The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Movie Review: Rocky Balboa (2006)

Movie #10 of 2026:

Rocky Balboa (2006)

Any story that restarts a dormant franchise carries an additional burden of justification that immediate sequels lack. The first five Rocky movies had their ups and downs, but together they formed a cohesive unit about the life and career of a Philadelphia boxer from roughly 1976 to 1990. This next installment followed after a gap longer than the entire span of the original series, which raises the question: why? What was left to say about the titular hero that needed to be explored so much later on?

As it turns out, quite a lot. These films have always been stronger outside the ring in my opinion, and so it is legitimately interesting to check in on the Italian Stallion with his boxing days apparently long behind him. We find Rocky a lonely widower running a restaurant named after his late wife Adrian, as well as a local celebrity whom everyone greets warmly but no one except his brother-in-law Paulie seems to really know. His son Robert, now played by Milo Ventimiglia, feels perpetually overshadowed by his father’s fame, resulting in an estrangement that neither man sees how to bridge. Around this time, the aging protagonist strikes up a new friendship / potential romance with a woman that he knew as a child back in the first picture.

It’s a good character study overall, but unfortunately, the surrounding sports genre eventually swallows it. The current heavyweight champion, a guy with the ludicrous name of Mason “The Line” Dixon, is getting disrespected by fans who don’t think he’s ever faced a real challenger, while a computerized match between him and Balboa in his prime predicts that the older boxer would triumph. As a result, Dixon’s managers challenge Rocky to an actual fight, which he accepts and trains for, forming the climax of the piece.

The bout is only supposed to be an exhibition, but still, it’s a development that I just can’t suspend my disbelief over — a former athlete in his late 50s, who was diagnosed with brain damage and other serious injuries over a decade before and who has not kept his body in any sort of shape, fighting the literal champ (and, spoiler alert, managing to hold his own)? It’s a feel-good fairy tale about persistence, or as writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone has his character declare in a rousing speech to Robert beforehand, “It ain’t about how hard you hit – it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward!” Which is a nice motto, but an implausible retreat into fantasy on this particular occasion.

In the end, Rocky exits the arena much like he did after first battling Apollo Creed, having proved himself a contender against all the odds. But it’s a lot harder to take at this point, not to mention a distraction from the other things he had going on earlier in the movie.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Doctor Who: The Pit by Neil Penswick

Book #37 of 2026:

Doctor Who: The Pit by Neil Penswick (Virgin New Adventures #12)

This Doctor Who novel is so bad that it had me looking back over previous stories I’ve rated as three-out-of-five stars, wondering if I’d been too harsh on them. It’s both overstuffed and incredibly disjointed, offering not so much a plot as a string of events that barely connect to each other even by the end.

To wit: the Seventh Doctor and Bernice travel to a certain alien world in the past because she’s always wondered why it mysteriously vanished. They swiftly get separated, and he ends up with the poet William Blake, who’s somehow been transported there from his own time and place. The two men eventually find a portal that brings them first to Victorian-era London, where they unmask a cult behind the Jack the Ripper killings, and then to turn-of-the-century Stonehenge for an encounter with UNIT. Meanwhile, the Doctor’s companion has been kidnapped by an android soldier who’s lost the rest of his squad, who are on the planet to kill two shapeshifters who have taken a number of slaves including one who’s a psychic, while another of the robots winds up traveling with the widow of a scientist who died while researching a strange local phenomenon that turns out to be a mysterious red fungus slowly spreading across the globe and destroying everything it touches. Simultaneously, the narrative is following a police investigation, rioting, and general political intrigues all happening elsewhere in the solar system, for no clear reason at all.

As a work it’s fairly interminable, since the action largely consists of various people walking around in circles, and the Time Lord’s ultimate contribution to the situation is practically nonexistent. He’s there to witness the climactic showdown between two other characters, and Blake’s there to witness him, and afterwards they meet up with Benny again, but that’s about it. I’ll give this title one-and-a-half stars, rounded up, for finally narrowing its story threads at the climax and doing some interesting worldbuilding with ancient Gallifreyans fighting Lovecraftian entities that I appreciate, but it certainly lives up to its reputation as the worst entry of its series so far.

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

★★☆☆☆

TV Review: Homicide: Life on the Street, season 1

TV #10 of 2026:

Homicide: Life on the Street, season 1

This show debuted in 1993, and knowing that it was based on a book by the journalist/producer David Simon who later went on to create The Wire, I was expecting a similar sort of crime drama here. And the parallels are there, seeing as how this series likewise focuses on a squad of Baltimore cops, but it’s more of a straightforward police procedural — and closer to something like The Shield in tone, though perhaps less cynical than weary in terms of the work the characters are doing. These protagonists don’t have much of a home life, and the job is just an endless grind of assignments stacking up. Still, there’s a definite air of triumph whenever one of them is able to solve a case, erasing the victim’s name in red on the unit markerboard and writing it out in black instead.

