Media Criticism
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Ted Lasso and the Simple Power of Being Nice
Ted Lasso, a comedic streaming series from AppleTV+, is a strange show for its time. The show itself is simple, with straightforward plotting, an uncomplicated timeline, and relatable human-sized characters dealing with relatable human-sized obstacles; which makes it a notable exception for the 2020/2021 slate. It’s strange in that the show originated as a character Jason Sudeikis created for NBC back in 2013 to sell Premier League soccer (we’re going to stick with the American spelling throughout this article to avoid confusion and out of patriotism!) to audiences unfamiliar with the sport. It’s strange in that Ted Lasso isn’t hosted by one of the dominant streaming platforms (Netflix, Hulu, HBOMax,…
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Coming of Age in the End of the World: Big Mouth Season 4
Coming of age stories are some of the most popular, enduring, and accessible fictions in pop culture. They can comprise gorgeous films like Richard Linklater’s Boyhood or Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird to gross-out fare like Superbad or Sex Drive or Blockers to more supernatural stuff like It or Stranger Things or Super Dark Times to the fact that half of all YA novels starting with Twilight could be classified as ‘coming of age’ in some way or another; and that’s only stuff that started in the last 15 years or so. I’m sure I missed other important examples. Coming of age stories are everywhere and have been so for decades…
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As if They Never Left. Animaniacs 2020 and What We Want from Television Reboots
The famous 1959 film, Ben-Hur, won 11 Oscars the year it was released and grossed the second highest box office total for any film ever made at the time. It was a cultural phenomenon the likes of which very few movies, then or now, could ever hope to achieve. It is still remembered today, though opinions on it after sixty years are of course mixed. It is something of a time-capsule of a film, a view to a very different Hollywood that made movies in very different ways with very different means of profit-making and different audiences in mind. Ben-Hur was also a remake of a 1925 film titled: Ben-Hur:…
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Daredevil Season 3 is Amazing and Already from a Different Era
The fourth episode of the third season of Netflix’s Daredevil contains what is perhaps the most technically impressive one-take shot in television history. An eleven minute ‘oner’ that begins with a multi-party fight in an infirmary, moves to an intense and emotional and plot-relevant conversation in a storage closet, and then climaxes in an escape/fight sequence through an honest-to-God prison riot. Even if the rest of the season had been an utter disappointment (it wasn’t), watching Daredevil Season 3 would be worth it just to experience the sheer action-filmmaking triumph that is the prison fight one-take. The shot is the cinematic centerpiece of an overall fantastic season, and just reading…
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Raised By Wolves, Westworld, Robots, and Time
Raised By Wolves, the new TV show produced by Ridley Scott out now on HBO Max, is not a show that coddles its viewers. It begins with a spaceship crash-landing on an alien planet. Two people on the ship awaken, and the viewer is aware right away that these two are not exactly human, not quite. From their mentions of ‘programming’, it becomes obvious these two are androids. Though they are also clearly a bit different than the usual androids you see in most science fiction television. They refer to themselves (quite bluntly and in a blank tone of voice, to be fair) as caring a great deal for the…
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The Pandemic Special and What South Park Means in 2020
My friends and I have been asking ourselves different versions of the same question since March of this year: “How will [INSERT SHOW TITLE HERE] adapt to Covid-19 next season?” There have, of course, been quite a few bigger fish to fry in terms of anxiety this year than wondering if It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia can stick the landing in this new television landscape; but as a media-obsessed person living in lockdown, it was a relieving form of idle speculation. Scripted television shows we had loved for years were going to have to figure out new ways of being, new topics to consider, new styles of presentation, much like…
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Fargo, Watchmen, and the New Television History of America
The first episode of this new season of Fargo, now airing on FX and Hulu, begins with a history lesson. It’s not the sort of lesson you’d find in a high school history textbook. It concerns the growth and changing leadership of the Kansas City underworld from the very start of the twentieth century up to 1950, when the main body of the show takes place. It shows how the criminal elements of that city were initially under the control of a Jewish crime syndicate until the Irish came to town and made a deal straight out of Feudalism. This deal results, inevitably from the tone of the show, in…
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Archer is the Middle Child of Adult Animation. I’m So Happy He’s Finally Awake.
Archer’s back. And he’s funnier than he’s been in at least five years. It’s honestly a relief to see. After three coma seasons, a mixed PI season that also involved an abrupt (and quickly forgotten) relocation to Los Angeles, and an oddly bitter return to the spy formula in Season 6; Archer in Season 11 is finally awake and (way more important) finally having fun again. Archer, as a television show, occupies an interesting middle ground in adult animation. It came in 2009, after the initial wave in the 90s and early 2000s that created the titans of the genre like The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, Futurama, and King…
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A Brightness Long Ago Says Magic isn’t Required for Fantasy. It May Be Right.
What makes a fantasy novel a fantasy novel? I know, and I apologize. What a stupid, pretentious question, right? We all know what makes a fantasy novel different from a work of historical fiction or science fiction or a standard coming-of-age tale/YA novel. We all read Harry Potter. It’s magic. Magic is what makes a fantasy novel truly a fantasy novel. Whether that magic is produced via wands and boarding schools like the aforementioned Harry Potter, or through color and light absorbed from the sun like the Lightbringer Series, or through the many complex rules of Brandon Sanderson’s various ‘hard-magic systems’, or through the strange mix of geothermal energy and…
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The Boys Will Show You the Truth: Superheroes are Terrifying.
Imagine you are a criminal. I know, I know. You’re not. You’re a good person with hopes and dreams and you pay your taxes on time. You never speed in school zones. But, just for a second, imagine it. Let’s say you and your crew (cause of course you have a crew) have decided to commit a standard starter-crime in a comic book universe. You’re going to rob a bank. The reasons why you choose to rob a bank, or even why that particular bank on that particular day in that particular part of Metropolis/Gotham/Spiderman’s New York; don’t particularly matter. They matter to you of course. Maybe you are simply…
