Midnight Texas

Midnight Texas, about a small town where the supernatural gather. This show took a while to grow on me. I watched it because I I like fantasy and supernatural stuff, and this show seems pretty cool. But it did take a while for me to really get into it.

I think it’s mainly due to the characters. I’m not sure why, but they lack an endearing quality to them. It’s not that any of them are bad people. Most of them are pleasant and fine. They just lack a certain likeability factor that I find tough to explain. I think it’s because everyone has an air of sadness, even when they’re smiling. And they rarely smile early on.

Fiji, the witch, is the one character that I thought was instantly likeable. She’s happy in a genuine way, and the show feels lighter when she’s around.

Our main hero, Manfred, has his troubles and grows through the show. Later on, I started liking him. In the beginning, he sort of lacks being endearing, much like most other characters. Like, even when he’s with his girlfriend, his mind seems elsewhere and he’s not enjoying being in the moment. The main cast really came around later in the season, though, and I do like all of them now.

As for the plot, each episode the people of Midnight needs to deal with some supernatural threat while there is an overarching worry looming over them. It’s done alright. Nothing stands out, but I thought the creatures and monsters looked the part.

The season gets more enjoyable later on as the main characters start to become better friends and open up. Now, whether that makes the show worth a watch or not depends on how much you like supernatural stuff and what else you have to watch. It’s not a bad way to pass the time.

Oh, I do like how they keep the relationship drama to a minimum. It happens, but nothing frustratingly stupid. Thank goodness.

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Hooten and the Lady

How should I put this. This is a quaint version of Indiana Jones. Hooten is a charming rogue that’s always in trouble. The Lady is Alex, a British museum staff member that goes out in search of new things to research. Together, they travel all over the world to find lost treasures. Hooten mainly wants to sell it while Alex wants to preserve them.

I think that due to each artifact taking only one show to find, there’s a lot lacking from the show. The two of them get thrown into a lot of dangerous situations, but quite a few times it’s luck that gets them out rather than anything they did. And finding the artifacts feel too easy. All to keep things at one episode long.

The show is mostly episodic. While there are two plots running through the season, one for Hooten and one for Alex, neither one feels important enough. The current week’s adventures is usually not overshadowed by the side plot.

The locations are pretty cool, though. The two of them go to a lot of places over the world. I don’t know if they’re sets or what, but I think they look alright. Hooten and Alex also have fun presence around each other and when reacting to all of their dangerous situations. How much you enjoy the show is based on how much you like seeing the main characters. The actual adventure part is too simple, and so are the dangers.

I think TV movies would have worked much better. It gives each artifact and adventure the time and weight they need rather than just having it be a one and one.

Defenders

Marvel’s Defenders, the teamup of Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Danny Rand. Daredevil, Iron Fist, and the other guys with no nickname. This is what the Netflix shows has been building up to. It’s their version of the Avengers. So, how is it?

Well, it could be better. I will blame a few problems on the budget. That just leads to generic and unimpressive fight scenes. It was often tough to tell what was going on with jumpy and choppy cameras. There were a few great scenes, but it’s mostly just a bunch of guys against the Defenders.

What was done really well was seeing our heroes interact with each other. Of course they start standoff-ish but then they get to know each other and work together better. It’s great to see them become friends. The side characters are all around, like Karen, Foggy, Trish, Claire, Misty, Colleen, and they all get a few scenes. Misty, Claire and Collen are more important, but it’s great seeing them interact, too. I felt that Karen, Foggy and Trish could have used a bit more scenes.

Or a bit less scenes depending on how you feel about all these side characters. Defenders really wants to show the aftermath of all the other shows. And at only 8 episodes, that’s a lot of things to go through. The result is underdeveloping the actual enemies, The Hand.

The Hand. Unfortunately, they are the weak part of the show. You could replace them with any random criminal organization and it would have worked. They don’t show enough mysticism or creepy stuff during the show at all, not like how it was before. The five fingers of the Hand, or their leaders, don’t feel special enough. They needed episodes dedicated to them and special moves! Just better fighting in general.