It’s punching above its weight for the genre and the era, landing at a moment when writers were starting to experiment with serialization but networks hadn’t figured out that audiences cared about that quite yet. Watching it now on Peacock, I’ve found that the episodes are frustratingly presented in the order that they aired rather than arranged for production / continuity, but that’s easy (and rewarding) enough to manually adjust. It’s a product of its time too in a few dated elements like everyone smoking indoors, but so much of it feels maddeningly contemporary that the scripts could largely be filmed these days unchanged.

The cast is another major selling point, given all the early-career actors who pop up — Edie Falco and Luis Guzmán in the same episode! — and a very young Andre Braugher as one of the leads. As a longtime fan of the movie Midnight Run, I’ve also enjoyed getting to see Yaphet Kotto as the beleaguered lieutenant trying to get his team through each day. And of course, this season introduces the world to Richard Belzer as Detective John Munch, who would improbably cross over to become a regular on Law & Order: SVU after this and subsequently make guest appearances on a record-setting eight further shows, including things as far afield as The X-Files and Arrested Development. (Try not to worry about the shared canon implications, in which Munch is a key lynchpin of the proposed ‘Tommy Westfall’ fictional universe.)

Here and now, the stories are good, and the heroes don’t always figure out the mystery in front of them. Two are particularly haunted by the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl they can’t close, and several resort to underhanded tactics like flat-out lying to their suspects in the interrogation room, which is realistic but was groundbreaking to see depicted on television. Viewers may not have necessarily appreciated it — the program was perpetually on the bubble of cancellation, despite ultimately lasting for seven seasons and a film finale — but this title clearly helped the medium transition into what it is today.

[Content warning for racism, drug abuse, gun violence, suicide, and gore.]

★★★★☆

TV Review: Our Flag Means Death, season 2

TV #9 of 2026:

Our Flag Means Death, season 2

I gave the first year of this period comedy three-and-a-half out of five stars, rounded up, because although I enjoyed the gay pirate romcom, I felt like it took too long in a fairly limited number of episodes to fully establish itself as just that. This second and unfortunately final season doesn’t carry that same weakness, as is obvious from the marketing poster alone — returning audiences know by this point that Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard are legitimate, textual romantic interests for each other, and are further supported by a crew of similarly queer shipmates around them.

With all that being said, I still don’t love this show as much as I maybe could have grown to do if it had had more time. This sophomore run has pacing issues of its own, after all: several half-hour installments with the central couple broken up, then a short reconciliation before another dramatic split, and so on. Watching it well after the fact meant that I wasn’t in the position of contemporary viewers forced into a binge by the network burning off multiple episodes a week (of only eight total), but I can nevertheless feel the whiplash of such repeated swings of the status quo. It’s great that the program wasn’t queerbaiting us with the strong emotional bond between our male leads, but frustrating that they don’t get to spend a longer stretch simply happy together, especially given Ed’s murderously dark mood when they’re apart.

There’s probably a way to balance the shifting tones of a series like this, but this one doesn’t manage it in the end for me. I’m also not convinced that the colloquially vulgar language was the best choice for the setting, which is a lingering issue from before that I continue to think gets in the way of the humor and storytelling, rather than enhancing it. (Spanish Jackie’s comment that her new husband “fucks like a jackhammer” is a particularly anachronistic headscratcher.) And while I appreciate the commitment to representation, here including historical female pirates like Zheng Yi Sao, that’s more important on a broader scale of the industry at large than automatically translating to strengths on-screen.

I wouldn’t say this follow-up is a major step down from the initial release, but it doesn’t really deliver any significant improvements beyond a nice character arc for Izzy Hands at the cost of less space for the rest of the ensemble. As a result, I’ll let it sail off into the sunset with a slightly lower rating, as befits a title that I’ve liked but never quite loved.

[Content warning for gun violence, torture, domestic abuse, amputation, and gore.]

This season: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 1 > 2

Book Review: Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire

Book #36 of 2026:

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #11)

At this point, the Wayward Children fantasy series has established a clear alternating pattern: the even-numbered novellas contain prequel stories about troubled young characters stumbling into other worlds that offer a respite from their ordinary lives alongside unexpected new perils, while the odd volumes follow a loose group of those same protagonists in their adventures after returning home and making their way to the special school for such individuals introduced back in book one.

