1GF Watches TV: Ash vs Evil Dead

Charlies Angels

Pilot Movie and Season 1 - Part 1

Charlie’s Angels - When a wealthy vineyard owner goes missing and is presumed dead, an investigative team headed by a mysterious man named Charlie sends his three lady PI’s on the case: Sabrina, Jill, and Kelly, as well as Charlie’s assistant Bosley. Kelly poses as the long lost heir to the fortune, and together the Angels devise a plan to trick the suspects into unearthing the body and exposing them as murderers.

Hellride - After a female stock car racer dies in a fiery wreck, foul play is suspected. Sabrina poses as a new driver on the track while Jill, Kelly, and Bosley do some snooping to find out what happened.

The Mexican Connection - When an airplane is hijacked and crashed, Charlie suspects a link to heroine smugglers in Mexico. The Angels infiltrate the suspect’s operation, with Jill getting close by posing as the suspect’s daughter’s swimming instructor, and search for a link between him and the drugs and, hopefully, find a way to get him to cross the border so they can arrest him.

Night of the Strangler - A fashion model is murdered by strangulation, but all the key suspects have alibis for the time of the murder. The victim bears a striking resemblance to Kelly, so Charlie and Bosley have Kelly and Jill pose as new models for the agency, hoping the similarity between Kelly and the victim may cause the killer to slip up.

Full disclosure, I have never seen the Charlie’s Angels TV show before. I had seen the original McG movie and I remember hating it. Since the new Charlie’s Angels movie was coming out, I watched that movie again and discovered that I was right for hating it. Whew boy, is that movie a stinker. Because I hate myself, I watched the sequel immediately afterward out of morbid curiosity, which I had never seen. I heard it was worse, but honestly…I can’t tell how. They’re both the same.

But I had never seen the show. I think my dislike of the movies threw me off, so it took me ages to actually give it a chance. I saw that the show was for free on the IMDB app, so I started working through episodes during my lunch break at work (after Mill Creek’s Spree service crapped out on me after two episodes of Ultra Q). I had far less strong impressions of the series than I did of the movies. It’s a fairly basic crime drama of the period (compared to McG’s films, which seem to be a poorly thought out parody fused within a flashy action movie). Maybe not too well written, but a lot of them were goofy like this, so I can’t dock too many points for that.

Charlie’s Angels is an interesting franchise in its aim. The series centers on three very beautiful women who count on being underestimated by men, but then it contradicts itself by turning men into the target audience. The men watching the show don’t care that the men are constantly made fools of or one-upped by the women who are one step ahead, they tune in because the ladies aren’t half bad to look at. So it’s a show that’s squarely in male gaze territory, but its about characters who use male gaze to their advantage. That’s some fourth wall shit right there.

But being male, if I were to comment on the male gaze aspects, I had always known Farrah Fawcett was pretty much THE sex symbol of the show, but I profess that my personal taste leans more toward her co-stars Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith, but I’ve always had a thing for brunettes. Sexualization of the Angels themselves is actually surprisingly rare. They’ll put on a lovely outfit or a bikini, but the series does seem intent on letting them be more than “dem bewbs” and “dat ass” and the leads handle their roles with a lot of grace. The more objectified women are usually extras, often at the expense of innuendos by Charlie. I’m almost impressed with the show’s restraint in regards to its reputation, but it still does dig itself into a hole at times, because it’s clearly a show about “capable women” written by men, so it has to be a man’s idea of capable women, i.e. they look nice and kick a lot of ass.

As for the stories themselves, they don’t really stand out in the vastness of 70’s crime TV. Like a lot of shows at the time, you’re watching because of the talent onscreen or the characters you like, not because the show is doing anything particularly original. There are plenty of shows from the period that had episodes exactly like the ones that I watched. Maybe even better. Something I felt while watching these first four episodes was that I think this show would have benefited from a mystery format. Usually as soon as the Angels take a case we’re treated to a scene where the villains explain their dastardly deed immediately afterward, which reduces the tension of the episode to simply whether or not the Angels will get caught snooping around. The one exception to this is the fourth episode, Night of the Strangler. This was probably the best episode of this batch because the audience doesn’t learn who the killer is until the Angels do, with a few good red herrings and groovy twists along the way. It has it’s downsides, particularly a scene where Sabrina is nearly raped which she laughs about moments later (she then claims the only person who is allowed to rape her is Robert Redford, which is a total YIKES line), but the intent of the route this episode is going down is the right direction, I feel.

