Tag: observations

Praise for Amazon’s The Boys

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not often that I find shows that grab me, and really elicit a must-see response.  A lot of the time, I spend an inordinate amount of my evenings watching a lot of things that are okay, enjoyable to differing degrees, but when the day is over, they’re not things that I genuinely think I could probably watch again, or be willing to tell people to watch, and let me know when you watch it so that I can watch it with you, kind of shows.  I watch a lot of slice of life types of television, because they’re often times quick, simple, and are enjoyable to a degree where I can spend 30-60 minutes, and then walk away and not feel like I’ve wasted too much of my time.

Out of the blue, my brother texts me and asks if I’ve seen The Boys.  Nope, never heard of it.  But the timing was good, because I had just finished season 2 of Kakegurui, the gambling anime, which I had watched as something of a pallet-cleanser after the fairly lackluster Jessica Jones season 3.  So since all the stars were aligned for me to start something new, I gave it a whirl.

At the very first inkling of the plot coming together, revolving primarily around the corruption of superheroes backed by corporate, I was pretty much engaged.  My brother said it took him about five episodes to really get into it, but it latched its hooks into me after just one.  The sheer idea of compromised superheroes who are just as much shitheads as the vast majority of the population is an intriguing plot, and I was committed to watching more of it.

I have to say that I’m kind of impressed with Amazon’s batting average, as it pertains to shows its released.  Granted, I’ve really only delved into stuff like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Electric Dreams but as far as I’m concerned, for a network that is trying to shake itself out of the shadows of Netflix, The Boys is a solid contributor to helping them achieve such lofty ambitions.

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Jessica Jones S3: The Insufferable Adventures of Trish Walker

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I personally would rank Jessica Jones to be on the lower tier of the Netflix Marvel Universe, as long as it has that Marvel nameplate at the front of it, I’ll still inevitably watch it.  Considering the fact that I’ve watched everything from Daredevil, the Defenders and even Iron Fist, I had to do due diligence and finish up with Jessica Jones; especially since this was truly the swan song last of the Netflix Marvel series, thanks to Disney starting their own service, this was really going to be the last time we’re probably going to get to see any of the Defenders any time soon.

Overall, I didn’t much care for season 3 of Jessica Jones.  Frankly, it could barely be called Jessica Jones, since 90% of the season revolved around the insufferable Trish Walker and her ascent into becoming the ultra-lame Hellcat, although they don’t actually use the name at all throughout the show, except for one episode title that most people don’t actually read while they’re in the throes of binge-watching a show.

Don’t get me wrong, despite my general ambivalence for the season as a whole, I still recognize the show as still having strong writing, with fairly complex and intriguing storytelling, it’s just that I didn’t like particular character(s), but ultimately the goal of storytelling is to elicit some sort of response from the viewer.  By that regard, Trish was written very well, because it was extremely easy for me to dislike her and all her insufferable traits as a person.  But it was almost delving into X-Pac Heat, to where I was just getting sick of the character, but not quite to where I was willing to walk away from too much Trish.

But I digress a little; if not for Trish becoming so insufferable, it probably doesn’t help the story arcs of Malcolm or Jeri Hogarth, because ordinarily they’re pretty pedestrian characters on their own, but seeing them after 15 minute chunks of Trish bullshit makes them welcome reprieves, and storylines worth caring about, that is, until they collide and intertwine with Trish eventually.

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The last singles

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

If I can pull the curtain back a little bit, whenever I sit down and write, there’s no guarantee that the most recent thing I’m writing is actually the most recent thing that’s actually happening.  Especially these days, I often times come across things or thoughts that spark the want to write, but I just simply don’t have the time to write, because I’m always busy at work, and by the time I get home, I’m either too busy to write or too fried to write.

In times like those, what typically happens is that I have a cloud-based document where I jot down the date and the general theme of what was going to be written, and if there’s any links that I want to refer to, that too.  And when I have the time and the motivation to do some writing, those are the things that I try to tackle first.  Typically, I don’t like the queue to grow too big, because then it gives me anxiety and a feeling of being worthless as someone who likes to write.  But there are exceptions to the queue, where I start writing about something in the true present, because usually there’s some degree of time sensitivity to where it’s not something that I can go back and write about retroactively.  At the time I’m writing this, there are three posts queued up that I still want to write about when I get the time.

