Superman and Lois - Season 2 Round-Up

Let me just say, sometimes you need to let a show cruise along for a season and trust in what they're doing when you think maybe it's not going great.  I never felt Superman and Lois was off the rails this season, but I just wasn't always sure why they were doing what they were doing.  And maybe they did too much of some things, not enough of others, but the show felt *intentional* in ways that were satisfying, carrying overall themes, arcs for all the characters (except for Lana's younger daughter, who is an astounding after-thought) that reflect and refract the theme, and allegory mixing with the concrete.

The show seems very aware of the faults and issues with most CW superhero shows from Smallville through to today, and works overtime not to fall into some of those traps even when it sometimes can't avoid them.  It's not perfect - there's stuff I don't love, and things I wish they'd sort out, and choices they made this season which felt poorly considered.  

But they also chose to go big and swing for the fences with big-time superheroics that somehow aren't just spectacle but contain genuine, complex emotional beats.

SPOILERS, AHOY.

PodCast 203: "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" (2022) - Marvel Madness w/ Jamie and Ryan

Watched:  07/02/2022

Format:  Disney+

Viewing: First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Sam Raimi

For more ways to listen

Jamie and Ryan take a multidimensional look at Marvel's Magical offering from earlier in 2022. Join us as we jump around looking at a Marvel film from a novel point of view, scale a mountain of plot, and consider what magic Marvel is spinning as they expand the multiverse of possibility.

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 203: "Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness" - Marvel Madness w/ Jamie and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Multiverse of Madness - Danny Elfman

Marvel Madness - Movies and More...!

The Signal Watch PodCast · Marvel Madness - Movies and More...!

Return To Smallville - Season 8

just go stand in the back, Clark

I dipped in an out of Season 8 of Smallville when it first aired.  They were hitting some key Superman business, and so I was recording episodes and would watch some, parts of some, and skip a lot.  

Season 8 was when CW realized Clark and Chloe were the only characters still around from Season 1, and they pushed Chloe a bit more center to mixed-effect.  With Lex gone, we got Tess Mercer (played by the fantastic Cassidy Freeman), and the introduction of Davis Bloom played by Sam Witwer.  

Episodes

Odyssey - Clark is in Russia for some reason?  Tess shows up and says "I'm the Captain now".  Davis appears as an EMT.  Chloe gets kidnapped and has a new power that could have been cool, but the writers will lack imagination and ditch it mid-season.  

Plastique - Clark is now at the Daily Planet, Tess is CEO of LuthorCorp but spends her time at the Planet, and a young meteor-freak kills people and Clark and Chloe just smile and pat her on the head.  

Bloodline - Clark and Lois wind up in the Phantom Zone, find Kara.  Faora shows up possessing Lois and screws up Season 9 continuity a bit, but we don't talk about that.

Legion - The Legion of Super-Heroes founders show up (Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl) and are somewhat helpful in extracting Brainiac from Chloe.  I liked the Legion depiction.  

Hex - a cute capsule episode where Zatanna shows up and can grant wishes?  The entire exercise seems to be there so someone could put a woman in a Zatanna outfit.  Which would be ridiculous, but Lois' gig seems to be "sexy disguise" starting with this season's maid outfit in S8E1.  But I feel bad for both Durance and Mack as Durance has to play Chloe in Lois' body, and has to walk the fine line of imitation without insult.

Doomsday - Ooof.  This is wildly anti-climatic and embarrassing.  And then there's the nonsensical part where a supposedly cured Davis just straight murders Jimmy, and then they both die, clearing the decks for Season 9.  But, yeah, this was amazingly bad.  And I'm not even going into the Doomsday look, which is...  muppety.

I don't have much new to say.  With Rosenbaum, Glover, O'Toole and Schneider gone, now they need for the new cast to perform.  Witwer and Freeman add a breath of fresh air.  The show seems to recognize Season 7 was a mess, but the writers still aren't much better.

But I do have a note for WB execs.

Superman Is Not Entirely About Krypton

Return to Smallville - Seasons 6 and 7 - So, So, Soapy

MOVE, Clark!  You're clearly in the way.

Jamie is piloting this ship, and we're now well into territory when I wasn't really watching the show beyond checking in to see what they did with Cyborg, etc..   She's far more familiar with this window of Smallville, and she really didn't want to much most of these two seasons.  

Revenge Watch: Lady Snowblood (1973)

Watched:  07/02/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Toshiya Fujita

Oh.  My God.  @#$% yes.

As a rule, I don't personally believe in revenge.  But if you're gonna do it, might as well come at it with ice in your veins and a sword hidden on your person. 

