7 WondLas

Apple TV+ has its share of breakout television series, titles known even to non-subscribers. But it also has series you've likely never heard of... which probably includes one based on a series of books I'd never heard of either, WondLa.

Teenager Eva lives in a bunker, cared for by a robot caretaker named M.U.T.H.R. When the bunker is suddenly attacked, she is forced into the world outside... to discover a strange planet inhabited by aliens. What has become of other humans, said to have been safe in other bunkers? What has happened to the planet? Can Eva find these answers, and her true destiny?

WondLa is based on a fantasy trilogy by Tony DiTerlizzi, and comes from a fairly new animation studio, Skydance. Apple TV+ gave the show a 2-season order right out of the gate, and the first of those seasons is now complete (and waiting on a cliffhanger until the next season). The show has many of the hallmarks of an American animated feature film: a plucky young protagonist, plenty of humor filling the spaces between more serious dramatic moments, and a vivid color palette for the visuals.

It has an even more colorful cast of characters. Just like Dorothy adventures through Oz with a distinctive trio, Eva's adventures in Orbona include the fussbudget M.U.T.H.R., the giant puppy-like tardigrade Otto (with whom Eva can communicate telepathically), and permanently cranky Rovender (who doesn't want to let on how much he's taking to Eva). The casting is as inspired as the visuals, with Teri Hatcher as M.U.T.H.R., Brad Garrett as Otto, and Gary Anthony Williams as Rovender.

Each of the seven episodes of the first season is about 20-minutes long -- a fast and easy watch. Yet I'm not entirely convinced that these almost bite-sized episodes are the ideal way to experience the story. If you skipped the various episode recaps and credits, you could stitch the entire season together into a "movie" running perhaps a little over two hours. And while this would be too long for a theatrically-released animated movie, it might be ideal for sitting at home on your couch and bingeing.

Or... that might be me trying to compensate for the fact that the story never quite got its hooks in me. I never felt like I had to know what was going to happen in the next episode of WondLa. But at the same time, I always enjoyed watching it. It looks amazing. The environments are the most stimulating I've seen in an animated movie since Strange World, the character design as creative and varied as the best Pixar movies, and the animation wonderfully detailed. WondLa is sometimes a meal for the mind, but always a feast for the eyes.

I'd give the first season of WondLa a B-. Depending on how long it takes for the second season to arrive, I can imagine myself coming back for that. Until then, it might be something for you to check out too.

Enterprise Flashback: Minefield

With one full season of Enterprise complete, several of the starring characters remained underdeveloped -- particularly Malcolm Reed. Early in season two, the writers put Reed at the center of another episode... only to double down on the few shallow and annoying characteristics they'd already given him. That, and a first appearance of the Romulans, is "Minefield."

Enterprise stumbles into a cloaked minefield, taking heavy damage and getting an undetonated warhead attached to the hull. When Reed tries to diffuse it and winds up trapped outside the ship, it falls to Archer to take over. But time runs short, as the mysterious alien owners of the minefield arrive and demand that Enterprise leaves their space.

Way back in the 1960s, the original Star Trek conceived of an alien race that happened to look like the Vulcans. The Romulans were a one-off allegory about the red scare of communism and the paranoia of traitors in your midst. There was no anticipating the decades-spanning franchise that would build out that story, making increasingly implausible the notion that the Vulcans could have spun off another space-faring society, with an extensive shared heritage, and yet have no knowledge about them. That all poses a particular problem for a prequel show like Enterprise, whose answer to the issue was probably the only one possible (other than: "don't use the Romulans") -- honor the fact that "no one prior to Kirk, Spock, and company knew what a Romulan looked like," and sort of hand wave the rest.

If you accept that approach, then this episode does well by the Romulans. They're certainly portrayed as xenophobic and unreasonable. They're secretive to the point of being inscrutable. (What was so valuable on this uninhabited planet that it was worth putting up all these mines anyway?) They're all the things that longtime Trek fans expect from Romulans.  I do question a bit the decision not to make them deadlier. We see the Enterprise with a nasty "bite" taken out of its saucer by the Romulan mine... but there are no lives lost. Still, I'd say overall that making the aliens of this episode be Romulans ultimately works well for the episode.

Besides, this episode itself puts other nitpicks much more in your face. The minefield is ultimately shown to be so dense that it's unclear how Enterprise could have gotten through it as far as it did without tripping one. You would think the Romulans would have some means of detonating them remotely -- like, say, the one attached to Enterprise, after they refuse to leave. Why are shuttlepod hull plates made out of some sort of explosion-resistant material that the Enterprise hull plates apparently are not?

If you get past the quibbles, the episode is all about Malcolm Reed -- and in these respects does the character just as dirty as previous first season episodes. The main thing we learned about him last season is that he's so boring that nobody actually knows anything about him. The same joke plays out again here, as Archer invites him to breakfast and he can't talk about anything but work. When Archer later tries small talk to distract Reed from an injury, Reed curtly maintains that senior officers and subordinates shouldn't fraternize.

Finally, we get a little background on Reed's family background in the navy, his own fear of the water, and an ancestor's death by drowning. But this quickly morphs into a repetition of the one other thing we know about Reed from season one: he's obnoxiously fatalistic. He's ready -- even eager -- to sacrifice his life in this situation (and pretty much any other), which doesn't exactly create narrative tension when Dominic Keating's name is there in the main titles every episode.

But as is so often the case on Enterprise, a shaky script is produced with top notch production values. I mentioned the look of the damaged Enterprise already. Also great is a version of the original Romulan "bird of prey" design. The outer space set of the Enterprise hull is nicely detailed, and the prop of the Romulan mine is excellent, full of widgets the actors can interact with in a series of bomb-diffusing scenes.

Other observations:

• I devoted a whole post to why "Faith of the Heart" makes for a bad theme song for Enterprise. This episode really highlights yet another problem: it never plays well against a dramatic teaser. This episode establishes a nasty threat with huge danger in the opening minutes... and then smash cuts to "It's been a long road...." Does not work at all.

• It feels like this episode must have run short. We get a rather long sequence of Reed suiting up to go outside the ship. It's the sort of thing that might have felt appropriate the first time we ever saw spacesuits on Enterprise -- but it's been more than a year now.

The episode looks pretty great, and it uses the Romulans about as well as you could in a prequel, given the weird constraints of Star Trek lore. But nonsensical writing, including the refusal to make Reed anything but boring or annoying, drags it down for me. I give "Minefield" a B-.

President Without Precedent?

Apropos of let's say nothing in particular, I recently was drawn to a non-fiction book written by constitutional law professor Corey Brettschneider. Including the subtitle, the book has an unwieldy name. But from it, you might intuit why I was interested -- The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.

This book presents ignominious slices of American history: details of presidents who pushed the power of their office, and in some cases pushed the country to the brink of collapse. More importantly, it recounts what was involved to pull the United States back from the brink.

First up is John Adams, whose monarchical view of the presidency led him to vicious attacks on the press, including prosecutions of anyone speaking critically of the office of the president (himself). Then, as you might expect from a book like this, we read about James Buchanan, who colluded with the Supreme Court to deny the basic personhood of black people. Next comes Andrew Johnson, who encouraged violence against his political opponents as he asserted authority above Congress. Skip ahead a few decades, and read about Woodrow Wilson's focused efforts to mainstream racial animus through expansion of bigoted laws. And of course, no book about U.S. presidents threatening democracy would be complete without a look at Richard Nixon, who contended that no action taken by a president could be illegal.

