The Gifted: the dreaM - Nov 27

Obligatory disclaimer: sometimes, real life does not just suck, but it also hurts. Like, emotionally. Sometimes, your family members are like emotional/energy vampires, and there is nothing that you can do with them…nothing that is truly legal, anyhow. Any solution that results in a funeral with a closed casket/coffin/call it whatever you will has to be wrong than the problem, it just has to!.. And now on to our feature presentation.

‘the dreaM’ of ‘the Gifted’ shows the continuous issue of this TV series: it is conflict-driven, and primarily – it is mutants vs. Sentinel Services. Whenever Sentinel Services went out of the equation, ‘the Gifted’ suffered. In S2, Sentinel Services around in the equation at all; in this episode, Jace isn’t even in it – instead we got yet another friend of Reed Strucker’s father Otto, who’s got an entire institute, (sort of), and whose goal is to learn how to manage and probably to suppress the X-gene, which makes mutants mutants. Sorry about repetition, but we already had something similar back in S1, so now it feels as if ‘the Gifted’ are going around in circles; it didn’t help AoS, which was notorious in recycling ideas for its’ plot and scripts, and it doesn’t really help ‘the Gifted’ either.

…This is the Strucker plot line, actually – whereas the other two of this episode were Lorna. Her life story, her journey to the current point in time in the world of ‘the Gifted’, and it culminates in her giving up baby Dawn to her aunt, and making Magneto’s token (and yes, this is the first evidence of Magneto/X-Men/Xavier/Brotherhood of Evil Mutants/etc. in the show. Oh, there had been plenty of references, but the token is something different, more real and precise, and Lorna makes into her own headpiece, reminiscent of Polaris – of all of Magneto’s children, she was the one the most like him.

The problem is that this version of Lorna is nothing like the mainline Polaris; by, well, giving up Dawn and all, Lorna has given up herself – her self that had been building up from the S1 premiere until now. Is this a result of FOX and Marvel (MCU) teaming up now, I do not know; true, there are some similarities now between ‘the Gifted’ and AoS & AC, but few and safely buried, so there.

Finally, there were also Thunderbird and Blink searching for Rebecca/Twist as the latter took a runner from the Inner Circle at the beginning of ‘the dreaM’. At the end of the episode, after sharing her small information dump with the not so dynamic duo, she seems to have been either killed or captured, and while that is bad, (especially for her), why…hasn’t she left D.C. yet? She had an entire day, (though the entire chronology of ‘the dreaM’ went jumping around in a non-linear way, and the various flashbacks did not help either), I guess… script reasons?

And the same goes for the John/Clarice fight/argument/etc. It felt contrived in the previous episode, (two weeks ago), and it feels contrived now. John and Clarice, it seems, just decided to fight, and Marcos…either is fanning the flames or is staying out of it entirely. Ditto for Lauren Strucker, even though at the S2 premiere she was shown to be an integral part of the Mutants Underground team. Now, though, the Strucker family has gone down one path and the Mutants’ Underground people – Marcos, Clarice, John – another. A plot device or a plot hole? Who knows, we can only wait and see…

…Well, this is it for now. ‘the dreaM’ had been a lackluster episode; or rather – an unbalanced one. Most of its’ focus, overwhelmingly so, had been on Lorna/Polaris, and ‘the Gifted’, in the past, didn’t do such character-heavy episodes. AoS, on the other hand, did, especially in its’ first seasons, with various effects, but that did not help it either; the S6 finale found AoS at a low point…but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

The Gifted: no Mercy - Nov 13

Tonight, we are back. Real life still sucks – and that even without taking into account that Mr. Stan Lee is gone: I was never his biggest fan, but regardless, his death is being felt already; what is coming out of it is another story; onto ‘the Gifted’?

Well, let us try. This week’s episode - ‘no Mercy’ – was something else; in S2, ‘the Gifted’ are having issues into combining all of their narratives into one, and it shows.

What has happened in ‘no Mercy’? The Inner Circle robbed a bank. Jace met some sort of an evil politician/TV show host/someone-someone, and is going to star on his show. And the Mutant Underground are dealing with the fact that Reed’s problems are getting worse, and that they suck, at the same time. Let us elaborate?

