Random TV Show Thoughts

[Jrzag42]

Cadillacs And Dinosaurs (1993) -
I have a co-worker who is very passionate about dinosaurs. The topic of dinosaur cartoons came up as I had been seeing ads for the new Ark animated series. At some point I brought up Cadillacs And Dinosaurs, which he had never heard of. I only have a passing knowledge of it, I recall emulating the arcade game to play with my dad years ago and looking into it more then, but that's it. So I decided to read up on it more and check out the show, see if it's worth properly recommending to my co-worker.
I've now watched 3 episodes. This show is really fascinating, it has so much lore with an expansive world that we're just thrown right into. It starts out a little hard to follow, especially with the dialect, but I was quickly engaged. So far I don't think there's too much depth to the characters, but that's subject to change. Episode 3 introduces the Grith, a race of mystical lizard people, and I hope that they're further explored in future episodes, I want to know more about their relation with our protagonist. I also want to know more about how this world came to be, it really hasn't been touched upon yet, I only know a bit from wikipedia.
This show is like Mad Max with dinosaurs, but also super ambitious. The fact that it's only 13 episodes scares me, I'm sure some things will go unresolved. I'm curious how close the world matches the comic that it's based on, I kinda want to check out the comic too now.

Sorry about the loose, rambling structure of this post lol

 

[Jrzag42]

I threw on some Batman Beyond earlier to have something in the background while I draw. Man the show starts out strong. Annoyingly, Return Of The Joker is no longer streaming anywhere, I've been meaning to revisit it for a while now (I had the VHS as a kid, I don't think I've seen it since). Zeta Project isn't streaming either, which sucks because if I were to commit to watching through BB I'd want to watch this alongside it for completion's sake. Oh well, it's almost flea market season so I'll keep an eye out, maybe I'll luck out.

I bought a Batman 80th anniversery (or whatever number) set with a bunch of random Batman animated films. I'm starting to wonder if Return Of The Joker was included, but I can't for the life of me remember where I put the set.

 

[mnkykungfu]

RotJoker has typically been sold separately, in a "Director's Cut" format not suitable for the other kiddie movies. It has some scenes which were a bit dark and cut out of the televised release the new Joker murder/transformation.

Zeta Project was pretty unloved and I don't know if it ever got a full release. It's annoying, the show was really going for something, and the executives at the time got cold feet and wanted to move away from cartoons that weren't just disposable toy-sellers for kids. The network went through an overhaul that ended the Golden Age of cartoons at the time that went through Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, X-Men, and so on. Secret Galaxy did a great video on the effort to save Zeta Project and on where the intended follow-up season would have gone...kills me, it sounds like it would've been great!

 

[asterixsmeagol]

I did like Zeta Project, but it was never as good as Batman Beyond.

Although it was produced in two 13-episode seasons, it aired 10 episodes weekly(ish) from January-May 2001, then 1 episode in August and 1 in November. The last episode of the first "season" aired the following March, and was then immediately followed with 12 episodes of the second season airing weeklyish again, with a huge gap before the finale finally aired in November.

It never got any VHS releases, but a slightly different "Season 1" of the first 12 episodes that aired in 2001 was released on DVD in 2009. Then 8 years later they released "Season 2", which contains the last episode of the first production season along with all of the second production season, which makes up all of the episodes that aired in 2002.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^Sure, and Beyond wasn't as good as Superman, and that wasn't as good as BTAS, but I mean...I'm still going to enjoy the thing for as good as it was. I'd take any of them any day over typical kids cartoons or whatever cutesy stuff DC put out later like Teen Titans GO! (exclamation point not mine.)

 

[mnkykungfu]

Netflix added GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) and I had always meant to check out the anime after having a couple kids in Japan jokingly compare me to the titular GTO. I ended up quite liking the series and mainlined all 43 episodes in less than 2 weeks (a real testament, as I'm much more of a pleasure-delayer when it comes to series.)

