shrewd.buddha

That opening scene: why? I suppose I am not the type whose anticipation is whetted by a foregone conclusion. How many episodes (or seasons) will it take to get there? Will the actors even look the same? Was it a hallucination? (There were a lot of those ... which tends to get confusing, and exhausting, after a while.) It was okay - but not exactly frightening or riveting. Too many fake-outs. And what would be the logic of bringing a certified homicidal telepath whose cooperation is critical to the success of your mission? Maybe the problem was that there were so many plot lines thrown against the wall in the first episode: dying planet, a plague, alien contact , genetically modified humans, dangerous telepaths, family drama, mysterious absentee captain, etc. Television pickings are somewhat slim this time of year, so we will continue to watch ... but I was expecting more after all the marketing hype.

I felt some sympathy for the actor this season. The Danny Rand character really got sidelined with losing the fist and injuries. But sidelining the character really improved the season (along with reducing the number of episodes). When Danny was forcing offering the fist to Colleen, it really seemed like Danny was taking the backseat in his own show .. but then again, it is a show called Iron Fist - - not Danny Rand as Iron Fist. Having the show revolve around the legend and concept of the Iron Fist works much better. We get to change the focus to the Wing/Knight team-up and the messy Meachum family dynamics. I blame the writing and directing (and probably casting). The actor was great in Game of Thrones. It reminds me how someone like Nicholas Cage can get nominated for an Oscar when working with the right team ... but usually ends up getting nominated for Razzies, otherwise. Same with Halle Barry, Michael Fassbender (and many more).

Here is my cynical take on this: The insurance company will save millions, maybe billions, if they can shut down such settlements and avoid a precedent being set. Otherwise, they will be on the hook for paying out for liver transplants from that point forward. Similar to how some car companies 'do the math' and determine it is cheaper to settle some wrongful death lawsuits instead of paying for a massive recall of their vehicles in order to fix a potentially deadly defect in the airbags.

I still don't quite get Joy's over-the-top anger issues with Danny and Ward, but I thought the actress did a good job this episode - - her scenes with Mary and Ward were near-riveting. And Ward is stealing almost every scene he is in, also. I suppose good actors make the most of whatever dialogue they are given. But Danny... ugh. It was almost as if Misty was looking at Danny and then back to Coleen with thought balloon saying: "Really? You picked this guy..?"

I have to say: despite Danny continuing to be the weak link, Iron Fist is vastly more 'watchable' than Jessica Jones (season2) or Luke Cage (any season). We do a lot of eye rolling, but have decided that "somewhat silly" trumps "outright boring" any day of the week. We never finished JJ season 2 and never got past three episodes of any of Luke Cage - - despite their better reviews. As for the eye-rolling stuff: It must be a combination of the writing and the acting that makes Danny come off like the Greenwich Village Idiot. He acts, and reacts, like an impulsive eight-year old kid. When he quickly flipped through Joy's documents and just signed - Argh! . Despite being a secondary character, Ward is much more interesting to watch. (At least I am able to relate to Ward's behavior and he does not make me want to hurl rocks at the screen.) And it still seems as if Danny just randomly won the Iron Fist lottery. I can see why Davos is so pissed. There is not a glimmer of wisdom or evidence of years of martial arts training and discipline in anything that Danny says or does. And the actor just cannot pull off the badass-wearing-a-hoodie image that he seems to to trying for. So, we are in for Iron Fist Season 2 - - but not for Danny. Ward, Colleen, Davos, and even Joy and crazy-new-girl make the show worth watching.

That was the most awkward, clumsy serial killer attack / fight I think I have ever seen on television. I guess the blame should go to the director -> writers -> actors. So many WtF's.. Did not Joan receive fight training from Sherlock way back in the first season? Are the doors in the brownstone made of balsa wood? Was the serial killer trying to channel the spirit of Michael Myers from 'Halloween' with the slo-mo pursuit? What happened to quick-thinking, resourceful Joan Watson? I would have given her a pass if she had tried several options, but discovered that the serial killer had anticipated every one and she was trapped. What I really wished had happened was this: Joan discovers she is trapped by serial killer guy who has anticipated almost every avenue of escape. She realizes he is going to take his time after disabling her, maybe having a broken leg or ankle. He allows her to hobble away in an attempt to escape, like a wounded bird. Little does the serial killer know that Joan is actually leading him to the one room in the brownstone that he did not account for: the 'danger room' where Sherlock and Joan have been putting everything that might be hazardous to a new baby in the house ...