Corey Brettschneider's book provided me strange comfort. Current events may be unprecedented in my lifetime, but not without precedent, period. Strip the names out of my previous paragraph, and a reader might well think that it was about current events. It's not that reading this book made me think, "oh, the country has been here before, so we'll be fine," but it was a relief of sorts to see that we have been here before, and there were ways out.

The book presents the thesis (and I believe the correct one) that effective opposition to corrupt and captured governments comes from the outside. The three branches of American government do not have the final say on how the country's constitution is interpreted; the values of the document are ultimately up to "we the people" to decide. Brettschneider focuses on individuals and citizen groups who rose up to oppose these past presidents, in what he calls "constitutional constituencies."

The book highlights several truly impressing and inspiring historical figures -- especially Frederick Douglass (in the Buchanan and Johnson sections) and William Monroe Trotter (in the Woodrow Wilson section). The book does point out that a "constitutional constituency" need not be led by a singular figure like Douglass or Trotter. It cites the example of the grand jury against Richard Nixon, who collectively and (at the time) anonymously united in their view that a president can and should be held accountable for criminal acts. Yet Brettschneider also points out that this action was essentially thwarted by President Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon -- and he further suggests that this thwarting of the will of "we the people" prevented the sort of full recovery that followed the actions of the other presidents chronicled in the book. The pardon of Nixon, the author argues, was the first step down a path that led to today.

And the book does touch on today. Or, at least, "today" at the time it was written. An epilogue touches on Donald Trump and the events of January 6, 2021. But given everything that's happened since then, given the extent to which today's attacks on democracy feel like "all five of the other attacks detailed in the book, all at once," it's a quite disheartening note to end the book on. Still, focus on the central message, and there is hope. Yes, the Supreme Court says that there is sweeping immunity for presidential lawlessness... but Brettschneider's entire point is that the people are the final arbiter on that.

In any case, the message that we've been here before (or, at least, "here-ish") is a good one for today, and this author does a good job delivering it. Even if you read The Presidents and the People purely for the history and not for "inspiration" or "advice," it's a solid read. You'll be reminded of the achievements of Frederick Douglass, and educated about those of William Monroe Trotter. You'll be persuaded that James Madison may have been the most underappreciated of the "Founding Father" presidents, and that Woodrow Wilson was actually far worse than is widely thought. I give the book a B+.

When [I'm/]It's '64

Beatlemania may no longer be the dominant cultural phenomenon that it was decades ago... but it's a machine that still functions if you connect power to it. There was Ron Howard's documentary about the Beatles' touring years, Eight Days a Week. There was the monumental efforts of Peter Jackson and his technical wizards to restore the documentary footage behind Let It Be, resulting in Get Back. And now producer Martin Scorsese has thrown his clout behind documentary director David Tedeschi to create Beatles '64.

Like Get Back, Beatles '64 chronicles a very short window in time for the Fab Four -- specifically, their visit to the United States in February of the titular year. But this is a monumental few weeks for the band, including their famous appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and a wild concert at the Washington Coliseum (essentially played in a boxing ring).

The documentary features extensive footage shot at the time, from interviews with screaming fans to the big performances. A lot of time is spent hanging around hotel rooms; the band has become too big to just go out in public, and so their pent-up energy has no outlet but to call in to radio stations and mug for the documentary crew. It's a reminder that regardless of their celebrity, then soaring to unprecedented heights, they're ultimately four guys in their early 20s.

The classic footage is juxtaposed with modern day interviews. Many are with fans, looking back on Beatlemania with a 60 year remove and trying to find the words to explain it to today's audience. Many fail, yet as you watch them grapple with that, their emotions are on clear display. The feelings are still raw for them.

Some of the interviews are with other performing artists at the time -- and I find these to be a bit of a mixed bag. As the film acknowledges, the Beatles of 1964 were just as well known for their covers of other songs as for their original material. They were among the artists familiar with the black heritage of rock music, and were part of the movement to bring it to white America because they genuinely loved it. It's great that this documentary goes back to to the source, interviewing Ronald Isley, Smokey Robinson, and others, to make sure we all know where some of the Beatles' songs really come from. Yet at the same time, what are these artists going to say other than "I was honored the Beatles played my song," whether that's true or not?

The film also imposes a narrative about February 1964 that I'm not sure fits. It suggests that the intensity of the American response to the Beatles was driven in part by the assassination of John F. Kennedy less than three months earlier. The nation had endured a massive psychological trauma, and going mad for the Beatles was the joyous release. Maybe you had to be there, but I'm not entirely convinced. At least, I find it hard to point to any analogous fads in the wake of tragic events in my lifetime (like the Challenger explosion or 9/11). Or maybe the answer to that is, "well, but no one was the Beatles in 1986 or 2001."

Still, while this documentary wasn't exactly persuasive to me, I'm not sure that was first on its agenda. It is a well-made time capsule of a huge moment in pop culture history -- and that alone makes it an intriguing watch in my eyes. I give Beatles '64 a B-. Fans of the band will certainly want to check it out.

Agents Smith

The movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith now stands as an awkward memento of the relationship of stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But it still was the loose inspiration for a TV series created by Francesca Sloane and Donald Glover.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith stars Glover and Maya Erskine as the titular characters -- two strangers paired up as spies and dispatched around the world by an unknown handler. Navigating their cover as a married couple proves just as difficult as any of their dangerous missions. Over the course of eight episodes, the "Smiths" learn to love each other... and then sour on each other to an increasingly savage degree.

When this project was first announced years ago, it was a team-up of Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, of Fleabag fame. That was an exciting prospect to me: two writer-creator-actors, each with a well-regarded show, pooling their talents in a spy thriller? Count me in! Except that within a few months, Waller-Bridge left the project due to the oft-cited "creative differences." My own enthusiasm faded, and here it's taken me a year since Mr. and Mrs. Smith released to actually finish watching the show we ultimately got.

What we got is still a pretty good show. It's not hard to imagine what the "creative differences" might have been, as this is a fairly dark and definitely gritty drama with very few comedic accents. Spy thrillers are pretty much unrealistic by definition, but to the degree one can suspend their disbelief, this show plays to be as realistic as the format allows.

While each episode has all the action you could ask for -- foot races, car chases, reversals and improvisations, explosions -- it is fundamentally a relationship drama. When you take the whole season in totality, you see it's a particular kind of relationship drama, focused on what draws two people together. Does having one or two things strongly in common make for enough "glue" to bind a couple together when they're incompatible in basically every other way? It's a slightly deeper take on the classic "opposites attract" rom-com, made all the more different for the spy genre it's grafted onto.

It might sound like the relationship elements overwhelm the action, but they really don't. Indeed, I could have done with more -- or, at least, a longer runway to deal with them. In my eyes, the eight episodes really wasn't enough to track the arc of Mr. and Mrs. Smith's relationship. Their emotional turns felt awfully abrupt to me in key moments, necessitated because the series only had a limited amount of time to get to where it was going.

But then, this is a TV show, so the end of a season isn't necessarily the end of the show, right? Well, in the sense that it was renewed for a second season, right -- we are getting more episodes at some point. But the arc of Glover and Erskine's characters feels complete to me by the end of season one. Picking up with them again feels to me like it would be struggling to squeeze more juice from a spent fruit. And throughout the season, it's made clear that there are other "Mr. and Mrs. Smiths" in the world of this show; so a season two might just as easily reveal that we're watching an anthology of spy thriller mini-series.