Is there anything I didn't like about this movie?  No.  Is there anything I liked about it?  Everything.

Watch immediately.  Recommended.

Watch Party Watch: Princess of Mars (2009)

Watched:  07/01/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2000s

Director:  Don't care

In it's way, Edgar Rice Burrough's novel A Princess of Mars is maybe the most important book of the 20th Century that you've never read.  Published in 1912 as a serialized adventure, it laid the groundwork for 20th and 21st Century science fiction and fantasy of a certain swashbuckling flavor.  You do not get to Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Dune or Star Wars without the book.

It's had two adaptations that I know of - this one by SyFy Channel's unholy love child, The Asylum, and then the billion dollar dud from Disney, which I quite like as it's own thing.  

This movie had two things going for it:  

1)  A book beloved by 12 year olds that should have been a slam dunk to adapt, even for The Asylum

2)  Traci Lords

I am here to report that Traci Lords is a force even (especially?) when she's standing in the middle of a smoking crater of where a film was supposed to be.  All told, if you came to see Traci Lords, there's not really enough, but is there ever enough Traci Lords?

The movie was... bad.  Absolutely handicapped not just by a slim budget but by what they chose to excise from the book, what they added in, and then 79 minutes of the 90 minute run time all telling and zero showing.  Which is a really fucking dumb way to use your money when it comes to retelling A Princess of Mars.  

Not actually a set pic.  This is just Traci Lords on a Thursday.

Friday Watch Party: A Princess of Mars

I love the novel A Princess of Mars, by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs.   It's some bat-shit sci-fi-fantasy that's wildly imaginative, weird, violent and romantic in the way that would have deeply satisfied me at age 13.

A while back (2012), Disney had its famous catastrophe with John Carter, a several hundred million dollar adaptation of the book(s).  But that book is out of copyright, and three years before that bomb hit the screen, our friends at The Asylum, grabbed Antonio Sabato Jr. and someone we don't talk about nearly enough, Traci Lords, and they went out to the Vasquez Rocks and made a movie.       

I've only seen about thirty minutes of this back in 2009, but it always stuck with me.  And not just because it features Traci Lords.  I felt like, hey - this is them kinda trying.  It's still The Asylum, so, you know, it's got it's quirks. 

• Day:  Friday July 1
• Time:  8:30 Central
• Service:  Amazon
• Cost:  $2

Friday - Click Here to Leap Into Adventure

Happy Birthday, Debbie Harry

Today is the birthday of Debbie Harry, Queen of Pop Punk.  

I'm a Blondie fan and a Debbie Harry fan.  That's all I have to say about that lest I start to wax rhapsodic.  

She's the absolute best.

Return to Smallville - Season 5 - In Which I've Just Had It

Arrival - Brainiac's ship arrives, along with a few Zod-folk.  Clark loses his powers, hooks up with Lana

Mortal - Some guys escape from Belle Reve and decide to make their name by taking out Clark Kent, who is an urban legend at Belle Reve.  

Hidden - a former classmate of Chloe and Clark takes over a nuclear missile silo? and decides to dust Smallville to get rid of meteor freaks.

Aqua - we watched the first six minutes or so of this one before I remembered this episode is very bad and everything you need to see (YMMV) is in the pre-credits sequence

Thirst - vampires at Metropolis U

Exposed - Lois is a stripper

Reckoning - I'd never seen this one.  It's where Clark tells Lana, things go well until they go very, very bad.  It was actually like an episode of grown-up TV.

Vessel - Cliffhanger Season Finale where Lex becomes Zod and Clark gets tossed into the Phantom Zone.

So I really was thinking about a few overarching things in these episodes.  

"Smallville's" Clark Kent Bares No Resemblance to Superman In Other Media

Trying Not To Be Dead: I Had a Colonoscopy

If you remember the League of Melbotis blog that was the original blog before The Signal Watch, you've watched me age from a bright-eyed young man in his twenties (we are looking down the barrel of our 20th anniversary blogging in 2023, people), to the part where I'm now going in for the routine maintenance of a man in middle-age.

I don't talk about health too much, I think, but I believe in preventative maintenance as much as possible in the form of basic heart health and annual check-ups.  I also am extremely quick to call a doctor to get some pills as soon as I think I have whatever is going around.  I am not one to tough it out - I want to get back on the road to health as soon as possible.  

So - put all of that together, and I am 47, and it was time for me to make sure I was good when it came to colon cancer, a highly treatable form of cancer if you're able to catch it early enough.