The setup of the show is essentially that there's this guy who was always a ne'erdowell punk but somehow got into a low-rank school and is finishing up his college degree to be a teacher. The first episode is him doing a 2-week practical training as a substitute teacher in a junior high. Now, despite Onizuka's aspirations to be "the Greatest Teacher in Japan!", he had really been hoping to be in a high school because he's a huge pervert and somehow also a virgin and dreams of scoring with some high school girl who has a teacher fetish. And all of this is played for absurdity, as this is more than anything, a wacky comedy series.

That said, that Onizuka ends up with a bunch of 14-year-olds does not stop him from leering at them and occasionally even fetishizing the more developed ones. It's something that you'd say is "dated", except it's actually just super normal in Japan even now, where the legal age of individual consent is 13. Yeah, Japan has all sorts of sexual issues, but I won't get into that here. Suffice to say, the kids are drawn like and act like they're about 17, so I just turned that into my head canon to be able to set my cultural moralization aside and take the comedy as it was meant. (Onizuka never actually does anything with any of his students, he is actually quite protective when it comes down to it, so there's nothing truly triggering in the end).

That early creep factor aside, the thing that grabbed me in the first episode, and continues to be the reason to watch the series, is that deep down, Onizuka will do anything for his students. I mean, anything. He doesn't give two shits about societal conventions, being polite, keeping up appearances, or giving people time to come around. He just comes right out and says the quiet part out loud, walks into a room with a sledgehammer (sometimes literally) and smashes down whatever is holding people back from getting on with living their best lives. He's juvenile, reckless, ignorant, low-class, horny, and sometimes a jerk. But at the end of the day, he's going to blow apart the polite Japanese "mind your own business, watch your own ass" attitudes that keep parents, teachers, and especially school administrators from creating an environment that actually teaches kids and gives them the tools to handle their own lives. He's kind of the teacher Japanese kids all wished they had.

I did a little investigating after the series and found out that GTO is actually a sequel series! A lot of people don't know it, but self-identifying "yankee" Japanese gyaro and manga-ka Toru Fujisawa wrote Bad Company, wherein Eikichi Onizuka starts Junior High and ends up in a competition with Ryuiji Danma to see who's going to be the biggest class delinquent and run the school. (I get strong "Bad Dudes" game vibes from this.) Onizuka and Danma end up becoming best buddies and getting motorcycles together to start a gang. This is a prequel to Fujisawa's first series, where their gang at Shonan Junior High fights other gangs, and they try to become the boss of all bosozokus (biker punks). That later was made into a brief anime series of the same name (Shonan Junai Gumi), and so it sets the stage for absurd comedy when you know that THAT guy, the leader of all badass bikers, is now going to try to teach Junior High! I would recommend checking out the earlier series first, as I think it would give the proper framework.

GTO is in the top 10 money-making Japanese properties of all time, and the manga rank even higher in terms of volumes in print around the world. There are multiple sequel manga and spin-offs, and the author shows no sign of slowing down, although he is moving into other manga about young delinquents. I've seen some "rebel teacher" stories in English, and even "school principal sets students straight" movies, but nothing quite like GTO. He kind of one-by-one sorts out his students' lives and wins them over, with a fair bit of absurdity between. There are great characters and it's quite a romp; I very much recommend it.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Archer (14 seasons from 2009 - 2023)

Oh, where to begin with Archer? If you've somehow let this one slip under the radar, it's a simply yet sharply animated comedy parody series for adults. The initial premise is largely taking all the spy-action-adventure tropes and both exposing how ridiculous they are or also making them even more absurd, whichever is funnier. The titular character is Sterling Archer, who is essentially James Bond but completely unapologetic about how reckless, horny, addicted, and often misogynistic he is, while also being incredibly skillful. "M" here is the head of their small, independent spy agency, and his literal mother, Malorie Archer. Their 2nd top agent, nest to Sterling, is Lana Kane, the much more serious and also hyper-competent ex-lover of Sterling, and a clear stand-in for Lara Croft.