I think I'd be there for that. But on the other hand, a big part of the appeal of season one was the two stars. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine are good separately in their roles, and have good on-screen chemistry in the story. Still, just as important in what made the show fun was the deep bench of guest stars who popped up throughout the season, including Paul Dano, Parker Posey, John Turturro, Sarah Paulson, Billy Campbell, Alexander Skarsgård, Ron Perlman, and more. This series had the acting roster of a long-running prestige show that gets actors in who just want to be part of something widely regarded to be great... even though not one minute of this had been seen publicly when they all showed up on set. If Mr. and Mrs. Smith can keep that going even if it decides to rotate the stars each season? I think that would still be fun.

I give Mr. and Mrs. Smith a B+. I probably shouldn't have waited so long to watch it... though with television production times so spread out these days, I'm still finished well ahead of the next crop of episodes, whenever they'll come. If you haven't watched it yet, you've got plenty of time too.

Enterprise Flashback: Carbon Creek

Enterprise followed up its second season premiere with an unusual episode set mostly on 1950s Earth, "Carbon Creek."

Over a dinner honoring one year that she's been aboard Enterprise, T'Pol is encouraged to tell Archer and Trip the story of Vulcan first contact with humans. No, not Zefram Cochrane's warp flight, as they might believe, but the story of a Vulcan ship that crashed in Pennsylvania in the late 1950s. Is T'Pol's tale of her ancestor's time among humans a fiction, or did it really happen?

If you've been following my reviews of Enterprise episodes, you know that it was my least favorite of the Star Trek series the first time around, and that this rewatch has so far done little to change that. "Carbon Creek" may be the episode that most crystallizes why Enterprise just isn't the Star Trek show for me. (At least, this version of the show that was the first two seasons.)

In my view, "Carbon Creek" is actually the best episode of Enterprise to this point. It's a charming tale of Vulcans learning about humanity by living in secret among them. It has stakes, emotional content, likeable characters, and believable interpersonal conflict. It has a well-executed moral message, and it's fun to watch. I'm not saying Enterprise has never achieved any of those things, but I do think it's fair to say that it's never really executed on all of them at once.

That it does so here is a telling indictment of the series itself. This being my favorite episode of Enterprise so far -- when Phlox, Travis Mayweather, Hoshi Sato, and Malcolm Reed aren't even in the episode -- reinforces some quiet truths about the series. All those "secondary" characters that the writers don't seem interested in developing? I guess they really aren't adding much after all. There isn't much Archer, Trip, or T'Pol in this episode either. (There's Jolene Blalock, but not T'Pol.) And the episode is more enjoyable in their absence.

Honestly, I feel like "Carbon Creek" makes a good case for there being a proper anthology-based Star Trek show out there in the firmament of Star Trek series. We saw the fun and varied stories that "Short Treks" was able to tell. Let's have that, but... not short. After all, with the roughly 40 minutes this episode has, it adds refreshing nuances to the Vulcans. They have to navigate this "fish out of water" situation -- eating meat (that they've killed themselves) to survive, concealing their identities without compromising too much on their values of truthfulness, living among emotional humans.

The three Vulcans -- T'Mir, Mestral, and Stron -- each deal with this in compellingly different ways, essentially forming a classic Star Trek triumvirate of their own. Stron remains coldly logical the entire time. Mestral fully assimilates, finding value in humanity and becoming borderline emotional himself. T'Mir is caught between them, duty-bound in her mission, but ultimately tempering learning to temper her logic with empathy. After a whole season of Enterprise watching humans and Vulcans dunk on each other, it's refreshing to see a Vulcan advocate so earnestly for the goodness and potential of humans.

There are many fun elements of this episode. The typical antics any time a Vulcan needs to hide their ears. Plenty of references to 50s pop culture -- including talk of I Love Lucy, a sly shout-out to Lucille Ball's critical behind-the-scenes role in making Star Trek a thing in the first place. A sweet guest star turn by Ann Cusack as a small town woman raising a child as a single mother. Contaminating an alien culture with the invention of Velcro.

For me, one discordant element throughout the episode is the matter of whether Archer and Trip believe the story T'Pol is recounting. Why don't they? What is gained by the wink at the end where T'Pol returns to her quarters to prove to only the audience that the story is true? I think this element exists in the episode only to give the regular actors a little more to do. And yet it's still barely an episode of Enterprise (as opposed to a backdoor pilot for this anthology series I'm imagining).

Other observations:

• The pool hustling sequence is cute, though Mestral is able to intuit things about the game that he should not know (such as having to sink the 8-ball last, and needing to call the pocket you'll put it in). Wagering a date with T'Mir is a bit icky, though.

• Also icky is the salacious moment T'Mir stands behind a sheet and changes into a dress. The shadows are extreme. This is an Enterprise episode, after all.

• There's effective pathos in the story of the brilliant kid unable to afford college. He at least had an alien intervene on his behalf. Plenty of real-world kids aren't so lucky. Star Trek is full of this sort of social commentary, but it's usually more metaphorical than this.

Part of me wants to give this episode a B+. Probably I should; that's how I feel about it. But as an episode of Enterprise? It feels like a B. It's unfortunate that making a solid episode means jettisoning so many of the things that make it Enterprise.

Would You Like Franchise With That?

I get it -- there are too many interesting television series out there for you consider watching one that was just ignominiously cancelled after a barely-watched first season. But if you're a regular reader of my blog, there's a good chance this show is "relevant to your interests," as they say.

So let me say a few words about The Franchise. This half-hour comedy followed the behind-the-scenes insanity of the making of Tecto, one film in a massive superhero movie universe. A frazzled first assistant director struggles to please a vain leading actor, an aging theater star who thinks he's too good to be there, an auteur writer-director with outsized ambitions, demanding and distant studio executives who don't want anything to mess with the franchise's "tentpoles," and much, much more.

The show was created by Jon Brown, who was a writer on both Avenue 5 and Veep, and so was supported here by the creator of those shows, Armando Iannucci. Not every project associated with Iannucci has wowed me, but I generally like his formula of vapid people with massive flaws taking on serious tasks. It may be debatable how serious a task it is to make a popcorn superhero movie, but in at least every other sense, The Franchise is very much the spiritual successor to Avenue 5 and Veep.

Episodes highlight the surreal stupidity that can be part of movie-making: working with visual effects, causing real-world destruction for the sake of a fleeting shot, altering dialogue to please fragile celebrities or foreign nations, and more. The show might be a bit "inside," and thus may be less interesting if you aren't interested in movie making. Then again, you didn't have to be a fan of government to like Veep. I think The Franchise generates plenty of laughs regardless.

There are a few cheeky bits of casting for people familiar with actual superhero franchises. Daniel Brühl, who gave the MCU one of its most memed moments as Zemo, plays the director of Tecto. Aya Cash, who gave a memorable turn as Stormfront on The Boys, plays an ambitious new producer assigned to the film. But other casting is fun because you feel like Marvel or DC has cast these people and you just might not remember it: Billy Magnussen and Richard E. Grant. Himesh Patel is solid as the keystone of the show, first AD Daniel Kumar. Then there's the real scene-stealer, Lolly Adefope, who plays a new low-level assistant on the film and hilariously neither takes shit nor gives a shit.

As you might guess from the show's already-canceled status, after a single season nobody was talking about, the show is no Veep. That was a next-level success possible when every writer, every actor, every person working on the show was at the top of their game, with a razor sharp wit and a barely-disguised contempt for the thing being satirized. Everyone is having fun with The Franchise, and there are no real weak links... but it all amounts more to a less lofty "isn't this silly?"

