The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Fringe, season 4

TV #3 of 2022:

Fringe, season 4

I didn’t have much patience for this penultimate run the first time I watched through Fringe, as the literal retcon of the rebooted timeline struck me as a lazy excuse for the writers to stop caring about continuity at all. They keep coy about everything that’s now different well into the season, and as a loyal audience member who believes in the dividends of investing in a serialized narrative, it’s hard not to feel betrayed and checked-out over that sort of treatment. Why did we watch all those episodes of plot development and character growth, if there’s no guarantee that any of it still happened that way?

And I want to preserve that reaction in amber, because I do think it has a degree of validity to it, but upon this rewatch, I appreciate this year so much better. Things are changed, yes, but at least we have Peter as a key perspective figure who remembers everything we do. (It hopefully shouldn’t be a spoiler that he’s survived getting erased from reality, given how prominently he appears in the promotional materials and Joshua Jackson’s name featuring in the credits during his initial absence.) Later, as the new Olivia starts accessing memories of her prior self, she joins him in that position, and since they’re our two central protagonists anyway, I can just about let it slide that our old versions of everyone else are irreparably lost.

Two other elements help bolster my newfound enjoyment of this era as well. First, the altered characterizations of Olivia, Walter, Lincoln, and the rest are pretty interesting, and although it’s frustrating to not know which of the familiar cases they’ve actually investigated, the people themselves offer rewarding contrasts to the situations we knew before. And that’s my second observation, that Fringe is in part a study of the gradations of variation: with parallel worlds, and biohacking, and cyborg imposters, and time travel, and post-death interrogations, the series continually asks how much a person can change and still be recognizable as an iteration of a common being. The displaced timeline simply adds one further fringe case to the existing collection.

With all of that said, the storyline has some issues. The season ends a lot weaker and I would even say sillier than it begins, and the threat of David Robert Jones in particular feels like too much of a retread without payoff. The human shapeshifters are a major concern early on but then get dropped entirely, while the business with the Ark shows up out of nowhere and ultimately seems a bit rushed. And the flashforward episode, much as it sets up the final days ahead, lacks any obvious justification for its inclusion and placement here.

So it’s a mixed bag overall, but between the ambitions that I’m realizing more today and how the wacky science of the episodic plots still tends to be quite fun, I would call this another winning season for Fringe. It’s shifted from what it used to be, but somehow remained itself.

[Content warning for gun violence, body horror, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: ReBoot, season 4

TV #2 of 2022:

ReBoot, season 4

Oh, that wicked cliffhanger! 20 years later, it still stings that we leave Mainframe in such a perilous position, and that the eventual semi-sequel to this show, aside from being awful all-around, never even tries to provide any resolution to it. Like the teams on Angel or Animorphs, this 90s squad goes out fighting, although that’s less of a deliberate creative choice here.

But let’s back up a nano. In credit to the producers, ReBoot season 4 was conceived of as three separate movies, each of which would be broken down into four parts for transmission as TV episodes. The ending of the first storyline leads into the second, and in theory the third would have immediately followed that. Yet the order was shortened and the series canceled during production, and so there is no final film. Without it, we cut off right at a crescendo of tension that may never be resolved.

It’s frustrating, but mostly because this run is just so great overall. The initial block “Daemon Rising” follows up on that titular supervirus who was mentioned as having corrupted the Guardians and infected the Net back in the earlier “The Episode with No Name,” and is now attacking the protagonists’ system directly. Once she’s dealt with, we face “My Two Bobs,” a seemingly goofy concept — there are indeed two versions of the hero on the scene, one presumably a copy but both claiming to be the original — that develops real pathos and stakes as it moves along. The plot throughout remains as propulsive as it’s been since mid-season two, with no filler episodes and dynamic character arcs for essentially all the main cast. The continuity is expanded with flashbacks that further flesh out the backstory as well, finally answering many lingering questions about the general premise of the program.

The graphics get a noticeable upgrade too (although the current official streaming home on ShoutFactoryTV is hosting low-grade video files for some reason), reflecting the advancements from 1998 to 2001, and it’s hard not to wonder what modern technology would be able to make of a true ReBoot revival after another two decades. The humor and cultural references, long a sly wink for older audiences, are more daring than ever, and the gender equity demonstrates how far the scripts have come from when Dot was problematically positioned as the only girl around. The sole sour note I can report is the roller-bladed binome waiter at Al’s Wait & Eat, whose flamboyant gay caricature hasn’t aged especially well. Conversely, however, the pointed satire of washed-up “Neo-Virals” longing for the good old days in Megabyte’s army feels even more salient now.