I kinda like it. I’ll probably watch some more. That is unless the new movie kills what interest I have in the franchise, but let’s live in the moment and see what trouble the Angels stir.

Also, the pilot had Tommy Lee Jones in it.  If I had known that, I would have watched this show ages ago.

I have too much Charlie's Angels to watch.

Star Trek:  Discovery

Season 2 - Part 1

Brother - After the USS Enterprise is damaged on a mission, Captain Christopher Pike takes command of the Discovery to complete Enterprise's investigation of seven red signals that had led to the crippling of the ship.  While investigating the last one, the Discovery crew find the downed vessel USS Hiawatha, to which Pike and Commander Bernham lead a team to rescue possible survivors.

New Eden - Investigating another signal, the Discovery uncovers a human colony of religious human settlers on an unknown planet.  The planet is in great danger when an anomaly puts the planet directly in the course of a radiation shower.

Point of Light - Ash Tyler now assists L'Rell in keeping the peace on the Klingon home world of Qo'noS, but find their tempering of the Klingon race in jeopardy when other leaders threaten insurrection.  Meanwhile, Ensign Tilly is seeing visions of a childhood friend that she knows to be dead, who is leading a "mission" and has "plans" for Tilly.  Also, Bernham and her adopted mother Amanda Grayson search for Bernham's foster brother and Amanda's son Spock, who has escaped a psychiatric unit treating him for recurring nightmares, and is wanted for the murder of three doctors.

An Obel for Charon - A mysterious alien sphere tangles the Discovery in its pull and weird things begin happening upon the ship.  Commander Saru finds that the sphere has triggered his death cycle, the Vahar'ai, and struggles to help the crew with the potential threat before he dies.  Meanwhile, engineers Paul Stamets and Jet Reno study the fungal symbiote that is still trying to bond with Tilly.

Myself and several of my friends are pretty big Star Trek fans, and we watched the entirety of the first season of Discovery as it aired on CBS All Access.  However, when the second season premiered and made its run, one of them had just had a baby and we weren't able to hold our weekly "Star Trek viewing," because she was the biggest fan among us and not having her along was unthinkable.  So if we weren't watching Discovery, then I dropped the app for a period.  I still need to check out the new Twilight Zone, which will inevitably happen at some point.

Rather than catching up on All Access, we decided to wait until the blu-ray release, which came out yesterday.  Of course, she told the rest of us to "come over immediately!" and we binged straight through the first four episodes.  Be warned, some of these episodes were screened through the lens of screaming children averaging five years old or less.  If I missed details, I apologize.

I thought Discovery's first season was one of the more consistently good first seasons a Trek show had ever had.  The original series and Deep Space Nine (mostly) probably have a leg up on it, but I enjoyed that first season quite a lot.  But it's also been a while, and my memory is a little hazy.  While waiting for my friends to put up another free night, I might go through the first season again as a refresher course.  I do remember the bitch fests from whiny fans about it being "not Star Trek enough," and don't know if those complaints are still being tossed around, because if I have any issue with this second season it's that it may be too Star Trek.  I appreciate the continuation of episodic storylines that snowball into a serial narrative, which I think lets Discovery stand out in Trek lore, though some of the individual storylines are starting to feel a bit familiar.  New Eden especially feels like quite a few Trek episodes from series' past, while other episodes seem to borrow a bit from them as well.  This always seemed to be the major complaint point of Enterprise, which seemingly got torn apart at every turn way back when.  Discovery's identity may be in crisis.