‘no Mercy’ felt like three or four separate stories with little connecting them, period. The bank story line with the Inner Circle feels completely detached from the Mutant Underground story line, period. At least with Jace, the show’s scriptwriters put in effort to connect his TV appearance with the Inner Circle’s bank attack, and showed his inner struggle. (Hey, it sells the numbers, ratings and otherwise, so there!) The Mutant Underground, on the other hand? We had the Struckers doing their family issues thing, while on the other hand, we had Marcos all but stirring up trouble between John and Clarice regarding the Morlocks. Sorry, I still enjoy ‘the Gifted’, but John and Clarice’s conflict feels especially contrived – it really does. As we have seen in the past, the Mutant Underground, (i.e. Marcos) was aware of the Morlocks before S2, (technically speaking), so what is their problem with Morlocks? This conflict just holds no water, even by AoS’ standards, and that is just sad, because in S1 ‘the Gifted’ were more like AC, than AoS…

Anything else? Rebecca has a bigger chip on her shoulder than the rest of the Inner Circle do, now many people are dead, and Reeva’s true test as a leader has come: how will she handle Rebecca and her disobedience? She did have a plan, she gave Rebecca an order, and it did not work. Reeva will need to bring Rebecca to heel eventually, because if she does not, Rebecca might turn on her, and Reeva’s entire master plan will derail completely.

Here is a fact: as far as leadership goes, Reeva pictures herself more like Dumbledore than Riddle. She is willing to sacrifice anyone for the greater good, (whatever she perceives it to be), but good is the key word here. Rebecca is more like a Death Eater instead – she does not care about who gets in her way, as long as she succeeds. Andy Strucker is currently riding the metaphorical tiger, and it is an open question if he will succeed. (The fact that Rebecca’s character was upgraded is put aside – real life matters, even on a TV show, you know?) What next?

Well, on one hand, ‘the Gifted’ were showing Rebecca to be bad news since she appeared; the question is, is she irredeemably bad? (And what about Andy? Where does he fall here, again?) AoS tried its’ hand with redemption, (especially in S2), and made a hash of it; AC tried something similar…also in S2…but got cancelled after the second season, so that was the end of it; the greater MCU is just meh on it…so it’s anyone’s guess as how this will turn out. The same goes for Jace, though with him it’s more of an open question will he become just a narrative engine to expose the social ills of the world of ‘the Gifted’, or will he come into open interactions with the Mutant Underground (or any other mutant characters on the show) instead.

Anything else? S2 of ‘Runaways’ is coming on December 2018; S2 of ‘C&D’ – in spring 2019, and detective Mayhem will play a proportionate role to Ty and Dy, who are the titular characters after all. Real life does suck, but not always, it seems.

Well, this is it for now; see you all soon!

The Gifted: afterMath - Oct 30

And we are back. More or less, certainly limping, but for now we are back. Yay!

Back on TV, ‘the Gifted’ continue to impress, as the plotlines finally get moving. In this week’s episode – ‘afterMath’ – we have Andy make a new friend, whom they have rescued in the previous episode. Her name is Rebecca, so far, she is not one of the main cast, and her powers are turning things inside out. Her approach appears to be similar to Andy and Lauren, but her attitude is quite different: Andy did hesitate in attacking Lauren and Marcos back then, but Rebecca manifests a vibe that she would not.

…Some people say that there are two approaches to everything, a good and a bad one. The two terms aren’t fully interchangeable with right and wrong, but the fact is that starting with ‘afterMath’, ‘the Gifted’ will begin to show the, well, ‘evil-ness’ of the Inner Circle, as their lofty goals hide some unsavory means of getting there. Of course, the question of whether the game is worth the candle and whether the means justify the ends, will never be answered – at least not in real life – but on TV, as ‘the Gifted’ will continue to develop, maybe we get an answer in that universe at least.

