Stepping Up?

The Fantastic Four: First Steps arrived this weekend, bringing these staple characters into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I never saw any of the previous Fantastic Four films, so I was unburdened by any comparisons to them (though I understand such comparisons would only have favored the new movie). Still, with the movie arriving so soon after the new Superman, it seemed difficult not to come burdened with any expectations at all.

My main takeaway from Superman was that it was overstuffed with ideas... though the virtue of that was that for every undercooked element that didn't work for me, somewhere in the movie was another element that really soared. I found The Fantastic Four to be a much more leveled-out experienced with neither any great peaks or valleys. The same things that might have excited me were inextricably linked to things that gave me pause. So while the movie was by no means "bad," I left not feeling particularly high about any it.

Here is the first Marvel movie in memory that truly required no "prior reading" from the ponderous MCU. Fresh characters, fresh story, fresh setting... and all of that felt great. Yet rather than embrace an opportunity to tell a story with more modest stakes, this franchise-within-a-franchise starts off immediately with an intergalactic villain whose evil scheme is literally to destroy the entire Earth. It's an apocalypse so vast that it almost instantly becomes abstract.

The cast is full of highlights... but then the movie doesn't really make room for anyone to shine. Pedro Pascal is a performer with so much charm and magnetism that he leaps off the screen even in a show where you almost never see his face. So something seems really wrong to me that in this movie, he seems "fine." Vanessa Kirby made the early episode of The Crown a true highlight of the season. She's "fine" too. Joseph Quinn stole season four of Stranger Things, making his character the most memed-about thing in that show since "Justice for Barbara." I'll leave it for people who have watched The Bear to opine on Ebon Moss-Bachrach's contributions to that show, but I'll wager they are noteworthy. Here? "Fine" and "fine."

Maybe even more emblematic of this issue is the inclusion of Natasha Lyonne in the movie. I get it, she's very much a secondary character. But I've enjoyed her charming... uh, Lyonne-iness... in everything from Poker Face to Russian Doll to even a voice on Big Mouth. I feel like something has gone very wrong somewhere with the script, the directing, the editing -- maybe all three -- that she's flat and forgettable in this movie. But basically, everywhere you turn in this movie, you see a performer who should be great, coming off as "good enough, I guess."

Even the setting left me of two minds. The retro-future world of this movie is really delightful, something fun and different that looks... well, fantastic... and deftly skirts the issue of making classic superheroes work in a modern world. It certainly helped this movie stand apart from the raft of other superhero movies. And yet... I often found myself thinking, "they're doing The Incredibles." Yes, from the vantage of superpowers and family dynamics, I'm well aware of who was ripping off who. But in feeding the snake its own tail here, this movie really leans into a few elements of The Incredibles plot that kind of make it impossible to ignore. They even get the same composer, Michael Giacchino, to do the score. (He does his best not to copy himself, but you're not going to get two completely different takes on similar material from one composer.)

Still, when I add everything up, I feel I land on giving The Fantastic Four: First Steps a B-. Any less, down in C territory, and I feel like I'd be saying it was a bad movie. But there really are no bad performances, it looks great, and no serious missteps like some of the muddled entries in the MCU. It's probably a movie I should have let myself just catch up with late on streaming at some point, without getting caught up in the "fantastic" hype.

Strange New Worlds: Hegemony, Part II

I was on vacation when Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally returned after a painfully long, nearly two-year absence. It returned with two episodes. And next week, I'll be off to Gen Con. All of that pretty much guarantees I'll be behind on the show (or at least, blogging about it) for most of the season. But I'll never catch up if I don't start. So, here I dive into the season three premiere, "Hegemony, Part II."

Enterprise is severely damaged in battle with the Gorn, but new arrival Scotty may have a way for the ship to at least stay in the hunt to track their abducted landing party. Yet still -- the ship can't be in two places as once... and it soon becomes clear that it also needs to be warning the rest of Starfleet of an imminent invasion fleet.

It's been so long since Strange New Worlds last delivered a new episode that I'd honestly forgotten we left on a cliffhanger. (Certain other episodes in season two loomed so much larger than the finale.) And now that we're back to resolve it, we're kind of forced to confront the fact that resolving cross-season cliffhangers is not something Star Trek has ever done especially well. Even their best could only be a letdown from an excellent first half. (And let's put a pin in "The Best of Both Worlds" for a moment here.)

However, I was coming to Strange New Worlds in the middle of a re-watch of Enterprise, and the contrast was striking. I've noted before that Strange New Worlds really strives for different genres and tones in different episodes, and here the aim seemed to be for a straight-up action affair. In my re-watch of Enterprise, that's been what that show tries to default to. And I feel like Strange New Worlds was running circles around Enterprise with this episode.

