer Greg Berlanti) to headline the genre, but even its best show, The Flash, doesn’t showcase the genre’s potential on a regular basis. It’s a likable, occasionally ambitious, and incredibly sincere show, but it’s still far too often a sloppy mess that usually only pulls itself together at its key moments while spending the rest of the season meandering until reaching its various finish lines. I mean, I love The Flash, but it’s not exactly a show that trades in depth or complexity or adult themes like Breaking Bad or Mad Men, and with all of this past season’s broadcast superhero TV shows — ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter; WB’s Arrow, Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow; CBS’s Supergirl, NBC’s Heroes, and Fox’s Gotham — past, at, or near their seasonal (or series) conclusions, that’s not a trend that’s likely to end very soon.

And then there’s Netflix. Continue reading →

Legends of Tomorrow – Last Refuge recap

22 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

by Thom Yee

legends-of-tomorrow-one

Legends of Tomorrow images courtesy of Warner Bros. Television Distribution

1×12: “Last Refuge”

It’s gotten to be almost impossible to watch Legends of Tomorrow without finding some pretty big logic problems in the gang’s time-travelling shenanigans, but as big as the problems would have to be in a story where the legends try to prevent their latest villain, the Pilgrim, from murdering their younger selves, they didn’t bug me as much as they normally do.

After first rescuing the young Heatwave, fresh off of accidentally killing his entire immediate family after losing control of a house fire that he set, the legends proceed to rescue the young Sara before losing the Pilgrim when Gideon can no longer track her, and then devise a plan to kidnap themselves as newborns, thus, preventing themselves from building a timeline on which the Pilgrim can strike. There’s a base level on which almost none of this makes sense, particularly when that last bit means erasing themselves from existence, but the more I thought about it, the more I started building my own internal logic about the whole thing. Continue reading →

Fear the Walking Dead – We All Fall Down recap

18 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in Television

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

by Thom Yee

fear-the-walking-dead-one

Fear the Walking Dead images courtesy of AMC

2×02: “We All Fall Down”

After escaping from their mysterious, yet-to-be-revealed-but-no-doubt-still-a-factor-in-this-story pursuers by sticking near the coastline, our heroes spot the errant lights of a house and head in-land to investigate. Finding a family, the Gearys, whose patriarch, former park ranger George, is determined to maintain their spot for as long as they can, our heroes gather vital information and new insight on the state of their new world. And get most of the Gearys killed. It’s not usually hard to tell when people are doomed on this show. I mean, there are all sorts of outside-narrative, inside-baseball ways of telling if actors will be sticking around, especially following casting news, but you can usually just tell if a newcomer is long or short for this world, and this family definitely wasn’t right, at least not right enough to be added to the cast. It’s not that they were overtly weird or perverse, but you just knew they wouldn’t have fit. Continue reading →