Back to ‘the Gifted’ proper? While Andy was on his date with Rebecca, and Lauren was recovering from their fight with their father, their hospital was invaded by the Purifiers and Jace. So far, Jace had done nothing openly ‘evil’, and in fact is shown to have had more mixed feelings in the past, before his daughter died, about the mutants, but that was in the past and in the present, he clearly is not a friend to the mutants at all. How more can his TV character remain somewhat ambiguous is anyone’s guess, but eventually he will have to make a choice and after the events in S1, when the Frost sisters mind-forced his partner to kill himself, the odds are not in pro-mutant favor.

Speaking of mutants, the last main plotline of ‘afterMath’ was about Clarice and Marcos taking their rescued group of mutants to the Morlocks, into the sewers. The Morlocks’ take on the human-mutant conflict is to stay out of it, by hiding in the sewers, getting by by all sorts of means, including thieving, and generally that is it. They are not fighters, they are hiders. The Inner Circle might be evil, (at least from the P.O.V. of the Mutant Underground), but at least they are proactive. The Morlocks are not evil, but they are escapists, and from the P.O.V. of the Mutant Underground, that is just as bad. The Mutant Underground are good, (well, this is their story and they’re sticking to it, at least for now, even though at least some of their allies left them hanging instead), but they are also fighters, not escapists, and so they and Morlocks are going to clash, especially since the Morlocks don’t like them very much either. They are not looking for a fight, but their leader is interested in Clarice/Blink and her mutant portal powers – and John is not going to swallow that at all, especially since he had spent this episode recovering from his own injuries and growing increasingly frustrated with everyone and everything. Given that Clarice herself is feeling short-tempered lately, this can be very bad, for the entire Mutant Underground – but we will have to wait and see as to what will happen next.

…This is it for tonight; see you all soon! (Hopefully).

Daredevil S3 - Oct 23

The changes come and changes go, in real life they suck, but you can adapt and try something new, just because you do not want to go crazy or worse. On TV, on the other hand…well, ‘Iron Fist’ was cancelled, as we knew even before ‘Daredevil’ S3 was released, and now, it seems, ‘Luke Cage’ is as well.

Still, there are some differences between ‘Iron Fist’ and ‘Luke Cage’ – while theories about the former continue to abound, (most consider the fact that it wasn’t making enough money to be the key fact here), with ‘Luke Cage’ it is more straightforward – differences between Netflix, the crew, and co. It shows too – ‘Iron Fist’ ended with some sort of a resolution, at least; ‘Luke Cage’ – in mid-swing, (so to speak), just as the Deadly Nightshade or whoever was rising to challenge Luke in her turn. Ouch. What next?

‘Daredevil’ S3 has arrived last week, we got introduced to this version of Bullseye, and it was interesting. At least at some point the team of ‘Daredevil’ made Bullseye to be the antithesis of the titular hero – guess Matt really needed it. Of course, with ‘Iron Fist’ and ‘Luke Cage’ gone, ‘the Defenders’ appear to be even less unlikely than they did after ‘Jessica Jones’ S2, where no mention of them really appeared; well, now with the cancellations, they may be the next to follow. Anything else?

‘The Gifted’ may or may not air tonight, due to the World Game (or whatever) it is called – real life sucks, see above. The Americans, of course, and especially their current president are still one-step ahead from the rest of us, in regards to ‘the migrant caravan’ or whatever. In the U.K., on the other hand, no actual evidence of Russian temperance was found, meaning yeah, that all of those cries of ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ were a fabled lie. How will the U.K. get out of this revelation? Ask the wading birds, such as the avocets, in the swamp – they will tell you how!

(Yes, I watched the ‘Miss Peregrine’ movie online. Miss Avocet was not a bad character, but the avocet is a wading bird, built almost like a mini-heron or stork. Rather than short and plump, Miss Avocet should have been tall and skinny instead, but who cares? She was just an episodic character anyhow, and regardless of her appearance? She was still neurotic).

Anything else? Frankly, no. Real life still sucks, and while you can try to manage it, sometimes you just cannot. Of course, on TV, things are not always so rosy either, as ‘Daredevil’ S3, (featuring no mention of ‘Jessica Jones’, ‘Luke Cage’, or ‘Iron Fist’) can attest. Still, let us wish Matt and co. the best of luck and move on.