Sure, television production and visual effects have advanced more than two decades, so Strange New Worlds can put more bang for the buck on the screen and gin up thrills. But that's not what I'm talking about. In "Hegemony, Part II," I felt more connected to the stakes and the characters than I ever have watching Enterprise -- and I chalk that up to the fact that even amid an episode that's essentially trying to be a summer action movie, it made room for important character beats.

For Captain Pike, every action he took was colored by the circumstances of knowing the woman he loves might be dying right at that moment. Chapel and Spock were put in a challenging situation where they had to work together despite their own personal situation. Every moment of La'an's struggles aboard the Gorn ship were steeped in her own past experiences, a sense that her life may have all been building to this moment of revenge. Ortegas being forced to endure a horrific situation while rising to the occasion resulted in a clear trauma that will have ripple effects later in the season. (Because this is a show that cares about consequences.)

And there was at least one solid character moment that wasn't just about life and death. Pelia putting on her teacher hat to motivate Scotty in exactly the right (if slightly cruel) way was a great moment for her. And positioning her character to show us "how Scotty becomes Scotty" is just great for the show overall. 

I didn't exactly love the story as a whole. I was particularly bored that the convenient resolution of the crisis -- putting all the Gorn to sleep -- was essentially the exact resolution of the "Best of Both Worlds" cliffhanger I mentioned earlier. But as I basically said about the season two finale, even a "bad" episode of Strange New Worlds is really just a "not as good" episode.

I kind of waffle on what mark to give "Hegemony, Part II." Maybe a B+, because it's clearly better than this kind of episode on Enterprise, and should get a mark that clearly reflects that. Maybe a B, because that's what I gave "Hegemony" part one, and I don't think I want to say I liked this better. But flip the coin either way and my feeling is basically the same: I love the way this show does what it does, and I'm so glad its back.

And They're Off!

"Previously on... my vacation..."

On mid-afternoon of day three, my husband and I were just heading to our second event at Bardstown Bourbon Company, Rickhouse Thieving. A guide led us across the grounds and inside one of the distillery's many rickhouses. There, he talked about the distillation process -- with an expected emphasis on maturation -- as we were served samples of three bourbons pulled straight from the cask. That itself was not a completely new experience, as we've attended the annual Cask Thief event at Stranahan's in Denver several times now. Still, the massive scale of this rickhouse, with its seemingly endless rows and towers of barrels, was quite a sight to see. (And for me, Bardstown Whiskey in pretty much any form is a delight.)

While we were in the rickhouse, another afternoon downpour opened up like it had on our first day. The rain on the roof made quite a roar inside the massive building, and the claps of thunder echoed throughout the space in a slightly eerie way. Our tour waited inside as our guide called for a cart driver to come shuttle us all back, a few at a time, to the main building.

Even though the rain let up before too long, it left mud everywhere -- and continued to come and go over the next hour. So we had to cancel a short hike we'd found in the area, one of our planned non-whiskey activities. But... checks notes... beer is not whiskey. So after making our way back to Louisville and regrouping for a while at our hotel, we headed out to hit a couple of breweries that came highly recommended by online enthusiasts.

The online community went two for two this time. First up was Atrium Brewing, where a whole flight of taster glasses we shared didn't have a single dud in the bunch. One of the apparent regular beers there, Key Lime Cheesecake Boy, was delicious -- and the focus that day of a special release of variant flavors. Sadly, all but one of the variants had already kicked, but there were too many delicious alternatives on their beer list to fret much over what we'd missed.

Second was Gravely Brewing -- a music and retro themed spot -- where there was one thing in particular I wanted to try: Sable, a dark cream ale. I'd never even heard of such a thing, but it was a delightfully different mashup of a cream ale and a... porter, maybe?... that gave "dark beer" richness and "light beer" drinkability. We sat at the bar and slowly enjoyed vintage reruns of The Price Is Right played on the TV. (Staying home sick from school had never been like this.) Dinner that night was at Parlour, a great pizza place in walking distance of the hotel that I'd never hit on my work trips. (But if I go back for work again, before GAMA moves to Baltimore, I definitely will go there again!) And with that, we called it a night.

We were heading home to Denver the next afternoon... but with just enough time after breakfast for something else. So we headed to Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. Absolutely perfect would have been to see a horse race (and place a small, utterly uninformed bet). No races were scheduled for that day. But we did the next best thing. We cruised through the on-site museum, and went on a brief guided tour that took us out the stands to overlook the track itself.

Between the museum and the tour, we learned all kinds of fun, random tidbits about the 150-year history of the Derby. (Fillies have won three times; general admission in the center of the track on Derby day unofficially makes that field the third-largest "city" in Kentucky; no horse has ever won starting from the 17th position.) And though I've never in my life had a Mint Julep before this, it felt as though when you're at Churchill Downs, that's the drink you have to try. (I liked it far more than I expected. Let's just say they'd be dangerously refreshing on a hot day.)