The abrupt stop at a villain’s triumph is pretty jarring, and hardly a moment that we want to crystallize as the definitive statement on where this winding path has led. But it was a strong title all the way through to that bitter end, and one that still holds up as an animated classic today.

This season: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Seasons ranked: 3 > 4 > 2 > 1

Book Review: White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson

Book #6 of 2022:

White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson

This YA ghost story could have been a run-of-the-mill three-star read for me, but since the ending is so abrupt and unsatisfying, I think two stars feels more appropriate overall. I’ve had a really hard time getting inside the mindset of the protagonist, a teen girl who’s pretty mean to her friends and family even before she starts suspecting that her creepy new house might be haunted. (To give just one illustrative example, she’s so hooked on pot that when she can’t afford / doesn’t know how to score any locally, she guilts her bestie from her last address into mailing her some seeds — meanwhile noting that it’s a federal crime! — so that she can grow the crop herself in the yard of a theoretically-abandoned property on her block.)

Character misgivings aside, the spooky atmosphere is reasonably effective, as is the sustained plausibility of several possible explanations for what’s going on, none of them particularly welcome. Either the building is legitimately possessed by wicked spirits, or there are intruders sneaking around the place at night, or the heroine’s preteen stepsister is secretly malevolent-bordering-on-murderous. But the final twist revealing a dastardly scheme behind certain developments is absurdly convoluted and not given anywhere near enough narrative space to justify itself. In the end this horror title mostly gets an eye-roll out of me.

[Content warning for anxiety, bedbugs, gaslighting, racism, and mention of child molestation.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly

Book #5 of 2022:

The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly (Mickey Haller #4)

A competent if somewhat straightforward legal procedural, following the trial of a woman accused of murdering one of the bankers foreclosing on her home. Even more so than Harry Bosch investigations or previous Mickey Haller cases, author Michael Connelly gives us the full play-by-play here, detailing basically every moment of the action from jury selection until a verdict. The emphasis on lawyer strategy is interesting, especially the insight into what each side wants the jurors to hear whether it’s objected to and struck from the record or not — although the repeated dwelling on that device grows a tad tedious after a point.

In my favorite examples of this genre like My Cousin Vinny or The Good Wife, there’s typically additional elements going on outside of the courtroom, but in this title we mostly just get that core plot alone. And while the ultimate resolution is kept uncertain throughout, the storyline is not particularly twisty by this writer’s standards, offering only one big surprise near the end that I’ve seen too often before to be blown away by this time. All of that adds up to a volume I like but don’t love in a series that remains generally engaging.

[Content warning for torture and gore.]

★★★☆☆

TV Review: Scandal, season 4

TV #1 of 2022:

Scandal, season 4

This series remains compulsively watchable in the ludicrous audacity of its various developments, and it occasionally gives us some powerful character arcs, like the one this year of a shattered First Lady Mellie Grant picking herself back up after personal tragedy. Mostly, though? It’s a whole lot of nonsense that barely holds up to even the remotest scrutiny of logic. To quote from my own review of the previous season that absolutely still applies: the “characters seem to have the memory of a goldfish by now, amiably teaming up with people who were recently torturing them, threatening to shoot them, murdering their spouse, etc.” The relationships are nearly all written in sand, delivering no lasting consequences to any particular betrayal or reconciliation that the script of the week requires. That’s been a problem for a while, but it gets worse the longer it stays unaddressed.

Also returning from seasons past is the tediously unending effort to take down the super-secret spy organization of B613, which showrunner Shonda Rhimes must just find way more interesting than I ever have. That story bookends this run, interrupted only for Olivia to be kidnapped for a few episodes in an unsuccessful Jack Bauer riff that contains an altogether-separate conspiracy reaching deep within the White House. But then that resolves without much fuss and we’re back to the same Rowan frustrations as before, except with new plot armor keeping every major figure alive no matter how deadly their supposed peril. (The overall high casualty count continues, but we’ve lost the sense of danger that any of the main cast might reasonably fall into it.)