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

The Gifted: outMatched - Oct 16

The adventures of the mutants continue, but first – the obligatory disclaimer. Real life sucks, change hurts, and I cannot guarantee that I will be able to review ‘The Gifted’ in the following weeks, and not just because our TV set was testy over the weekend. You’ve been worn, and now onto the main topic: in this week’s episode – ‘outMatched’ – the Mutant Underground found themselves, well, outmatched by the Inner Circle once again, while Jace has made contact with the Purifiers, at last. To elaborate?

The entire plotline of Jace in this episode was actually well done and designed. The Purifiers do not appear to be too different in their approach from the Mutant Underground, truth be told. They are not exactly supported or approved by law enforcement either – but then again, neither did the KKK in real life; there probably were supported unofficially by, and even approved by, people, even political people, but officially? They were criminals, hence the whole secrecy, hoods and robes thing.

…And now, in modern times, in real life, we got the Republicans, on one hand, who seem to embrace the alt-right groups, such as the Proud Boys, (whatever their details are), and have candidates who spew racist rhetoric, (well, at least it ain’t Nazist, but this is a small comfort at best, especially by American Integration standards), while the Democrats, on the other hand, seem to be going leftist and socialist – in response? What is next, an all-American version of Hitler vs. Stalin? American Civil War version IV? This is not what USA needs, and it needs division just as little.

Again, the problem is not Russia exactly; the problem is that USA has a very weak state and many very powerful individuals, each of whom has their own idea in which direction to take America to success…and they are all fighting about it and not getting anything done. The result is, well, chaos, and the reason why USA was not toppled yet is either because its’ opponents have its’ own problems, (like Russia), or are not willing to have America dismantled for real, (like China) – yet. In the future, this may change, especially if America itself does not change. The more its’ leadership fights, the more fighting drips down below, and the same goes for fractioning, partition, and separation. If the American society fractions far enough, it will fall apart completely, into, well, fractions. If that happens we’ll end up either with a USA that isn’t too different from the world of ‘The Gifted’, with a distinctly Nazist undertone, (especially in S1, now – not so much), or with n USA at all, but rather a semi-balkanized North American continent, with Canada in the north and Mexico in the south, and how will they fare in such a mess is another question, for another time.

Back to the show? In ‘outMatched’ there was a lot of running, a lot of action, a lot of John posturing very manly with his firefighter’s axe and a machete, (or maybe even a cutlass), but little that actually was done.

Well, no – the Inner Circle, especially Lorna and Andy, have released a crowd of mentally-disturbed mutants, and the Mutant Underground have to take care of them now, especially since the Inner Circle also forced or coerced the asylum’s staff into admitting their guilt – before presumably executing them or something along those lines. As a result, the Struckers…let us recap what the Struckers did separately. We have Andy and Lauren having their first big confrontation and Lauren lost. Maybe she was pulling her punches. Maybe she underestimated just how intensely Andy was training during this hiatus. Regardless, she got knocked out cold. This brings us to the parents. We got Catelyn…sorry, Caitlin Strucker channelling her inner Cersei Lannister by drugging a junkie mutant hacker so that they could help their team and rescue, cough, Andy, and maybe Lorna. That didn’t work, and Graph – the poor sap in question – almost died as well, causing Reed to challenge his wife at last regarding just what they are doing and whom they are channelling, and how they are better than the Inner Circle? And then his powers popped-up again and he got forced to pick-up his pills from the floor in the most pathetic scene of the entire episode; Jaime Lannister pats him on the back sympathetically – he knows both about tricky hands and loss of dignity that is related to them – and suggests that maybe Mr. Strucker should talk to Ser Luke Skywalker regarding prosthetic limbs. Luke is ready and willing to advice, especially since he got killed in the canon. Reed hates them both.

