Media Report
Guardians of the Galaxy #2, not one but two zombie shows, and more!
Books:
The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame #1) by Jen Williams
Having read a fair number of fantasy books in my day, I can tell you that they must be either hard to write or, for whatever reason, a magnet for bad writers (the crime/mystery genre has this issue as well) I imagine because the author gets an idea and thinks it seems cool but of course for a reader that cool idea is a mere blip and what really matters is what matters in all fiction regardless of genre: story, character, writing, i.e. the big stuff. Which is all a preface to say that while this book wasn't perfect by any stretch or even really wildly original, it had the big stuff covered enough that I ended up enjoying the whole thing and will definitely be reading the sequels. The basic setup is a world - kind of cusp-of-industrial (like they just invented a train) - where invasions from some insectoid all-devouring things happen every so often and the only beings that in the past were able to stave them off are all mostly dead and what happens when the invasions start up again. That's the gist; most of this book, as in many fantasy trilogies, is setup for all that but you know from the beginning that that's what this trilogy is going to be about. There's a bit of magic in the world, though the people who can do it are imprisoned and enslaved, and the POVs of this story are a wealthy woman who's been investigating the insect-y things’ remains (they have a corrupting influence on the landscape around them), one of the remaining insect-y killers, and one of the enslaved women. For those who read in this genre - and honestly I'm imagining everyone else has already DNF'ed this review - that setup - ancient evil returning etc. - is a pretty familiar trope and I wouldn't say this book breaks any new ground plotwise. What actually makes the book work is that the characters are pretty fun and distinct and the world and the people in it behave in ways that make sense. Let me put it this way: despite being able to see most of the plot points coming, I still enjoyed the book which tells you there were enough other writing components present to carry the ride because otherwise there's no doubt I would've DNFed as predictable plot with mediocre everything else would've been the end for me. I'm sure this review is coming out super lukewarm, but I actually enjoyed the book and was completely engrossed in it when I was reading. Success as a TV/streaming series aside, the reason Game of Thrones is held up as, in some ways, the epitome of this genre is that it managed to build world, character, and plot in ways that felt familiar enough that you could get immersed in all the interpersonal politics yet unexpected enough that you couldn't exactly say with certainty where the plot was going to go or what the characters were going to do. In many ways GoT was fiction with a few fantasy elements rather than fantasy itself, so if you consider that to be the very thin aired double-diamond top of the mountain, I'd say this book is a decent 2/3 of the way of up the mountain, a tough blue square kind of ride. I'm mentioning all this for expectation management; if you’re a reader of the fantasy genre in general and haven't read this one, you'll be delighted to tear through it.
TV/Streaming:
The Walking Dead (Season 1):
So I watched this show when it first came out and DNF'ed after a few episodes for reasons, which I'll go into a minute, which remain entirely valid on a rewatch. The difference is I decided up front that I'd get to through season 2 (which I will at some point) before making a decision about this show in the hopes that the writers had a rethink between the two seasons and changed things up. For those for whom this show missed their radar: it's a societal-reconfiguration show about people trying to survive after a zombie apocalypse where the world collapses, kinda like if COVID supply-chain issues become permanent (please NO) but with people eating each other. The reason I DNFed the first time and which the intervening years have not made any better is that the writers explained none of (most of) the characters' decisions but rather just had them behave like idiots in order to generate plot tension. The show is set up around a guy who goes into a coma and, when he wakes up, there are zombies everywhere and his wife and kid are missing both of whom, as it turns out (and I promise it's not a spoiler since it's episode 1), are living with a small band of random strangers and basically what happens when everyone reconnects and forms a hazy plan to go somewhere else. That plot was not the problem; it's perfectly fine for this kind of show and there are obstacles along the way plus some zombie attacks plus some dwindling-resource management (though honestly not much) to give it a bit of drive. What I couldn't take the first time around and was still bothersome the second time were things like this (and again none of these are spoilers because they're basically all in the first episode): there's a zombie apocalypse where life as you knew it is gone and most people you love are, ya know, zombies and... OMFG the lead’s bestie and wife are sneaking off into the woods to bang! ... the domestically abusive spouse is, despite zombies everywhere and stuck camping within a tiny group, domestically abusing that poor spouse... in the middle of being trapped by zombies in a building, the racist redneck is being super racist to the Black guy... to hardly mention that, other than a generic "safety in numbers" there's absolutely no discernible reason why our leads are staying with any of these people at all given that they're all hair-trigger lunatics who could turn on the group at any second. I mean I can't tell you how many times guns were pointed at fellow group-members' heads and it was just so dumb and ill-thought-out. There's no reason for these people to be together; they could leave at any time, i.e. when there are zombies everywhere why are you hanging out with a bunch of racist, spouse-abusing rednecks who contribute little other arguing? Because the plot needs it, because without those domestic dramas there was little happening in the show. The show also gives zero sense AT ALL of anyone's plan; yeah, towards the end of the season, they form a vague plan but even that isn't much of one. I mean look: the world as you know it has been wiped out and there's danger everywhere - wouldn't you come up with some kind of plan other than camping in the woods and hoping zombies didn't find you? So the reason I DNFed the first time is that it was so shapeless, contrived, and dumb that I couldn't invest in the show because I didn't trust the writers to come up with something smart and character-based and logical so that was that. It's all still that btw - the things that annoyed me when it first came out are still annoying. However, given the show's enormous popularity (then again, according to Netflix's self-interested unaudited marketing claims, so is Lupin and well that's consistently sucked), I'm gonna assume it gets better. The show isn't unwatchable just irritating and I'm going on faith here that the writers sat down between seasons and took a beat to rethink things and came up with something that ultimately turns into a gripping drama about people trying to survive in a world gone haywire and try season 2. Wish me luck, me, because there's nothing in season 1 that demonstrates that could happen but knock wood it does.