Still -- if you liked Veep, or if you've been sucked into the inescapable gravity of a superhero franchise, then The Franchise might be for you. Let's face it, almost every consumer of media is one of those things, and most readers of this blog are probably both. I give The Franchise a B.

Survival Instinct

I think in a few blog posts over the years, I've mentioned my interest in crewed space flight. I know I've mentioned that Apollo 13 is one of my very favorite movies. So you probably won't be at all surprised about a recent documentary that found its way into my queue.

Apollo 13: Survival is a recent documentary on Netflix that tells the story of that fateful mission to the moon -- how an explosion on the journey crippled the spacecraft, and only through heroic efforts were the three astronauts returned safely to Earth. I've seen Ron Howard's film Apollo 13 many times, and I've even read astronaut Jim Lovell's book on the flight (originally called Lost Moon; republished as Apollo 13, in connection with the movie). Still, Apollo 13: Survival had the potential to tell a story I already knew well in a new light.

Where Lovell's account makes you play events in your mind's eye (as any book does), and Ron Howard's movie dramatizes events (with some slight alterations from strict truth), Apollo 13: Survival aims to split the difference. By using actual footage -- from the spacecraft itself, the ground crew in mission control, and representative film from other sources -- this documentary aims to tell the story completely as it happened, in as visual and visceral a way as possible.

As you might expect, there are pros and cons to this approach. This documentary did not have the budget for any restorative technology (like Peter Jackson used on Get Back, for example). Thus, most of the footage is as low-quality as you might expect -- poorly preserved, or limited by technology at the time it was originally captured. Sometimes, the documentary has to resort to "home movies" with poorly synced audio, and photos with sound recordings playing underneath.

That's where footage actually exists. As you would expect, three astronauts in a fight for their lives weren't taking time to capture their ordeal on film. So some of the sequences in this documentary are "reenactments," close-up shots of replica spacecraft instrument panels, underscoring the technical jargon being used in the recordings we hear.

Yet in the moments that can and do use real-life film, this history really does come alive and seem more "real." (And a handful of the sources are more clear than you'd ever imagine 50+ year old film could be.) These are the real people, captured as they reacted in real time to these events. We get to be the proverbial "fly on the wall," as some of the best documentaries ever have positioned the audience.

I imagine that the average viewer wouldn't care to experience this story twice. And if you're going to only watch it once, I think I'd still recommend the "slightly fictionalized" version that is Ron Howard's Apollo 13. But I'd say the essential humanity of the people involved comes through more in this documentary -- the astronauts, their families back on Earth, the engineers working at NASA to solve one problem after another. I give Apollo 13: Survival a B+.

Worldly Thoughts

After slowing down its release schedule for a while, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is ramping up again in 2025. This new phase (that may not officially be a "Phase," as Marvel would call it) begins with Captain America: Brave New World.

Sam Wilson has fully assumed the mantle of Captain America, but there's friction with the recently-elected President of the United States, Thaddeus Ross. Things only get worse when someone connected to Wilson tries to assassinate the president. But not all as it seems -- not with the would-be assassin who has no memory of his acts, and not with the president who is hiding a secret. And a shadowy mastermind is playing them all.

Brave New World is a decidedly mixed bag, but still is a major step up many of the MCU's recent offerings. It's actually at its best when it strains at the boundaries of the superhero genre. Of course it's going to fit into the franchise mold -- and I'd be foolish to expect otherwise. Still, there are sections of the movie that play more like a political thriller or spy movie, and I found them to be genuinely compelling. The "tech" involved is only slightly more outlandish than in a typical James Bond movie, and the setting only slightly more sci-fi-tinged than a Jack Ryan story.

But I found the movie didn't nail its narrative nearly as well as its tone. The villain's scheme in this movie is so convoluted that it defies belief -- and is all the more ridiculous for how much the characters tell the audience that it's actually brilliant. Coincidences are passed off as calculations. Connections are made where either none exist, or where they involve minor subplots from decade-old movies. The villain falls out of the trope tree and hits every branch on the way down, from expendable lackeys to B, C, and D plans, to (minor spoiler) deliberately being captured because it (somehow?) serves their machinations.

All of that might be easier to dismiss as part of what you get in a movie like this, if only the movie actually excelled at the main thing you come to see: the action sequences. But Brave New World notably has some of the worst film editing in the entire MCU. It's one cinematic sin after another: not using the right establishing shots to set a stage, cutting too fast to follow the action, leaving out "insert shots" to highlight key action, using bad angles that confuse the geography. I can't think of one action sequence in the entire movie that didn't "break" for me in at least one moment that left me questioning what was happening.

It's also unfortunate that the movie's plot turns so much on a "big reveal" that's been spoiled in every poster, every ad, every bit of promotion. With comic book readers well aware ahead of time about Ross' secret, it was never going to be easy to see this movie without knowing the twist. But then why even structure the movie in a way that holds that deep into the third act, as though it was going to be a stunning revelation? I mean, when trailers for Terminator 2 spoiled that Arnold was playing the good guy, that revelation came less than 30 minutes into the film. Brave New World makes you wait until less than 30 minutes from the end to "surprise" you with something you already know.

Fortunately, though, the movie does excel in another area that is by no means a given in a comic book movie: the acting. Anthony Mackie is a great lead, charting his own sharp, quippy course that feels different from Chris Evans without straining to be so. Danny Ramirez is a fun partner for him as Joaquin Torres, bringing life to the expected action movie banter and making you believe in this important friendship.

Carl Lumbly imbues a key role with enough pathos to make the stakes matter. Shira Haas does a great job with a role that seems at odds with her small appearance. Giancarlo Esposito always plays a great villain, but does well here with one that's more physical than usual for him. Tim Blake Nelson relishes in the mustache-twirling nature of his villain. And Harrison Ford excels at the role he's taking over from William Hurt. Maybe Hurt would have risen to this occasion, had he ever been given this much to do in an MCU movie; regardless, Ford displays nuance that I imagine is quite a surprise to anyone who hasn't been watching Shrinking.

I suppose you could make the argument that "plot" and "action" are the two most critical ingredients of an MCU film, and from that perspective consider Brave New World a major disappointment. But watching it, I was routinely ushered back into the experience with the "tone" and "performances." There are things the movie does well enough that I think I'd grade it a B-.

But Back to the Point...

Because I have so enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's podcast Revisionist History, I've found myself going back on occasion to visit one of the books he wrote earlier in his career. Gladwell himself has now done the same thing, with the publication of Revenge of the Tipping Point.

Released in 2000, The Tipping Point is the book that put Malcolm Gladwell on the map. On the occasion of the book's 25th anniversary, Gladwell decided he would look back  and create some sort of revised or updated edition. Instead, he found enough to say to create a full-fledged sequel book. Ordinarily, I wouldn't consider taking on a sequel (book, movie, whatever) without having first experienced the original. But since some of the point here seemed to be Gladwell saying "here's what I think I got wrong," I decided jumping right in with Revenge was a valid way to go.

As always, I found Gladwell's writing to be engaging, and his anecdotes entertaining. He's compulsively readable, and a very clear communicator. But also, Revenge of the Tipping Point feels like a more "scattered" book than some of his other work. (For example, Blink -- which I have also read, but apparently did not blog about.) From one chapter to the next, the topics seem to vary wildly, and I'm not convinced that the final chapter, a classic summary meant to tie everything together in one nice bow, is as effective in unifying the thesis as it should be.