I’m curious to see where the show goes next, especially if it’s able to really put the spy antics to bed as the finale at least tries to suggest. Scandal is often best in its moments of total reinvention, like the decision here to transform Abby from OPA lawyer to presidential Press Secretary, so I do believe the entire program could yet turn over a new leaf. But I’d be lying if I said I love what we’re getting until that happens.

[Content warning for torture, gore, gun violence, and rape.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: The Prophecy by K. A. Applegate

Book #4 of 2022:

The Prophecy by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #34)

Another strong Animorphs adventure ghostwritten by Melinda Metz, who likewise penned the previous Cassie volume, #29 The Sickness. (Alas, it appears to be her final contribution to the series.) Surprisingly enough, this one is also a direct sequel to The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, revisiting the planet of that setting and bringing back its heroine, the Andalite-turned-Hork-Bajir Aldrea. Of course, she’s dead now, so her presence in this novel is as a disembodied voice in the protagonist’s head made from an old recording of her brainwaves, able to thought-speak with her host and share control of her limbs but generally keeping her own counsel about what’s happening. It’s a classic sci-fi scenario, right down to the threat that she won’t agree to return to storage / nothingness in the end.

The precipitating plot is fine, if ultimately somewhat irrelevant. The last Arn has found his way to the free Hork-Bajir colony, seeking someone to channel the Aldrea template and locate where she hid a cache of weapons. He’s then going to genetically engineer a new wave of Hork-Bajir, arm them, and restart the old guerilla war against the Yeerks, which in theory would draw some of their attention away from the invasion of earth. But if I remember correctly, there’s never any follow-up on that front, so it’s mostly just an excuse to set things in motion and bring the Animorphs off-world here.

The alien doesn’t even know who will be the best receptacle for the Ixcila pattern he brings, and everyone is expecting her to manifest in either her great-granddaughter Toby or the bloodthirsty warrior Rachel. Instead Cassie is selected, and although she worries it’s because she’s been seen as a pushover, the rest of the book helps her and us realize the parallels between her compassionate yet bold spirit and Aldrea’s. They are both graceful morphers too, and both involved in a romance with a fellow fighter they worry might be doomed. (Thank you to Metz and credited author K. A. Applegate for the confirmation that Cassie and Jake are continuing to kiss, as well as the update that she’s been doodling sappy messages about him on her schoolwork.)

From the slain woman’s perspective, everything has suddenly leaped forward by decades, with her home and loved ones now long gone. There’s deep pathos in her grief, but it’s lightened by the fun of seeing an outsider’s view on the familiar team dynamics, from bristling over Ax’s arrogance to being unexpectedly impressed by Jake’s leadership skills. It’s a relatively simple storyline, and nowhere near as dark and heavy as this franchise can get, give or take the latest slaughter of thousands of helpless enemies in a pretty clear war crime, but it’s effective nonetheless.

Child soldiers and their massacres aside, the minor arc of Aximili coming to accept Aldrea — and her claimed identity as a Hork-Bajir — certainly tugs at my heartstrings, as does her own eventual realization that she has to leave Cassie and Toby alone to live their own lives, rather than molding either into a copy of hers. That, along with the customary jokes, morphs, and action scenes, makes this an altogether lovely read with only a background level of unsettling trauma.

[Content warning for body horror.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

Book #3 of 2022:

The City Beautiful by Aden Polydoros

I am predisposed to appreciate #ownvoices Jewish fantasy, but even within that slowly blossoming genre, this new historical fiction novel about a gay teen haunted by the dybbuk of his murdered best friend should stand out. The immersive details bring to life the World’s Fair and the rest of the 1893 Chicago setting, not to mention the Jewish immigrant experience of that time and the culturally-nuanced, complicated understanding of his sexuality and desires that a boy like Alter would have. It’s a book born of generational trauma that angrily puts antisemitism on stark display, demanding readers face the pogroms that ravished Europe and the attitudes that kept Jews from full participation in American citizenship, well before the better-known atrocities of the Holocaust. It’s also a spooky ghost story, a murder mystery, and a meditation on the inadequacies of language to wholly express queer love.

I’m holding back from a five-star rating mainly just because some of the hallucinatory imagery seemed hard to follow and picture clearly as I listened to the audiobook, but that might be less of an issue for folks with the text in front of them, and I could see myself bumping this up another point on a reread. It’s all the more impressive given that author Aden Polydoros reportedly wrote the title as an independent study for his undergraduate degree, a feat that has immediately rocketed his future works to the top of my personal to-read list. Representation matters in literature as both a mirror and a window, and the writer has delivered it powerfully here amid a crackerjack YA plot.