The show merges the action-adventure of espionage films with the mundanity of office work in a spy agency, where initially we hear the accountant, the secretary, the HR manager, the gadget guy, and other characters lamenting about how their jobs suck and Sterling's is cool. As the series goes, they become further embroiled in the adventures, and over 14 years, it's crazy how much their characters grow, while always maintaining the sense of what made them individuals. Cyril is the buttoned-up tax guy who is the opposite of Sterling Archer in many ways, which is why Lana is now dating him. That and he's apparently packing heat. Archer can never actually remember the secretary's name, which is just fine with her because she lusts after him so hard that she just changes it to whatever he calls her lately. She turns out to have a choking/death fetish and be an heiress. Brett is a random office stooge who keeps leaving out food in the office kitchen, which annoys Archer to no end "BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WE GET ANTS!!" and, not coincidentally, somehow always ends up getting shot. And so on.

It took me a bit to get into Archer, as the jokes in the first few seasons come so fast and frequent and are often so absurd that it just felt like it was trying too hard to be another edgy Adult Swim cartoon. Rampant swearing, sex jokes, and bloody deaths just added to that feeling. However, among all the low brow humor are episodes that are often really smart satire, and/or directly parody famous films and TV series. It doesn't hurt that the voice acting is fantastic, with the iconic voice of Jon Benjamin as Archer, the wonderful Aisha Tyler as Lana, and the classic Jessica Walter (RIP) as Malorie. The fast and witty repartie between the cast is authentic, and if you've ever seen them at a convention or in group interviews, it's almost like listening to their characters riff. The genuine connection they all have surely contributed to the series running for so long, even changing formats and networks and time slots.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and this final season was the first (and last) one to be made wholly without the dearly departed Jessica Walter. It's still a great season, and some would argue that it's something of a return to form. The series had a run of seasons in the middle where Archer had been shot and was floating face down in a swimming pool, Sunset Boulevard style. On that season cliffhanger, the following seasons appeared to take place all in his mind, perhaps all in that instant, and each one was a parody of a different genre. In one, they're in a '50s adventure serial. In another, it's film noir. Another is Sci-fi. My favorite season may actually have been before that though, where the whole agency reinvents itself in the wake of ISIS (also their name) becoming a global terror organization. So they instead work with the CIA to "pretend" they're now a drug-running front. Given license to be bad guys, hijinx ensue...until they find out that the CIA has double-crossed them. A lot here actually sets up the 3-part series finale that just aired a couple months ago, featuring voice talents like Christian Slater as...well, "Slater", their jerk CIA handler.

Archer died as it lived, kind of fast and messy, but with increasingly bigger action and oh so funny. There are so many immensely quotable lines, it kind of pre-dates and has outlived Anchorman in being one of those properties where fans just quote lines back and forth to each other.
"LANA!" - "What?!" - ".....Danger Zone."
"Phrasing!"
"All I’ve had today is like three gummy bears and some scotch."
"Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts?"
"Sorry, I can't hear you over the deafening sound of my own Awesomeness!"
"Are we not doing 'phrasing' anymore?"
"If I quit drinking cold turkey, I'm pretty sure the cumulative hangover would literally kill me."
"Sploosh."
"RAMPAGE!"
"Wait....I had something for this...."
"You can't tourniquet the taint."

...I could go on. And on. The show is...well, I didn't even boop the tip of how raunchy it can get, from robot sleeper agents with vibrating vaginas to an uncomfortable amount of storylines merging male competitiveness with subconscious homoeroticism, everything is permitted, nothing is forbidden. The show is crass, fast, and probably high on grass. There was really nothing quite like it, and the 21-minute episodes went down like candy. With only a dozen or so per season, you could easily mainline the whole series and then go back for more. Speaking of which, it's been over 72 hours since I finished watching....