I think the most likely reason for this is the very podcast that led me to Gladwell in the first place. Revisionist History is now in its twelfth(!) season, and while a few of those seasons have taken a more serialized look at a single topic, most have just been a collection of intriguing stories well-suited to the "under an hour" audio format. It's a perfectly good format... but I think it may have "infected" his style when it comes to long-form writing. (Indeed, one of the chapters of Revenge of the Tipping Point has a "companion" episode in the latest season of Revisionist History!) Gladwell remains strong at telling a tight story -- be it in a chapter or a podcast episode -- but I'd say the whole of this book isn't any greater than the sum of the parts.

But that shouldn't be construed as too great a criticism. The "parts" here are quite good. Whether looking at the most successful bank robbers in history, delving into the genetic plight of the cheetah, scrutinizing the early spread of COVID-19, or pitching his social momentum theory of "the Magic Third," Gladwell's newest book is stuffed full of the same kinds of tales that keep each new episode of his podcast as a "release day listen" for me. I give Revenge of the Tipping Point a B+.

Enterprise Flashback: Shockwave, Part II

The second season of Enterprise picks up as new Star Trek seasons often do: with the resolution of the previous season's cliffhanger. The season opens with "Shockwave, Part II."

Suliban soldiers board Enterprise under orders from their Temporal Cold War ally from the future. They hold the crew captive as they search for Captain Archer -- but he is trapped in a far future, a wasteland paradoxically formed by his own absence from the present time. Can Archer get back home, and drive the Suliban from his ship?

Television cliffhanger wrap-ups are rarely as good as their setups. Star Trek is seldom different in this, and this episode is no exception. We've seen enough time travel on Star Trek that the "rules" here feel pretty suspect. Here, someone time traveling to the future instantaneously kicks off a divergent time by the simple fact of their absence, which seems to contradict previous Trek time adventures. The writers are clearly aware of this, since they have time-traveling Daniels dismissively tell Archer (and the audience, by proxy) that "this isn't anything you would understand," and then refuse to answer any questions. Well, I guess okay then.

Except not all the holes in the storytelling are limited to the nits you might pick with the time travel. The Suliban board Enterprise, but apparently don't find the locked room that was formerly Daniels' quarters, where all his future intel and gadgets are stored. And there seems to be a lot of unnecessary scenes for an episode that's barely 40 minutes after the commercial breaks. A lot of time is spent on Silik's torture of T'Pol -- an uncomfortable enough scene to begin with, and narratively awkward when the point seems to be her stalwartly maintaining that time travel is impossible, even though we all know it isn't. An early argument back on Earth between Admiral Forrest and ambassador Soval is included only to justify bringing those guest stars in for more than just the one scene at the end of the episode.

But as is often the case for Enterprise, there are some good elements scattered throughout. The imprisoned crew, contriving a way to cooperate right under the Sulibans' collective noses, each get a nice hero moment. Reed voluntarily catches a beating to help the cause, T'Pol whips out a Vulcan nerve pinch. A warp core breach contrived by Trip fool the Suliban into abandoning ship. And Hoshi? Well... she "crawls" on her fully extended arms through a space that's supposed to be too small for anyone else, then gratuitously has her top ripped off when it snags on something. (I guess not everyone gets a good moment.)

Production is a bit hit and miss. CG is used bring scope to the apocalyptic future Archer is trapped in... though it doesn't always look entirely credible. Archer's huge holographic head, calling from the future, could be silly, but stays on the right side of serious. On the other hand, Daniels has a wild costume: bondage ropes wrapped over a sparkly rainbow body suit.

Other observation:

• We get a closeup on the lock on Daniels' quarters, and the user interface is incomprehensible. It has a block of 20 buttons, each with a 3 digit-number on it. How do you make a sensible passcode out of that?

If you try not to understand any of this, as Daniels advises, you can derive some action pleasures from "Shockwave, Part II." Enough, I'd say, to just barely score a B-. Still, it's a bit weak for a season premiere.

Enterprise Flashback: Shockwave

It's been a long road... getting to the end of season one of Enterprise. But my time is finally near! I bring you my review of the season finale, "Shockwave."

When a shuttlepod accident causes the complete extermination of life of an alien planet, Enterprise is recalled from its mission, likely to be decommissioned under pressure from the Vulcans. But suddenly, time-traveler Daniels appears to Archer with a revelation: the Enterprise crew did not cause the accident, but were in fact set up as a gambit in the ongoing Temporal Cold War. Armed with information from the future, Archer steals proof from the Suliban to exonerate his crew. But the Suliban response is strong and swift... and Archer is snatched from his own time just as the crisis intensifies.

It's been half a season since the Temporal Cold War storyline took center stage on Enterprise. I haven't really missed it; just a few episodes into the arc, the machinations of the plot make little to no sense. Still, I have to admit that it makes for a pretty good season-ending cliffhanger here. After our heroes have been shakily learning the business of exploration all season long, it's not a stretch to wonder if they really are responsible for a global calamity like the one here. And it's compelling to watch them chasing the proof that they weren't, through a series of well-conceived action sequences.

But you really have to watch Archer be a complete tool for a while before the action gets going. Thousands of colonists have been killed, and as a Trek viewer, you'd hope that your starship captain takes that seriously. But Archer seems more self-absorbed than solemn, making the tragedy more about himself than the lives lost. Admiral Forrest tells him directly that he needs to stop wallowing and set a proper example for his crew, but he ultimately needs T'Pol to snap him out of it. She's going to fight being railroaded, working to persuade the Vulcans not to scapegoat Enterprise. Why can't Archer fight more on the Starfleet side of things?

The story starts moving once Daniels appears on the scene -- though the plot is by no means clear. He hand waves both how he isn't dead (after being killed in his last appearance), and Archer's complaints that time travel is a "load of crap." The episode itself hand waves just what Daniels actually says to get Archer on board with any of this. (But it makes time to show us shirtless Archer in his pajamas. Enterprise is on-brand, as always.)

But then we get to the action, and Enterprise continues to be good at that stuff. The sequence where an assault team attacks the Suliban, gets in a firefight, steals computer intel, and flees -- it's all solid stuff, as is the subsequent attempt of Enterprise to outrun an armada of Suliban ships. Enterprise is stretching the boundaries of what television CG of the time can make look perfect, but the show is definitely putting all its money up on the screen in a satisfying way.

In my mind, every Star Trek cliffhanger will always live in the very long shadow cast by "The Best of Both Worlds." Still, it's pretty effective to end this episode with Enterprise surrounded and outgunned, and Archer trapped centuries in the future, in a bombed-out wasteland, with no apparent means to return home.

Other observations:

• I think the drama of "is this it for the Enterprise crew?" is undermined by knowing just how many of the characters have other viable options. Hoshi Sato talks about how she'll go back to teaching, Travis Mayweather talks about how he could go work on a cargo ship (even being its captain), and Phlox and T'Pol both clearly have other jobs they could go do. "The end" just doesn't seem as bad as it could be for most of the characters.
  

• It's a great bit of meta fun when Scott Bakula has to say that while he never thought it was possible, he has traveled through time.

The last half of the episode is a fun enough action romp, teeing up an entertaining cliffhanger. But the extra-big dose of whiny, mopey Archer we get before that? Much less entertaining. I give "Shockwave" a B.

And that's a wrap on the first season of Enterprise. Looking back, there's no episode I graded any higher than a B. So my praise is a bit faint when picking my top 5 episodes of the season. But here they are: "Dear Doctor," "Civilization," "Fusion," Shockwave," and "Detained."

On to season two...

Fowl Thoughts

It's been over 30 years since the characters Wallace & Gromit appeared in their first animated short. I still clearly remember the feeling of watching it (and the two shorts that followed) for the first time, and being blown away by what I'd seen. It was "shock and awe" in entertainment, my mind buckling to comprehend what minute detail and massive scope had been captured in stop-motion animation.