But it's in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position.  If it stayed the course of the previous season, it would continue to be "not Star Trek," but if it reverts to what Star Trek was then it's "not different enough."  I'm in the camp where I'd rather see it explore some new avenues, whether it's "Star Trek" or not.  Give me something interesting.  I have the other shows if I want something familiar.

But we'll see where it goes.  I still like most of the characters.  I like Saru and Bernham, and Tilly is just adorably enthusiastic, while Michelle Yeoh continues to be a scene stealer as Georgiou.  Anson Mount is a wonderful addition as Pike, picking up the baton from Jeffery Hunter and Bruce Greenwood.  I'm wondering if the captain of the Discovery position is turning into the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in Harry Potter, where it's a different person every season.  I anticipate at some point Bernham is going to be promoted to that rank and take command, but until then it's kind of fun.  I like Discovery overall, but I just may be anticipating Star Trek:  Picard just that much more than further episodes.

Hawaii Five O and Magnum PI crossing over in January

tvline.com/2019/11/15/hawaii-five-0-magnum-pi-crossover-january-2020/

Star Trek:  Discovery

Season 1 - Part 1

The Vulcan Hello - A decade before the events of the original series (and one hundred years after the events of Star Trek:  Enterprise), the USS Shenzhau encounters a group of hostile Klingons led by T'Kuvma, who is hellbent on uniting the Klingon Empire in a war against the Federation.  Captain Philippa Georgiou and her First Officer Commander Michael Bernham have intense disagreements on how to handle the situation, forcing Bernham to take harsh measures.

Battle at the Binary Stars - Bernham is thrown in the brig for mutiny, as Georgiou continues to try and negotiate with the Klingons.  As the Shenzhau takes heavy damage, Bernham escapes the brig and pleads with Georgiou to capture T'Kuvma alive and turn him into a symbol of disgrace.

Context is for Kings - Six months after the death of Georgiou, the Federation and the Klingon Empire is at war and Bernham has been given a life imprisonment sentence for her mutiny.  During a prison transfer, Bernham's transport is forced to take haven on the science Starship USS Discovery.  Put to work by the ship's captain, Gabriel Lorca, Burnham becomes curious of the Discovery's secret experiment involving alien spores.

The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry - Burnham believes that an alien creature they salvaged from the wreckage of the USS Glenn is the secret to controlling the spores and getting the Discovery's jump drive functional.  The crew races against time to get it working to rescue a mining colony from the Klingons.

I went back and watched a few episodes from the first season while I waited for my friends to give the okay to watching the last batch of season two (which should be tonight).  So far I'm going to stand by my assessment that I enjoyed the first season more than the second, though I find both seasons pretty solid Trek seasons.

The one thing I will note about these first four episode is that it's amost as if Discovery has two pilots.  The first two episodes are more of a prologue than anything, as it mostly sets up the characters of Bernham and Saru, as well as the Klingon war setting.  Another Star Trek series would probably explain all of this in exposition, or a five minute section before the opening credits.  Discovery gets a bit more into the dirt than that, which is probably just an excuse to get the series more action focused.  I have no problem with a Star Trek series carving a distinct identity though.  And if I ever want all of those diplomatic talks and table meetings, I always have TNG to go back to.

Once we get to Context is for Kings, it almost feels like the show is resetting.  We're given new characters that will serve as our main cast, and given new scientific ideas to explore.  It doesn't feel like a brand new show, but it's not exactly in full swing yet.  But I love the touch and feel aspect of exploration in these episodes, as the characters are introduced to the spores and they discover something new and game changing about them with each episode.

But while I hope to get through the last run of season two tonight, I have to deal with reality soon in the upcoming weeks, so I'm not sure when I'll finish season one.  I won't go into details, but hopefully I'll be back up and running in full steam in a few months.

Doomsday thebtskink

Doctor Who

Revival Series 1 - Part 1

Rose - Rose, a normal woman living in London, finds herself attacked by living mannequins and saved by a mysterious man known only as "The Doctor."  Intrigued by him, Rose digs deeper only to find he is an alien time traveler.

