TV #85 of 2021: ReBoot, season 3 An absolute delight, all the way through to that daft but earned Penzance recap number that closes everything out. This run starts right where the last one left off (although a year and a half had passed for viewers), and it continues the strong streak of serialized plot …
Tag Archives: rewatch
TV Review: Fringe, season 2
TV #82 of 2021: Fringe, season 2 This year drops the ball a few times in terms of maintaining the tension in its serialized plot — say hi to Meghan Markle, whose junior agent disappears after the second hour — but overall it continues the strong streak that developed late in the initial run. The …
TV Review: ReBoot, season 2
TV #81 of 2021: ReBoot, season 2 The first four episodes this season are about on par with the previous year: competent yet disposable pieces of 90s children’s entertainment, more notable for the technological graphics achievement of the time than for any appreciable complexity or storytelling ambitions. (And in the initial airing of the show, …
TV Review: Fringe, season 1
TV #76 of 2021: Fringe, season 1 This series is a little clunkier than I remember at the start, with lots of empty ominous talk about The Pattern (of strange events happening across the world but mostly in Boston that our new team has been created to investigate) that isn’t as inherently compelling as creator …
TV Review: ReBoot, season 1
TV #72 of 2021: ReBoot, season 1 I have a lot of fondness for this old cartoon, which premiered in 1994 as the world’s first all-CGI series (before the movie Toy Story helped popularize the technology). Set inside a computer where the digital heroes have to fend off viruses — plus the users playing games …
Movie Review: Star Wars (1977)
Movie #5 of 2021: Star Wars (1977) As expected, this sci-fi classic absolutely still holds up. The worldbuilding is naturalistic and immersive, the characters are compelling, and the stakes of the storyline make sense at every stage. The pacing is excellent throughout, up until arguably the final attack on the Death Star, which maybe drags …
Movie Review: Serenity (2005)
Movie #3 of 2021: Serenity (2005) When the show Firefly was canceled — before the planned end of its first season, after airing its episodes all out of order — it left a lot of plotlines open and a lot of strengths on the table. Fans were outraged, and as the series gained further followers …
TV Review: Community, season 6
TV #31 of 2021: Community, season 6 The mantra for Community fans clamoring for renewal was always, “Six seasons and a movie!” after a hopeful throwaway Abed line about the ultimately short-lived series The Cape. The sitcom too fell shy of that goal — technically I suppose a revival film someday wouldn’t be so surprising, …
TV Review: Community, season 5
TV #28 of 2021: Community, season 5 This is a year for the sitcom that’s clearly in transition, with the return of showrunner/creator Dan Harmon after a season off, the departure of two original cast members, and a few necessary tweaks to the general premise. The solution to the question of how one still tells …
TV Review: Community, season 4
TV #26 of 2021: Community, season 4 I’d probably agree with the popular consensus that this is the weakest stretch of Community, but it’s honestly not that big a step down from the chaotic year before. Fans were reasonably upset that showrunner / creator Dan Harmon had been fired — not knowing then how abusive …
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