 

[Jrzag42]

Archer (14 seasons from 2009 - 2023)

Oh, where to begin with Archer? If you've somehow let this one slip under the radar, it's a simply yet sharply animated comedy parody series for adults. The initial premise is largely taking all the spy-action-adventure tropes and both exposing how ridiculous they are or also making them even more absurd, whichever is funnier. The titular character is Sterling Archer, who is essentially James Bond but completely unapologetic about how reckless, horny, addicted, and often misogynistic he is, while also being incredibly skillful. "M" here is the head of their small, independent spy agency, and his literal mother, Malorie Archer. Their 2nd top agent, nest to Sterling, is Lana Kane, the much more serious and also hyper-competent ex-lover of Sterling, and a clear stand-in for Lara Croft.

The show merges the action-adventure of espionage films with the mundanity of office work in a spy agency, where initially we hear the accountant, the secretary, the HR manager, the gadget guy, and other characters lamenting about how their jobs suck and Sterling's is cool. As the series goes, they become further embroiled in the adventures, and over 14 years, it's crazy how much their characters grow, while always maintaining the sense of what made them individuals. Cyril is the buttoned-up tax guy who is the opposite of Sterling Archer in many ways, which is why Lana is now dating him. That and he's apparently packing heat. Archer can never actually remember the secretary's name, which is just fine with her because she lusts after him so hard that she just changes it to whatever he calls her lately. She turns out to have a choking/death fetish and be an heiress. Brett is a random office stooge who keeps leaving out food in the office kitchen, which annoys Archer to no end "BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WE GET ANTS!!" and, not coincidentally, somehow always ends up getting shot. And so on.

It took me a bit to get into Archer, as the jokes in the first few seasons come so fast and frequent and are often so absurd that it just felt like it was trying too hard to be another edgy Adult Swim cartoon. Rampant swearing, sex jokes, and bloody deaths just added to that feeling. However, among all the low brow humor are episodes that are often really smart satire, and/or directly parody famous films and TV series. It doesn't hurt that the voice acting is fantastic, with the iconic voice of Jon Benjamin as Archer, the wonderful Aisha Tyler as Lana, and the classic Jessica Walter (RIP) as Malorie. The fast and witty repartie between the cast is authentic, and if you've ever seen them at a convention or in group interviews, it's almost like listening to their characters riff. The genuine connection they all have surely contributed to the series running for so long, even changing formats and networks and time slots.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and this final season was the first (and last) one to be made wholly without the dearly departed Jessica Walter. It's still a great season, and some would argue that it's something of a return to form. The series had a run of seasons in the middle where Archer had been shot and was floating face down in a swimming pool, Sunset Boulevard style. On that season cliffhanger, the following seasons appeared to take place all in his mind, perhaps all in that instant, and each one was a parody of a different genre. In one, they're in a '50s adventure serial. In another, it's film noir. Another is Sci-fi. My favorite season may actually have been before that though, where the whole agency reinvents itself in the wake of ISIS (also their name) becoming a global terror organization. So they instead work with the CIA to "pretend" they're now a drug-running front. Given license to be bad guys, hijinx ensue...until they find out that the CIA has double-crossed them. A lot here actually sets up the 3-part series finale that just aired a couple months ago, featuring voice talents like Christian Slater as...well, "Slater", their jerk CIA handler.

Archer died as it lived, kind of fast and messy, but with increasingly bigger action and oh so funny. There are so many immensely quotable lines, it kind of pre-dates and has outlived Anchorman in being one of those properties where fans just quote lines back and forth to each other.
"LANA!" - "What?!" - ".....Danger Zone."
"Phrasing!"
"All I’ve had today is like three gummy bears and some scotch."
"Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts?"
"Sorry, I can't hear you over the deafening sound of my own Awesomeness!"
"Are we not doing 'phrasing' anymore?"
"If I quit drinking cold turkey, I'm pretty sure the cumulative hangover would literally kill me."
"Sploosh."
"RAMPAGE!"
"Wait....I had something for this...."
"You can't tourniquet the taint."