The Hype (Season 1):
This streetwear designer competition reality show serves as proof IJHO that the Project Runway model is really the best regardless of host or judges because this show, for reasons I'll go into in a second, is decidedly not. This show is structured similarly to Project Runway - 1 challenge per week, 3 judges (sorry "co-signers") - but lacks three essential elements. The first is that, while there's a host, he's not a Tim Gunn or a Christian Siriano meaning we, the viewing audience, get no real sense of what everyone's up to because there's no one going around asking them, giving them pre-critiques, perhaps discombobulating their process, and giving us any sense of what anyone's doing other than cutting fabric and using the silk-screen machine. Second, as with Making the Cut, watching people design but not make (meaning kinda sew but mostly conceptualize and then ship things off to be constructed) is BORING - why does anyone think watching people think about things is interesting; what's interesting - which is what Project Runway does - is watching someone take what's in their head and make it real THEMSELVES with all of the frustrations/revelations that can entail especially under time and budget pressure. Finally, and this was really the one that for me kills this show, is that every challenge is conceptual like "make an outfit that represents who you are." You can probably see the problem with this instantly (and why the series creators couldn't is beyond me) which is that anyone can bullshit anything into being anything, meaning there's no real basis for any kind of judgment, which you can see with the judges because it's more or less down to personal opinion as opposed anything vaguely objective. Let's contrast this to a Project Runway type challenge a la "make an evening gown out of auto parts." I know what an evening gown is, I understand why auto parts would be a creative challenge, and I can just look at the final product walking down a runway at the end without anyone explaining anything and make my own judgment as to whether or not the designer met the challenge regardless of whether or not I actually like the garment. In this show - and really given that streetwear is a specific niche much of which looks very similar (lots of hoodies and baggy clothes) - the failure to have any kind of actual challenge means you're just watching a bunch of people think, send things off, explain themselves, and have those explanations discussed. Like whaaa? Who thought that would be fun?
Also, this show did something truly self-servingly gross, something I’ve noticed creeping into other reality competition shows, which is that, as with most shows in this genre, the competitors are cut off from phones, internet, and all outside contact unless the show is doing an episode where they talk to their loved ones or whatever. This show at one point brings up a black screen with type to tell us the George Floyd verdict had been decided the day of some challenge and that they, the producers, had decided to break the cone of silence and tell the contestants. This did not feel like some vital piece of information that couldn't have waited a week or so to be revealed but some pompous PC (do we still use PC, itself an ‘80s cultural reference, to mean anything other than an ‘80s computer? is the phrase cool retro or verboten? oh dear, have I stepped into some kind of linguistic anthropology mire?) self-ass-licking where the production glued streetwear design to a cultural shift, cut to the contestants having exactly the reactions you'd expect, and then dropping it completely. I get it: many streetwear designers are of skintones that are directly affected by the issues around George Floyd and it so would've been great if, for example, the production had said because this happened, we're tossing this week's challenge and instead we want you to use your designs to talk about political or cultural issues that are important to you (remember: this is a show where something amorphous and unjudgable like that could be a challenge) or if even one of the contestants had been spending the prior episodes talking about how their design was influenced by BLM or police murders or anything in that vein. In the absence of that - and it was completely absent (which isn't to say the people didn't feel strongly about those issues, just that they weren't part of the show) - what was it? Far from elevating that moment, the production team, by failing to integrate it into the show itself, transformed George Floyd’s murder into a degraded blip of producer self-importance. So, yeah, you can skip this thing.
