TV Review: New Girl, season 5

TV #31 of 2016:

New Girl, season 5

Year-old spoiler alert, but last season of New Girl ended with two characters getting engaged, and this season tracked the length of that engagement, ending with their wedding in the season finale. So that was fun to watch, as someone who’s getting married soon myself, since it’s rare to see a sitcom tackle the exact situations you’re going through at the time. I’m also impressed with how seamlessly New Girl handled losing its main actress to maternity leave for so many episodes: her replacement was very definitely a different sort of character than Jess, and the rest of the cast has been fleshed out so well over the years that it was easy to hardly notice Jess had gone. I don’t think New Girl would (or even should) go on if Zooey Deschanel ever decided to leave for good, but this season makes a strong argument that the show can still work without her.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Morning Star by Pierce Brown

Book #41 of 2016:

Morning Star by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #3)

A thrilling end to a spectacular trilogy. I do think this book was a minor step down from the first two Red Rising volumes, which had more cohesive plot structures than this one. Morning Star sometimes felt more like a sequence of discrete stories than a single overarching narrative, but it definitely delivered a satisfying conclusion and the payoff to various character arcs begun in the earlier books. As I’ve said before, Darrow is an amazing character to see thinking his way out of seemingly hopeless situations, and author Pierce Brown is just as adept at coming up with plot twists I never see coming. This is a series I know I’ll be rereading at some point, and I’m excited to see what Brown does next.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks

Book #40 of 2016:

Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks (Genius #1)

This book got better around the halfway mark when the main character finally developed a conscience, but I still didn’t really love it. There were a lot of elements in this book that suggested a heightened comic-booky reality, but it never felt like the author was wholly committing to that. And the protagonist gets called a genius a lot, but for the most part, we’re only shown the results of his actions without any indication of what those actions really were. I feel like this book had potential, but it wasn’t realized enough for me to continue on with its sequels.

★★☆☆☆

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TV Review: The Flash, season 2

TV #30 of 2016:

The Flash, season 2

Zoom wasn’t quite as compelling a villain as last season’s Reverse Flash, partly because his master plan never really made much sense. But this season still delivered a lot of fun with its new multiverse setting, so on the whole I’d call it a success. I’m not sure what the last scene of the finale means in terms of continuity – I’m really hoping it’s not a brand-new timeline like Fringe delivered at the beginning of season 4 – but I trust these writers. And now that they’ve sent a few characters over to live on Earth-2, hopefully that means more time can be spent on each of the remaining team members! (I’m cool if those other characters recur from time to time, but the main cast roster was getting a little bit crowded. It’s nice to thin the herd once in a while on a show like this, especially when you can do that without killing anyone.)

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, season 1

TV #29 of 2016:

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, season 1

I hate to say it, but this latest Arrow spinoff was a complete and utter trainwreck. I kept watching for the shared continuity with the Arrowverse (and, okay, for Caity Lotz and Wentworth Miller), but I’m not sure if I can put up with another season of this. Just weak, lazy storytelling all around, and most of the cast isn’t up for the challenge of making the bad writing seem at all believable. I think this may be where I stop being a DCTVU completist.

★☆☆☆☆

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TV Review: Fargo, season 2

TV #28 of 2016:

Fargo, season 2

Fargo’s second season was even better than the first, another taut examination of how quickly events can spiral out of control once people step outside the protection of the law, all wrapped up in midwestern niceness. It had a great cast in service of some seriously great writing – I have no real complains about this season other than that it placed all its fireworks, Game of Thrones-like, in the penultimate episode and not the finale. But the fallout was interesting enough from a character perspective that even that I didn’t mind so much. This series remains a surprisingly rich remixing of various elements from the original hit film.

★★★★★

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TV Review: Bob’s Burgers, season 6

TV #27 of 2016:

Bob’s Burgers, season 6

I feel like Bob’s Burgers is comfortably past its prime at this point. This season was still reliably funny, but I can’t really point to any all-time classic episodes from it. It does seem like the character of Louise got fleshed out a little bit more this season, though – let’s hope that Gene is next, and that the writers continue to bring the jokes even if the plots aren’t as surprising anymore.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

Book #39 of 2016:

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

A heartbreakingly visceral story about a poor black family in rural Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. This whole novel feels like one long in-drawn breath, as things keep getting worse for the main character and her family while you, the reader, know just how devastating the storm is going to be when it finally arrives. There’s a lot to be said for historical fiction that’s presented this way; there’s no real foreshadowing in the text itself, because the protagonist’s story is all told in the present tense, but you still can’t help but feel the power of the hurricane looming over the book. A lot of this is due to Ward’s prose, which is simply beautiful. I don’t know if I would ever want to read this book again, but I’m so glad that I read it now and I know it will stick with me for quite some time.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 3

TV #26 of 2016:

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 3

This was another solid season on S.H.I.E.L.D., but in hindsight it also seems like something of a palate-cleanser. Original cast member Brett Dalton appears to be leaving the show, as are fan-favorites-in-search-of-a-spinoff Bobbi and Hunter. Plus it seems like the HYDRA plot that had been present ever since halfway through season one is finally going away as well. There are still Inhumans out there, but with both Afterlife and Hive out of the picture, they’re not necessarily going to be the focus of the show anymore. And the final minutes of this season definitely foreshadow some major changes to the status quo. It’ll be interesting to see how the series moves on from here, especially given the rumors that season 4 might be its last.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Deadwood, season 2

TV #25 of 2016:

Deadwood, season 2

This season is a big improvement over the first, which was already a solid prestige western. More supporting characters get fleshed out this year, and there’s an interesting overarching serialized plot over most of the season. This is probably never gonna be my favorite show — although I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing a lot of the nuance by not giving it my full concentration, since it’s so much denser than most programs I multi-task on — but it’s well worth the time for that exquisite flowery dialogue alone. I’m excited for the final season, and I hope that that movie they keep talking about finally gets made to give the series a proper conclusion.

★★★★☆

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