I did not follow the logic there. So, you inherit a billion dollars and have to pay taxes on it ... But you just inherited a billion dollars, so... are you not a billionaire?

It is still surreal to have new episodes during August. This is the time of year for burn-offs and bad summer television: The Dome, Salvation, Whatever that Halle Barry Show Was. Note to producers: When your show has the same name as the lead character, it is not at all likely that said character will be killed. So there was not a lot of tension - just a frustration that Sherlock did not take the simplest route: stay indoors during the 24-hour period and prove the prediction wrong. Tho I mostly like Elementry - the show - I can see why it struggles ratings-wise. There is little to no action and both lead characters are deliberately deadpan. There is just a lot of exposition, people looking at files, looking at computer screens, talking to suspects and Sherlock conducting the occasional wacky experiment.

Finally saw it ... ugh. The only thing that saved it from being turned off was that the action picked up when The Wand made its appearance. So, with more races, you get more racist assholes. Great.

This one did not have as much spark as the first. It did not help that the main character came off like a spoiled rich kid who kept getting second chances. And the dialogue was flat. Guillermo del Toro has the ability to make cliched material feel fresh - - his directing was sorely missed. In fairness, the characters did say that they were not not as heroic as Stacker Pentacost and did not have the ability to give great speeches. They were correct.

I am completely not interested in the adventures of Anna, Space Preacher. Apparently she is a neglectful mother, bad wife, inept counselor and poor judge of character. Her talents seem to be speech writing and smiling while frowning. I would rather have watched any other character instead of Anna's space memorial scene. And watch out, Melba/Clarissa : bad things happen to people who try to mess with Space Jon Snow.

She wallows in self pity as if her powers came with a hunchback or scaly green skin. "Oh no! I'm a tall attractive woman who has the ability to defend herself. Look away! Look away!!" The story of a lawyer, ceo, etc being forced out by their partners has been done to death. After this episode, we have decided to skip to the end and see if there is anything there that would make us want to look back to see what led up to it. I cannot take ten more episodes of this slow-paced dreariness.

Not sure we are going to make it thru this season ... so slow .. such heavy-handedness on all the same heavy-handed issues from the first season : guilt and grief from family's death, crappy adoptive family, I think I have lost sympathy for Jessica's alcoholic, asshole lifestyle. It is not helping that she is not as witty this season. Actually, no one is fun or snarky. And Malcom being everyone's eager personal assistant in exchange for verbal abuse is not enjoyable. Jessica should be left to sweep up her own apartment. We are giving JJ one more episode. Then we are going to skip to the end and decide if we care enough to see what led up to it. The other option is to put in in the Luke Cage category of unfinished Netflix series.

I'm not feeling the Melba story line : jealous sister, unappreciated daughter, self-taught saboteur. Those flashbacks did not help, either - but it was nice to see Julie again. Fortunately, Melba left a nice confession on the phone of the man she killed - but referring to Mao as 'Daddy' was embarrassing. Why is security so lax in the future? First on the Rocci, then with Melba. Facial recognition and DNA analysis should have prevented her from ever getting on the UN ship to begin with. Melba should have been toast by now. (It's just too easy..)

I gave this show another shot after losing interest early in Season 2. But this show is still a wannabe soap opera with actors wearing colored contacts and pretending to be robots - and not doing a very good job of it. The whole racism angle could have been done with any type of life form : aliens, mutants, etc. There is just not enough actual science, or even science fiction, to hold my interest. I am not interested in androids falling in love, becoming terrorists, or whatever. The show completely ignores anything to do with how and why such androids would be manufactured in the first place. Why not self-driving cars or automated smart houses? Why do *all* the androids have hair, fingernails, sex organs, etc? If they pose a danger, why would androids be allowed to be manufactured to look like individual humans?

