Tag: television

Requiem for Dexter

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Four years late to the party, but I’ve finally finished watching all of the Dexter television series.  Back around the start of season 7, I made an off-hand remark to a friend that I hadn’t even seen season 6 at all, and was promptly recommended to skip it.  Before I could get the statement “still, I should watch it” out of my mouth, this friend blurted out the big reveal of the season, and said that he was saving me trouble and doing me a favor, allowing me to skip ahead to 7.

Naturally, my reaction was to just stop watching it outright, and a year later, the final season came and went, and I’d been none the wiser to the television happenings of everyone’s favorite forensic expert/serial killer.

With a lot of house shit done, and life somewhat kind of settling back down, I’ve had lot of time on my hands to watch television, and I’d been doing just that.  And in the span of the last two weeks, I’ve basically gone through all three of the last seasons of Dexter that I had never watched before, and one good thing about having such a gap, was that I even forgot about the big reveal that my friend had spoiled for me years prior.

And it’s good thing too, because it’s pretty much the reason why I don’t really trust anyone’s opinions about any show or movie except my own.  When the day is over, I’ll come to my own judgments, and there are plenty of times in which I feel completely different than what the hive mind of the internet tends to think.

Continue reading “Requiem for Dexter” →

Let’s talk about Game of Thrones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With season 7 now in the books, all Game of Thrones fans are astutely aware that we are down to one season left, and if all the claims are true, there will only be six episodes.  So there are going to be six episodes left to close out a whole butt-load of storylines.

I’ve enjoyed the show all the way to current in spite of what people on the internet have been saying about it, and the incessantly endless debates between book purists and show-exclusive fans.  It’s entertaining, I don’t put that much tremendous thought into the plot, and the show writers are good at drumming up tension and drama, artificial as it might seem to some, and it leads to watchable television.

But six episodes to cover the sheer volume of plots and resolutions, that’s a tremendous task to be asking for, so I can’t help but be skeptical at what the quality of the final season can possibly be.  Maybe if every episode is stretched beyond an hour, they could literally buy some more time to tell more story, but if we’re talking about five hour-long episodes and maybe an extended finale, I just feel like season 8 is going to be a ride faster and more furious* than the entire Fast & Furious franchise combined.

*Especially considering the fact that characters are traversing from one end of Westeros to the other and back on horse and buggy faster than Vin Diesel could ever do a quarter mile, but let’s not debate semantics

Continue reading “Let’s talk about Game of Thrones” →

You’re better than this, Adande

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I like J.A. Adande, as a sports journalist.  I remember him best as the straight man on Around the Horn, but in spite of his “role,” he was always a source of informative and insightful sports opinions, on the show and in the times that I’ve come across his writing on the internet throughout the years.

However, I don’t know it’s because it was for The Undefeated, an online rag that doesn’t hide its black bias, and he’s just trying to appeal to its target audience, or he’s deciding to waver from his modus operandi of logical and educated opinions; but his article about how “this isn’t the baseball he grew up watching because there aren’t enough black guys in it and the ones that are aren’t aren’t playing ‘black enough’ baseball” seems just so, so, so beneath a guy I’ve always held in regard for integrity and not needing to ever play the race card in order to look intelligent.

Basically, Adande says the Cincinnati Reds’ Billy Hamilton (a black player) runs down flyballs at the wall, is a fast runner and steals a lot of bases is playing “black baseball.”

By this logic, Mike Trout, Trea Turner and Kevin Pillar, are playing, black baseball.  These are also guys who are very good outfielders who are capable of making plays at the wall and occasionally robbing some home runs, and they are also very fast runners who steal lots of bases.  However, all three of them are white guys, thus negating Adande’s logic of what defines “black baseball,” and how absurd it is to associate such styles of play solely with the color of a player’s skin.

Continue reading “You’re better than this, Adande” →

Thoughts on a weekend of wrestling

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yeah pretty much I spent the entire weekend on my ass watching television.  Not only did I watch all of The Defenders with great relish, I also enjoyed the fact that it was a weekend featuring both NXT Takeover: Brooklyn III as well as the 30th anniversary of SummerSlam, with a brief interruption by Game of Thrones.  Since I don’t really get the chance to watch WWE television since I no longer have cable, I have kind of fallen out current storylines for the most part, but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be able to enjoy either show.

To cut to the chase, it should be of no surprise that I would say that Takeover was easily the superior show, since there’s very little denying that they’re a vastly superior wrestling product versus the overboard storytelling on the main roster.  The subtle invasion of the next wave of Ring of Honor expats blew away the smark-hip Brooklyn crowd which is always a hot market for live shows, and it sets up NXT for a few months of above-average talent to mix things up with.

As a whole, I would say SummerSlam was pretty mediocre for what the WWE constantly bills as their #2 major show of the year.  It’s also way too god damn long, since it started at 7 p.m. EST and went all the way to 11; adding in the hour I paused to watch Game of Thrones, I actually had to stop prior to the main event and pick it up later, because I didn’t want to be up until like 1-2 a.m. watching wrestling on a night where I’d have to go to work the following morning.

