With Sons of Anarchy wrapped last year, creator Kurt Sutter moved on to a much different time and place for his next project. Set in Whales in the 14th century, Wilkin Brattle is a knight in King Edward III service. Barely surviving through a war time attack, he vows a more honest, less bloody life. A few years later he finds himself swinging a blad again in the name of rebellion. A divine messenger vists him, putting him on a ritous path for his people as an imposter, a bastard executioner.

Kurt Sutter is the sole reason I checked out this show. Promos seemed alright, I typically like this time period and I have a good amount of faith put into whatever Sutter does. The premiere was 2 episodes and it took about an hour for the show to really start. One of the slowest and arjuest pilots I’ve ever sat through, it took me 3 sittings to get through it all. Half the time I was wondering where the show was going and hoping it would just hurry up and get on with it. It’s really the last moments of the first episode where things start coming together.

Second episode is quite a bit better. The title of the show is explained, your familiar with many of the characters and the pace is much better. There’s a healthy mix of love, politics and faith at work that’s just starting to show, so there should be much more than people getting stabbed to death. The cast is really good  (impressed with Katey Sagal, her role demands a lot to not be a disaster) and the production values are great too. The action scenes so far have been shot better than SOA.

While it was a rough start, I think I’m glad I stuck with it and I want to know where it goes from here. Seems to be the ideal DVR show.

Haven’t watched any movies in a while as I’m invested in TV shows (old and new) just as the fall season is about to start.

I’m on to season 3 of The Sopranos now. Season 2 was as good as I remember it. A lot went down in both of Tony’s families. He more or less stays on the same level with his therapist and the blackouts keep coming.  Christopher tries to get his foot into Hollywood (with a few cameos) and the stock market and both don’t go too well by pulling in some dummies into the fold. Richie does everything to be a pain in the ass by trying to swing his (non-existent) weight around. He also attracts Christopher’s dummies making for more drama. Tony’s older sister, Janice, is the all-star addition to the season. She’s  a typhoon of a character, just like her mother. Hook her up with Richie and that’s basically a walking heart attack for Tony. Running a gambling ring has many pitfalls, Big Pussy comes back and goes away after walking the line for far too long. Season 2 has it all with mob and family life (looking at you Uncle Junior) constantly crashing together.

I saw that the entire 4 season run of Spartacus is on Netflix, so that enticed me to watch it in chronological order (2,1,3,4). I’ve watched season 1 and 2 more than once, but it’s been awhile. I have one episode left before going to season 3 and I forgot how intense Spartacus is. Everything they do, they do to the extreme. The violence, the gore, the sex, the language (which is actually the tamest with the creative Roman era cursing, it’s rather funny). It’s an unapologetic show and it’s so much fun. The political maneuverings of Batiatus to raise his house into the upper-class realm of the political elite. The back stabbing, the love triangles, the secrets, and the blood-soaked sand of vengeance. Some of the most memorable characters: Crixus, Gannicus, Ashur, Lucretia, Ilithyia, and Oenomaus just to name a few. One of the first shows to use CG blood (and extensive CG sets), it’s interesting to see the show lean on CG gore at first, then pull it back for much more prominent practical blood (300 is clearly an inspiration for the show, but as it goes on, Spartacus finds it’s own visual voice). Some of the best fight scenes in TV or film can be seen in this series (many of the stuntmen and fight coordinators went on to do Daredevil on Netflix). I haven’t watched season 3 or 4 since they aired and while I’m looking forward to it, I know I’m going to miss the late Andy Whitfield all over again.

A lot of the weaker cast members are gone from Face Off, so we’re getting to see some consistently great work now. This week a gantlet of 3 challenges was introduced. which I really liked. Each tested something different and the person with the lowest score at the end was let go. Nice twist of the formula.

The addition of letting the canvas who is voted to have the worst tattoo of the week on Ink Master is really just a way to make someone feel bad. Not a fan, it doesn’t add anything worth while to the show. I like this cast a lot, this week’s departure was a real surprise, it’s just about anyone’s game still with about 4 episodes left.

Fear the Walking Dead and The Strain both remain strong. I’m sensing a major death in The Strain very soon.

South Park returned last night and no one does social commentary as well as Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has graced us with our presence and I could not be happier. Colbert has kept a lot of what made The Report so great and I think everyone is on board with it. The set looks amazing, the bits are hilarious and the interviews of some of the biggest names on the planet have been fantastic (let’s keep that shmuck Uber CEO off of TV please). I think Colbert and his crew are going to dominate late night for some time to come.

The Fall TV season comes back in full force next week, so there is a lot to look forward to very soon. I have The Bastard Executioner on my DVR which I plan on getting to this weekend. Till then, stay frosty.