I think that episodes 1 and 2 of the show could be turned into one episode. And episode 4 could be condensed. That would allow for more time to develop the Hand. And bring back all of their creepy magical stuff! Embrace the comic book.

But all of the good characters were great to watch. They made the show fun and exciting. If you want more of your Netflix heroes, Defenders will give it.

Some Spoiler thoughts ahead!

The main leader of the Hand, Alexandra, has great screen presence, but we don’t see why she’s the leader at all. What makes her so fearsome and powerful? Who knows. She needs to show off her skills. And so do the other members of the Hand.

And the Black Sky needs to be shown as more powerful, too. It’s like, why make a Black Sky when they’re only about twice as powerful as a normal person? Go bigger!

Blood Drive

This show is quite something. It’s a lot of things, but for a huge amount of the time, it’s a violence extravaganza. Blood Drive is based on the grindhouse style where everything is hyper violent, sexual and stylized. It’s about a death race, of course, though the race is actually more of an excuse to go to many weird locales. This show has over-the-top absurdity, action with hints of under-the-top tragedy. And then it gets weird.

There are two plots running through most of the show. The A plot is with Arthur, Grace and their time on the Blood Drive. Oh, the Blood Drive is an actual in universe show, which gives it a great excuse to randomly throw obstacles into the way of our hero. Because it’s what the viewers want!

The guy that runs the Blood Drive is also the best character on the show. Julian Slink just has everything I want out of a guy that makes a killing show. He’s flamboyant, kinky and has all the right attitude. Even when he’s answering to his bosses, Slink is always the craziest guy in the room.

Some of the other racers feel underused. Of the ones that got special introductions, Fat Elvise did not have any real effect on the race. Ribbone could have used more scenes, too. Other teams were interesting to watch. The Gentleman and the Scholar were great. The married couple was fun, too.

Early on, each episode goes through a typical crazy scenario in different stops on the Blood Drive. Those, while fun, didn’t interest me as much. At the halfway point of the show, though, when things became more serious and focused, that was when I got engaged. The characters became fleshed out, they added depth and vulnerability, it got better than just mindless violence.

And I enjoy Arthur better than most good guy characters. He doesn’t hold back the action with trying to be good. Grace is usually fun to watch. She kicks a lot of ass and is not sorry for anything.

Now, what about the B plot? It’s far less interesting than the A plot, though there are still fun characters there. Aki is interesting to watch. Aki is a robot servant of Heart Enterprises, the company behind the Blood Drive, and she fully subscribes to their crazy practices. The other character is Christopher, the poor guy. He just gets abused the entire time.

The B plot is mainly about Christopher and Aki and their relationship with each other, but it could have been more. There’s quite a lot of world-building and crazy stuff just mentioned in passing. Christopher could have been investigating that more, instead, and filling out more of why things were happening. He should have gotten more people to interact with.

Blood Drive does throw a lot of weird surprises out that makes the world more than just anarchy. It makes the show worth a watch for those that can stomach all the body fluid being flung everywhere. And for those that enjoy this style of show, I think Blood Drive sets out to do everything it wants to (within the TV ratings system).

Killjoys, Season Finale

Mm, space battles, space battles everywhere. This season of Killjoys follows from a more coherent second season. Now, war is coming, and Dutch, D’avin and Johnny have to do all they can to prepare for it. Their enemy is Aneela and the Hullen, parasitic alien invaders.

I liked this season, much like the last one. It has a story running throughout, and we get a lot more of the universe as Dutch asks for help from everyone. The characters are all back in fine form. I think Alvis (the Scarback) was underutilized this season. He could have used more scenes and maybe a focus episode.

As for new characters, Aneela is interesting. She’s also played by Hannah John-Kamen, but the Aneela and Dutch are completely different. They sound really different. Aneela has a soft way of talking that’s still really dangerous. It works for her. Zef is a new biology girl for Dutch’s crew. She doesn’t get too annoying, but she is a bit annoying. Pip I liked better. Pip is their, uh, black market guy? He’s fun and it looks like he’ll have more of a role going forwards.