That is the Struckers, really. They are going for some character-driven plot-development here, as do everyone else – Jace and the rest of the Mutant Underground. Jace has finally decided to talk to the Purifiers at last – well, what else can he do? He is on the outs with his wife for real and he just cannot be a civilian and he needs to do something than just stay in some motel and watch TV, not forever, while the rest of the Mutant Underground… Their confrontation with Lorna was more lackluster than Lauren’s with Andy – at least the Strucker siblings talked to each other, while Lorna just stared at John and Clarice and released the patients. That is it. Marcos/Eclipse provided some support to Lauren but got taken out by Andy as well. Not very impressive either. And now the Inner Circle got their new mystery mutant member/weapon and who knows what they will do next? We will just have to wait and see it next week – hopefully. If real life permits.

This is it for now, though – see you all soon!

FH: Shaolin, Tiandi, Jiang Jun - Oct 15

…Sometimes life gives you lemons even though you have no idea as to how to make lemonade. Sometimes it does give you lemonade instead, even though you were not expecting it, (or really needing it, truth be told). But – a silver lining on any cloud and so forth. Where were we?

Ah yes, FH has finally revealed all of its new characters. Let us look at them. We already discussed Nuxia yesterday; today we are beginning with the Shaolin monk – as opposed to a Hungarian short track speeder skater, whose last name is also Shaolin. Yeah, real life sometimes is simply bizarre. We have talked about him yesterday too, in regards to the hook swords – the gun staff was another one of his weapons, though it fell short of its’ Maori counterpart – a staff-slash-club. Seriously, there was no reason as to why Maori should not have won, and yet he lost the fight – but we talked about it yesterday too. The Shaolin monastery is also famous for its’ Kung Fu, but there was little of it in DW, and FH is all about the weapons, so it is doubtful that we will see any especial martial arts in the upcoming update. The Nuxia, of course, had some unusual moves, but then the hook swords are unusual, exotic weapons, so naturally her moves are unusual; the Shaolin’s are more straightforward…

Speaking of swords, next we got the Tiandi and his dao saber. Well, maybe it it’s the dao saber, but that’s what it looks like – the blade that was used by DW’s Ming Warriors, when they faced-off against the French Musketeers – and lost. Were the weapons mismatched? Not exactly; the Musketeers’ had more derived weapons, still not as good as the modern ones, but already more derived, reliable and better than the Ming Warriors’ were.

Any weirdness? Perhaps the fact that the face-off took place on a mountain pass of some sort that the Musketeers were storming, and the Ming were doing their best to hold them off; spoiler alert – they failed. The Musketeers won; their rapier triumphed over the saber, but it should be kept in mind that they also had a parrying dagger with them. Here is where DW would bend its’ own rules some – sometimes one team had ‘an extra’ weapon over the other team. The hosts didn’t really offer much justification, and even if they did, still having the Americans have 4 weapons, while the French had only 3, (the S3 premiere), for example, looked rather dishonest. The Americans love to win, but they prefer if it is done fairly…or at least not by obvious cheating, as it happened on DW. Then again, DW got its’ comeuppance – it is still cancelled these days, and there is no talk of it being rebooted. Pity, for it was a good show despite its’ flaws…but FH is filling its’ gap in the game world, at least.

Finally, we got the Jiang Jun. Apparently that is a literal name, not a title or whatever; it is the name of some mythical Chinese warrior or hero. His weapon is the guandao, which is the ancient Chinese version of the naginata used by team Samurai already – or the western glaive. The glaive’s main difference from a lance is that it was not used from horseback, but more on foot, against cavalry. It has a bigger tip than the lance does, and in case of both the naginata and the guandao, it is curved, more like a saber than a lance, rapier or spear, which are straight, and can stab instead.

This brings us to another Ubisoft game that was launched this year – their latest Assassin adventure. Apparently, Ubisoft hasn’t severed all of its’ ties with AWE Me YouTube series, as it had commissioned them to make the broken spear of king Leonidas, (featured in the 300 Spartans movie), and a khopis. The spear is a spear, save that its’ haft is broken, so it can be used as a sword or a rapier of some sort, while the khopis is a Greek adaptation of the traditional ancient Egyptian khopesh, which was a sickle-shaped blade, and according to some sources, the sharp edge was the inner, not the outer one, meaning that perhaps the khopesh was more like some sort of a military sickle than a saber.