But in typical WWE fashion, they have potentially good matches like The New Day vs. the Usos on the undercard, and have garbage like Big Show vs. Big Cass with Enzo Amore in a suspended cage in more premiere spots on the card.  Matches like AJ Styles vs. Kevin Owens with the completely ‘roided up and humorously over-sweaty Shane McMahon as referee were reliably good, and I was moderately pleased by the main event despite my skepticism of any match featuring more than two singles competitors.

Continue reading “Thoughts on a weekend of wrestling” →

The Defenders: entertaining, good but not great

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because I’m an individual who likes to not live on the internet and let the actions of others and the ensuing social media shit storms dictate my life and emotional well-being, I found myself in a fortuitous situation where I had all weekend to watch the just-released Netflix’s The Defenders; all of it.  It’s not often that I’m at the forefront of freshly dropped television, and I’ve made no secret that I’ve been high on all of the Netflix Marvel Hell’s Kitchen Universe, so this was a tremendous delight in getting to shotgun the series from start to finish pretty immediately.

If I had any genuine gripes, it would probably have to be the fact that the series as a whole is but just eight episodes, instead of the 12-episode standard that all of the comprising characters’ individual shows had.  I mean, as I’ve aged, I haven’t had a problem with stories getting to the point and finding resolution in an expedient manner, but the mark of good television is when the viewers are wishing there was more of it; more time for characters and their relationships to develop and hash out more.  The Defenders was definitely not in the camp of being too long and drawn out, but quite the contrary, I simply wished there was more time and more interaction between the stars of the show, instead of just so constantly rapid-fire progressing the story.

In fact, the best imagery of the entire series occurred in one of the rare downtime moments of the show, when, and this spoils nothing, the foursome of the Defenders are all at a Chinese restaurant, some eating more reluctantly than others, but they’re just kind of hanging out and getting to know about each other before they really start working together.  It’s reflective of my favorite imagery in comic books, when super-powered characters are simply existing in the same real world as us readers, doing mundane things, like gathering with peers and eating Chinese food together.

Anyway, as a whole, I will say that The Defenders was a good and entertaining series.  Not mind-blowingly good, but not at all terrible.  Whereas Iron Fist was kind of mediocre but better than expected, Jessica Jones was a little too long and repetitive and Luke Cage lost some steam late in the series, The Defenders’ short series made a lot of those shortcomings impossible to have.  Instead, the show feels kind of like a really fast-paced whirlwind, where the plot exists in just a few days and almost never stops once the show gets moving.

Continue reading “The Defenders: entertaining, good but not great” →

When kids make grown-up money

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was in the fifth grade, I was a huge Mighty Morphin Power Rangers fan.  This was one of those things that publicly amongst my school peers, I kept under wraps because that shit was for kid-kids, i.e., the ones in the third grade or younger.  Yet I was still captured by the campy acting, bad voiceovers and the fight footage more sliced and spliced together than a Kardashian.

I even learned how to program my VCR timer because of Power Rangers, because the show always came on at 2:30 when I didn’t get home from school until like 3:45.  That’s how much I grew to love Power Rangers, that I forced myself to learn things in order to enjoy a mindless and stupid kids show.

That particular winter, when Power Rangers really began merchandising, I decided that I really wanted a MegaZord and/or a DragonZord.  I wasn’t necessarily a Transformers or Voltron fan, but I loved the Transformers/Voltron-like manner in which the Zords transformed and connected together, and I really, really, really wanted some Zord toys of my own.

Unfortunately, this winter was the winter when Power Rangers toys were the hot item for the holiday season.  The equivalent of Tickle Me Elmo, Furbies, hoverboards, NES Classics, or whatever that one thing is during each holiday season in which there aren’t ever enough of, and the demand becomes so great, it achieves a modicum of mainstream attention at just how hard it is to get them, perpetuating the cycle of unavailability to the next level. 

Continue reading “When kids make grown-up money” →

What happens when people look for things to be offended about

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little bit of research goes a long way: girl looking for something to bitch about on Twitter is triggered by seeing the strikeout counter at a Braves game on television reading “KKK”, immediately voices her outrage in 140 characters or less and is ridiculed for not knowing a standard ballpark tradition

See, this is exactly what happens when people actively seek out things to pretend like they’re offended by, so they can sound like social justice avengers on the internet.  And what happens when you don’t double-check your words or do a little cursory research to see if maybe, somewhere on the internet, the answer to your outrage, might actually exist.

I love the text delivery of

Definitely NOT ok.

With the all-caps NOT and the stern looking period after ok.  I know it’s hard to interpret emotion out of text, but I can only imagine the artificial and determined offense taken by this twerp who had admit to being bored and basically decided to let herself get triggered to help pass the time.

Continue reading “What happens when people look for things to be offended about” →