The Rebel - The Hunted (1960)

I just rewatched an episode of The Outer Limits: Demon with a Glass Hand, which features Robert Culp (I, Spy, The Greatest American Hero) was written by Harlan Ellison. It also features and actress by the name of Arlene Martel, and I was curious what happened to her, as I didn't recall seeing her in any other TV shows or movies. I looked her up, and it turns out she had been in quite a few TV shows, inlcuding playing T'Pol (who I always thought was sexy, even when I was really young) in the Star Trek episode Amok Time. It turns out she also appeared in an episode of the TV show The Rebel. which I had never heard of until looking it up on the net. She appeared in a small role, and that episode also featured Leonard Nimoy, who plays Spock on Star Trek so he appeared with Arlene Martel Amok Time as well. Strangely, I never had a clue Arlene was the same actress who played both characters. But even more amazing was that this episode was directed by Irvin Kershner, who directed the greatest movie of all time; The Empire Strikes Back.

Mohawk Girls (2010)

I will watch pretty much anything that is created by native Americans, and have seen a large number of native American films. Once I heard of this TV show I had to watch it. This taught me more about modern native culture than any other film I have watched, though I am not sure how accurate it is. It was interesteing in the way the series was presented, as a kind of fish out of water tale, with Anna going to the resevation, to join the culture of her father. As she meets the other people on the resevaration, they highly critical of her, starting with her appearance, and also being that she doesn't follow their ways, which seems to mostly be catering to the men, getting in physical fights and drinking. She is introduced to the culture by her friends, and others who live on the reservation, though the others are quite hostile with her at times. But, in general, she being exposed to traditoinal Mohawk culture, but to the modern way the people live on the rez, which in my opinion is far from the tradtional Mohawk culture. Even worse, the people on the reservation often reject attempting to experience a larger world, rejecting traveling to other countires, learning foriegn languages and studying, especially in college. Bailey is shown having a job making cigarettes, which first must be an extremely mind numbing job and second is working in a dying industry which is selling a product that is determental to it's users health. I would think that anyone would be bored with that life and want to seek out challenges. They brought up the concept of the Blood Quatnum System which is shocking if it is still in use. First, and formost, it is appaling racist, to the level that Hilter working towards with his Arian Race. Also, it is appalingly ineffective and outdated, both culturally and scientifically. If they were to switch to a system of DNA (which I assume to be much more accurate test of actual Mohawk ancestry), they would find that a large percentage of the people on the reseveration are under the 50% quantum level that was set as a requirement for living on the reservation. While I know the actors in this show are all of native decent, looking at them, 98% of them appear to be white (two of the main stars of the show, Anna and Caitlin) look like native Americans to me, though a few others show some native American characteristics). While this may be an accurate depection of the physical appearance of people who live on resevations, it does make me wonder if they were to give those people a DNA test if they would really have as high a level of native ancenstors as they are lead to beleive from the blood quantum system. It's funny, cause at this show is native American produced,those people who do have native ancestors, but don't appear physiclaly as native Americans, were able to get acting roles. Of course, in Hollywood, only people who's physical appearance looks native were able to get native American roles, even though some of them had no native American ancestors at all. For example. in the Keep America Beautiful ads back in the 70s, an actor with the stage name Iron Eyes Cody protrayed a native American but was actually of Italian decent (though born in America) The other thing is that if there main requirement is to be 50% or greater Mohawk, it is a very odd requirement, as I belive that native tribes internmixed, having members of other tribes join their tribe (I belive through adoption), so that the phyical make up of a person was not any sort of requirement to be part of the tribe. Also, I don't know the history, but I belive the piece of land they live on, the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, was not originally set as a Mohawk territory, with set bounderies, so that they didn't make it a practice restrict those who lived on the land to only Mohawks. It's very odd that the physical make up of the people is the standard by which they judge how Mohawk people are, though I understand it is obvioulsy easier to quanity phystical make up rather than something such as knowledge of culture. But that could lead to a future where the make up of the people would be of those who had a very high Blood Quantum level, but no knowledge of there culture. While I understand their language is dying out, language is a essental part of cutlure, and it should be something that they are working to preseve and hopefully bring it back to being an active part of daily Mohawk life. One other things is they do show a hatred of white people, which is very odd. While on the surface it makes sense, as you can blame white people for taking their land, the root of the problem is the white people who are alive today did not take part in taking away their land, and nothing those people have done in their lives had any impact on those events. Also, the term itself "white people" is a huge generalization. Caucasion is a giantic group of people, which diverse roots in European countries, and many of those groups were not present in North America nor were they participants in taking away of native lands. For example, Irish had their land colnized by England for around 850 years, predating Europeans coming to the Americas by 300 years. It's also odd (though perhpas accurate) that the families of the girls are so against them having non-native boyfriends. They men on the reservation are extremely immature, selfish and toxic, and I would think that any family would have their daughter's happiness as their highest priority. While I know that such racisim exists in every culutre, I wonder how prevenelnt in really is on reservations. Also, the people on the reservation acted like very toxic high school students, excpetionally jugdgemental, lacking any ambition and it seemed to be living only to party / drink. Even worse, all the men on the reservation were toxic and selfish. Being that they could treat women there so badly they would use them for sex, and never support them in their own interests. Unrelated to these cultural issues, the character Jack, who was Bailey's boyfriend in the first season, broke up with her through a friend at the beinging of the second season. I was wondering if the actor who played Jack didn't wish to return to the series, and he was written out for that reason, as it is very odd that the character didn't having an in person break up and was never seen again. Stranger still, Bailey goes on to have another white boyfriend in season for, so her story realy just took a detour for two seasons. The best thing about this series is that at the end the girls are able see clearly they need to not give in to the pressures to conform to limitations imposed on them by the other memmeber of the reservation, which includes their family members. One last thing is that I found out there is a network APTN, which is a native American network, which even has a streaming channel. Unfortunately, the streaming service is restricted to Canada, which seems really unnecessary. I would really love to watch the content they have on the channel (some of which is in native American languages), but as it is the restrictions prevent me from doing so.