The saber is mentioned here because the khopis was exactly that – a saber of the Antiquity. In DW’s S2, it was one of the weapons of Alexander the Great, put against Attila the Hun’s Sword of Mars, aka a longsword. Just think the Samurais’ nodachi (or katana), put against the Knights’, well, longsword. The difference is still there…and Alexander lost to Attila, but that face-off was one of the worst in DW from the technical point of view, (and that is unusual – usually DW had the technical side of things done completely right), so we will not go into it this time…

And this is it for now – see you all soon!

FH: Nuxia - Oct 14

Firstly, real life sucks. It sucks in different ways, and for those people who died during hurricane Michael it sucks worst of all, because of obvious reasons, but for the rest of us? We got all sorts of issues, each of our own, and they are not very pleasant, because change usually always hurts – someone. On one of the sides, at least…and very often they are unavoidable. You can try to figure out ways to soften the blow, but as often as not they do not work, especially if you do not want to make things worse and to break the criminal code of your country. On the other hand, maybe you do, on both counts – in which case, good luck to you, you are a greater and/or braver person than I am…

What next? Leaving my life/real life aside, (the mess with/in the Saudi Arabia is growing nastier by the day), we got, well, ‘Iron Fist’. The show got cancelled. The end. Moreover, no one really knows why. With P: NW a while back, at least, you got the entire ‘Impossible Pictures’ getting cancelled/annulled by BBC because reasons. Considering that ‘Impossible Pictures’ was good, this was a bad decision by BBC; certainly after the not-very-impressive ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ movie, they didn’t try anything new with dinosaurs any time lately…

Back to ‘Iron Fist’? We don’t know, again, as why Netflix ended the series; ‘Daredevil’ is coming back for S3 later this month, ‘Jessica Jones’ and ‘Punisher’ seem to be returning too, ‘Luke Cage’ is up for grabs…

Maybe it is just the matter of money – there is just not enough of it to allow Netflix keep all of their Marvel shows…at least for now. Apparently, they made a statement that ‘the immortal Iron Fist never dies’ or something similar. What does that mean I have no idea.

On that note, let us get to FH. Earlier this week they released the Nuxia, one of the new characters. In real life, Nuxia is a genus of plants that grow in Africa, Middle East, and on some islands in the Indian Ocean, meaning that this word does not have anything in common with China or the rest of the Far East region of Asia…

Now, I must admit, I was genuinely surprised – I have never heard of these plants…and given the sparse information about them, I am guessing that this is because these are some of the more obscure plants, not much known to people outside of professional botany, such as myself. Ergo, let us not stay with Nuxia proper for now, and move onto her signature weapons – the hook swords.

They were shown in DW, S1, as one of the weapons of the Shaolin monk, (who is also featured in FH – or will be, soon enough, properly). As it was mentioned before, that episode – ‘Shaolin monk vs. Maori warrior’ – was one of the more bizarre/lopsided episodes: the hook swords were the only Shaolin weapon that were better/scored higher than their Maori counterparts did, and they were the one who won the day for the Shaolin monk via points – they scored higher than any other weapon on that episode, Shaolin or Maori. Why, how so – the field-test of the hook swords was not that impressive, honestly – remained unknown, though on that episode follow-up, none of the team Maori showed up. Again, we do not know what went behind the scenes of that episode, but something certainly did, though it did not affect DH at that time…

Back to FH? Why not. Nuxia uses her twin hook swords very efficiently, and ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ should be mentioned here too – we’re talking the original TV cartoon series, not the travesty of the movie that Mr. Night Shamalayan did: one of its’ recurring characters, Jet, also used twin hook swords very efficiently, making himself stand out of the crowd, (since he wasn’t a ‘bender’, by the way). So, I guess – go twin hook swords!

Anything else? No, not really. Nuxia does appear to be an interesting character, and FH is clearly upgrading and redesigning itself, doing its’ best to make itself even better, so good luck to them. Ergo, as for us – see you all soon! (Hopefully).