Black Summer (Season 2):
I have to say, even though I singled out season 1 of this series as a jumping-off point for a diatribe about not really understanding why people are so into zombies, I found myself kind of liking this season - it’s certainly way better than Season 1 of Walking Dead (above) because it’s about present-tense survivalism meaning characters may be making bad choices but not ridiculous ones; this is a very present-tense show in which the characters are just dealing with whatever’s happening to them in the now and not much else, which is what kept the pace moving along. The show splits focus between interrelated stories and there’s an overarching goal of finding a plane out of wherever they are but really it’s about untrustworthy people forced either to keep moving or fight to stay alive. Admittedly, the show never upgraded beyond being divided-attention viewing, but still, it was pretty entertaining. Also the structure really lends itself to background viewing because each episode is broken down into multiple short chapters meaning you can kind of piece together the arc of an episode even if you're, say, arguing with Amazon about how Prime says 2 days and how you're paying an annual fee to have everything delivered in those 2 days and how, if Amazon doesn't live up to its side of the bargain, it needs to pay, and, no, an apology isn't enough but, yes, an extra month of free Prime will be fine thanks. Though in the face of Prime’s recent price-jacking combined with Amazon now charging for Whole Foods delivery, is Prime really so much better than the cheaper Walmart+? Of course, Walmart+ doesn’t have any grocery delivery where I live whereas Amazon has Amazon Not-So-Fresh (if you’ve received their produce, you’ll know exactly what I mean). Though really the value proposition of these things is that, because I’ve made a sunk-cost in terms of pre-paying for shipping, I’ll shop where I’ve prepaid in order to maximize its value plus since even small incidentals are free-but-actually-paid-by-me-in-advance shipping, I’ll go to that Amazon first because it’s frictionless and avoids the unpleasantness of thinking something is one price then seeing an additional cost tacked on at the end (other than taxes which are just part of life). Basically, Amazon has convinced me to play an idiotic mental game with myself and I really hope someone far less lazy than I does the math on whether a typical Amazon customer really does save even a dime on shipping over the course of the year (because don’t forget Amazon gives free shipping above $25/$35 regardless of whether or not you’re Prime) or if I’m just willingingly boxing myself in by the rules of human behavioral economics. I’ve been played! By me!
Where was I? Oh yeah, so the other thing is that my hazy memory of last season was people running from place to place, but this one is more about societal norms falling apart in the face of desperation in between people running from place to place which made it more interesting on a broader level and, like, maybe I'm getting a slight taste of why people are into zombie things maybe? Anything is possible!
Movies:
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (Marvel Universe #15) - So it's once more into the boring-then-madness breach with the second in the series which pits Old Testament vs. New and definitely proves the old cliche that every White man thinks he's God while, because it’s empowered-White-male-loving Marvel, tacking on a “and maybe actually is.”
As with the first film where I found the initial 10/20 minutes to be snoozily cartoony, I found something similar with this one only longer, like half the 2000-hour length these movies have ballooned into. This is the 15th in the series and I've watched them in release order and I must say that, almost in lock-sync with the length-padding and endless dialogue scenes that have made their way into these films, the plots have become more and more incomprehensible. I mean surely by this point, I should understand the universe and relationships and good-guy/bad-guy pairings - I am 15 movies in after all - and I got nothin'. I mean is it my bad that I just watch these movies without doing graduate-level studies in what everything is or, um, would that be the fault of the filmmakers for including an incomprehensible amount of meaningless minutiae that only serves to confuse rather than deepen, as in I challenge literally anyone who's done nothing other than watch these movies to flowchart the character relationships, the relationships to prior films, and how all these superpowers and glowing orbs and big batteries and whatever all tie into, oh, the Norse mythology that vaguely infuses some of these movies (or at least some of them have "Thor" in the title) as in: what is this Marvel Universe other than a pile of disconnected action sequences glued together solely by having the word "Marvel" somewhere in the credits and having an occasional crossover actor? And I don't want to get too lost in this though I'm afraid that's what's about to happen, The Avengers are what vs. the Galaxy Guardians? Is it one of those things where all of a sudden every planet/galaxy's got their own superhero hodgepodge, like that minute on TikTok when it was nonstop sea shanties or that weird Hollywood twinning thing where all of a sudden there are 15 movies about about friends having consensual sex and promising to keep it cazh only secretly falling in love all with more or less expensive and/or British variants on Ryan Reynolds and Natalie Portman as the leads?