Right now, is one of those moments.  Because the last few days, I’ve been coming to the realization that a lot of the things I’m doing, are the last time I’m doing them as a single guy.  Yes, melodramatic me is actually writing about the slow farewell to single, unattached life, because I’m two days from entering the wedded bliss of holy matrimony, and getting married.  What started out as mythical gf became mythical fiancé, and now I’m about to have a mythical wifey, and I’m actually going to be somebody’s husband.  Sucks to be them!

But anyway, it’s a lot of little things that I’m doing that I’m realizing are the last times I’m doing them as a single person.  All throughout the week, I’ve had my final chest and tris day as a single guy.  My last time running on the treadmill as a single guy.  Today was my last bis-shoulders-hamstrings day.  As the weekend progresses, I’ll have my last meals and drinks as a single person, and then when I’m at the altar, likely watching down at mythical fiancé coming down the aisle, probably looking radiant and beautiful, I’ll be ticking down my last minutes and seconds as a single person.

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MLS is clearly the preferred white people sport

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Driving around Atlanta, there are often a lot of tells on peoples’ cars that indicate the race of the people driving them.  Some are pretty blatant, like how white people all love to have shit like stick figure family stickers, black people have big flashy rims or the content of Africa silhouetted in some way shape or form, or Hispanics having pictures of their trucks airbrushed onto their trucks, while being looked over upon by the Virgin Mary.

However, some tells are more subtle, but no less obvious to those who see them.  Like blackout license covers or (likely) illegal shades of tint or a box of Kleenex wrapped in an ornate satin box cover sitting in the back window.  But there’s no more obvious tell that a car belongs to a white person in Atlanta, than an Atlanta United sticker or emblem on it.  Because there’s nothing short of Ponce City Market and talking about gentrification and urbanism that white people in Atlanta like more than Atlanta United soccer.

And then it got me thinking beyond just Atlanta United, and about soccer in general, specifically MLS.  And how it really seems like MLS has become the de facto preferred spectator sport of choice for white people, even above the NFL, NBA and MLB.  The more cursory internet glancing I do, I’m seeing that in major cities like Toronto, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia, if you take snapshots of the crowds, they’re unmistakably overwhelmingly white.  It doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s really all the justification I need to make my snap judgments; I’ve been to enough cities to watch sports, and despite being in different states, they really aren’t that much different from one another.

Ultimately, I think white people loving MLS really boils down to two very obvious white people traits: racism and a lack of commitment.  A low-key third would be the fact that so many are hipsters, so naturally, they gravitate towards a lower-tier popularity sport, especially if it meant that there were fewer minority fans to have to mingle with.

But frankly, upon thinking about it, it kind of makes perfect sense why white people love MLS so much. Go to any NFL or NBA game, and it’s abundantly clear that black people love football and basketball.  And the average white person is often times afraid of the average black person, so it stands to believe that white people don’t like going to these sporting events, because it puts them in too close proximity with those that intimidate them.  When the home team does well and the black people get excited, it scares the white people.  But when the home team loses and the black people get butthurt, it scares the white people then too.  This isn’t to say that white people avoid these sporting events outright, but typically they tend to go when they have privileges like corporate box seats, or are in large enough numbers to where they manage to feel safe, but even still it’s not the same white safety as an MLS game would be.

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Black Mirror S5: I think we’re out of ideas

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m sure it’s a shock to those who know me, but I’m pretty staunch about the order in which I watch things.  Nowadays, content is released so frequently and there’s so much of it, there have literally been nights where all I do are surf through previews on Netflix and just add things To My List, but then don’t actually watch anything, because I’ve just spent 45 minutes combing through content and now it’s 11 pm and I need to think about going to bed.

Black Mirror however, is one of the few shows in which I’ll pretty much drop whatever else I’m watching and fast track it to the front of the line.  It’s a series that I’ve often extoled my general love and admiration for, and all the way up to Bandersnatch, I’ve always been a fan of the risks they take and the creativity they express when making the show.  The writing is strong, and the acting is often consistently strong, so it’s an easy show for me to have fallen in love with.

Season 5 of the show, understandably “short” on account of the fact that Bandersnatch kind of folds into it, was but a mere three episodes outside of the aforementioned choose your own adventure.  As a whole, I enjoyed the season, as I often did with all preceding seasons, but by the time I got done with it, I couldn’t help but have this sentiment that, I think the show is running out of ideas.

