With the series finale of Adventure Time looming, Noel and Kate take extra time this week to dive deep with the show’s penultimate batch of episodes, spotlighting “Blenanas”, “Jake the Starchild”, “Temple of Mars”, and “Gumbaldia” and speculating about what the final arc may bring (and how very not ready we are to say goodbye to Ooo). Before that, however, there’s plenty of TV to discuss. First up, we look at the week’s reality and comedies, including the season 10 premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the finales of Fresh Off the Boat and Speechless, and another terrific Atlanta. Then we move over to the drama and genre offerings, including another fun The Good Fight, the finale of The X-Files, and strong installments of Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, and iZombie. What are you hoping to see in the final episodes of Adventure Time? Has iZombie run into new trouble with its brain balance? Reach out and let us know what you think.
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Spotlight: Adventure Time: “Blenanas”, “Jake the Starchild”, “Temple of Mars”, and “Gumbaldia” (1:24:43)
Our Week in Reality and Comedy
RuPaul’s Drag Race premiere (28:08)
Fresh Off the Boat finale (34:20)
Speechless finale (40:51)
Atlanta (46:03)
Our Week in Drama and Genre
The Good Fight (55:44)
The X-Files finale (1:02:00)
Legends of Tomorrow (1:05:42)
Black Lightning (1:09:51)
iZombie (1:13:16)
Music Featured: “Somewhere Out There” as performed by Ian Chen, Forrest Wheeler, and Randall Park on Fresh Off the Boat; “Money” by Leikeli47; “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden
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Is Claire Foy more famous than Matt Smith across the pond? I’ve seen her in Wolf Hall (she kept calling Cromwell “Cremwell”), but that’s it for either of them.
There are lots of people who file hopeless lawsuits against larger institutions (I know an attorney who has to deal with them), although they tend to do so pro se.
Harvey Weinstein was bold enough to sometimes do things when other people were around, although most of these incidents came about when he was alone with a woman (though often luring them in under the belief that another woman would be present).
This episode of Atlanta was directed by Amy Seimetz. I recommend watching her (so far) only feature “Sun Don’t Shine” back-to-back with Kelly Reichardt’s “River of Grass”.
Kate’s problem with iZombie reminded me a lot of a point that often rubbed people the wrong way about Dollhouse: That the main character didn’t really exist on-screen since her personality was overwritten every episode.
I never had that issue with Echo/Caroline nor Eliza Dushku’s performance. I thought she actually did a good job giving the audiences peaks of Caroline’s curiosity, stubbornness and rejection of hierarchy and the status quo in Echo’s interactions with her surroundings.
That being said: iZombie never really clicked for me the way Dollhouse did. I liked the characters well enough, especially the connection between Ravi and Liv. But I hated Major’s storyline right from the beginning. That old “We have to protect you from the truth and by doing so we will make your life dangerous and miserable” trope. It never worked out well for anyone. And I simply expect better from the man who gave us Veronica Mars.
But what really pissed me off was Blaine. Maybe he reminded me too much of Spike (which I never really liked – I merely accepted his presence), maybe it was just the fact that Liv didn’t shoot him after she witnessed him killing her (kind of) boyfriend. At that point I tuned out. It just didn’t make any sense in my mind. Plus: It was clear to me that the show was too much in love with David Anders to get rid of his character any time soon. He basically had no code he lived by which, in my mind, made him unreliable and therefor unfit to ever have any dependable interaction or coalition with our heroes. Unlike, let’s say, Banshee’s Kai and Justified’s Boyd who had their own set of rules and who would be able to work with you if there was a bigger fish to fry. I never felt like that was a possibility with Blaine which made him instantly boring to me.
And since this comment is already way too long: You talked about bad pacing in season long story arcs a few weeks back in your podcast. I think in context to The Flash.
Did any of you ever watch MTV’s Teen Wolf? That show was a hot mess. I never have seen another show with a pacing as bad as that. I mean like REALLY, REALLY bad.
For all the things I love about the show, in most of the 10 episode arcs the viewers and our heroes only learned around episode 8 who the bad guy and what the threat was. So they had episode 9 to find out how she or he wanted to achieve their goal and to find a way to stop the bad thing from happening. Episode 10 defeated the bad guy, had a short moment of happiness and a set-up for the next arc. It wouldn’t have been this bad if they didn’t regularly waste about 3 episodes with some excuse to split up the team. Some of this was due to movie shootings or injuries of Dylan O’Brien which – you know, fair enough. Some of it on the other hand: I have no freaking idea…