The End of the World - The Doctor takes his new companion Rose to five billion years in the future to witness the destruction of the Earth...from a party of a satellite with a view of the planet's last hours.  But there are party crashers in the form of small mechanical spiders, which begin murdering guests.

The Unquiet Dead - The Doctor and Rose investigate gas-like beings who are possessing corpses in 1869.  With the help of famed author Charles Dickens, they seek to communicate with the creatures.

Aliens of London - The Doctor returns Rose to her time...twelve months too late.  While she attempts to re-establish her relationship with her family and boyfriend, a UFO crash lands and the Doctor investigates what may be humanity's first contact with an alien species.

My Doctor Who knowledge is limited.  The only Who products I have seen being through Rifftrax, namely the Peter Cushing movies (which apparently is fake Doctor Who) and the 80's TV special The Five Doctors which didn't even have five Doctors in it.  Also King Kong Escapes, which has someone named Doctor Who in it.  It always seemed like something I'd enjoy if I got into it, though my OCD would always nag at me if I started watching a TV series which is notoriously missing nearly one hundred episodes (it still doesn't forgive me because Mystery Science Theater has one lonely episode missing).  But it was probably a matter of time before I started to dip my toe in it.  Revival series first, because it's actually not lost.

So, I believe this starts out in 2005.  Doctor Who had been off the air for about sixteen years or so, aside from an attempted revival TV movie in 1996.  From the looks of things, the revival series tried to make the Doctor a bit sexier and with more youth appeal (for example, he no longer dresses like a hobbit schoolteacher), casting Christopher Eccleston, AKA Destro from GI Joe/Malekith from Thor 2.  Eccleston is very game for Doctor quirk and snark, and while I don't think he's entirely an ideal lead, he does grow on you like an infection and he has a decent chemistry with his co-star/companion Billie Piper as Rose, which keeps things fun.

I myself have always gravitated to TV shows about ordinary people on an extraordinary journey out of their control.  I watched a lot of Lost in Space growing up, and during my teen-to-twenties I was a heavy binger on Quantum Leap and Sliders, and more recently the series Timeless.  Doctor Who seems to be cut from the same cloth, though the Doctor isn't exactly "ordinary."  So I find myself using Rose more as my own focal point and using her as my rock, because seeing this fantastical journey through her eyes is more of where I find my entertainment value.  I take the Doctor being more of a plot convenience that sucked her into it more than anything, which could change should the Doctor gain more development.  I only know snippets about the character, like him being a "Time Lord" or some other nonsense babble.  I have no clue what a "Time Lord" is other than some alien that travels through time and has James Bond like regeneration powers that make him look like someone else (I assume this is true of all Brits, honestly), but this revival series hasn't exactly established them outside of a name drop really.

The episodes themselves are hokey fun.  They're fakey and silly, but there's enough cheek to the show's attitude that makes it work.  The first episode, Rose, has a lot of rushed elements to it, like a lot of bad pilots, and it also relies on the characters being impulsive to move it forward (Rose running into the Tardis at the end because why not being the big "WOW she would dive off a cliff on a whim" moment of the episode, and she spends most of the next episode being mopey at her impulsiveness).  I think I enjoyed the next three more, with The Unquiet Dead being the peak of these first four episodes for me, because it brought me back to those silly, individual Sliders episodes that just existed in a bottle and didn't matter the following week.  I had a lot of fun with that one.

The fourth episode is part one of a two parter, though I wasn't too into the story as a whole.  The idea of a first contact storyline held promise, though I felt it never really stuck the landing while it's humor fell fairly crass as well (the aliens like to fart a lot).  I enjoyed the idea of Rose returning to her own time, though in an oopsie daisy by the Doctor it's a year later and she's now a missing person.  My one thought about that is that I think it came too soon in the season.  Rose had only had two adventures with the Doctor before coming back home.  It seemed to me that more of a buffer would have made this land.

It's a good show.  I'll keep at it to see if it ever becomes a great one.  Maybe I'll mingle some classic Who in also.