The Boys (2019)

Several months ago, I did a survey which showed up clips of the upcoming season 2 of The Boys, a shows I had seen repeated static ads for on Amazon, but I previously had no interest in what so ever.  The name The Boys didn't tell me anything about the show, and all the ads I had seen just showed the main characters, members of the Boys, who are NOT superheros, and clearly don't look like superheros, so I had not idea what the show was about or that it would be of interest to me.

One thing I don't really care for in the show is the sex and the excessive violence.  Really, I am no kind of prude and have no problem with sex, but in most TV shows and movies, it is a distraction, and adds nothing to the story.  While sex is often added as an enticement, a lot of show have it greatly misplaced, and it doesn't add anything to the story, characters and just seems foolish. In the Boys most of the time is seems unnecessary.

While I don't really care for gore and violence, being that these characters have superpowers, and do wild and abusive things with them, it is appropriate for the story, thought it turns me off as well.

Watching The Boys made me want to read the comic from which the material came, but so far, the comic lacks anything that makes the TV show extremely interesting, and had a great deal of ridiculous elements that make it seem rather silly,

First is that the superheros are only featured in the first four issues, and then for the next 10 issues, they don't appear at all, (except a ridiculous story about Tek Knight, who has an uncontrollable urge to fuck things).  And as the superheros appear, the Deep is nothing more that background art, with the most impractical costume ever, and his whole story of being kicked out of the Seven and joining the Church of the Collective doesn't exist.  Meave get any significant attention, nor does she have any story line which is the same for Black Noir and A Train who has only a minor appearance, in the beginning of the story, which does follows the same incident in the TV show, which began the whole story and made Hugie become part of the Boys.  Also there is a character called John from Jupiter, who has a unique costume, but is irrelevant as a character.  Translucent does not exist at all in the comics, so of course his story arch is also non existent.

The comic does have the superheros abuse their powers greatly, but it is mostly focused on them having sex and sex parties (which is covered in one episode of the show), but no other aspects of them abusing their power for personal gain are featured.  It seems like these superheros are interested in sex and nothing else.

Also, the whole idea of commercializing the superheros, going through huge efforts to maintain their image and have this all controlled by Voght doesn't exist either.  That is one of the most interesting aspects of the TV show, having a greedy corporation attempting to control people who are beyond control and exploit them.

