The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

TV Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 7

TV #20 of 2021:

Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 7

With very few exceptions, this final span of TNG plays like a program that has essentially run out of fresh ideas. There’s no real shame in that — the series already had over 150 episodes under its belt ahead of this last run, not even counting the franchise’s earlier TOS and TAS titles or the first year of Deep Space Nine, which collectively add another 120 or so — but it’s an unfortunate way to say goodbye to the era nonetheless. Certain hours are clear repeats of stronger previous plots, while others exhibit absurd low-bar concepts which may well have been rescued from the trash bin. We also get retcons aplenty, mostly in the form of crew members being visited by previously-unmentioned relatives in a naked attempt to gin up personal stakes in the writing, and a half-hearted gesture at a new relationship that only ever feels genuine in the admittedly-superb multiverse adventure “Parallels.”

As that one indicates, it’s not that everything in this batch is awful, but it is the case that most of the show’s worst outings are concentrated here. I can’t decide between such dreck as “Sub Rosa” or “Genesis” for the true bottom of the barrel, but including both those contenders amid some that are just marginally better makes watching this season a chore in a way that Star Trek has never seemed before. I am excited to return to DS9 next, and I’m hopeful this proves the low point for the entire venture and not merely Picard’s branch of it.

I do still have the spinoff movies to watch, so maybe they’ll offer the sort of closure which is largely absent for now (although I haven’t heard great things on that front). I should emphasize that I’ve generally enjoyed this version of the Enterprise and its journey through space, and I will miss characters like Data when the dust finally settles. But at the same time, I think I would look at them more positively had they departed a bit sooner.

This season: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Seasons ranked: 4 > 3 > 5 > 2 > 6 > 1 > 7

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Book Review: The Listerdale Mystery by Agatha Christie

Book #51 of 2021:

The Listerdale Mystery by Agatha Christie

A fine collection of short stories, although perhaps a bit too similar to one another overall. Despite the title, these are not mysteries in author Agatha Christie’s usual sense; there are no investigations or clues that a clever reader can race to put together before one of her detective figures. Instead, most of the entries here are more like action thrillers, with excitingly unpredictable twists and a heavy reliance on mistaken identity. Characters pick up the wrong car, or trousers, or telephone call, and swiftly find themselves swept into someone else’s adventure. Others are specifically asked to swap places with a doppelgänger to draw off pursuit. It’s a fun departure from the writer’s typical style, but all those variations on the common theme do begin to feel a bit rote by the volume’s end.

[Content warning for racism, antisemitism, and use of words that have since become slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor

Book #50 of 2021:

Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America by Candacy Taylor

A fascinating deep dive into The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guide that was self-published by a small press from 1936 to 1966 with lists of businesses around the country that had been verified safe for black travelers during America’s shameful era of racist Jim Crow oppression. Author Candacy Taylor offers a chilling depiction of the bigotry and violence that could be expected at a typical white-owned establishment of that period, but she mostly walks readers through a history of the text and how it changed across successive editions.

Although the narrative can sometimes feel like just a catalog of entries itself — and the writer occasionally wanders into digressions of related but off-topic social ills like racial disparities in mass incarceration — it’s a pretty thorough look at the hotels, restaurants, and more that were recommended by Victor Hugo Green and his team over the years, as well as updates on whether / how these places can still be found today. Complemented by interviews with elderly African Americans who either used the Book or were featured in its pages, this title provides a capsule of black existence that was critical for its contemporary audience yet rarely documented in the mainstream culture.

[Content warning for slurs.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Justified, season 2

TV #19 of 2021:

Justified, season 2

I like the idea of the Bennett hillbilly crime family — as well as Margo Martindale’s powerhouse portrayal of its cagey yet honorable clan matriarch — but the surrounding plot is messy and uneven, and a number of writing decisions leave me frustrated. I don’t mind making the protagonist more fallible, guided by emotion and personal loyalty over superhuman marshal instincts, but too often this year his bad choices end up yielding positive results, and characters who criticize him are treated like scolds. He’s too cavalier about breaking the law in pursuit of his vision of justice, and that’s an element that sits worse with a decade of cultural hindsight into patterns of police abuse.

I’ve also just never cared much for Boyd Crowder, who has now been promoted to a series regular. Depending on the episode, he’s either being pitched as a reformed bigot or one who was merely faking his prior extremism to amass power in the region, and neither of these characterizations is particularly justified (sorry) by the evidence. I get the impulse to position this figure as an antihero foil to Raylan, but it feels incoherent to write him pushing back against an acquaintance’s antisemitism in one scene and then have the camera linger on his swastika tattoo in another.