Wallace & Gromit have since moved on to occasional full-length features. The world of animation has moved on too, to a place where it's all too easy to be jaded about what can be rendered at the touch of a button And while underappreciated toil does go into great-looking computer animation, there's still something alluring and mind-boggling about stop motion, about the knowledge that every object you see on screen was physically built, and every movement created by hand, one painstaking frame at a time.

So yeah, the newest Wallace & Gromit movie, Vengeance Most Fowl, still wowed me. At 79 minutes, it's certainly short for a modern movie -- even an animated one. But at 24 hand-staged frames per second, 60 seconds per minute, the visual marvel of the movie becomes quickly apparent.

As with all movies from Aardman Animations (Wallace & Gromit films included), the script seems written specifically to stretch -- to the breaking point -- the boundaries of what seems possible in stop motion. Vengeance Most Fowl includes scenes with dozens of moving characters (moving in perfect unison!). It extensively features water, carefully dripping off or pooling on surfaces. A spectacular finale is set in a massive environment that could only have been achieved using an enormous filming stage... or a carefully crafted series of models in a staggering number of different scales. (That's part of the charm; you can't be exactly sure how they pulled it off.)

For long time Wallace & Gromit fans -- or people who now watch those original three short films that started it all -- Vengeance Most Fowl is also rewarding for bringing back an established character (seeking the titular vengeance). Yet despite this, story isn't a particularly strong aspect of the film. As I said, a key element of a Wallace & Gromit script is the set pieces that showcase what the animators can do. It feels like a summer blockbuster in that respect, the story spackled in between the big action.

The other key element of a Wallace & Gromit story is just how much Gromit the dog suffers in silence. Yes, stop-motion animation is by definition a "cartoon," but Wallace & Gromit is always especially cartoonish in how little its characters change and how much everything adheres to formula. 30-some years later, I'm a bit less charmed by that formula, and I find it slightly harder to laugh at the treatment of poor, put-upon Gromit.

But any shortage of charm in the storytelling is more than compensated for by the spectacle of the animation. So ultimately, I really enjoyed Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. It just misses out on my Top 10 Movie list for 2024 (though if I'd watched it sooner, it would have enjoyed a short stint there before being displaced). I give the movie a B+.

A Good Thing in a Dairy Small Package

One of my favorite board games is Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar. (It's only risen in my esteem since I first played it more than a decade ago.) Many strategy games in general -- and worker placement games in particular -- ask players to "look ahead" and plan several moves in advance to succeed. They also ask you to balance long-term rewards against short-term gains. I love how Tzolk'in makes all of this so visual in the way that workers physically move around the game board. It's something that few other games pull off. So when I heard about the game Fromage, it rocketed to the top of the list of games I wanted to pick up.

Fromage is a game about -- what else? -- making cheese. It's played on a circular game board divided into four sections. On each turn, you may place up to two of your three "workers" into the section in front of you -- one to gather a specific resource, and the other to make a cheese and score points. Players make their placements simultaneously in the section before them, and then the board rotates to bring the next section to you.

Every decision is a time investment. Each "worker" is a wedge of cheese, and once you place it, it's gone until the tip of that wedge has rotated far enough around the board to point back at you. That is: each worker you place will remain spent for one to three turns, as you chose when you placed it. The longer you give up the worker, the more resources you'll gather, or the more high-valued cheese you can make.

There are all sorts of subtle ramifications within this system. Your three workers also have colors (for hard, soft, and blue cheese), and any cheese-making requires both the matching color and that time investment. You may know what you want to do, but you have to have the right "worker" to do it. The space also has to be available to you, without an opponent's worker already on it when a new section rotates to you.

With this system, designers Matthew O'Malley and Ben Rosset have pulled off something quite extraordinary. In my view, Fromage provides nearly all of the decisions (and satisfaction I find making them) that Tzolk'in provides. Yes it does so in a game that plays in 1/3 the time. A group of four players with just one or two games under their belt can finish a game of Fromage in under half an hour -- a shockingly tight time frame for a game that packs this much strategic crunch.

In that 30-or-so minutes, you have to make decisions about where to focus your attention. Among the game's separate "competitions," you have to decide where to push for first place and where to settle for second. You have to manage conversions from one type of resource to another. You have the ability to mess up your opponents' plans, and you have to deal with with an opponent messing up yours.

But... you also have to accept a theme that to me only feels half complete. Everything about cheese types, spending time as cheese "ages," filling orders, managing resources -- all that feels as well-themed as any board game of this nature, and certainly as on point as (or more so than) Tzolk'in. But then there's the part about how you score points at the end of the game.

Each of the four sections of the game board is essentially its own "mini-game" with its own rules about how points are scored. They're all essentially a form of area control. One is an actual map where you try to get the most cheese touching each province. One is a grid where you seek to build the longest chain you can before being cut off by opponents. The other two are even more abstract, asking you to pair up or isolate your cheeses to maximize points. Nominally, this is because your cheese is being served at a festival, a bistro, or some such... but ultimately, it's a handful of ways to score, each balanced through playtesting such that any one is as valid as any other. And kind of as flavorless as any other too.

This aspect of the game really challenges my priors when it comes to board gaming. I have always thought myself to be a board gamer for whom thematic considerations don't hold much sway. You say we're colonizing a planet in this game? Building a historic bridge in that game? Tiling a cathedral's mosaic? Whatever -- what are we actually doing, game-wise? And yet, there's something about having Fromage's theme, so strong in so many aspects, and so incidental in others, that makes me better understand the "point salad" criticism some gamers level at some games.

Despite that, I can't be down completely on a game that scratches the same itch as Tzolk'in in a new way. I certainly can't be down on a 30-minute game that packs as much strategic punch as many 90-minute games. So in the end, I think I give Fromage a B+. We'll see what kind of staying power it has in my game group... but shorter games do tend to have the edge these days, so I'd say the odds look pretty good. Bon appétit!

Enterprise Flashback: Two Days and Two Nights

After several episodes of teasing, Enterprise finally does the episiode they've been talking up, "Two Days and Two Nights."

Enterprise arrives at Risa for shore leave. Everyone has different plans on how they'll spend it... and no one's trip goes quite according to plan. 

Every now and then, a Star Trek series will drop in a decidedly "low stakes" episode like this to cleanse the palate. (Unless that show is Discovery, of course, where the stakes are always galactic.) Risa in particular has been the setting for a couple of these lighter episodes. (And with Worf being the troublemaker in one, it's amusing that Michael Dorn is the director of this episode.) While I appreciate the change of pace overall, I found this episode to be a bit of a mixed bag.

I think one problem is how much they built it up. "Going to Risa" has been mentioned in at least two episodes leading up to this. I think it does a disservice to the "low stakes episode" to hype it up so much in advance. Another issue for me is the sort of "wish on a cursed monkey's paw" aspect to everyone's holiday. The people who actually want something out of their time off don't get it, while the one person with no aspirations at all has a great time. That feels like a weirdly judgmental commentary about seeking pleasure at a pleasure resort. Still, the various subplots do all have their fun elements if you separate them from that implied narrative whole.

Archer seems destined for a classic "Star Trek captain rendezvous with a beautiful alien." This trope is upturned in a fun way when his love interest turns out to be pumping him... for information... about the Suliban. (Ha!) It's cute that Porthos has such a big part in this storyline, since Archer has found a hotel that allows dogs. Archer's love interest has a dog too. (Porthos going to get some action?!) Cute beagle insert shots and a well-written, slow realization that "something's up with this woman" make for a satisfying subplot.