This week has seen many summer shows sign off and last night was the season finale of the best new show of the year. An all killer, no filler, 10 episode run introduced us to Mr. Robot and Elliot Alderson that took many people by surprise.

Here’s the synopsis from IMDB, since I won’t be able to make it any more succinct than this:

Follows a young computer programmer who suffers from social anxiety disorder and forms connections through hacking. He’s recruited by a mysterious anarchist, who calls himself Mr. Robot.

Elliot suffers from a lot more than social anxiety disorder, I can say that right off the bat. Played brilliantly by Rami Malek, he is the main character and the narrator for the viewer. He brings you into his world, grabs you right from the opening scene with his staunch ethics, brilliant technical know-how and ability to sniff out what isn’t right. But then the other hook of the show appears. The audience is left to sniff out what isn’t right about Elliot. Things don’t seem…right. Elliot is clearly not the most level headed person and with each intense moment and interaction what’s true and what isn’t is constantly up for debate.

The show owes much to Chuck Palahniuk, but there are enough new and interesting character and story developments that make Mr. Robot not feel like a Fight Club rip-off. I consider it an homage to a past great to give us a different and modern take on our society.

Going beyond the brilliant writing (I love Elliot’s inner monologs), the craftsmanship of Mr. Robot is what makes it stand out so much. The soundtrack is Quentin Tarantino levels of perfect down to making each title card at the opening of each episode a striking moment. What’s shown to the audience is meticulously thought out and beautiful, someone has to get at least an Emmy nomination for directing. It’s subtle, there are hints all over the place in every episode, it lets you think about things without beating you over the head. Things that seem odd makes sense when the other shoe drops. The cast makes all of this possible, from the aforementioned Rami Malek to Christian Slater, who gets to finally show off how great he is again. I love that all the female characters are strong too, everyone gets a chance to make their mark in important ways.

I’ve been very vague about what goes on in Mr. Robot because I want people who have never heard of it, to go in fresh. It’s the best to go into and out of it that way. There are massive spoilers out there, so do yourself a solid and avoid them as best as you can. Watch and discuss it with others, remarking on all the things you pick up on and see if you can figure out what’s going to happen, it’s a blast. I loved the finale, it was super intense and went in a direction I didn’t see. I don’t think I’ve been so in love with a show since I first saw Breaking Bad. I love Elliot, I can’t wait to see what Sam Esmail has in store for us next.

…is it a coincidence Esmail is Email with an ‘s’ snuck in there? Hmmm…

I’ve watched Falling Skies from the beginning and last night marked the series finale. The show had the big name of Stephan Spielberg as Executive Producer attached to it, along with its biggest star, Noah Wyle. Big concept sci-fi is tough to do on a TV budget, but TNT stepped up and made a fun alien invasion series.

While the budget often showed on screen with some awkward CG and limited scope in showing destruction, I gotta say the production really made the most out of what they were given. The prosthetic effects and physical aliens were often very good, Doug Jones as Cochise looked fantastic (all the Volm do, as few as we get to see).

With any alien invasion story, the end is pretty much one of two outcomes: annihilation or a triumphant fight back. In between that is the struggle. The horrors of war, the internal struggle between survivors, the wins and losses of battle. Falling Skies often showed that well and showed us new and interesting things. The harnesses and “Skitterizing” of humans, the tech of alien espionage, and their weapons, both biological and in hardware. But in an effort to have major season finale’s, they would often dip into deus ex machina territory to make things work. Mostly, people surviving things they shouldn’t.

After five seasons of this alien war, I was rather let down by the series finale. So much build up, so many trials and tribulations and it just wasn’t grand enough. First, the bio-weapon that Tom Mason was given was a huge cop-out, despite them modifying it so it wasn’t a complete gift from God. It was never really explained well, going all the way back to Tom surviving the off-planet mission (which was a huge cop-out to begin with). I’m not a fan of the Dorniya idea at all.

Much of the season was spent on gathering intel for the final fight, which worked well and fit in. Lexi coming back and the other Espheni tricks were fun to watch (they usually are). That leads us to a showdown in Washington that should have been massive.  Tom and the 2nd Mass sneak in, but the tunnel sequence was shot so dark, it was hard to tell what was going on. Someone makes a sacrifice there, but it came off as confusing and unwarranted. Someone goes to be a hero, you need that to pay off, not have your audience shrug their shoulders. Tom gets separated only to face the Queen conveniently by himself. This had to have been done because of the budget because the final fight was barely one. The Queen looked awesome, though, loved the design and it looked like a lot of time was put into it so I can’t hate on this scene entirely. And then this huge war kind of…ends. Everything drops dead, even the goo holding Tom to the wall suddenly dissolves (makes no sense). There’s a bit of exposition on the Queen’s part, but that turned out to be pretty damn stupid. A lot of wasted potential (plus a miracle character rescue that I didn’t like at all. There was very little consequence for the Mason clan this season, felt too safe).