This eleventh installment continues that trend, revisiting several figures from earlier on. Nancy, who once defied the odds to find her beloved Halls of the Dead for a second time, is apparently quite happy there as a barely-living statue until now forced to flee in the face of a dire threat to the realm. She escapes to Eleanor’s academy, gathers some helpful classmates, and then accompanies them to confront the old villain who’s made a surprise reappearance as well. It is, in short, a piece for attentive and faithful readers, rather than the standalone tales that author Seanan McGuire sometimes delivers in this saga.

It’s also not especially moving as these titles can be at their best. There’s little examination of the quiet sorrows that drive kids away from their common reality, or of the magical doors as a metaphor for choices one might carelessly embrace in a moment of weakness. And I’d reiterate a complaint I lodged years ago in my review of #5: “on a macro level, it seems like the overall pathos of these books is weakened with every successful new return journey (and resurrection from the dead), lowering the stakes by making those rare events more commonplace and controllable.”

I suppose it’s nice to check in on our heroes again, and as usual the work is slim enough that it doesn’t overstay its welcome, but the plot is pretty straightforward and I don’t think it does anything really interesting with any of the underlying concepts. A solidly unremarkable three-star vehicle, in the end.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Libby Lost and Found by Stephanie Booth

Book #35 of 2026:

Libby Lost and Found by Stephanie Booth

I like the glimpses we get throughout this novel of its story-within-a-story, a fantasy series called The Fallen Children that’s supposedly bigger than Harry Potter. (Perhaps, like Simon Snow, it will someday be spun off on its own.) The further wrinkle that its pseudonymous author is secretly a reclusive middle-aged woman in a quiet neighborhood is also a good one, and her hidden struggle with early-onset dementia that’s preventing her from finishing the final volume makes her a devastatingly sympathetic protagonist. I was so worried on her behalf while reading this, especially in a scene near the beginning where she forgets her dog at the park and goes home without him.

I don’t care as much for our other heroine, the precocious eleven-year-old whose fan letters Libby randomly decides to respond to, nor do I think very highly of the plot that brings them together. The writer’s behavior is so inappropriate even before they meet — browsing forums about her own works for inspiration, etc. — and although I understand why she’d be reluctant to share her diagnosis, I’m baffled by how many characters don’t immediately realize something is wrong upon interacting with her at all. And finally, at the risk of spoilers, I’m disappointed that the hints of the fantastical, of the books being real on some level that connects to Peanut’s small-town life, wind up coming to nothing. It turns out that all the parallels between her and the Children (which multiple people keep noticing and commenting on) are purely coincidental, which isn’t the most satisfying choice imaginable.

A strong enough ending might have helped save this, but even there, I feel let down by several implausibilities in the execution and left with questions that will never be resolved. Ultimately I give the title two-and-a-half-stars rounded up, for a major case of squandered potential.

[Content warning for domestic abuse, child endangerment, and suicide.]

★★★☆☆

Movie Review: Rocky V (1990)

Movie #9 of 2026:

Rocky V (1990)

This fifth Rocky movie has a reputation as a franchise-killer, performing poorly at the box office compared to its predecessors and likewise receiving worse marks from critics. (It didn’t wind up ending the series entirely, but another 16 years would have to pass before the next installment was finally produced.) And yet watching it with fresh eyes now, I think it’s honestly a rather fitting sendoff to the character at this stage of his life, building off the previous films in a way that feels emotionally true. I still don’t love the street brawl at the end, but everything leading up to that scene is stronger than is often credited.

I suspect people’s issues largely stem from the fact that our returning protagonist is not actually a boxer in this one. Starting right after his fight with Drago, the former champion is told he has brain damage from taking so many hits to the head and can no longer get into the ring. It’s a de-facto retirement for Balboa, who had toyed with that idea anyway in the past, and it means he won’t seek to reclaim the title he gave up to go to Russia before. He also learns that a shady accountant has stolen all his family’s assets, forcing them to sell their house and estate and move back to the old neighborhood in a poorer district of Philadelphia.

Around this time, a young up-and-comer named Tommy “The Machine” Gunn — again, these names! — approaches Rocky and convinces him to become his trainer. Under his tutelage, the new fighter does well, but he chafes at the press’s descriptions of him as a mere puppet for the old champ. He’s swayed by the offer of wealth and a guaranteed shot at the championship from an obnoxious promoter who’d previously been hounding the hero not to retire, but when Tommy does ultimately compete and win, the crowd turns against him for having abandoned Rocky to get there. Meanwhile, Adrian and Rocky Jr. (played by Sylvester Stallone’s real son Sage in his film debut) are chafing at how little attention the older man has been giving them versus his obsession with the kid’s career, even after getting dropped.