Interesting developments.. though it is annoying that there is a world changing event happening and there are still groups who only want war. And has there ever been time when the governments of the world sent out religious leaders to help explain or investigate some phenomenon? They are really stretching the believability of minister Anna's involvement. Holden being at the center of every event is also getting a bit hard to believe. Even John Snow does not pop up everywhere in Game of Thrones.

I was not exactly excited to see yet another prequel, but some of the previews looked fun, so we went. The sets looked impressive. And the acting was as good as it needed to be. But the story was terrible (in my opinion). It felt completely farmed out to whatever director and writer were available to get their Star Wars product to market for the summer of 2018. The mission statement seemed to be : Take every memorable phrase that Han said and either reverse it or repeat it. Take everything that Han owned and make it iconic. Also, turn Lando's wearing a cape into a thing. There was no sense of time passing. Han looked and acted exactly the same before he enlisted in the Imperial Army and the three years afterwards - which transpired in about ten seconds. The great train robbery : We should put the highly volatile, highly valuable MacGuffin on the slowest, shakiest transportation as possible. Also we need to leave a body or two at the end of every caper. What was the motivation of Val (Thandie Newton) to sacrifice herself? She was a thief, not a rebel or a soldier. "I just want all of you to end up as rich as possible without me." The theme of "kill the female companion" was again repeated with the next caper and L3-37. The grieving process took about ten seconds before the characters were back to making jokes. Ugh. And any character who was a pilot might as well have killed themselves because we all knew who was going to end up being the pilot before the end of the mission. And the Kessel Run was measured in distance instead of time?!? Why expound on what was probably a mistake on the part of George Lucas? Why would you brag about "the fastest ship in the galaxy" because it can find the best shortcuts? Everything about the mission was a factor of time : the MacGuffin would go 'boom' if they could not make the trip quickly. And no one considered uploading the navigational system into the spaceship before L3-37 'died'? Did they not understand how computers/androids work? The Crimson Dawn (Tide?) leader 'reveal' meant nothing to me. I just figured it was another person of the same species, like another Wookie instead of Chewbacca. The idea of someone coming back from the dead seems a like silly comic-book type of development. Oh no, why did we kill off our super cool villain? Let's use magic to bring them back!

Finally saw it - and thought it was very well done in terms of acting, special effects and sets. There were a lot of leaps in logic and believably, tho : getting full memories from a dna sample, a complex neural interface the size of coin. Just the technology to create sentient A.I.'s in a virtual world would be ground breaking. I was hoping for a Black Mirror that was more fun, and this was - at the beginning. But it got more disturbing as it went on. The socially awkward nerd we sympathized with at first was revealed to be a type of secret serial killer, child murderer, monster, etc. (At least in a virtual world, populated with sentient AI's.) It appeared to me that only the sentient VR characters on the ship that made it to the worm hole survived. So, the woman from marketing, and any other co-workers Daly 'created' would have perished? For myself, I think a more satisfying ending would have been for Daly's private version of the game to get exposed to the public version and have his co-workers see his twisted fantasies. I did not give the Daly character a pass because the game was not 'real'. His desires and rage were real. And the virtual AI's he tortured had real personalities and memories. With his magical technology, Daly could have made simplified, fantasy characters, but he chose not to.

This episode was a sharp left turn and slowdown from the previous episodes. There were a lot of separate locations, a lot of separated characters, and even additional characters, some of whom made a quick exit. I was not even sure what ship Melba, the spy/bomber, was working on - - there were so many moving parts in this episode. I did not like the documentary story line. At all. It feels like every show, at some point, goes the route of having a documentary film crew show up to cause strife among whatever group is involved. I find it hard to believe that Amos would ever agree to participate - especially if he has a past he does not want uncovered. Why would the minister woman (Anna ?) get transferred to a ship that was investigating the Protomolecule Ring? That just seemed like a illogical stretch to keep the actress/character involved in the current story.

