Quarantine entry #76 - May 5

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks; the situation regarding George Floyd and the fallout that followed him continues not to improve, and across the border, the same situation is developing regarding the demise of another POC that fell from the balcony after some search. Now what?

…Firstly, a shout-out to the ‘Barkskins’ series: their first season has reached its’ midway point by now, and the official critics are ignoring it, God knows why. It is a good TV series, a historical docudrama that looks and feels authentic, so why there aren’t more people discussing it? I have no idea, though considering as to how real life is more dramatic and surreal than anything that can appear on TV, that might be one of the reasons why. Next?

…Speaking of real/unreal, it seems that the team AoS is leaving the post-WWII NYC behind and are going elsewhere. Pause. Firstly, I am guessing that we will not be having an AoS/AC official crossover any time soon or at all. Pity, but as it’d been acknowledged semi-officially, team Carter didn’t fair too well in the MCU: at first, it was looking as if Steve would settle with Sharon Carter, the niece of the original AC, while AC would end up with agent Sousa, (most likely, in my opinion); but then AC the TV show ended, and people at MCU decided to match Steve with Peggy, while Sharon would end-up with Sam and Bucky… either or, or both. Since ‘The Winter Solider and The Falcon’ show is suspended indefinitely, it is anyone’s guess as to how it will turnout, relationship-wise, so let us get back to AoS.

Sadly, there isn’t much to go about, not really – either the team Time Bus will continue to travel through time and space, thus also continuing to imitate DC’s LoT, which can be bad for the Marvel/DC relations in real life, (but remember, real life sucks for infinite reasons), or they can pull a ‘sound of thunder’ twist, and return to the present in the 7x03 episode, only to find it changed in subtle, but important ways. Considering that so far they only interacted with a Koenig and a Malick variants, I’m leaning towards the former; plus, Powers Boothe, who had played Gideon Malick back on AoS’ S3, has died in real life several years ago, remember? Real life sucks, again.

To elaborate… listen. AoS was intended to be a tightly intertwined or interconnected TV series, with recurring characters appearing for more than just a single season. Instead, we got exactly that from S2, if not S1 onwards, and consequently, the AoS’ ratings have suffered and fell all the way until now, aka the final season. Now they may recover, but because AoS is done, both in real life and with real life, it probably does not care anymore. Pause.

No, really, look at what the AoS’ audience got in the final season’s premiere. A two-parter that features a variant Malick, and since both of the ‘modern’ Malicks died within the parameters of the AoS’ S3, it is highly unlikely that we will see either of them on S7 because of various real-life reasons, and a variant Koenig… pause.

There had been several Koenigs on the show, played by a single actor (for men) and a single actress (for women), and they came and went with neither rhyme nor reason, without much, if any, impact on the show. In good conscience, they could have replaced ‘Ernest Koenig’ with a completely different, non-Koenig character, and it would have worked just as well, because within the show’s parameters? 

The Koenigs are not recurring; they are redundant, and largely forgettable. The actors who played them, (especially the Koenig men), must have had a set contract to appear an appropriate amount of time in AoS episodes, and that is it. …Something similar must have happened with the character of Deathlok on MCU – in S1 he was one of the main storylines, and then his role began to increasingly diminish, until he appeared in a single episode of AoS’ S5 or 6, that is it. Sic transit Gloria mundi or whatever. Anything else?

…I admit that I wanted to talk about beetles for a change – you know, the insects that have six legs, a hard out pair of wings, and chewing jaws? Yes, we talked about them in the past, when we have discussed the world of insects and the difference in terms of ‘bugs’ and ‘beetles’. That, of course, is very exciting, and the beetles themselves are a very exciting topic, but we will probably talk about them some other time – they are just not fun to talk about, not after AoS!

…This is it for now – see you all soon!