There were a lot of good ideas in the last season, but they kinda fizzled out at the end. Pope’s defection was a great move, but really anticlimactic. I think that thread could have used some more time in the writers room to make work.

I really wanted a satisfying ending so I’d be able to confidently recommend the show. It was on a nice track for a long time, but it grinds to a half-hearted halt. I’m not mad at the ending. I’m good with the outcome and the final dialog is pretty great. I also appreciated the thank you message and the title being assembled by the names of the cast and crew, it’s a classy touch.  How we got to that ending, is what upset me. Those final threads of the story just crumbled to the wayside.

Hannibal may have been the most intense TV show to air, but it’s been grossly overlooked for all of it’s three seasons. Last night was the series finale and gadzooks did it go out with a bang.

Mads Mikkelsen might have done his career-defining role as Hannibal, he’s that good. The shadow of Anthony Hopkin’s work in the films is an epic one, but I don’t think anyone can deny or marginalize Mads work. I think from here on out I will consider him The Hannibal Lecter.

The entire run has been rather shocking. It’s amazing this show aired on NBC and not a paid cable network. I can’t think of a more beautiful but horrific show. Crazy prosthetic makeup effects, each one outdoing the last. The mayhem started as mostly aftermath visuals, but by the end much more onscreen violence was shown. Despite where Hannibal was physically at any given time, the threat of escalation was always palpable by the other psychopaths on the show. The villainy of this world is hard to match (looking at you, Mason Verger).

The production levels are upper echelon high with the often stunning visuals. There’s this crazy design logic that can’t be seen anywhere else. I’m having a hard time articulating the ebb and flow of this show it’s so overwhelming.

The cast around Mikkelsen is fantastic, so while Hannibal is a dominating presence, Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) always seems like he has a shot at getting the upper hand, albeit a small one. Hannibal is and always will be a step ahead.

I rather like that Hannibal only went for three seasons. Packed with great, memorable characters and dark plots, there wasn’t much chance for the show runners to get off track. A clear beginning, middle, and end is the best way to tell a story and the start, lead up and conclusion of last night was very satisfying for me.

With season 1’s “let’s build the next great machine!” arc finished, I wasn’t too sure where the bulk of season 2 would go. The obvious being that Joe was kicked out of the club, ostracized by his own actions, right back where he started. Gordon would play around with his payout while Cameron and Donna would be busy getting Mutiny off the ground.

Now with season 2 finished, it’s clear that our quad didn’t learn much as they made many of the same mistakes. Joe manages to bounce back pretty quickly, selling himself and his out of the box thinking like a true master. Too bad he is his own worst enemy. Even when he does right, his track record means no one trusts him anyway. Joe’s life is an animated gif of an explosion spreading out and resetting over and over.

Gordon can’t stay still for long and decides to build his own PC again. Keep it small, do what he does best and engineer the crap out of it and do direct sales to start. It’s all he really knows how to do. A major illness knocks him for a loop, which makes his business hit the skids before it every really gets off the ground.

Donna and Cameron make a good team, with Donna being the business woman and Cameron being the fire in the furnace for the fledgling Mutiny. The online upstart that has bigger plans than it may ever be able to handle. They manage to get through every crisis, but a piece is lost each time.

Halt and Catch Fire is about the four legs of the table: Joe, Gordon, Donna, and Cameron. When a leg (or two) gets kicked out, the whole thing teeters. Their work back at Cardiff Electric will be with them until the day the die.

Cameron struggles with Joe the entire season, despite him hardly being there. They were rarely in the same scenes together, but their actions were often influenced by each other whether they realized it or not. Cameron gets to the end this year be reassured to never trust Joe (again).

Gordon was a walking accident all season. With Donna working with Cameron so much, their past roles were reversed with Gordon more or less floundering around and hiding things. Their rocky marriage has been mentioned quite a bit from the start of the show, but Gordon’s most recent actions were Joe caliber implosions. A lot of it was due to his brain disease, but the rest he had to take responsibility for (which Donna more or less forced him to do).

I found a lot to like this season and it all came together in the season finale. Gordon’s erratic behavior and the head it reached with Donna. I loved the ultimatum she gave him at the end for them to move forward in a positive way. She’s a smart woman, simply bailing on him would’ve be too easy. The kicker of Gordon discovering Joe’s theft should light an epic fire under him. Keeping his family together is one thing, but this is going to push him to help Donna and Cameron absolutely bury him. Because of the payout from Cardiff, Gordon got out of working with Joe relatively unscathed. That left him open to help out Joe when he asked (while still being shady about it, but Gordon still rolled with it). The last move from Joe is a straight up personal attack, I can’t see Gordon ever forgiving him.