...I could go on. And on. The show is...well, I didn't even boop the tip of how raunchy it can get, from robot sleeper agents with vibrating vaginas to an uncomfortable amount of storylines merging male competitiveness with subconscious homoeroticism, everything is permitted, nothing is forbidden. The show is crass, fast, and probably high on grass. There was really nothing quite like it, and the 21-minute episodes went down like candy. With only a dozen or so per season, you could easily mainline the whole series and then go back for more. Speaking of which, it's been over 72 hours since I finished watching....

Been meaning to watch this for years, as a fan of Sealab and Frisky Dingo. I didn't realize it finally ended, maybe now I'll finally get around to checking it out. Or maybe not, there's so many things I need to watch.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Yes, creator Adam Reed also created those, and for the early seasons of Archer, he wrote every episode himself. Should be right up your alley then. Honestly most seasons of Archer have their own arc, so you can just watch a season (or even many episodes) without needing to see anything before or after.

 

[asterixsmeagol]

My first time watching, a friend loaned me his DVD set of the first season. My DVD player refused to load the first disc for some reason, so I just ripped it on my PC and tried watching that. But Title 0 was a special feature where they replaced Archer in the pilot with a velociraptor, and otherwise the entire episode plays as usual. This was baffling.

 

[mnkykungfu]

^I've seen that, yeah! LOL It's so random as a first time viewer, but to go back years later after rewatching the pilot many times, it was actually so dumb it was hysterical.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Shogun (2024)

Generally, this is a more subtle and nuanced version than the '80s mini-series, and much more modernized in its sensibility. You can tell that they made liberal use of green screen while filming, and while I really enjoyed the score, they went with an anachronistic electronic one helmed by Atticus Ross. It actually pulled me out of the scenes a few times because it was just so different. That and much of this was so visually dark, partly I'm sure to hide the TV budget. Overall, this is great TV, and I'm sure some will vastly prefer it to the '80s version. However, I miss the 'chaotic adventure' vibe of that one, of running into John Rhys Davies as a frenemy (a plotline just dropped here), of a sweeping romantic look at the Japanese, and of a larger-than-life mythologizing of this sailor who becomes perhaps the only real friend this Japanese lord has. This version may be higher class, but the old one is the one I'll rewatch. Full review here.

 

[Gaith]

A 4K/UHD release of Friends? Greater resolution then Blu seems excessive for this series, but, sure, okay, whatever...

But, the 4K set going for five times the normal Blu-ray price?!?!

Friends don't let friends wildly overpay for Friends!

 

[WilliamRedRobin]

A 4K/UHD release of Friends? Greater resolution then Blu seems excessive for this series, but, sure, okay, whatever...

But, the 4K set going for five times the normal Blu-ray price?!?!

Friends don't let friends wildly overpay for Friends!

Is it cropped or did they leave it in IMAX ratio, as God intended?

 

[Gaith]

Sir, we're talking about Friends here. Let's leave any and all allegedly benevolent deities far out of this.

 

[mnkykungfu]

Yellowjackets (2021 - )
So season 2 of this just made its way to my region, and after watching the premiere, I think I'm going to tap out. Until the show wraps up at least. I usually don't watch shows as they're coming out, because almost every show that's hot out the gate has a big drop in quality at some point, starts hemorrhaging fans, and in this new internet age, the remaining fans become more and more polarized and fanatically defensive about why the show is so awesome and you just didn't get it, or you expected something more conventional (i.e. not sloppily-written) or how "you just have to hang in there until X episode, and then it really picks up!"

Well, homey don't play that. Anymore. Burned on too many shows like LOST and Heroes and Battlestar Galactica and yes, I'm looking at you, GoT. So I'll check back in on Yellowjackets if it wraps up and people think it's boss. But in the meantime, the quality has already dropped off so much that I think I'm good. Season 1 Premiere: amazing. Rest of season: steadily downhill. Season 2 Premiere: holy shit, no less than 3 plot-points of super typical dumb TV tropes. That's 3+ strikes.