Lost in Space

2018 Season 2 - Part 1

Shipwrecked - Seven months after the Robinsons were separated from the Resolute, the Jupiter 2 is stranded on a thin island on a planet.  When their crops are accidentally destroyed, John concocts a plan to turn the ship into a raft and sail to a different region of the planet.

Precipice - With the Jupiter 2 stuck above an alien anomaly in the sea, Maureen and Penny find themselves trapped beneath the ship and the duo must find a way to get back to their family.

Echoes - The crew of the Jupiter 2 make their way back to the Resolute, only to discover it has been abandoned.  The Robinsons search for clues as to what happened on board, while Dr. Smith feeds her own agenda.

Scarecrow - The Robinsons, Don West, and Dr. Smith are reunited with the rest of their colony and each do their part to get the Resolute functional and the rest of the families to the Alpha Centuri star system.  However, Will tries to communicate with the alien robot designated "Scarecrow," while John discovers that a corrosive alien substance may threaten the future of their mission.

I make it no secret that I hate most of what Netflix does.  I think they miss the point of what makes TV fun and often just take one story, stretch it beyond comprehension, and break it into pieces and call it good.  It bores me.  If a TV series is to be serialized, I'd much prefer the show to use the individual episodes to tell their own individual stories that serve that larger narrative.  Instead most shows like this dick around for an hour and toss a tepid plot point at the viewer at the end of each episode to make it seem like something happened (The Walking Dead was king of this).

Thank god for Lost in Space.  At long last, a show that does serialized storytelling right.

Lost in Space tells one arc for its season, but each episode is an individual entity with an obstacle to overcome.  The episodes aren't afraid to tell a story, rather than most shows which have the characters mope around about the ramifications of the thirty seconds of plot from the previous week.  I can identify individual episodes of Lost in Space, and tell you which episodes stand out as favorites.  I can't say the same for a lot of other crap on Netflix.

Also helping is that the show is a fun reinterpretation of that childhood favorite show of mine way back when.  I love the spirit of adventure that inhabits the new Lost in Space, and it's not just in tune with the original episodes of 1965, but done with such gusto and heart.  I especially loved the first episode of this season, which saw the crew find their inner "Swiss Family Robinson" and turn the Jupiter into a sailboat.  It brought back memories of one of the original series' best episodes, The Hungry Sea, where the Robinsons and Major West navigated some rough waters in the Chariot.

I find myself less thrilled as the Jupiter finds its way back to the Resolute.  Echoes is a fun little empty hall, horror themed episode, but seeing the Robinsons reunite with the rest of the colony didn't do much for me.  I liked the use of the colony in the previous season, but so far I don't see much potential cor bringing them back.  Especially when the essence of Lost in Space is the Robinsons, West, and Dr. Smith isolated from the rest of the universe having a crazy adventure.  This season started with the show embracing that, then seemed to get cold feet about it.

But the show has built up a lot of good will with me, and me and my friends can't wait to finish up the new season next week.  Can't wait to see where the wild ride takes us!

Doctor Who

Revival Series 1 - Part 2

World War Three - The Doctor is blamed for deaths throughout the British ministry caused by alien infiltration, while the aliens attempt to spark nuclear war for their own financial gain.  The Doctor and Rose seek to find out the origins of the aliens to get a leg up on them.

Dalek - The TARDIS is routed into Utah circa 2012, where the Doctor discovers he has captive a Dalek, a member of a hostile race and possibly the last surviving member of his species from the Time War.  The Doctor implores them to kill it while Rose seeks to free it.

The Long Game - Joined by their new companion Adam, the Doctor and Rose take him to the height of human civilization, 200,000 years in the future on a space station that uplinks people's brains online.  Originally intending for his companions to relax and explore, the Doctor soon suspects that something is nefarious exists on the station they've landed on.  Meanwhile, Adam tries to upgrade himself future technology and use it for his own gain.

"Ladies, gentlemen, multisex, undecided, or robot..."