Strangely, Butcher is completely different personality wise and the way he looks in the comic.  He is drawn as very good looking, and not nearly as rough as he is in TV show.  He also having and very odd affair the his superior, and the whole back story of his wife does not exist, which is odd, as that is his whole motivation for hunting the superheros in the show.

I must say in the TV show Karl Urban does an amazing job (as to all the actors) as I have seen him in films but I had no idea he was the same actor.  He played McCoy in the new Star Trek films, but I didn't recognize him at all the whole time I was watching the Boys.

Also the animosity that the other team members have when Butcher is putting the team back together is non existent in the comic, as well as the way he keeps saying that Hughie doesn't belong in the group, where as in the comic, Butcher recruits Hughie.  And the whole story of finding the Female, freeing her and her alone having superpowers doesn't exist in the comic.

And the whole mystery/ scandal of compound V doesn't exist in the comic.  In fact the only time compound V is brought up is when it is shown that the Boys take compound V in the story, giving them superpowers, which means the angle the Boys are coming from in the TV show is completely absent and they don't have any justification for considering themselves morally superior to the Supes.  Though it does make sense to an extent, because with  Homelander being psychopathic, it seems he would have killed most of the Boys on his first encounter with them.

In the comic, the whole of Voght is nearly nonexistent, and Homelander is the one who is instigating the actions that both Deep and the management at Voght instigate in the TV show.

Honestly, while the focus of the boys on the comic makes that an appropriate name for the comic, Supes might have been a better name for the Amazon series, as it is largely focused on them, and really a completely different story.

The Mandalorian (2019) (i.e. The Boba Fett show)

The concept of this series gives me impression they wanted to make a Boba Fett series, but were unable to do so, due to the character dying in Return of the Jedi, and perhaps they didn't want to be limited to his backstory as told in the prequels.  One other thing of note, is the tone of his voice in reminiscent of the original voice of Boba Fett.

Still, this character does seem to be dominated by concepts that have occurred over the years and in other series about the mandalorians.  And the way he seems to be solely motivated by getting metal for his armor, seems rather odd.  What would motive him, once his armor is complete (as it now seems to be)

Also, it is rather odd to have him be unable to show his face to anyone.  Hiding your face all of the time servers no purpse, as your mask would effectively be the face you are recognized by. 
I have had the idea that Boba Fett would get out of his armor to take part in an undercover mission, or for intelligence gathering, or at least leave his costume at home when he went on vacation.

I do have a bit of a complaint about the choice of the name for this series, as it uses a world only know to diehard Star Wars fans, but the attachment of this series to Star Wars was more than enough to spread the word of the show to the masses.
While Star Wars' incredible success allowed Lucas to release a film with a made up word in the title "Jedi" as he know everyone was familiar with the concept, I am less impressed with the title of "Revenge of the Sith" as the concept of sith still in not well defined, nor known by the general public.

One thing I want to see in Star Wars is the high tech ships, dog fights and space stations.  Those have been largely absent since Disney took over the franchise.

There are a number of ridiculous concepts that keep coming up, which are perhaps used because they are easy for the audience to understand, but they go against common sense.

One is that there is a lot of fighting involving people with masks (and armor) versus people without masks, but some how the when the person with the mask gets punched in the face, they are injured but the person who just punched metal doesn't appear to injure their hand.

In fact, it's quite odd that there are so many people getting into fistfights, and then after they fight for a while, only then do they draw their blasters.  It makes no sense that anyone with a gun would resort to fist fighting. They was no fist fighting in the original trilogy.

Also, the concept that shooting a droid in the head will "kill" it.  There is no reason to assume that a droid would have some vital circuitry in its head.  One of the few times I have seen this concept applied (as it may also apply to aliens, was in Men in Black 2, went Agent K fought a Ballchinian (Ball Chin -i an)

The planets that the mandalorian visits are general low tech, with the exception of a few people with blasters and some droids.  The worlds, while meant to be reminiscent of Tatooine, are more like those shown in science fiction B movies (and the Big Isle 2321 scene from Cloud Atlas) or Firefly.