Why did I even start watching the show in the first place? Well, the things I do for Christina Ricci. Hot damn, I've got a thing for her. Oh, and she's a wonderful actress. Teamed with Juliette Lewis and a helluva lot of buzz on that first season? Worth checking out the pilot. And in that pilot: hooo boy. The basic concept is that a girls' high school basketball team flying to a championship game has their plane go down and is stranded in the wilderness. For like, a LONG time. We don't know exactly how long, but the show switches time periods to present day when the survivors are 40-something and basically all don't talk to each other and don't talk about what happened, because some serious shit apparently happened. For years, they've kept secretive about the truth in those woods, but now someone is blackmailing them. And oh yeah, the end of the episode shows them having gone fully tribal, hunting people!

I found that increasingly as the show went, the stuff when they were younger was creepy and fascinating and real, but the supposedly more-grounded present-day stuff got crazier and crazier. By the end of S1, it was practically a Mexican telenovela with all the BS drama in all these people's lives. But hey, I really wanted to know what happened in those woods, so I came back for S2. And in that episode, we see:
1. The whole "this actress is dead now, but we're going to keep her around because one person can still see and talk to her" trope. I hate this trope. Death is meaningless if you keep having scenes with the characters. Let the actress go look for another job, sorry.
2. The whole "this guy is thinking about stuff, so even though it literally just happened in this episode, 15 minutes ago, we're going to show you a bunch of flashbacks because we don't trust the audience to get what he's reacting to otherwise" trope
3. The whole "we tried to destroy the thing that would give away our secret, but when someone checks -- oh look! Literally the one piece of it that will for sure give the key information is the one piece that wasn't destroyed, and somehow we didn't notice before!" trope

This stuff drives me nuts. I don't care how "woke" the show is, or if they're taking forever to pay out the mysteries, or if the motivations of characters are pretty suspiciously murky... I just ask for smart writing. Don't fall back on this shorthand like I'm going to be watching while cooking dinner and checking my phone. I want to give a show my full attention, so earn it. Peace!

 

[mnkykungfu]

Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008)
"It's a little kids' cartoon!" I always used to say. I wrote off the fanaticism of a generation younger than me as just the show having hit at the right place in the right cultural moment. Tossed it in with Yu Gi Oh and Beyblade and any number of other huge fads of the time that had a catchy premise but were overblown. It essentially writes a parallel to the Pacific aspect of WWII in a mystical Asian world where select martial artists can actually telekinetically manipulate the 4 elements. The Fire Kingdom (Japan) is trying to take over the world in the absence of the spiritual knowledge of the Air Kingdom (Tibet, now missing its Dalai Lama...er, Avatar). The Water Kingdom (Pacific Islanders) are kind people, but no match in war, and the Earth Kingdom (China) is losing ground everyday. It's Asian history for Western kids.

However, the longevity of the property should tell people something. Having a huge flop movie didn't stop this thing, it's got a new Netflix show, and it's had more comics and cartoons and games and so on. It's not even the most famous Avatar now, but it still ain't going away! I thought it was about time I give it a fair shot.

And you know what? It's pretty good! I came into Avatar backwards from its follow-up series: The Legend of Korra. I got into that from following the voice director Andrea Romano. If it's a DC animated movie, or virtually anything else on TV/DVD that's got great voice acting, she's usually been in charge for the past 30+ years. Korra has a pretty excellent voice cast, and although it is kid-focused programming, it really pushes the boundaries of what kids are ready to tackle in an action cartoon, from complex politics and historical analogies to spiritual and religious concepts and sophisticated emotional relationships. I came to be a big fan of the series, so I decided to back up, watching Avatar as a prequel.

