Shmee.Me

April 6, 2016April 6, 2016

The Walking Dead Season Six Finale Was Bull Crap!

Okay we need to talk about The Walking Dead season six finale “The Last Day On Earth”! Obviously this rant will contain spoilers so you have been warned. Well except for the fact I can’t really spoil anything because nothing really happened. I don’t know what the writers were thinking with this episode. They managed to create an episode that not only didn’t deliver on its promises, but that also now has the worst cliff hanger of all time.

They have been asking for all of the second half of season 6 “Who will survive?” only to not tell us. Sure the introduction of Negan was good, and he is just as charismatic and terrifying as we have been told, but we were also promised he would kill someone, and while he technically did, they just didn’t show us. So they used 90 minutes to not deliver on the one question that they have been asking for months. Of course now they get to ask ‘Who was it?”, but that is garbage, it is just being mean to their fans.

The show already had a natural and interesting cliff hanger, “How will the group survive this?”, but I guess that wasn’t enough, so they decided it was okay to amp it up for no reason. I could see if this show was doing poorly how an action like this would make sense, but this is the most popular show on the planet, so there was no need to not deliver on their own marketing.

The Walking Dead has been getting lazy with their writing for a while now, and this finale might be the tipping point in The Walking Dead’s popularity. I have not heard this much backlash about an episode of TV in a long time, and I think the producers of The Walking Dead are going to regret filming “The Last Day On Earth”.

March 29, 2016March 29, 2016

Daredevil Season Two Wrap-Up: If Ninjas Are Boring You Are Doing It Wrong!

I figure enough time has passed for me to give my final judgement of Daredevil season two. Which will be way better than my midseason impressions I assure you! For the most part this was a pretty successful season. The Punisher stuff was very good. Frank Castle becoming the terrifying murderous vigilante was great. Surprisingly what wasn’t great was the Elektra/Ninja storyline.

I mean Elodie Yung was an excellent Elektra, but that story really never went anywhere, and it mostly served as a distraction from all the good stuff that was going on with Frank. It just seemed like any time there was a lull in the story they just threw some random Ninjas at it and started talking about ‘The War’.

The only real positive the ninjas served is bringing up the question of if superheroes should kill or not. For the most part we can all agree that they shouldn’t because then they would be replacing the law, but in the case of the ninjas their clan would just sweep in and collect them, so none of these guys that Murdock was knocking out were ever going to serve any jail time. He was just going to have to fight them again tomorrow. So if he was truly fighting a centuries old war, maybe, just maybe, he should stop pulling his punches. Maybe then he could have saved us from a couple of those boring ninja fights.

I have to tell you that I never thought ‘boring ninja fight’ was something I would write, but here we are. Daredevil has boring ninja fights. Now like I said they are only part of what happens this season, and I do think they are building to something bigger, but they are kind of forced in to a holding pattern until Iron Fist shows up. Once all the Marvel TV series are launched we can probably get to the interesting ninja fights. At least I hope so. If the Luke Cage show is filled with boring ninja fights I am going to be ticked!

March 21, 2016March 21, 2016

Daredevil Is In An Enjoyable Holding Pattern!

The second season of Daredevil launched on Netflix last Friday and my wife and I have been doing our best to binge-watch straight through it. We have made it about halfway through, so I figured I would give my thoughts. Which is kind of what I do on this blog, so it would be pretty odd of me not to. While the show continues to be good it is disappointing that the main characters don’t seem to be progressing.

Foggy is still a brilliant layer that continues to doubt himself and his partner’s night job. Murdock still can’t seem balance being Daredevil and a lawyer even though his firm desperately needs him, and Page still has a mysterious past and her relentless digging in to things endangers her and the others around her. In other words they are all doing the exact same things they were doing last season.

Another bummer is that this is all supposed to be part of Marvel’s connected universe, but they can’t seem to say that New York was attacked by aliens, and even more baffling is that the only hint so far in the show that Luke Cage and Jessica Jones even exist in this world is that Rosario Dawson’s Nurse Temple said that she helped out some big strong guy. I mean not to spoil any of Jessica Jones, but it wasn’t like that at the end of her season she kept any of her exploits secret. People should be aware of her, especially red vigilantly ninjas trying to ‘save a city’.

Luckily the fight scenes and the new characters make Daredevil well worth watching. While Jon Bernthal’s Punisher started out looking like an out and out bad guy as the series progresses you start to feel for him and understand his quest, and my wife is now firmly on team Punisher. Meanwhile Élodie Yung’s Elektra is shrouded in mystery. You have no idea what she is up to and whether she is good or bad, and Matt Murdock can’t seem to think straight when she is around. Pretty much she is the Elektra fans have been waiting for.

It is a shame that the main characters don’t seem to be exhibiting any growth, and that Marvel can’t quite seem to figure out how their connected universe fits together even on their Netflix TV shows which are meant to be even more connected, but great fight choreography and wonderful new characters make Daredevil season two well worth watching. I still can’t wait for all the Netflix shows to combine in to The Defenders, but for now I am happy that Daredevil is as good as it is since we know thanks to Ben Affleck and crew that it could have been much, much worse.

March 11, 2016

Thank Spoon! The Tick Is Coming Back To TV! … Well Internet TV Anyway!

There is no shortage of comic book based TV programs these days, but according to Deadline.com it looks like the folks over at Amazon have decided that we could use at least one more! They are bringing back The Tick! For those of you that don’t know The Tick is a superhero parody, and if Deadpool has taught us anything, with all of the ‘serious’ superheroes around, adding a little levity to the mix should be a welcome change.

As you can see from the photo above this isn’t The Tick’s first transition to live action television. 2001’s The Tick was very funny even if no one watched it, but with more people tuning in to the adventures of caped crusaders every week Amazon’s reboot should do much better provided it is as funny as the original, or the comic, or heck the 90’s cartoon even. Actually especially the 90’s cartoon show. Never-mind, what I am saying is The Tick has been consistently very funny. I can’t wait to have one more binge-watchable show on Amazon! Spoooooooooooooooooooooooooon!

March 10, 2016March 10, 2016

Downton Abbey Is Over! Where Will I Go For My 1920’s Fashion Fix!

There are two ways to end a show: try to go out with a bang (and unless you are Breaking Bad usually fail), or wrap everything up with a pretty bow. Downton Abbey went with the pretty bow option, and it was a lovely bow at that. The final episode was pretty much fan wish fulfilment. Everyone got a happy ending. Well pretty much everyone, we don’t know about Tom, but screw Tom nobody likes him anyway. I kid, I kid, I love Tom, and he gets his cars to play with. Plus his whole role this season was to be Mary’s Jiminy Cricket, and I think he was successful Mary is now a real girl. It is a miracle!

It is a shame that this show never really showed the true downfall of the Edwardian era. It was only alluded to by looking at what had happened to other great houses. Instead we got to watch a family overcome it all, and not only that thrive in the end. Which is kind of disingenuous. There should have been some major consequences. Still after following a family and their staff for six years it was heartwarming to see them all well and taken care of. If you are going go for the happy ending there is something to be said for going all in. No half measures as they say. Downton Abbey’s ending was sugary sweet, but I guess after six seasons the family deserved a treat. Now I will have to find some other show to fill the period drama sized hole in my TV rotation, but I fear whatever I fill it with will not be as good or as well executed as Downton Abbey.