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!

Kings of Pain 2 - Dec 11

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks and your family does its’ best to make you feel worse. You cannot escape them, not really, and certainly not legally, and if you aren’t ready to cross the legal lines, you are in trouble, and if you are-? Then you are ready to spread your trouble to your immediate vicinity and beyond because you are that badass, (but in a bad way, so do not get too cocky). …And so I tried to escape into the realm of TV for some sweet release, and what do I find there? ‘Kings of Pain’.

Now, I have been talking about them in passing in our last few entries, but I tried to avoid talking about them directly, because there were, and are, better topics to talk about; this time though there aren’t any. Oh, sure, there are also the news that the Marvel TV as such is being assimilated into the greater MCU, but this was in the cards all along: FOX mutant TV shows and FOX itself – cancelled/concluded/assimilated. Netflix TV series – cancelled or finished. AoS – finished in summer 2020. C&D – cancelled. Runaways – finished this winter, (2019/2020). And then there were none, and Disney+ is coming out soon, so any outsiders shall be dealt with accordingly. Yes, Sony showed that Disney/Marvel juggernaut is not so tough. Yes, until Netflix’s rights expire properly and for real, (we’re talking about the Defenders here), Disney/Marvel isn’t about to use any of them in its’ movies, TV shows, and so on, lest there be a copyright conflict issue. Quite a while back, Lionsgate made an animated ‘Planet Hulk’ film, and so we got ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ film the way we got. Disney/Marvel isn’t quite as badass as it appears to be, but it’s close enough, the end.

…Not that DC is much better – remember the Maxwell Lord situation that we have mentioned earlier? That is typical for DC, however – the ‘Arrow-verse’ is tight, and nothing else in DC-verse is. What does it have to do with ‘Kings of Pain’?

Here’s what: just as Disney has clamped down tight on its’ YouTube aspects – ‘Mulan’ barely got any discussion, and what did occur was carefully controlled and positive – so has ‘Kings of Pain’ stopped appearing on YouTube at all, even on the official YouTube channel of History TV. Why?

…Before we get into it, let us give a dishonorable mention to NatGeo, and not just because its’ website is now a paysite. Aside from the online paysite, NatGeo has two other main sources of sharing its’ info: the magazine, (which is always available on the site, of course), which is available as a corporeal, paper magazine, (duh!), and also on the YouTube channel – as videos. Actually, there are several connected YouTube channels that are property of the NatGeo brand, but…

…But now that the mothersite of NatGeo is a paysite, NatGeo releases its’ videos on its’ YouTube channel very rarely and very sparingly and they are only clips from its’ various shows now – no news. You get only what you pay – how commercial. They are not about to share much freely, but neither are they about to abandon this venture either.

Why is NatGeo’s YouTube info free? Hard to say. Various movies, TV series, etc., are for cash only on YouTube, but not short episode clips – just look at BBC Earth YouTube channel, for example. Video clips that are under 5-10 minutes are free, and apparently, NatGeo has to follow this rule slash guideline as well. Therefore, it does, and it does so by releasing only a couple of clips per week at most – yay. No.

How does the History channel compare to this sort of thing? Just like the BBC TV family on YouTube, it reveals plenty of episode clips from its’ shows on its channel – the full episodes are available on the History website where you need to sign-in, join-in, etc. Fair enough, but lately there are no episode clips of ‘Kings of Pain’ on YouTube, only full episodes on the History website proper. Why? Does the team of the History channel consider this show so good? Let me give you a hint: they are not.

…On this week’s episode, ‘Kings of Pain’ dealt, first, with the toe biter, aka a giant water bug. Note the ‘bug’ in its’ name – this is important, because the leads of ‘Kings’ called it a ‘beetle’ repeatedly on the show instead. ‘Bugs’ aren’t ‘beetles’: the two groups of insects are separate and distinct as much as – cats and squirrels, for example.

How you differentiate beetles from bugs? Beetles have two pairs of wings. The hind pair of wings is membranous and transparent and is used by beetles for flight. There are flightless beetles, of course, but they still have front pair of wings that are more properly called the elytra and aren’t wings at all, but hard covers that protect the vulnerable hind pair of wings and the soft abdomen of the beetles.

Bugs also have the membranous hind pair of wings and they too can fly, and they also have the elytra, but their elytra is only partial, it only covers part of the hind wings and of the abdomen, giving bugs a very different appearance from the beetles.

The second main difference of true bugs from true beetles is that all of bugs have a proboscis – a sharp syringe with which they stab their food, liquefy from the inside and sap it up. Beetles, conversely, usually have jaws called mandibles and they chew their food up – but they are a very varied group, and some beetles have adapted to eat liquid food also – we are talking about the stag beetles and their kin, so this method of separating true beetles from true bugs is not as reliable as the first one.

…And then we have the Wikipedia that already has done the hard stuff and you can always look it up to see just what you are dealing with, broadly speaking. Team ‘Kings of Pain’ did it – in this episode, they also list a number of lay names for the giant water bugs aside from the primary toe biter moniker that they clearly got from the Wiki – so why did they insist on calling this insect a ‘beetle’? Giant water bugs are no more beetles than cats are squirrels, you know!

…My money is on the show itself – it has its’ good aspects still, but so did AoS, and on ‘Kings of Pain’ we may be dealing with an AoS level of bad. The main leads seem to be decisively unenthusiastic when working with each other, they have no chemistry, and sometimes they appear to honestly hate each other sometimes, or at least – not like each other very much. Sometimes their banter does seem natural, but this isn’t enough to save the show entirely, so why the apparent VIP treatment by team History? Because they consider the new show to be that good, (it isn’t), or that bad, (it just may be)? Everyone can draw his or her own conclusion.

…The other animal featured on this week’s episode was the scorpionfish and that came with its’ own problem. You see, the term ‘scorpionfish’ applies to a very large family of fishes, scientifically known as Scorpaenidae. The lionfish, which appeared in an earlier episode and was referenced here, is actually a lay name for a fish genus named Pterois: it includes several fish species and is a part of the Scorpaenidae family, aka the scorpionfish. This particular ‘scorpionfish’ featured on ‘Kings of Pain’ didn’t look anything like a lionfish, but there are several genera of ‘scorpionfish’ that resemble each other very closely, (which is why the scientific names of their genera sound similarly), so it’s hard to figure out just what species of ‘scorpionfish’ ‘Kings of Pain’ used in their show. Of course, in the wild the scorpionfish live mostly in Indo-Pacific, which is nowhere near Baja California where this episode supposedly took place at, but not exclusively so, as the wild lionfish do, so let’s give ‘Kings’ the benefit of doubt on this one and call it a day.

Anything else? Well, Boris Johnson, who is the U.K.’s PM (for now, but still), had hid in his fridge to avoid an interview on live TV – nice. It is because of actions such as this one Ms. Greta Thunberg became TIME magazine’s person of the year… but we have already mentioned that real life sucks, so let us call this an end for this rant.

…Ergo, this is it for now, so see you all soon!