When Travis is seriously injured while rock climbing, Phlox must be awakened from hibernation to tend to him. John Billingsley gets to ham it up as a groggy Phlox, a weird fusion of mad scientist and drunkard. I wouldn't want him working on me if I were Travis, but the comedy certainly is fun for the audience.

The one person whose plans go un-awry(?) is Hoshi. She just wants to take in the local language, and winds up having a very close encounter with a cunning linguist. (Sorry, folks, but this is the mindset of this episode.) While I noted that this episode feels morally judgmental overall, I appreciate that it's not at all scolding in the Hoshi Sato storyline. She's a young woman who just has a fling for a couple nights before walking away without obligation. I would have been fine if this is how Hoshi had set out to spend her time, but it's fine that she experienced all of it with no consequence.

The one subplot with few redeeming qualities centers on Reed and Trip, who decide to spend their trip living "A Night at the Roxbury." This subplot was probably meant to be progressive, as we watch two guys out on the prowl get a come-uppance in the form of a mugging. But there are moments of dialogue along the way that to me read as a touch anti-gay and more than a touch transphobic. Is it enough that Reed and Trip are "punished" in the end by having all their stuff stolen and being left in their underwear? Meh.

What a treat this episode must have been for the set and costume departments! Or, perhaps more accurately, a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they got to build multiple sets for a relaxation resort, and got to costume nearly all their main characters in civilian clothes. Background players with alien makeups and costumes of their own make this a great-looking episode where every dollar spent is up on the screen. On the other hand -- they had to do all this in the same handful of days in which any other episode is filmed. Must have been a long week.

Other observations:

• A log tells us this episode takes place on February 18. So, a few days after Valentine's Day, if that means anything.

• The horga'hn-shaped light switch cover is a fun Risa detail for fans. Thankfully, they resisted the possible temptation to put a visible up-down switch protruding suggestively from it.

• Malcolm and Trip's clothes look a bit "Roxbury," but also a bit "Miami Vice."

• Even spending as much money on this episode as they clearly did, some things can't be shown, including Archer's date looking at sea turtles, and Travis' rock climbing accident.

I probably shouldn't get too caught up in the "mixed messages" this episode might send. It's likely this bit of escapism wasn't really meant to send any message. Still, I'd say "Two Days and Two Nights" deserves a B-.

The Inside Story

The Good Place is one of my favorite television series of the last decade. It casts such a warm glow that I would probably follow just about anyone involved with the show to whatever project they do next. Which is how A Man on the Inside wound up in my queue.

Like The Good Place, A Man on the Inside comes from series creator Michael Schur. Building on an idea from his producing partner Morgan Sackett, he created the show specifically for Ted Danson to star in. Danson plays Charles Nieuwendyk, a retired professor in the listless aftermath of his wife's death from Alzheimer's. Prodded by his daughter to find more activities, he takes an unusual job offered by a private detective: go undercover in a retirement community to investigate a theft. He throws himself fully into the role, but finds himself making new friends along the way.

If you're thinking that doesn't sound much like a comedy, you're catching onto one of the interesting things about A Man on the Inside that took me a little time to adjust to. You wouldn't be off-base expecting something like The Good Place going into this show: something that is fundamentally a laugh-filled half-hour sitcom, but that slyly slips in more thoughtful and dramatic content between the jokes. But where The Good Place ultimately had 53 episodes to pace its philosophical treasures more carefully, A Man on the Inside aims to tell a complete story in just eight. It has no time to tiptoe around the weightier themes it wants to engage with.

Consequently, while A Man on the Inside is partly a comedy (and adheres to the half-hour format), it's equally a drama. The show has a lot to say about aging, especially the loneliness of being separated from loved ones -- be it by distance, behavior, or death. There are moments of A Man on the Inside that are quite sad. Moving, and not at all treacly, but profoundly sad. And the show's essential "half and half" balance of comedy and drama is not deployed evenly in each episode. Some episodes are indeed a blend, but at least one is almost "before a live studio audience" in the degree to which it plays for laughs, and other episodes are nearly devoid of jokes in pursuit of the larger themes. Where The Good Place was a healthy pill pocketed inside a tasty treat, A Man on the Inside is an eight-course meal best considered as a whole.

In that holistic light, the sad moments of the show take on greater meaning. A Man on the Inside is a fundamentally uplifting show, because it's ultimately about healing -- healing yourself, healing relationships, and demonstrating that there is light at the end of any tunnel. But yes, it also has funny moments.

Ted Danson is as perfect as you'd expect in a role crafted for him, deft at both the comedic moments of his character's cluelessness and the heavier moments where he confronts the big issues. Another strong presence is another past Michael Schur collaborator, Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Didi, director of the retirement community.

But the real standouts in the cast are those on the deep bench of older actors who populate that community. These are faces you've seen countless times... but perhaps not any time recently. Hollywood tends to have maybe one role for someone like this in maybe every fifth or tenth project. But here in a single project, there are roles for Sally Struthers, Margaret Avery, John Getz, Susan Ruttan, Veronica Cartwright, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and many, many more.

As I mentioned, the eight episodes of A Man on the Inside tell a complete story. They jokingly tee up the possibility of another season without ending things on anything like a cliffhanger. And yet... shortly after Netflix dropped the entire run (like they do), a second season was announced. Having watched The Good Place, I remember well the feeling that "there's no way they could get another season out of this," and then being stunned when the story morphed quite naturally into something new and equally great. If anybody could spin another good story out of the premise of A Man on the Inside, it would be Michael Schur and his team of writers.

But for now, I can close the book and enjoy the story I've just been told. No, it's not as great as The Good Place -- an impossible standard this shouldn't be held to. But I'd still rate A Man on the Inside a strong, rewarding B+.

Are You One of the Nobodies?

I've been entertained and charmed by Kristen Bell in more TV shows and movies than I can count. So when I heard she was starring in another series, streaming on Netflix, I needed to know literally nothing else about it to want to give it a try.

For the rest of you who may want more info than that, Nobody Wants This is a comedy about new couple Joanne and Noah. Joanne hosts a podcast with her sister about sex and dating. Noah is a rabbi coming off a broken engagement. The two are crazy about each other... but can a fundamentally agnostic and irreverent woman really end up with a devoutly religious man? Can a Jewish family accept a shiksa? Does anybody -- including Joanne and Noah -- actually believe their relationship might last?

If you've seen more than like two rom-com movies, you know the formula of this show like a rabbi knows the Torah. There's the bewitching meet-cute in act one. The misunderstanding that threatens the relationship in act two. The reconciliation and happy ending in act three. After setting up the premise in its opening two episodes ("act one"), Nobody Wants This goes on to repeat act two and three in every subsequent episode.

This show asks "can this couple last," and I increasingly found myself asking "can this show last?" It's kinda the same thing over and over again, and I found myself growing a little tired of the formula by the end of the 10-episode first season. (I find it ironic that it's on Netflix, of all streaming service. It feels like the one streaming television show that would least reward binge-watching.) But then again... we get 90 Hallmark movies every Christmas with exactly the same plot, so maybe there's a large and eager audience out there for exactly this.

I know that so far, it sounds like I hated this show. But the thing is... not at all! I said I was growing tired of the formula, yet I never actually got there. That's because it may not be possible for me to get tired of watching Kristen Bell in anything. All her best television roles showcase her humor and charisma in equal measure, even as they make room for her slightly prickly edge. Nobody Wants This makes room for all of this.