Finally, although the colorful Elmore Leonard-inspired dialogue remains fun, this deep into the show it’s starting to seem a little one-note. In my recent review of Community’s first season, I praised how every line clearly arises from a specific character voice, and while a sitcom’s rhythms are obviously quite different from those in a drama, that’s emphatically not the case here. Taken out of context, there’s nothing distinguishing which quote comes from which cast member, and that makes for a less interesting atmosphere, especially as the initial novelty of the dialect wears off.

Overall this is still a program with a lot of potential and generally competent storytelling, but it isn’t showing the growth I would expect in this sophomore outing.

[Content warning for gun violence and racism and homophobia including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The Queen’s Gambit

TV #18 of 2021:

The Queen’s Gambit

An outstanding character study and period piece, offering the same sort of lush mid-twentieth-century design details that bring the era to life on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The main focus here, however, is on our complicated protagonist, a brilliant but lonely young prodigy struggling to understand the world around her and make her way in a male-dominated field. (So… rather a lot like Midge Maisel, come to think of it.) She is gifted but self-sabotaging, and an early addiction to drugs and alcohol creates a further tension and a challenge for the heroine to believe she can perform her best when not under the influence.

Although unaddressed on-screen — realistically for a girl of that time — Beth also reads as likely autistic to me, and her distance from everyone she meets is achingly palpable. Indeed, one of the great joys of the series is seeing her form genuine connections with people who appreciate and support her even when she appears unable to express how much that means. Even if not on the spectrum, she is an outcast who builds a nontraditional approximation of family for herself, and that’s a narrative pattern I’ll always cherish.

This is a show about chess too, but it’s very much in the genre of classic sports stories like Rocky or Friday Night Lights where you can follow the action and the emotion of the players without necessarily knowing or caring for the game in question. But those viewers who do will find an added layer of appreciation for all the training, matches, and strategy sessions which go into a professional career, and may well feel a yearning to dust off their old boards themselves.

It’s a one-season title that seems unlikely to be renewed, for while there are plot avenues that a sequel could theoretically pursue, the resolution to the central figure’s arc ends on a basically perfect note. I haven’t yet checked out the 1983 novel this is based on — and I’d love to hear how Netflix was convinced to adapt it almost four decades later — but it certainly represents a complete and self-contained story as is.

[Content warning for death of a parent.]

★★★★★

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Book Review: You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

Book #49 of 2021:

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

This is a really cute #ownvoices queer love story, and while it’s a little hard to suspend my disbelief that a race for prom queen could be this intense — or that the nerdy protagonist is pinning all of her scholarship hopes for college on an unlikely victory — the romance that blossoms with one of her competitors is well worth the investment. I’m glad too that although there is ample teenage drama here, it never rises to the cutthroat level of strategic betrayal that we might expect from the premise. The heroine’s perspective as one of the only black students in her small-town Indiana high school is also valuable, and rich with insights clearly drawn from author Leah Johnson’s experiences dealing with that sort of marginalization. I could nitpick on some of the finer plot details of this novel, but overall it offers a degree of YA wish fulfilment that makes me smile too much to care.

[Content warning for racism, homophobia, transphobia, panic attacks, and death of a parent.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenny

Book #48 of 2021:

The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease by Charles Kenny

An informative yet somewhat dry overview of the history of pandemics, focusing less on the science of disease origin, spread, and containment / cure, and more on the human policy response (or lack thereof). I’d recommend this 2021 title as a quick primer for readers seeking an introduction to the global context of COVID-19 or a general understanding of how earlier societies have faced similar crises, but it’s lacking the level of granular detail that would make for a definitive text on the subject.

I also think author Charles Kenny plays a little too safe with discussions of the current coronavirus and other recent outbreaks, highlighting certain management decisions as effective or not without ever naming the actors involved. He cites studies finding that most 2020 border control / travel ban edicts only pushed the local infection timeline out zero to two weeks, for instance, but doesn’t mention which politicians or parties favored that move and which saw it — apparently correctly — as empty xenophobic posturing. This reads as an attempt to stay apolitical, but it’s silly when contemporary audiences can read through the lines and will be frustrating in the future when that necessary degree of background knowledge is reduced. You can’t really be neutral when evaluating which actions or source ideologies actually work as intended, and the effort here feels disingenuous.