This season feels tight. After a bit of a slow beginning where Johnny was still separate from the group, things pick up as soon as he rejoins. Starting from then on, it’s fun adventures against increasingly dire situations.

Glad this show is renewed. *ahem*

Anyway, on to spoiler thoughts.

Fancy. I didn’t expect it, but he became a pretty big part of this season and he has a great plot. Turin is the jerk as always, but I do like him working with the main characters rather than against them.

The last episode, though, whoa. That changed a lot. I did not expect things to go that way, but I’ll say I was not disappointed. I am looking forward to seeing what’s coming next. The last few scenes were really well done, and I’m glad with the confrontation we got between Dutch and Aneela.

I’m expecting season four to continue with the setup they had at the end of season three.

Wynonna Earp, Season Finale

I just really like this show. It has a fun, feisty main characters, adorable side characters, a whole lot of supernatural strangery and more. Though I will say that the pacing in this show is weird. It’s like some episodes were filmed to be 60 minutes long, and I’m talking 60 minutes without commercials, and they were forced to trim it down to the 45 minute with commercials. Some episodes are just paced too fast. But the show is still great fun.

They still don’t shy away from the nastiness of the evil creatures. This time, the enemy are two widows. Actual sisters or just close enough to be called sisters? I’m not sure. But they work well as the antagonists. They have a different feel from Bobo of the first season. While he always felt like he was in charge, the widows don’t. That isn’t a bad thing. It gives them a lot of back and forth between the main characters while being actively threatening.

It’s a bit of a shame that it takes until later into the season before the widows really have their characters shine through. You see hints of it earlier on, but the closer they get to their goals, the more divergent they appear. If they had that sort of dynamic from the start, it would be really fun.

Adding on to the good guys side are Jeremy and Rosita. Jeremy is their new science guy, and much like all science guys on TV, he makes nerdy references and is awkward. There are several times he gets annoying, but he does get a lot of serious scenes that help him be part of the team. Rosita is a chemist and just a person they can hang around with. She provides the normal friend that knows whats going on, so the group can talk freely around her.

Aside from that, there’s even more stuff that  gets packed in. And part of all that packing makes the season feel rushed, especially towards the end where things get resolved in a few scenes each.

But the main characters are all still great. Wynonna rocks, Waverly is fun, Nicole is now a main character and that’s great. The romantic relationships Wynonna gets into is probably the weaker part of the season mainly because they don’t seem to go anywhere. They just kind of disappear for episodes before being brought back again for a bit. Them dealing with all the supernatural stuff, that part is fun.

Wynonna Earp has a style all its own, and it’s one I enjoy.

Dark Matter, Season Finale

Another fun season of Dark Matter! If you haven’t watch the show, it’s really fun. Sure, the show relies on a lot of tropes, both from science fiction and other genres. You want clones? It’s here. Androids? Definitely. Alternate universes? Sure, why not? But it’s always fun when seen through the lens of our main characters, the crew of the Raza.

This time around, though, and this is a spoiler for the end of last season, Ryo Ishida has become their enemy, along with a host of other new problems. The show really is one continuous storyline, it’s not broken up by seasons. So things from previous seasons come back and things from this season hint at future events.

This time around, there’s a bit of a rotating guest members on the ship. While I am disappointed that there’s no new crew member, I’m sure these guest members will be around in the future to help out. The Raza is really starting to get some good will nowadays. And there are still more stories to tell about their past, too.

The show is still fun as always. All of the characters are great. And I can get used to Ryo. While he’s not on the show as much due to him ruling Zairon, he still gets into frequent conflicts with the crew, and we follow his story through the season to a fun conclusion.

Dark Matter is a fun sci-fi show with fun characters and fun stories.

Now here are some spoilers on the last episode of the season.

Wow. I did not expect a full on space battle. They really let things get awesome. And the ending was a huge cliffhanger, once again. It’s the biggest one, yet! And I’m really glad that Ryo is back on the Raza, even if it might be temporary. You really get a sense that he likes the crew and only acted against them because he feels he must. The final shot of him with some other members of the crew is great.

I really want a next season.