That was just one break-up of the season too. Cameron couldn’t hold it together with Tom (big mistake) but retaliation on him in episode 9 was great. She kinda rolled over in season 1, but not this time. Joe’s marriage was a major flameout (surprise!) which seemed like the end of him. He always manages to rally though, like any good parasite. Slash and burn and move on is Joe MacMillan’s M.O.

Looking forward to Season 3 where we move to California to see if both Mutiny and Joe can fly out of the ashes again and manage to stay air born with the promise of networked computing.

The Wet Hot American Summer movie came out way back in 2001 to an audience of around 100 people, so it’s surprising that a series was made out of it. Yes, it did find a cult following after coming out on DVD, but even so it’s a love it or hate it kind of property. I lean more toward the hate is side as I think Wet Hot is more weird than actually funny. I’m a mark for anything Netflix green lights though, so with a stacked cast of actors I really like, I thought it necessary to attend the first day of camp (seriously, check out the cast, it’s ridiculous).

A prequel to the movie, Camp stars most of the same cast, now in their 40’s, playing the kids they were already too old to play 14 years ago. Half the charm and all of the enjoyment comes just from that premise. Just like the movie, we’re brought to Camp Firewood, located somewhere in Maine. It’s 1981 so watch out for the short shorts and tube socks.

With such a big cast, there are a lot of stories being told at once and most of them are incredibly stupid. Everyone plays the absurdity straight, completely committed to their part.  I’m talking about a show where H. Jon Benjamin gets turned into a can of mixed vegetables from toxic waste dumped in the woods, which makes Jon Hamm show up as a secret government agent to try and cover it up. Your tolerance of such things is going to dictate on if you watch this or bail out after two episodes.

I liked this a lot more than the movie. A lot more laughs come from the more in-depth characterization allowed by the added time. Everything is more expanded and not so slammed together so the crazier stuff gets a better set up. Wet Hot had a big cast to start with, but the added kids are a welcome edition (for some reason I got a real kick out Arty, who holes up in the campus radio station and dubs himself “The Beekeeper”).

I don’t think I’m ever going to watch the movie again, but Camp has convinced me to check out day two if they ever make it.

The first season of The Sopranos is a concise one. We’re introduced to a large cast of characters, with Tony in the middle, but the writers often let him take the backseat for others to grow and drama to expand.

There’s a lot of internal strife going on for Tony. His business is in flux with competition biting at his income from every side (and people not paying their debts), helping out friends (with various results, but always a consequence), and the feds watching his enterprises every move. And then there is his family.

The fulcrum of the show, or at least the start it, is Tony’s mental health. He gets panic attacks so bad that he blacks out. Seeking out mental health help is the only choice, but is later used as a weakness to try and get rid of him. The mob (organized crime in general) operates in secret. It’s dealings, it’s people, and their sins. A theme that keeps coming up is to never show weakness. Keep your secrets to yourself, or others will use them against you (that goes for family and enemies). Tony goes through great pains to keep his life in order which results in significant fallout from the solutions he comes up with.

The popularity of the show came more from the people around Tony, then himself. There’s a lot of morbid, serious and strenuous plot lines, but it’s stitched together by black comedy. Christopher, Silvio and Paulie often steal scenes, usually with very little dialog too. Soldiers to Tony, they are integral to his success, and at Christopher’s age, the key to a long, prosperous future. Paulie is by far my favorite though as he’s downright hilarious. He’s a dangerous man, but watching him struggle to keep up with a running target in the woods, only to freak out when he runs through some poison ivy, is one of the funniest moments put on film.

The real star is Tony’s mother Livia. She’s an awful instigator and epic source of Tony’s neurosis from child to adulthood. She manipulates Uncle Jr. behind Tony’s back in masterful ways and does her absolute damnedest to hide her involvement. Uncle Jr. realizes it too late and Tony’s maternal love blinds him for far too long as well. Their final scene in this season is bittersweet. Major props to Nancy Marchand for her incredible work. James Gandolfini’s work can’t be ignored either as he does carry the show through all sorts of emotional highs and lows. My favorite scenes are in episode 12 where he plays the effects of depression and medicated stupor to brilliant realization.

With 13 episodes, the first season moves along at a great pace and a lot is accomplished. The end sees Tony nearly cleaning house, but with more than a few loose ends that need to be handled. While the show is well produced, I found the editing to be really abrupt at times. It was almost like they ran out of film during the shoot, which forced the editor to cut to the next scene the millisecond dialog ended. Many scenes aren’t given a chance to breathe, the viewer never gets to linger in the room after something happens. These moments are really jarring and come off as amateurish. Thankfully, that’s the only complaint I have and it doesn’t happen enough to truly ruin things.

On to Season 2.