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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Book Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Book #38 of 2016:

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth #1)

I like the setup for this novel, which takes place in what used to be America, several generations after a zombie apocalypse has wiped out most of humanity and our civilizations. The main character lives in a fenced-in village in the middle of a forest, with hordes of the undead just outside its borders. It’s rare in my experience for a zombie story to take place so long after the uprising, when everyone has gotten used to the new reality and much of our former cultural knowledge has been lost. So that was a refreshing change of pace.

With that being said, I did not care for the protagonist at all, and I didn’t feel that any of the other characters were particularly well-developed, so finishing this book became something of a chore. (But I did enjoy another book by this author, and I’ve heard that the sequel to this one features a largely different cast, so I might still check that out at some point.)

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Book #37 of 2016:

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

I like that this book spans decades while focusing closely on only two characters, so that you get a strong sense of how their lives change over time. And the central gimmick is neat: the first half of the novel shows the marriage of these two characters from the husband’s point of view, and then the second half switches to the wife’s perspective. There’s a strong potential there to demonstrate how two people can share a life and so many common experiences yet still view things very differently from one another.

That being said, the actual execution of this novel left me cold. If both spouses were keeping things from one another, or if both had only mildly important but still incorrect ideas about the other, it would have been okay. Instead, the book reaches almost Gone Girl levels of a wife keeping her true self a secret from her husband, while he is essentially unfailingly honest in all of his dealings with her. I also didn’t care for the sense I got while reading that the author intended this story to be a commentary on the institution of marriage in general, or some sort of argument that you can never truly know another person. I would be open to that kind of story, but not with a character or a marriage like this one. When two people get married five weeks after meeting and one of them keeps everything about herself a secret from her new husband, it is hardly emblematic of the way most relationships function!

★★☆☆☆

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Movie Review: Ghostbusters (1984)

Movie #10 of 2016:

Ghostbusters (1984)

My wife had never seen Ghostbusters before, so her family insisted on fixing that. (She seemed to like it a lot, especially when Rick Moranis ended up having a bigger part than she initially thought he was going to.) As for me, I saw this movie all the time when I was younger but hadn’t actually revisited it in quite a few years at this point, which is always an interesting experience. I’d say it holds up pretty well, even though there’s some weird sexist stuff — and right-wing politics — that I didn’t notice as a kid. And the plot is kind of all over the place. But it’s still pretty fun, and watching it again made me a lot more excited for the new lady ghostbusters movie.

★★★★☆

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