I've kinda taken to watching an episode of Doctor Who before going to bed while I wait for melatonin to work its magic.  It's a fun way to close out the night, because it has a warm nostalgia vibe despite having never watched this show before.  I wish there were more adventure of the week shows like this on air today.  Often I really don't care enough to follow lengthy storylines from episode to episode.

I was iffy on the two parter that I split up between the last batch and this one, but one thing I will say is that I enjoyed part two more than I did part one.  There were segments that I thought were clever and fun, like the aliens playing hide and seek with Rose and the mum from Shaun of the Dead and also later on when the Doctor is trying to figure out what planet they're from, so he has Rose and Shaun's mother list out various things they know about them, to which the Doctor exclaims "Narrows it down!" after each piece of knowledge.  I also got a good laugh at the scene where the Doctor is cornered and says "If you're going to pin somebody, don't pin them against a lift" (or something like that) then jumps into an elevator.

I also quite liked the end segment between Rose and her mother, in which Rose promised that since the TARDIS is a time machine, she'll be back in ten seconds.  Her mother counts to ten, but the TARDIS doesn't return.  This could be quite ominous, because it implies something happens to Rose and she never sees her mother again, but it could also imply the Doctor made another oopsie daisy and who knows when she'll be back.  I still contend that a return home for Rose happened too early for this to have a full effect, though it started to seem to me as if the reason they rushed it out of the way was to offer maybe a slight sense of closure between Rose and her boyfriend, who she just kind of abandoned in a heartbeat in the first episode.  By the next episode it started to seem like this was pushed out of the way so Rose could have a long standing flirtatious romance with another regular companion character, Adam, introduced in the very next episode...but to put it simply, that was a big fat NOPE by episode seven.  Still, maybe it was meant to make her flirting with men seem less trampy if she didn't have some dude waiting for her that DIDN'T have a time machine.  Adam's arc is kind of weird and unconventional, but it works.  I won't miss the son of a bitch, though (unless he comes back as a villain at some point).  Rose's chemistry with the Doctor is serviceable enough for now.

Also noteworthy about this episode is that so soon after seeing Shaun of the Dead co-star Penelope Wilton on the series did we find Shaun himself, Simon Pegg, playing a villain.  I was a little taken aback...was this coincidence?  Probably.  I imagine they are both very well liked in the UK, even not taking that particular film as part of the equation.  The episode was filmed in 2005, and Shaun of the Dead had come out the year before, so Pegg was fairly well known for both it and Spaced at the time.  It's interesting to think of this quaint time when Pegg's career was blossoming, before he reunited with Edgar Wright on Hot Fuzz and The World's End and even joined huge franchises like Mission:  Impossible and Star Trek.  It's fun to see a little role he did before all of that to remind me that he was once this quirky little actor I liked seeing pop up every once in a while.  He's pretty good in the episode, though the episode is not great.  It's just kind of an episode where something bad is happening and the Doctor conveniently bumps into it.  The Adam subplot of the episode is more interesting than the A-plot, but it's given the short end of the stick.

That leaves one episode I haven't quite touched upon, Dalek.  It's notable for not only bringing the Doctor's most famous foes into the revamped series, but it also sheds a bit more light on what exactly this "Time War" the series has been teasing is all about, alluding that the Time Lords and the Daleks were battling and wiped each other out, leaving the Doctor and the sole Dalek as the last of their respective kind.  I kind of doubt that's true, though I imagine all of this makes more sense to people more familiar with classic Doctor Who lore (I might get BritBox for a few months and check out some back catalog stuff).  Time will tell on that, but I think Dalek is clearly the best episode of the first seven.  It's a fairly strong tale of two scarred war vets from opposing sides, and I like Rose's compassionate point of view getting in between them.  If I had one complaint for the episode, I'd say the human villain is weak and underdeveloped.  It seems like they should have put more time into this character that the plot of the episode rides on.  Instead his character is arrogant collecting guy with money that "owns the internet," whatever the hell that means.

Halfway through this season so far.  This show is fun.