Briefly… Several things have ended in the last few
days (well, on hiatus – sort of?). Can I rant about them?
AoS S4 is on hiatus. I have ranted about this before;
the return of Grant Ward to the show can be a very good thing, or it can be an
outright disaster especially since the S1 finale AoS in general was in a slog.
The same goes for the return of Hydra – does AoS want to have more controversy among its fans? And MCU? …Well, with
MCU in general it is tricky – Marvel’s ‘Iron Fist’ is coming to Netflix this
March, so maybe with the last Defender in its place, (and also Colleen Wing),
the new Defenders will be able to make up for whatever shortcomings AoS will
bring forth, who knows?
Sadly, ‘Iron Fist’ itself may have problems – the promo
videos show something rather similar to DCEU’s ‘Arrow’, especially S1, and that
probably is not very good. The ratings for the last – so far – S4 episode ‘Self
Control’ are still low, regardless of all the excitement that the new twists might
have generated among the fans and the month-long hiatus will not be a good
thing for the fan base either. Not unlike the previous season, AoS might have
shot themselves in the foot with the hiatus on top of anything else.
APB, on the other hand, is still going strong. Then
again, they do have good actors and a simple, but solid, plot – the promotion
of the police, you might say. There is some ‘loan’ of ideas from AoS and MCU,
(especially ‘Iron Man’), but in general, APB has found its footing and
continues steadily onwards. The ratings – and viewers – have dropped by almost
one-half now, but, for comparison, AoS – and ‘Powerless’ are still lower in
this turn of events.
‘Blindspot’ is also on hiatus, but I do not really want
to rant about it – unlike ‘Big Cat Week’ of 2017, which has also ended last
week (duh). Well, it is more of a mini-rant, and it involves the cheetah. Nat
Geo Wild has said that the cheetah is the only big cat that cannot roar, and
that statement is false.
Firstly, the cheetah is not a big cat from biological
P.O.V., (hence why it cannot roar). As I have written before, the cheetah does
not belong to the ‘roaring cat’ lineage; rather, it is a cousin to the puma and
the jaguarundi, neither of which can roar either. And secondly, while the
jaguarundi is quite small in size, (smaller than the ocelot, which cannot roar
too, even though it is the third-biggest cat in the Americas), the puma is
quite big – as big as the cheetah if not bigger, but it does not roar either,
because none of them are ‘roaring cats’.
Now, cat taxonomy can be tricky, but this is not about
taxonomy, it is about the fact that the folks over at Nat Geo Wild have ignored
the puma in favor of Africa’s lions and leopards and even cheetahs. The jaguar
special was a Sir David Attenborough special, and the great man is more closely
tied to BBC than to National Geographic. (This reminds me – Blue Planet II is
coming in the future; Planet Earth II was epic, Blue Planet II will be great as
well). However, the puma is the biggest wild cat in the U.S.; you would think
that the folks over at Nat Geo Wild would at least give it a nod in recognition
– but no.
Away from real life and biology, ‘For Honor’ (the
video game) seems to have its’ own problems; the fans’ honeymoon with it is
over, now there is plenty of criticism online, and such YouTube channels as IGN
and GameSpot are uploading far fewer ‘For Honor’ videos than they did in the
beginning of February, for example. I am not sure what is going on for ‘For
Honor’, but something apparently had. This is just sad.
Finally, ‘Powerless’ continues to be aired, and like
APB it has found its footing, as I may’ve written earlier. It is still fairly
ridiculous humor, and I cannot shake the suspicion that ‘Powerless’ is actually
poking fun at DC comics and DCEU, but you know what? Compared to the real-life
issues, such as the media’s feud with the Donald, his family and his cabinet,
this is minor stuff, pointless sniping, really.
As for the real life… The 45th president of
the U.S., as well as his entourage, are crude, vulgar and not very smart, and
that is the problem. The president of the RF, Putin, is a lot of things,
including a convenient bogey for the American government and media, but in this
case? He had nothing to do with the election and continues governing the RF as
he sees fit. The catch, which was conveniently forgotten by John Oliver and his
ilk is that since the perestroika, (look it up in the Wikipedia or wherever),
the U.S. had 25 to 27 years to change the RF government as they seem fit – and apparently
it included Putin on the throne, regardless of the fact that he has made a
mockery of the U.S. democracy, period. But no, not until 2014 or so, the U.S.
had no real problem with him, but now-
But now, here is how the cards fall. Russia is still
an Asian, rather than a European, country at heart, and in a bad way too; Japan
is more proportionally democratic…because the U.S. influenced it much more
intently than the RF was, but that is that. Russia is nationalistic these days,
but it is not given much to venturing abroad, especially into Europe; right
now, there are rumors that Putin might actually be interested and willing to
give up Crimea and co., if it wouldn’t cost him his popularity among the ‘little
people’ of Russia; if he stops being popular, he just might be deposed and
executed, as the last tsar of the old Russian Empire, Nikolai II, was. Putin
rules the Russians with an iron hand – but only because if he does not, he will
be deposed either by the elite, (as
it happened in February of 1917), or with
the elite (October 1917). Therefore, for now Crimea remains Russian…in no small
part because Europe does not intend to fight Russia for the sake of Ukraine.
Wars were fought over Ukraine from
the XVII century onwards, so by now most of the fighters – Russians, Eastern
Europeans such as Poles, Turks, etc., have wised-up and none of them wants to
battle for the sake of the Ukrainian government, (which is as bad as the
Russian is, BTW).
That includes the U.S. – by now, (I think), people in
D.C. have figured out that they have screwed themselves in the foot by themselves,
without any Russian involvement, and are trying to work out how to fix it,
other than to wait for the next election. Okay, but Europe and the EU aren’t so
interested in the inherent U.S. problems anymore and are solving their internal
problems how they see fit, not the
U.S. Put otherwise, Russia is still on the outs with the EU, but now so’s the
U.S. This suits RF well enough, the U.S. – not so much, but they seem to be
mostly concerned with the 45th government than with Europe so yes,
they are on the outs with the EU too, it seems…
Well, this is it for this rant. See you all in the
future!
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