It was fun. And I was happy to be surprised by parts of the movie - Deadpool's super team certainly did not follow any expected route. I also liked the Juggernaut theme song and the Bond-like opening credits. But ... it suffers in comparison to the first movie. The first was like lightning in a bottle - and there is no way to be groundbreaking again. These are a few things that hurt the movie (for me) : Killing the girlfriend in the first act - - it started the movie off on a down note. This was the girlfriend Deadpool spent the first movie trying to save. And we got the trope of the girlfriend getting killed immediately after they made plans to start a family. The directing did not seem as inspired as the first. The amazing chain of events in the convoy car fight of the first movie - which became the slo-mo opening sequence - holds up to multiple viewings. There seemed to be a sense of "let's not screw up the franchise." I was hoping for more reaction to Cable saying he was from the future - Deadpool just accepted the entire time travel concept so easily. That seemed like a major missed opportunity. There were too many moments when Deadpool took breaks from trying to save the kid - and saving people from the kid. Cable could have killed FireFist many times over during those moments. And the kid could have killed the headmaster multiple times before Deadpool intervened. The staging felt a bit sloppy. I was enjoying the movie again by the end, tho. But what about the post-credits scenes? Did Deadpool really save Vanessa? Or was that just fun, non-canon film footage?

So, Deke just disappears between scenes and no one even mentions it? Did they forget because he never existed? (Not possible, because every single thing he had done before his disappearance would have changed. And if time had shifted, no one would remember there was a frozen Fitz in the freezer.) Speaking of a frozen Fitz in the freezer - that sort of undercut the death of Fitz . It was not as significant when you have a spare - and after the death, you immediately begin talking about the spare, for the first time. Plus, you get an opportunity to repeat the very special, 100th episode wedding of FitzSimmons .. maybe .. after another series of roadblocks. Coulson did not die, which also felt like a cop-out. We had to endure ten or more episodes of everyone angst-ing over the looming Death of Coulson. He was not even on his death bed. As a comic book character, there are lots of ways for Coulson to be saved (at the very last second, of course.) It sort of irked me that Talbot/Graviton sat a huge alien spaceship on top of Chicago - and we see that not all of the aliens are dead on board - and yet the AoS heroes just fly off to Tahiti and then off to search for Frozen Fitz as if everything has just been tied up with a pretty bow. (And they are still the Most Wanted Criminals on the planet.)

Unfortunately a lot of shows fall into this lazy, musical-chairs style of writing : introduce around eight main characters and have everything revolve around them. It is interesting that the actors playing Brainiac and Daron Vex also had very similar roles on Da Vinci's Demons.

Agree with everyone - the show is really firing on all cylinders. All the characters are hitting their stride, while still speaking and acting like themselves. Just a couple of nitpicks : With all the gorgeous effects for the spaceships and planets, the Protomolecule Hybrids look a bit .. lame? Maybe a person in a costume as a start - with CGI added - would look better. After all these weeks of waiting for Errinwright to be found out, his take-down felt a bit anticlimactic.

It was odd having Gibbs immediately back in the lab. I almost got a vibe of "ding dong, the witch is dead." And, was the previous episode that introduced Kasie used as a way to get Abby's blessing of the new character in the lab? Wonder if everyone knew they were setting the stage for a replacement at the time? I was expecting a lot of guest stars as temporary lab techs. Usually job vacancies are handled with postings, applications, interviews, etc., ..but since this is the fictional NCIS, run by only around six people, we just skip to the parts where the new character's quirks are revealed - apparently she will be an astronaut nerd. This week's case did not seem to be resolved very cleanly. They never even bothered to identify the actual killer of the Coast Guard agent. How much did the wife know? Was the wife an accomplice or was she being conned?

That was a very well acted, but very sad, extended episode. But of course this was what it was always going to come to, in one way or another. Just some random observations: Crozier and Hickey (and Goodsir) appear to look much healthier than the other men. A coincidence? Are they just lucky? That crazy British folly : a tent for every man? Wooden cabinets and tables in Goodsir's tent? Where are their priorities? Did they find the passage they were looking for? (Despite it being iced over.) Will anyone ever know? It is interesting how most very 'religious' people do not appear to believe their own hype when it comes to dying and 'going to a better place'. I was confused when there was an announcement at the end of the episode for "scenes from next week's season finale." How could there be another season?