[Content warning for pedophilia, homophobia, self-harm, and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Tristan Strong Keeps Punching by Kwame Mbalia

Book #2 of 2022:

Tristan Strong Keeps Punching by Kwame Mbalia (Tristan Strong #3)

Certain scenes in this final Tristan Strong novel are terrific, but overall I would say that the middle-grade #ownvoices fantasy trilogy has never managed to recapture the magic of its first volume for me. As engaging as it remains to see black folk heroes and African gods brought to life in a modern plot like this, there’s not a strong enough sense throughout of what the villains are attempting to achieve or how the protagonist and his allies are acting to thwart it, and I feel some tonal whiplash in how the depictions of historical and contemporary atrocities against African Americans are balanced with the maturity level of the primary intended audience.

(Are we really supposed to laugh at the comically hapless henchmen who keep threatening to call the cops on innocent black kids and literally “saying the quiet part out loud” when explaining the reasons they totally shouldn’t be called racist, knowing that these behaviors directly hurt and kill the children’s analogues in the real world? Such topics aren’t necessarily off-limits for humor, but I’m not sure author Kwame Mbalia achieves the right alchemy in how he frames them here.)

Still, I do appreciate this series in general, and would happily recommend it to any readers looking for fiction with preteen black heroes and a largely black cast. It just isn’t telling as tight and clear a story as I want it to.

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 3 > 2

Book Review: The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee

Book #1 of 2022:

The Nobleman’s Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee (Montague Siblings #3)

Although it maintains the feel-good / hopepunk ethos and the commitment to marginalized historical voices of its predecessors, this final Montague Siblings novel never quite gets its hooks into me to the same extent. We’ve jumped forward a couple decades in order to follow the youngest brother Adrian, whose issues are primarily his anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and obsessive compulsive behavior — all #ownvoices for author Mackenzi Lee — as well as the unexplained recent death of his mother. In pursuing questions regarding the latter, he runs into Monty and eventually Felicity, his disgraced older siblings whom his parents have apparently relegated to a shameful family secret kept hidden from the lad.

I wish those returning characters (along with Monty’s boyfriend Percy) were more present in the narrative, but I also don’t buy them as forty-something adults, as they seem written essentially just as they were before with no sign of having gone through any meaningful change during the years when they weren’t on the page. Moreover, the plot here is pretty heavy on its fantasy maguffin element, which per usual for this series is not my favorite. I think Lee is best at personality-driven storytelling, but the protagonist leaves all his known connections and responsibilities behind to embark on this adventure of the Flying Dutchman’s spyglass, which somewhat dampens my investment in his arc. We’re set up initially to care about this hero’s relationships with his father and fiancée and how they will respectively affect his political future, so it’s jarring that these concerns are then dropped for the majority of the tale.

I’d still say fans should go ahead and pick up this title, as it has some fun moments and is clearly a very personal project for the writer. But maybe don’t go into it expecting to fall in love with a Montague all over again.

[Content warning for domestic abuse and suicide.]

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2 > 3

Movie Review: Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks (2022)

Movie #2 of 2022:

Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks (2022)

This standalone adventure is Doctor Who at its absolute best. The premise of a steadily-shortening time loop, while not totally original, is still fairly distinctive, and is executed here with great aplomb, alternating humor with tense terror via the ticking clock of the countdown. The Daleks of the title are completely relentless too, representing the formidable threat that the Doctor’s arch-enemies always should be (yet so often aren’t). On this occasion, at least, they live up to their hype and then some.

And the characters! The two guest actors pop really well, both in their performances and the specificity of each’s respective characterization in the script — another frequent weakness of this series, particularly under current showrunner Chris Chibnall, that is thankfully nowhere in sight. The dynamic of the Doctor and her companions likewise receives a fantastic development in this New Year’s special, of the sort I am reluctant to spoil but is an exciting culmination of three seasons of growth and the start of a big step forward for the future.

We only have two episodes left with Chibnall and the Thirteenth Doctor (and presumably Yaz and Dan), but this hour finds the head writer at the top of his game, avoiding all of the missteps that have sometimes made his tenure an exercise in frustration and missed opportunities. If the spring and fall specials are crafted with this same level of care, 2022 will be Jodie Whittaker’s finest run as well as her last.

★★★★★