And she's got a great scene partner in Adam Brody as Noah. The character is very much "the cool rabbi," the exact person who could keep up with Joanne... and Brody turns out to be exactly the actor who can keep up with Bell. In this show, the two are funny separately, and funny together. Rarely "laugh out loud" funny, or marvel-at-the-cleverness-of-the-writing funny. But consistently a "warm feeling in the gut, smile on your face" funny. It's fun to watch this show, even if the engine of the plot is always thrumming away in plain view.

There's a nice supporting cast here too, including Justine Lupe (who you may know from a recurring role on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Timothy Simons (a memorable heel on Veep), Stephen Tobolowsky ("Ned Ryerson?! Bing!"), and some fun pop-ins by cast members from Kristen Bell's past. (She has quite the contact list; why not use it?)

In fact, I really do find that I enjoyed Nobody Wants This to about the same degree as other shows I've rated a B+. It just happens to be the show that I enjoyed more whenever I let a week or more pass between episodes. (Will they be able to tweak the formula at all in the now-ordered season two? Would they even want to?) It might be a formula that works for you too.

Enterprise Flashback: Desert Crossing

Hollywood is full of recognizable faces. You see them pop up again and again in countless movies and television shows: never in a starring role, but usually elevating whatever they're in. Often, you don't even know their name. But there are an elite few "working actors" who are more widely known -- like Clancy Brown, who guest-starred on Enterprise in Desert Crossing.

When Trip repairs the damaged ship of an alien leader named Zobral, he and Archer are invited to Zobral's planet. But when a rival faction thinks they've taken Zobral's side in a local conflict, Trip and Archer are driven into the desert, where they must fight to survive until Enterprise can rescue them.

It feels like the central theme of this episode is to demonstrate why the Prime Directive, which doesn't exist at this point in the Star Trek timeline, is a pretty good idea. Because Archer recently got his crew involved in alien politics, now someone on a nearby planet is coming to them all for help. T'Pol even explains to Hoshi how just visiting a factionalized society might create the appearance of taking sides, in one of the better bits of advocacy for a Prime Directive that Star Trek has delivered.

T'Pol doesn't ever get to say "I told you so" to Archer, though (even if Trip notes, not in so many words, that she would). That's probably just as well, because it doesn't seem like Archer has bought into "non-interference as standard policy" by the end of the story. Despite the personal ordeal he's been through, he notes that while Enterprise isn't out in space to fight wars, this seemed like a cause worth fighting for.

I think it would have made for a stronger episode if that detail wasn't so definitive. Archer is right, it seems pretty clear-cut in this struggle who's "good" and who's "bad." A Prime Directive doesn't seem as appealing in such a situation. But the episode doesn't want to spend time making the conflict morally ambiguous. It wants us to watch a game of "shirts and skins" lacrosse. Strange music (for Star Trek) accompanies slow-motion shots of shirtless Scott Bakula and Connor Trinneer twisting and sweating under a hot sun. I'm not saying it doesn't have its appeal, but it's not really storytelling.

As is often the case on Enterprise, though, what the episode lacks in subtlety it makes up for in production. This episode uses extensive location filming, several one-off sets, new "desert camo" uniforms, and more. At the moment of greatest danger for Archer and Trip, director David Straiton puts the focus on the actors by letting them perform a nearly four-minute scene in a single, unbroken take.

We have to talk about Clancy Brown, though. Sure, at some point, you gotta get him on Star Trek. I'm just not sure this was the best choice of episode. Though this alien society has Middle Eastern vibes -- and perhaps Moroccan most specifically -- the leaders we see are (of course) white guys. And here comes Clancy Brown, boisterously over the top with this huge, weird accent that might be Slavic or something. He's a skilled enough character actor that somehow, I do believe a guy like this is a real person. Somewhere. I just kinda wish it wasn't here. Or maybe I wish that all these aliens looked less human and had more going on than a simple doodle on their chins -- maybe then it would feel less like uncomfortable cultural stereotyping?

Other observations:

• Once again, we're teased with pleasure planet Risa at the beginning of an episode, only to switch venues to a different story.

• Poor Trip is having a rough run.

Once this episode actually gets to the fight for survival, it picks up momentum. It's a particularly good character story for Archer and Trip. T'Pol gets a good speech about what will one day be the Prime Directive. But it takes a long time to get to all that, and the alien race's appropriated culture and slapdash conflict don't help. I give "Desert Crossing" a B-.

Where There's a Will, There's a Harper

When I blogged about The Substance, I seeded a minor cliffhanger by noting that I'd watched it the day after seeing a different movie that I deeply loved. I won't draw out the suspense any longer: that movie was Will & Harper.

This movie is a documentary about Harper Steele, a transgender woman who has recently come out to her friends. Because she used to work as a writer on Saturday Night Live, one of those friends happens to be Will Ferrell. He wants to support his long-time friend... but has his own complicated feelings to reconcile. Yet because they are good friends, Will and Harper feel like they can put any big questions right out there in the open. They decide to do so on a two-week, cross-country road trip.

I felt complicated feelings of my own watching Will and Harper, so much so that I'm having a hard time figuring out where to start in praising it. But I think I'll go with: I was surprised and impressed by how real it ultimately felt to me. It did, after all, have two major potential strikes against realism baked right in.

First was the presence of the documentary cameras. The two central subjects of this movie know they're being filmed at every moment. So does every person they come in contact with. When people know they're being filmed, and know that the things they're saying will be seen by others, people often change their behavior.

One of the premises of this movie's road trip is that in her former life, Harper loved criss-crossing the country, visiting dive bars, hanging out with strangers, and perhaps flirting with dangerous situations -- all things that now felt fundamentally impossible to her. Could she reclaim any of that as part of her new self? You might well question how genuine any of that would feel when Harper is traveling with a recognizable celebrity (one form of protection) and surrounded by film cameras (a second). Anyone these two encounter on their trip will behave differently too... right?

Well -- the movie confronts that issue. In one sequence, Harper heads into a dive bar after asking Will to hang back outside. The cameras are still there, but the celebrity is not. Later in the movie, the presence of cameras and a celebrity doesn't stop the crowd at a Texas steak house from being massively shitty. It's a powerful, disheartening moment, but I think it's good for the movie to admit that acceptance of transgender people is not universal. (Far from it.)

The second baked-in element that could have undermined the realism is the fact that Will and Harper are career comedians. Finding the funny is in their nature, and so is diffusing serious topics with a laugh. Sure enough, there are moments throughout the movie where a very deep discussion is headed off with a flippant comment. And yet -- I actually find that when funny people do break past the jokes, things get really profound. I certainly found that to be the case here. When Will and Harper's journey culminates at a run-down house in rural California, the discussion of why they're there, and what it means to Harper, is deeply moving.

Not all the profound moments are about Will or Harper, either. A visit with Harper's sister reveals the most beautiful affirmation you could ask for from a family member. A chance encounter with a retired therapist at the Grand Canyon exposes her profound regret at the way she once handled a patient during her career. And a running gag about a "road trip song" that Will and Harper ask Kristen Wiig to write for them pays off charmingly over the end credits.

Despite the specter of falseness that I thought might hang over the movie, I found it to be nothing but genuine. It evoked in me powerful memories of my own coming out as gay, even as the movie made me think that coming out as transgender would be infinitely harder. And while it sucks that a documentary about a transgender person should innately feel like an "important film," the fact is: it does. Right now especially.

Quite simply, I loved Will and Harper. I was so deeply moved that it lands in the #1 spot of my Top Movie List for 2024.