It’s meaty dramatic material for the most part, including a terrific flashback appearance from Burgess Meredith as Mickey that was newly-filmed for the purpose rather than just a replay of earlier clips. Unfortunately, it culminates in Gunn confronting the protagonist at a bar and them going outside to hit each other, which isn’t the most satisfying denouement. Balboa defeats his ex-protege and then punches the loudmouth manager for good measure, but it doesn’t feel especially earned — or plausible, since Rocky hasn’t been doing any training of his own and isn’t exactly in his prime at this point. But it’s a better ending than the rumored draft script in which he dies there, I suppose.

I can see why they stopped making these movies for a while following this one, but it’s not the catastrophe that it’s reputed to be. In the final analysis I give it three-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

[Content warning for gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: UnWorld by Jayson Greene

Book #34 of 2026:

UnWorld by Jayson Greene

In the not-too-distant future of this novella, people can create digital copies of themselves to serve as a backstop for their fallible physical memories. Generally the uploaded consciousness stays close to the human original, but Ana’s has asked to be set free following the death by apparent suicide of her teenage son, whom we learn had developed a relationship of his own with the divergent A.I.

It’s topical and eerily plausible in a Black Mirror sort of way, but both the short length and the structure of this story work against it. We follow first that heroine, then a new woman who has bonded with the former’s virtual self, then the dead boy’s best friend, and then the actual computer program, before circling back for a quick epilogue with the initial protagonist. Although the perspective of a grieving parent is well-rendered and the speculative premise is an interesting one, I think I would have preferred a plot that stuck with one primary character to explore at a greater depth rather than the loose baton race we’re given here.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Behooved by M. Stevenson

Book #33 of 2026:

Behooved by M. Stevenson

The punny premise that lends this romantasy novel its title doesn’t technically spring until almost a quarter of the way through the text, which is late enough that I normally wouldn’t mention it in a review. But since the publisher’s description gives it away anyway, and it really is the most ludicrous sort of fun, let’s talk about it: the main character’s new husband gets struck by a curse right after their wedding, which makes him turn into a horse every day between sunrise and sunset. He’s human again after nightfall, though of course he always transforms back without any clothes on, which is a problem since the two of them are actively fleeing through the countryside at this point to avoid the assassins of their unknown adversaries and seek for a magical cure.

It’s admittedly a lot, but I suspect you can probably already tell from that brief synopsis whether this is your kind of story or not. I was personally hooked from the start, when the noble heroine is pressured into her arranged marriage with the heir to a neighboring kingdom but still given the choice to refuse, and her parents matter-of-factly note how her sister wouldn’t be as ideal an option for securing their treaty because she favors women in bed, whereas the protagonist doesn’t have a preference in the gender of her partners. We’re also told how she’s suffering from an unnamed chronic illness, whose flare-ups and symptoms are reportedly inspired by author M. Stevenson’s own struggles with celiac disease.

Is this a “good” book? I don’t know! Is Jupiter Ascending a good movie? She’s married to a horse, y’all. The plot is full of ridiculous romcom and fanfiction-y tropes, like characters laboring under obvious misunderstandings that a quick conversation would resolve or inns having only one bed (which they destroy when they forget to get the prince back outside before dawn, whoops). Could the worldbuilding have been more cohesive and the enemies-to-lovers arc less predictable? Sure. But did I have a bad time with any of this? Neigh.

[Content warning for gun violence and gore.]

★★★★☆

Book Review: Berserker Base edited by Fred Saberhagen

Book #32 of 2026:

Berserker Base edited by Fred Saberhagen (Berserker #7)

I’ve never read anything else in Fred Saberhagen’s classic Berserker series (1963-2005), but I know that its core idea of killer self-replicating spaceships programmed by a long-dead race to destroy all life in the universe has been fairly influential in the science-fiction genre. (Mass Effect’s Reapers in particular are just berserkers with the serial numbers filed off, while other popular villains like Terminators, Cylons, or the Borg obviously tap into similar fears about unchecked machine intelligence.)

This seventh volume, published in 1985, was a collaborative effort among Saberhagen and several invited peers, each of whom contributed a short story in the setting. Their pieces do not overtly connect with one another — humanity in this future is so widespread across the cosmos that individual colony worlds are completely isolated — but Saberhagen as editor then wrote interstitial chapters about telepathic prisoners tuning into those stories to theoretically unite them under a single cohesive plot.

It’s too uneven a work overall for me to grant this more than three out of five stars, but I’m glad to have more context now for Stephen R. Donaldson’s “What Makes Us Human,” which I had previously encountered in his collection Reave the Just and Other Tales. And despite my lack of familiarity with the wider saga beforehand, I do think this book stands well enough on its own, in addition to offering an interesting look at this corner of pulp-fiction history. So I guess I liked it in the final analysis, which is what the Goodreads three-star rating is meant to reflect.

[Content warning for suicide, genocide, racism, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★☆☆