Regardless, the plot, or rather The Plot because of its deep and abiding religious overtones: So for the first half of the movie the writers managed to pull off a high-wire act of being simultaneously mega-octane CGI and soporifically turgid like combining the deliciousness of being asleep only with dreams where you’re an insomniac. “Awake but sleeping” I think is also an accurate description of the mental state of all the writers involved as I can't exactly tell what was going on but here goes. The Guardians are, I think, like a biker gang designation as opposed to an actual thing (or are they part of some interplanetary goverment? I have no idea) - who are sort of a wacky gang of criminally-minded do-gooders (read: exactly like Ant-Man) who are hired to get something - an orb again? I’m not sure - let’s call it Zzzxccxxcx which I’m now realizing is going to be impossible to type correctly but oh well - only instead of returning Zzzxccxxcx, they steal it and, for reasons I'm (not so) sure were entirely explained, the people the Guardians stole Zzzxccxxcx from decide the best way to get it back is to hire a bunch of pedophile sex traffickers to act as bounty hunters to hunt the Guardians down. Or at least I think that's what they are though really that seemed like a pretty aggressively particular group of outcasts but, well, Marvel. The leader of the pedophiles is, it turns out, Chris Pratt’s fatherish figure who was hired by Kurt Russell (CP’s biological father apparently) to steal Chris Pratt when he was born but for no reason I could discern decided to raise him instead of either completing the job assigned to him or just selling him like he and his child-trafficking gang did on a daily basis. In any event, the bounty-hunting pedophiles attack the Guardians to retrieve the Zzzxccxxcx and, just when it looks like they’re total goners, they’re saved (Saved?)... by God (question mark?), aka Kurt Russell who turns out to be Chris Pratt's father or Father I guess which, uncomfortably (for me to type though apparently for none of the writers or executives), makes Chris Pratt Jesus?
Just to note though, I'm not 100% on whether these should be a capital G and J as there seem to be a lot of gods in this universe. Like isn't Thor a god? And what about the trippy lady from Doctor Strange? And, to pause a moment for some metaphysics, much like, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke who said all advanced science is, depending on viewpoint, essentially indistinguishable from magic, does the same apply to superheroes and gods, i.e. if Bible-God's distinguishing characteristic is the ability to create and destroy life plus punish or reward those based on Bible-God's moral code, how do we know we aren’t really all just worshiping some dime-a-dozen time/matter-manipulating alien superbeing who, because it can make and destroy life and punish or reward based on its own moral whims, is sufficiently indistinguishable from the being billions of Earthers call God? Like if you’re religious and found out tomorrow that Bible-God both exists AND is an alien, would you keep worshipping it? Or would the proof of existence be proof that it couldn’t be Bible-God? What if it hired a bunch of child molesters to take out the gang of chaotic-neutral misfits who screwed It over in a previous hire - Biblical morality lesson or future The Atlantic expose? So many riveting questions, and people say these movies are mindless drivel!
The good news is everyone involved with this holy process is White - oh, Marvel, entertaining as Kurt Russell was in this part, is there some reason it couldn't have been played by, say, Viola Davis instead? - as Marvel continues its implicitly racist backslide (Ant-Man again!) as the darkest skintone in this movie is the raccoon's and honestly that's hair not skin so maybe not even that. In any event, Kurt-God makes the completely rational decision that he should take over all worlds in the universe with his DNA or whatever cellular structure comprises a god only he doesn't have enough power but his dear sweet baby Chresus does apparently and Kurt-God plans to either team up with him or suck it out of him.
As if all that step-family drama (or kidnapping I guess) weren't enough there's a whole drama between the green woman and her red sister; I'm totally sure red hates green for completely valid reasons beyond being on opposite sides of the color wheel, but I wasn't exactly tracking them. However, other than the insane action sequence the conflict generated, none of it mattered because the whole team realized that, all squabbling aside, having the entire universe inhaled by some big blue DNA was probably a bad idea and they teamed up to go back and save Chresus from his kudzu-like God/daddy which, while crystal clear as a plot point, made for a somewhat confusing religious metaphor at least as far as Christianity is concerned, as I'm not entirely sure that murdering God to get Jesus off the cross holds the same metaphoric meaning as the way it all played out in the New Testament though it definitely made for a better action sequence.
I guess the lessons here are that family is based on love not ichor, God it turns out is a virus, and, no matter how seemingly awful their behavior, the ones you can always count on to save the Universe in a pinch are child sex traffickers. Thus spake Marvel.