CletusMusashi

Once upon a time, there was an amazingly clever show called She Spies. It was a brilliant parody of action movie cliches, tough-girl-character cliches, silly high concept TV show premises, and really just delighted in trope-bustingly hilarious plots and banter while making full use of a very talented cast. For exactly one season. And then the network fired the comedic head writers, told the others to quit trying to be funny, and made season 2 exactly the kind of show that season 1 had been poking fun at.

Tonight after work I just barely managed to beat a red light, and realized that for decades now, whenever that happens, I have been quoting to myself in a Dan Akroyd voice saying "The light was yellow, sir."

Shit, pretty much everything I know about finances comes from that movie. Which is why I am not an accountant.

It's a great movie on so many levels. Beautiful choreography, yet with an overall look that makes it a perfect grimy urban period piece. Great cast of big names, all of whom are perfect for the part- no gratuitous stunt casting. Humor that fits the characters. Car chases that somehow never degenerate into formulaic wastes of time. And the music is not only as good as it gets, but it is actually relevant to the core plot.

It's probably my favorite Christmas film.

Loved the flashbacks about Brainwave's origin story. Hard to believe he never destroyed those tapes, or at least had them converted to something that he could encrypt somewhere, but, questionable venue or not, I'm glad we got to see that. How did he become okay with what he can do now, though? Working in a crowded, high stress environment at the hospital? Sitting in meeting with a bunch of evil, noxious personalities? I would expect him to gravitate toward a much more reclusive lifestyle.

Overall very good progression this week. Lots of storylines moving forward, and a a lot of quietly scary moments. However, I'm not quite sure why Barbara was surprised by the staff glowing and floating, but actually shocked enough to start screaming and dropping things once it turned into an inanimate metal stick on the floor. That was a very strange way to do the scene.

I was very excited about it until I found out they couldn't get Neil. That was the only one I voted for that won.

"Steele and Stone" would have made this worth the price of admission all by itself. I immediately had to stop the episode and rewatch that. But the rest of the ep was really good too. They even found a way to make Dorothy scenes watchable. All it took was for Jane to turn into Sara Silverman for half the episode.

Unless maybe it's, like, an actual giant lizard that he feeds people to when he's angry.

I think most of Dr. Ito's housing budget went into his humungous evil basement mancave. Poor guy even had to sell the insides of his books in order to pay for it.

Hard not to think of Buffy while watching this. Apparently they've even got the same sewer system as Sunnydale. I do like that Pat knows that it is problematic to keep all this a secret from Barbara. Did Pat watch Buffy? Does he remember how pissed off Joyce got at Giles? Or is he just being a normal person? Either way, I respect his concern, even though I suspect that the secret will be discovered by one person at a time, as usual, probably starting with the younger brother who will probably become some sort of a food-theme-based Green Lantern. Cindy is a good, mean villain. I don't know how she's going to be sustainable long-term, knowing as much as she does about the protagonists, unless maybe Brainwave Junior gives her partial amnesia. But for now, I'm liking her.

Yeah, count me in among those who are not thrilled with Dorothy. Besides the already-mentioned complaints, all of which I agree with (especially the question of why she is still so childish... is she supposed to have an extreme learning disability? Because she seems to learn things on-camera just fine...) I am also not a fan of the "magical hybrid child" trope. Plus, that accent is fucking horrible.

I tried watching the pilot when it was newer, and fizzled out on it pretty quickly because the Larry flashbacks bore the hell out of me. Eventually I gave it another shot, since I was running out of things on DC-D to watch. It's a great show. Sometimes very moving, often very clever, often fascinatingly stupid, and very often very funny. Larry is still boring as hell, though. He's okay as the straight man (comedically speaking) in an ensemble scene, but by himself he just drags the show to a slowdown. It's not the actor's fault. His character just isn't written very dynamically. Yet I really liked the version of him that we saw in the "Titans" episode. What the hell happened to that guy? Overall, though, thumbs up. I'm glad there's a Season 2 for me to watch now.

I seriously question this version of Harvey qualifying for the insanity defense. But, I suppose an iffy court judgement is not an impossible one. Especially on a show with talking plants, giant man-sharks, and flamboyant clay monsters. God, I'm gonna miss seeing these goofy characters every week...

Not as good as last season's finale. For one thing, not that many jokes. And for another, no big revelations or cliffhangers... the only significant payoff was Kite Man realizing that Ivy doesn't want the same future that he does. Which was fine, as a way of getting him the hell out of the way of the rest of the cast, but should never have been necessary in the first place if Poison Kitey hadn't grown into such a plot tumor to begin with. I do still hope we get a season 3. But if not, we were lucky to get the first two.

I sort of have to respect Gambler for not even bothering with a paper-thin disguise like most of the others. Couldn't Courtney at least tie her hair back or something? And he likes cats. Even though tigresses don't like him. This was pretty much the ep I've been waiting for. I've enjoyed most of the character buildup, and a good bit of the drama, but the core premise of this show is supposed to be a team of costumed heroes battling it out with a team of fun villains, and, finally, we not only got it this week, we got lots of it.

So, can Kite Man go away now? I mean, I loved him as an occasional comedy relief character, but giving him a ginormous extended romance/tragedy arc in which nobody in the audience was even rooting for him was a questionable plot choice. Now, not only would laughing at him not be as funny, but his novelty has worn off as well. I get it. He's a doofus with a kite, and it was hilarious the first 900 times. Now let Ivy go back to spending most of her time with the main cast, please.

Maybe as the Joker memories flooded in, and his other mind fought against them, he wound up filtering out the ones he least wanted to remember. Such as how much he was hurt (in his extremely limited asshole way) by Harley leaving him. Or by finding out that Batman was just another rich kid with daddy issues.

Although I didn't like the introductory episode of the parademons, they've stuck with that storyline enough to make it worthwhile. Ivy isn't as great with Kite man as she is with Harley, but even sub-par Ivy is still very good. I do miss KIng Shark and Clayface. Nothing they've done with the Joker has been predictable. I'm not sure I actually buy his romantic change of heart or his sudden friendly concern for Harley, but he could be playing up realtively minor feelings in order to not got his head 'sploded. Manipulation, lies, and moral inconsistency are all normal tools for him, so why not? Gotta ask how the chemical vat mutated his clothing, though. Riddler doesn't seem to be mind-controlled, so I doubt he'll be happy as second banana for much longer. There has to be a betrayal in the works. Probably he just wanted Psycho to be in charge of as much as possible before taking it from him. Superman ought to be able to destroy the demons pretty much all by himself, right? I imagine Wonder Woman will have to be involved in the final face-off against Psycho, although so will Harley and friends. I need Ivy, Sharky, and Clay to get back to being themselves, ASAP. Maybe Tabitha will come on land and use the power of love? And/or... I'm still expecting some techno-hijinks from that Chekhov's eyeball that Sy left.

I love how even when their lives are on the line they can't keep themselves from talking at the theatre.

Maybe it's a different Christmas Eve. You know, for the actual shark Jesus.

Excellent and Harley-centric. That's all for now. I'm gonna go immediately rewatch it again.

Season finale already? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

One habit Courtney needs to kick is going straight home from school and yelling to Pat about supervillains, without even checking to see if her brother is home yet.