I stumbled across this specific article when Googling the show after watching the season, which is often times the norm after I watch a show, and it basically mirrors my exact thoughts about the season; the writing is still strong, the acting is still good, but in terms of storyline, the plots aren’t really as … innovative as episodes from earlier seasons have been.

Make no mistake, Striking Vipers is the unmistakable star of the season; every season has one, like how U.S.S. Callister shone through season 4, and Nosedive was for season 3, and at least for me, White Bear and Fifteen Million Merits were for seasons 2 and 1, respectively.  It was the one episode that wasn’t just the most outlandish, as lots of Black Mirror plots kind of are expected to me, but it’s one that provokes a tremendous amount of thought and debate on how the viewer(s) should feel.

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Why I don’t really think AEW is a threat

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Watching highlight packages of AEW’s company-launching pay-per-view event, Double or Nothing, I definitely thought the company has a pretty solid roster of wrestlers to build upon, but I couldn’t help but feel this suspicion of a lot of things that I think are going to hold them back or just be plain detrimental to their budding fed.

As much as the quality of the wrestling was fairly competitive to the talent in the WWE, ROH or NJPW, it’s mostly the way the company presents itself that makes me feel dubious that AEW has more possibility of being the next TNA and not the next WCW, as someone who really has a chance to stand up to the WWE and really compete.

And I don’t bring up WCW without reason, because as much as WCW really did rise and compete with WWE, in the end they still fell apart and ultimately suffered an end worse than defeat, which was being assimilated into the machine, getting purchased for pennies on the dollar, mostly so that the WWE could have the rights to their tapes archives over the vast majority of any actual living human talent.

But it’s because so much of Double or Nothing felt like they borrowed the WCW playbook for Monday Nitro #1.  From the very start of the show, with “Good ‘ol JR” Jim Ross welcoming viewers to the show, to Justin Roberts doing the announcing in the ring, it was the exact play WCW did using Bobby Heenan and “Mean Gene” Okerlund to be their voices and kind of trick casual fans into getting a feeling of familiarity and hopefully stick around.

Then came a really convoluted battle royale featuring their young and mostly lesser-known talent, peppered in with, former WWE guys like Tye Dillinger.  Even not knowing who 80% of the competitors in the ring was, it was still highly predictable to guess who was going to be the last few guys in the contest, and when Hangman Adam Page hit the ring, the winner was all but decided, because anyone who follows wrestling knows Adam Page is a part of the clique that basically made a mass exodus from New Japan in order to create AEW.

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Let’s talk about Game of Thrones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I haven’t really posted much about Game of Thrones.  It’s one of those properties that I really love, and I often times don’t really write about the things that I really love until they’re over, be it being between books, seasons, or a definitive end of some sort.

But with the show winding down, and that we’re getting to the point where the remaining episodes presumably are all going to be epics in their own right if episode 3: The Long Night was any indication, I’m finding it difficult to contain all the things swirling around in my head about GoT, and by the time the next episode rolls around, I’ll probably lose my shit if I don’t take the time to do any writing about it.

Plus, speaking of writing, it’s pretty clear to me that George R.R. Martin isn’t actually ever going to finish the actual book series,* so as far as I’m concerned, the tv show is pretty much shaping the end of the series, definitively.

*Even if Martin finishes, I have little faith that the evolution of the show will mutate all of the thought processes that went into the original five books, to where he’ll deliberately alter and swing the story (and not in good ways) to keep book followers on their toes, and there’s no way he’s not going to be picturing Kit Harrington, Sophie Turner, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey or any other actor in his head when he’s writing key characters.  The books will DJ Tanner Wrestle tragically as a result, and it’s at this point where I’ll bust out the phrase “Dextering” again, named after the shitty way Jeff Lindsay steered the Dexter book series long after the television show started and ended.

SO, the Long Night – needless to say, this is where I write my disclaimer about how there will be spoilers, but also the fact that I’m still offline, and there’s no definitive timeline to when I’ll ever be back online, because I never have any time, and even if I did, by this point, I’ll have nearly four years’ worth of posts to back fill into the brog, which is a Sisyphus’ boulder in its own right.

SO, the Long Night – fucking incredible.  Kind of everything I had imagined the inevitable, eight-year build up to the battle between man and dead would be.  I can’t really think of anything that I was legitimately disappointed in, and despite the fact that a lot of my GoT death pool predictions did not come true, I still felt a sense of great satisfaction when it was all over.

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