The show does have a number of "easter eggs" which are nice to see.  One is that the weapon the madalorian uses is the same on that Boba Fett used in his original appearance in the cartoon during the Star Wars Holiday Special.

They also used the "eye ball" arm - door bell that Threepio encountered when first approaching Jabba's Place.  While was nice to see that, it also used the exact same alien phrase (which I assumed to be Huttese, which I assume would only be used when working for the Hutts), which to me always had the intonation of "I expecting some one else" because when I hear it, it sounds like he is saying "I thought you were blinky"  One other instance of this is when Threepio is explaining to the Ewoks why they should let Luke and Han go, the Ewokese phrase he uses has an intonation that is exactly the same as "You will be sorry."

Chapter 1:

It was very interesting to see an IG-88 unit , but it seems quite odd that he was able to talk, and rather silly that he kept trying to self destruct, which as a rather lame attempt at comedy.

I actually would have much preferred it if the IG-88 droids were the ones used by the trade federation in the Phantom Menace, as they are quite intimidating and completely underutilized in the original trilogy, rather that the "battle" droids, which looked like puppy dogs, and acted more like the Three Stooges.

Chapter 2: Baby Yoda do do do ti do (sung to the tune of Baby Shark)

While the there is no reason to assume that some one of Yoda's race would have any greater ability with the Force than other races (or maybe his being of Yoda's race is just coincidental) but even further, its ridiculous to have a baby who has had no training in the ways of the Force to be able to use the Force (same problem with Rey in the sequels).  I have been wondering for a while if this baby Yoda is suddenly going to begin speaking in full sentences, and has just remained silent up til now for some unknown reason.  I have wondered if Yoda reached his old age because of his race, or because of his strong connection with the force.  I have though that perhaps the Emperor looks they way he did because he was very old, though my theory was that the Dark side of the Force caused his body to wither.

Also, its ridiculous to believe that anyone could repair a ship that was completely torn apart in 4 days.  I would take months, if possible at all.

Chapter 4: The Two Samurai / The Magnificent Two

This was a fairly direct rip off the the Akira Kurosawa movie "The Seven Samurai" which was later remade as a the Western "The Magnificent Seven".  While a fairly good adaption, it didn't move the plot forward at all.

Once again, we have fights with people punching others in the masks, and the person with the mask looses the fight and gun are only drawn after a protracted fist fight.

Carmen Sandiego (2019)

While it seemed like a good thing to revive the series Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, this series has just taken the character's name, and nothing else.  The question "Where is the World is" is absent, and with good reason.  That question is not asked, nor is the viewer asked to think about the answer or do any sleuthing themselves.

The original concept was a game that helped teach geography and about other countries.  While this concept carried over to the game show "Where in the World  is Carmen Sandiego"  the following cartoon show "Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego?" dispensed with the focus on teaching geography and limited it's lessons to short blurbs about the country they were going to to track Carmen Sandeigo down in.

In this show, Carmen has been revived as a red ninja, using a sleeve mounted firing grappling hook, a copy of the same device used in the Batman movie and animated series, and a collapsible hang glider.  Every episode contains fisticuffs, a concept that has had no connection with Carmen Sandiego since her inception in nearly 35 years ago.

Also, rather than have Carmen Sandiego be the villain and leader of V.I.L.E., this show has her has a leaving the organization while she is quite young, and considered a traitor by the other members of V.I.L.E..  Also, none of the members of her gang, that were featured in the games and the game show, make appearances in this program.

One interesting addition is her assistants Zack and Ivy, who are from Boston, while their Boston accents are reasonably faithful, Zack over does it with the word "wicked" in every episode.

While there was a game released on facebook back in 2011, but was taken down in 2012.  A rival of the original game or even the game show is badly needed, as American's abysmal lack of knowledge of geography is the ridicule of the world.

Twin Peaks: The Return / Season 3 (2017)

When Twin Peaks originally aired, I was hooked, with it's cast of quirky characters and multiple complex story lines that intertwined with each other, it made for a very compelling series.  One of the greatest thing was that the town seemed very normal on the surface, but you soon found out that everyone had secrets and there was more going on than there appeared to be.

