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Reviews
Turtles All the Way Down (2024)
Faithful adaptation of something different
I read the book in anticipation of the movie; my first John Green fiction. (Like many others, I come to him by way of vlogbrothers and that whole world.) I recognize and appreciate the accurate depiction of anxiety disorders, and how they flare up and are managed, blunted, but not completely cured. An original idea for the primary conflict in a story, prompted to Green by "write what you know."
With the book fresh in my mind, this was an incredibly faithful adaptation. I recognized the little things that were cut or altered slightly to smooth the flow and/or make exposition easier and not clunky; they were appropriate and untroubling. Plenty of other little things were kept just as they are. The characters were what I expected, with just the quibble that I didn't picture Davis as that tall. The main characters were well acted and believable. No issues with the plot -- it's faithful to the book, and so any criticisms probably belong in a book review.
I would recommend this to others to understand what anxiety and treatment feel like, and how that impacts relationships with those around you.
Cursed (2020)
Muddled, confused mess
What a mess. The first three episodes seem to be focused on the idea that, "everything is horrible, always." Red paladins are slaughtering people, burning villages, and burning the people themselves alive in an exaggerated critique of the sins of the early Christian church. I don't disagree with the idea, but they seemed determined to go so far over the top they reach orbit. The bishop behind this is a one-dimensional zealot who never even flinches at gruesome death as part of his "mission." Along with a literally endless supply of idiots in red robes, he has a mysterious black-cloaked "weeping monk" who has actual combat skills, although the paladins don't need it to do a ton of slaughtering. This series is *drenched* in blood, including many body part removals, although maybe there's so much it desensitizes you.
Our hero, Nimue, escapes from our introduction to this. She, like all of the victims, is a fay. She meets a thief named Arthur, who is not at all "a young Arthur" as in the teaser, and he steals from her Excalib... oops, "The Sword of Kings" or whatever. Spoiler: He is never revealed to be a Pendragon, fake or any other kind. He also doesn't become king, but maybe that was planned for later seasons that were thankfully never green-lit.
Things pile on from there. Merlin is a drunk, possibly evil lout. Uther Pendragon is a petulant idiot on his mother's puppet strings, and as it turns out, not really her son at all. A "leper king" and his people appear for a couple of episodes to set up a hit man for Merlin. A Norse "ice king," somehow an actual Pendragon, has designs on ruling wherever we are (Britain is never named). Semi-friendly (but also murderous; everyone in this thing is murderous) pirates take in Nimue's friend. Another Norse faction, the "Red Spear," don't seem to have enough development time to show an evil side, so that's a breather. At one point I counted seven enemies for Nimue: the bishop, Uther, the weeping monk, Merlin, her friend Morgana compromised by the ghost of her dead love, young nun Iris, who wants to be a murderer too, and the ice king.
I watched the whole thing, but it's too tangled for me to sort it all out here. Down the stretch, the shifting alliances between the contender kings, the murder church, the monk, the friend, the fay, the undead (insufficiently explained), etc shift by the minute. They try to do too much and fail to be coherent. Katherine Langford is a reasonably good actress and of course not hard to look at, but the last straw may have been her singing a pop song that she wrote over the scene where she and Arthur finally get it on.
Last but not least, there's the broad license with King Arthur legends. It has been done to death and there has been plenty of alteration and broad interpretation in the past, but this show is just using the familiar names to draw an audience. Arthur in particular has nothing to do with the Arthur of legend. Nimue is the Lady of the Lake, maybe, if there was a Season 2. Morgana is not an evil sorceress, although they tempt her to become one. Uther is an adopted peasant baby. Gawain doesn't fight the Green Knight, he is the Green Knight. Percival is a name they tack on a plucky kid. And finally, the "weeping monk" turns out to be a fay, murdering his own kind, named Lancelot. Thank goodness, I suppose, that there was no room for a Guinevere.
It is all too much, enough to inspire someone to come here and write a rant about it. Choose one of the other 1000 Arthur stories.
The Blacklist: Brothers (2020)
No Red, no problem.
A departure from the same formula every week, making the most 2-dimensional character in the show 3-dimensional. Shows this long need to change things up.
Everyone who got their jimmies rustled by Spader taking an episode off needs to remember that he had his "Agatha Christie" episode recently, in which he was on screen nearly the whole time. No doubt this is comp time for that.
Easy: Prodigal Daughter (2017)
A complete story
Unlike other episodes of Easy, this is a fairly complete story. Characters grow. Hypocrisy is explored. It might be a little uncomfortable; how much do any of us really live our values?
It's a treat to see SNL alum Tim Kazurinsky after all these years.