[Content warning for discussion of racism and antisemitism, including pogroms.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat

Book #47 of 2021:

Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat

This 2018 novelization of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special is a whole lot of fun. Although it doesn’t take the opportunity like the similar Russell T. Davies “Rose” adaptation to cheekily sneak in some post-facto canon nods, author Steven Moffat does introduce a few elements — from flashbacks involving classic character Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart to new interludes with the Tenth Doctor and River Song — that further flesh out the storyline and make the adventure even more of a celebration of the franchise history. It’s a really clever rendition of what was a strong episode to begin with, and I love that it includes the short prequel “The Night of the Doctor” as well.

The broader question facing this sort of project is always, who is it for? The Day of the Doctor is a fantastic meetup of multiple incarnations of the time-traveling protagonist and a revisiting of the Time War that looms so large over the rebooted series backstory, and I can’t imagine any version of it working well for an audience unfamiliar with the show. I’m also not sure that any Whovian is seeking out the printed material ahead or instead of the filmed program, so it’s mostly eased of the burden of having to explain things that an entirely original plot would.

But if you approach this title as an excuse to revisit a tale you already know in a slightly changed format, it’s a pretty entertaining affair.

[Content warning for an insensitive joke about being easily triggered. And yes, I’m aware of the irony here.]

★★★★☆

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Book Review: No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox

Book #46 of 2021:

No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Fox

I think most people probably have a fondness for actor Michael J. Fox, due to lingering affection for the beloved characters he’s played, sympathy for the early-onset Parkinson’s disease that reoriented his career and continues to affect his daily life, and appreciation for the medical research foundation he established with his wealth. But even with all that good will going into this latest memoir… it’s simply not a very exciting read.

As a book, No Time Like the Future is disjointed and clipped, offering a variety of anecdotes that might be interesting at greater length but are seldom given enough space to breathe here. There’s not much of an overall theme linking these reflections, and the author can be a tad exasperating as he name-drops his famous friends and all the cool vacation spots he’s jetsetted to around the world or suggests that the universe wanted him to adopt a dog because he and his wife both happened to notice the same flyer for it. The subtitle is also misleading, although I don’t know whether or not Fox supplied it — he’s not particularly optimistic within these pages, nor is he overly focused on considering death. He’s just sharing a succession of unrelated comments that would likely make for engaging dinner conversation (so long as one could ask follow-up questions) but are not nearly as effective in this written format.

At its best, the title gives us an idea of what it’s like to live with a movement disorder, planning out every physical motion yet still experiencing a disconnect with one’s body, leading to spasms and frequent falls. But it’s lacking the story to properly illuminate either that condition or his broader journey, which substantially weakens the text.

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Infinity Blade: Awakening by Brandon Sanderson

Book #45 of 2021:

Infinity Blade: Awakening by Brandon Sanderson

This 2011 media tie-in novella is an odd curiosity, even with author Brandon Sanderson bringing his usual talents to the task. It takes place in-between two mobile games to apparently bridge their stories together, and I imagine it would read better for an audience familiar with either / both. But not everyone is going to approach this title as part of that larger franchise, especially after the apps were removed from the Apple Store in 2018 for compatibility issues with an updated operating system. I myself have never played them, and so I’m not sure how much of the printed work here consists of new versus inherited material.

The plot also begins rather abruptly and ends with a few threads left dangling, which makes sense as a middle chapter of an ongoing series but is less satisfying in a standalone piece. (Sanderson went on to release a second Infinity Blade volume as well, but I gather that that one is intended to set up the third game and does not directly function as a sequel.)

At least it’s an interesting concept, sort of like Castlevania meets Shannara meets the writer’s own Mistborn trilogy. An omnipotent god-king has been temporarily killed by the latest hero of a family who sends a champion to assault his castle every generation, and the worldbuilding reveals that his magic is actually all advanced technology that has fallen out of common understanding over the centuries. Again, I don’t know to what extent that’s original invention or prior canon, but it gets a fun exhibit on the page as the protagonist whom no one expected to win must scramble to decide his next steps and figure out if he’s anything more than a pawn in a contest among immortals.

There’s enough neat touches on display that I wish this were a full novel, and the storytelling is generally competent even if the femme fatale love interest is a bit one-note. But it’s really too truncated to soar in the way I’d usually expect from this source.

[Content warning for diet culture. And disclaimer: I’m Facebook friends with the author.]

★★★☆☆

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