But of course the main focus of the series was who killed Laura Palmer.  David Lynch made a lot of promises with that premise, and the quirky elements seemed like they were going somewhere, but he went over the edge adding in corny elements as well as supernatural ones, so that a lot of the clues to who murdered Laura Palmer lead nowhere and the final resolution was not satisfying at all.

And when the series was canceled, David Lynch took it out on  the viewers by making a ridiculous cliff hanger, which wouldn't be resolved, because the series ended.  It is this same childish actions that shows David Lynch's disrespect for fans of the show, and that carried over into this series.

This new series, while having many of the original cast members return, does not have any of the side stories of the original.  The original stories are not taken up again, and any new stories that involve those characters are very short, and often completely disconnected from the overall story arch, and could easily have been thrown out.  The whole story arch with Audrey, who was an important character in the original series, went nowhere.  Very little time is spent in the town of Twin Peaks.  While it's is interesting to see what "Bob" is doing, it seems like his story could have taken place during the 25 years while Cooper was in the black lodge.  Even worse, for 15 episodes Cooper takes the role of Dougie, and can only say the last word anyone else has said to him.  It is utterly ridiculous to waste viewers time with watching Dougie surrounded by people who don't recognize that he is severely mentally impared, and having situations unfold and get resolved around him, with Cooper/ Dougie taking no action to resolve those situations.

A common problem these days (perhaps started by Twin Peaks) is that the story teller makes promises, adds in bizarre elements, with no idea how to explain them later in the story, and often does no do so, often just ignoring them, thinking fans will forget them.

One such ridiculous event was in the new Battlestar Galatica, where Starbuck, who had died, suddenly reappeared.  At the end of the series, she just disappeared again, implying she was a ghost, or something equally as stupid, because the writer had no idea how to explain her reappearance.

One other thing with the original Twin Peaks, was the music was really mesmerizing.  It added to the show, but also could be enjoyed by itself.  This new series has long sequences with a low hum, which is just fucking annoying.

It's obvious David Lynch only had enough ideas for about three episodes of this series, but stretched it out with filler into 18 episodes.

It would have been nice to revisited twin peaks, see how all the story lines had turned out, and has some closure on the whole Bob story line, but this wasn't it.  They gave David Lynch the directors chair and he ran with it, making a bunch of nonsensical crap.  He obviously gave no thought to this story over the last 25 years, and just threw together whatever to fill up as many episodes as possible.

The absolute epitome of this is episode 8 "Got a Light?".  A large portion of the episode is just close up scenes of an explosion.  There is no substance to it, there is no story progression.  This episode can easily be skipped. and should be skipped, as David Lynch is just wasting your time.

David Lynch does well in his earlier work adding strange quirky and even spooky elements, but in this series, he lacked any ideas and just threw in a shit load of nonsensical crap, that he would ike you to think was deep, but it's just deep crap.  He thinks he is adding  spooky element, but it is just annoying and wasting the viewers time.

The whole situation with the Asian woman they found in the woods with no eyes was utterly stupid.  First, no one seemed concerned that she had no eyes, and she kept making annoying noises which made her scenes unpleasant to watch.  To compound the situation, there was a guy in the neighboring cell, with a string on his face, and constantly drooling, as though he needed medical attention.  And to make matters worse, he would repeat everything that anyone said, just to maximize his annoyance factor.  Anyhow, Sheriff Andy said that the woman with no eyes was "very important", but she didn't play any significant role in the series nor help resolve the whole Bob story line.

And as for the resolution, it is exceptionally dumb that they will able to shoot Bob with a single shot and kill him, and then have the kid with the green hand, who was a pretty cheap addition, to make him a unique character, who simply punched the floating ball of Bob to destroy it.  Really dumb, considering this character was just added in two episodes earlier.

Redneck Island

This show is my guilty pleasure.

The 5th season was great, as the brought back so many of the great personalites from the previous season, which made that season great as well.

I am curious what the next season will bring.  If they will bring back vetrans again, or go with a new cast.

I used to watch the show The Amazing Race, but strangely the people personalities were not shown off as well, as they different team had very litle time to interact with each other.  Also, the lack of alochol avoided a lot of the stupid (though sometime entertaining) conflicts which often fuel Redneck Island.