My initial impression was that Avatar was a lot less developed and less sophisticated than its follow-up. It's like all the same people set out to make a Nickelodeon cartoon for kids about 10-12 years old, and then they made Korra 4 years later for that same audience, now (barely still) teens. The first 12 episodes of Avatar (the initial pitch for the show) are definitely rather silly in tone, with lots of juvenile humor and drawn with a lot of cartoon shorthand and emoji-type anime expressions. I'll confess that I nearly stopped watching.

The initial episode order from the studio apparently got doubled though, and this emboldened the creators to push some boundaries a little. The back half of the first season starts taking chances with some episodes, having the little boy hero at the core of the show get introduced to ideas through talking to elemental Masters, and to the spirits of his own previous lives. The initial antagonist of the show, a boy not much older than the Avatar and who is intent on hunting him down, actually gets chances to "win" and finds that his motivations are more complicated. By the 2nd and especially 3rd (final) season, few of the "evil" characters are 2-dimensionally evil. The series really encourages kids I think (and hey, adults too) to look at the people you're facing off against with humanity and nuance, trying to appreciate what you can about them, even while condemning other aspects of that person.

That said, the show is no Serial Experiments Lain. While it's sort of "gateway Eastern philosophy", it is primarily an action cartoon for all ages, where you never see anyone actually killed and the stakes are pretty hard to get concerned about. The ending of the show was for me mostly obvious from the start, and so there was little suspense there. I was more invested in the interpersonal relationships of the show, as these young teens do have their own crushes and heartbreaks by the end. And on that score: Avatar was kind of a miss. It deals with relationships in a fairly simplistic way, without really fleshing out conflicts or complex feelings. The final moments of the show to me felt particularly unearned, a stark contrast to the shockingly complex and boundary-pushing relationships of Korra.

I'm glad I finally watched Avatar: The Last Airbender. I get the hype. I'll likely never rewatch it, like I will with The Legend of Korra, as that show builds on Avatar and surpasses it in every single aspect. From the art and music to the dialogue, it's a much more mature work that's closer to "grown up animation" than "cartoons". Avatar definitely is aimed at kids, but I love that it doesn't talk down to them, and it respects their ability to grow up as they watch the show. That is something truly special.

 

[Duragizer]

Mutant X (Season 1)

I remember when this show first aired in October 2001. After catching the first two episodes, I thought this blatant X-Men knockoff had potential, at least as entertainment. But after a few more episodes, it became apparent this show was gonna be formulaic AF, with each episode having Mutant X spoiling the Machiavellian machinations of Mason Eckhart and his crony of the week, and my interest plummeted; I continued watching, but only because I was a couch potato and there was never anything better on during that time slot. My interest picked up with the season finale, when it looked like they were finally shaking up the formula, and I did end up becoming a fan of the show with Season 2. A few years later, I looked back on Season 1 and l liked it a whole lot more than I had initially (in hindsight, my reappraisal was coloured mostly by my crush on Lauren Lee Smith and my hatred of Season 3, though Tom McCamus was genuinely good as Eckhart).

Anyway, fast-forward to 2018. I'd picked up a second-hand Season 2 DVD set some years earlier and thought it was finally time to watch it, but figured I needed to rewatch Season 1 first. Lucky for me, the episodes were available to watch on Dailymotion, so I didn't have to jump through any hoops to watch them. But a few episodes in, I needed a break. It was a long break. Then I resumed the rewatch, but a few more episodes in I needed another break. Rinse and repeat, again and again, off and on 'til today, when I finally reached the end. Yes, it took me somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven years to get through a single 22-episode season of television. My initial appraisal of the show back in 2001-2002 was on the mark. I may like it even less now, because I absolutely loathe the hideous yellow-filtered cinematography and wire fu, which didn't faze me much back then. Tom McCamus, John Shea, and Lauren Lee Smith are all good actors, but they're given nothing to work with, and only McCamus makes this season the least bit watchable for me.

I likely will go on to rewatch Season 2, as I know at least aesthetically, I won't find it so ugly, and the more varied plots will make it less tedious to sit through. I just know it'll be an emotional rollercoaster for me, as my rose-tinted glasses are shattered and the shards driven through my eyes into my brain.

EPISODE RATINGS

• "The Shock of the New" – 5/10
• "I Scream the Body Electric" – 5/10
• "Russian Roulette" – 5/10
• "Fool for Love" – 5/10
• "Kilohertz" – 4/10
• "The Meaning of Death" – 6/10
• "Lit Fuse" – 5/10
• "In the Prescence of Mine Enemies" – 5/10
• "Crime of the New Century" – 5/10
• "Dark Star Rising" – 5/10
• "Whiter Shade of Pale" – 6/10
• "Double Vision" – 6/10
• "Blood Ties" – 5/10
• "Altered Ego" – 5/10
• "Lazarus Syndrome" – 5/10
• "Interface" – 4/10
• "Presumed Guilty" – 5/10
• "Ex Marks the Spot" – 5/10
• "Nothing to Fear" – 6/10
• "Deadly Desire" – 4/10
• "Dancing on the Razor" – 5/10
• "A Breed Apart" – 5/10

SEASON RATING

4/10

 

[Gaith]

^ Whoa there, don't have too much fun too fast, now!

 

[mnkykungfu]

X-Men: The Animated Series (1992-1997)
I was a bit old to truly get into this as much as the target demo at the time, but I did watch a fair few episodes in the first season or two and had fond memories of the series. With the re-quel coming out this year, I decided a while back to make use of it being on Disney+ now, and rewatch the whole series.

I knew even at the time that this was Fox's attempt to build on the runaway success of Batman: The Animated Series, and my opinion that this doesn't come close to those heights hasn't changed. But I was struck at how mature some of the themes of this series were, particularly in the first 2 seasons (if not the actual dialogue or execution). Early on, you have Wolverine beating the tar out of a bar of rednecks because they're being racist towards Storm, for example. As an adult, I got a little giddy shot of electricity in my body just watching a kids' show tackle this straight on.

Part of the reason I didn't watch as much of this show on first broadcast was because it felt really hard to follow sometimes. Most Batman episodes were really well-written, self-contained short stories. X-Men frequently had 3- or 4-parters, and they didn't even air them in order! You're watching Cyclops and Wolverine episodes where they're all torn up and emotional, and you can't figure out why. Weeks later, Fox broadcasts The Phoenix Saga. Thankfully, Disney+ now has the episodes in chronological order, but they're still paced really unevenly over the seasons.

The first 2 seasons chug along pretty well, but it's season 3 that's the inarguable high point. After The Phoenix Saga, which has still never been adapted better, there are some recovery and filler episodes, and then the Dark Phoenix Saga. This is a bit clunkier, but they manage to mostly successfully adapt the Hellfire Club and all the S+M and relationship power dynamic themes and somehow make it all work as a kids' show. It's kind of a miracle. The stakes for the characters are so high in this season, almost everything afterwards just feels like typical action kids' cartoon fare. "So and so has an evil scheme, we have to stop them!"

With the arcs of the characters and the balance between who is featured and how big the stories get feeling out-of-whack, I actually made a Reddit thread asking for suggestions of how to reorganize the episodes. (Yes, the lazy man's solution.) We'll see what happens. It's problematic that the series was apparently planned to end with season 4, so there's a huge 4-parter there that brings back almost every character from the whole series. Then season 5 is a half-season emergency add-on from the producers, which had to be shipped off to another animation studio as the original one had already moved to another project. So it looks different, and rushed, and the stories often feel like smaller-scale filler, and they lost Gambit's voice actor. But it does have a banger of a final episode which is genuinely tear-jerking.

Overall, this is an series which occasionally is as good as action/adventure cartoons get. It's well worth the nostalgia, if not something that totally holds up for adult non-fans. (Oh, it was my first time seeing the finale though, and I didn't realize Logan's big Professor X incident is pulled almost directly from there!)