 

With our souvenirs padded the best we could inside our luggage, we finally headed back to the airport, dropped off our Bette Midler karaoke car, and brought our Louisville trip to an end. We had a great time, and I especially enjoyed seeing other places beyond a half-mile from the convention center. But as soon as I pickup that set of cylinders and eye droppers for whiskey blending, I'll be able to revisit the trip any night I want to.

House Blend

For day three of the Louisville trip, my husband and I headed south to Bardstown -- the city generally, and ultimately the distillery specifically.

First, we stopped at Heaven Hill, having heard they had both a nice distillery and good bourbons. As to the first -- I can confirm. Heaven Hill is a mega-conglomerate of the bourbon world, and they've used their success to build massive and modern buildings across a huge sprawl of land. That includes a museum you can walk through, full of exhibits detailing the growth of the bourbon industry in Kentucky and many of the people who were pivotal in that history. We walked through (in part because it was interesting; in part because so many people come to Heaven Hill that you can't really do anything else without having booked an experience in advance).

As to whether Heaven Hill has good bourbon? That's almost certainly true as well, no matter your particular taste. That's because they are ultimately the parent company responsible for a huge number of well-known brands. Besides one actually branded "Heaven Hill," they make Elijah Craig, Evan Williams, Pikesville, Bernheim Original, Rittenhouse, and a bunch of others. Of the few we sampled, Larceny struck me as the best -- a brand I certainly remembered seeing back in Denver, though couldn't recall having had before. Your tastes may differ, but Heaven Hill probably has you covered.

We had a little time before scheduled events later in the afternoon, so we made another short stop at the nearby Preservation Distillery. This was the antithesis of Heaven Hill, a place that proudly proclaims itself to be "Bardstown's smallest distillery." Lots of distilleries in the area are set on farmland, but Preservation is still using it that way -- cows roam the grounds, and just a few small buildings are devoted to making bourbon. A lazy cat lounged outside the tasting room entrance, caring nothing for us or anyone else going in to sample. We tried just one whiskey each -- all we had time for, and all they would pour in any case. (Either they don't want to deal with sloppily drunken tourists, or you have to have more money and clout to serve any more than that in Kentucky?) Small though Preservation is, a map on the bar showed the other states they have managed to distribute in, with Colorado being one. So perhaps in the right mood, I might have some bourbon from them again some day.

The next stop was the focus of the day. We went to Bardstown Bourbon Company, a relative new kid on the distilling block, but already a personal favorite of mine. We had booked two experiences in advance, and the first one turned out to be one of the great highlights of the trip -- a one-hour session called "The Art of Blending." A guide took us into a backroom they call "The Library," a fancy, decorated room where the shelves were filled not with books, but with bourbons -- from throughout history, and from a wide variety of distilleries. Our guide pointed out a number of interesting and rare bottles, from one actually distilled in the late 1800s (and containing the original spirit!) to a souvenir bottle of Dickel with a distinctive shape that made it a go-to prop on the original Star Trek. 

In this unique setting, each participant in this small event found a station with three drams of different bourbons set up -- two completely different 4-years from Bardstown, and a 12-year from an (officially) unspecified third party. One of Bardstown's own "Fusion Series" of bourbons was made from exactly these three components, with the exact ratios specified on the actual bottles and on a reference sheet in front of us. We got to taste each of the three separate components, and then -- using graduated cylinders and an eye dropper -- measured out the exact blend of the Fusion for ourselves to compare the results and see how each separate whiskey might have influenced the results.

Then it was experimentation time. Each of the seven people attending the event played around with mixtures of our own, ultimately writing down the one we thought turned out best and handing it to our guide. (Remember to pay attention to color, aroma, and taste, we were reminded.) Then one blend was selected at random for everyone to make, sample, and comment on. It of course totally helped my enjoyment of the experience that mine happened to be the selected blend... and it seemed to be well-received by all.

Our guide in the class gave us ideas to bring blending home with us from this short class. This can be a way to use up a random, disappointing bottle of whiskey you might have; just grab your own tubes and droppers and start blending -- maybe you can save it! Or this could be the basis of a party with your whiskey-loving friends: invite everyone to bring a bottle, and then get everyone engaged in making blends from those ingredients. You can even make a little competition out of who creates the best blend! I must say, I've already done some "window shopping" for the tools to blend at home.

We had tickets for a second event at Bardstown, but with enough time in between to have lunch at their restaurant. After having been told by both our waiter and our blending class guide that the chicken sandwich in the restaurant was famously good, we decided to put it to the test. Test passed, with flying colors... it was the tastiest fried chicken we had during the whole trip (among more examples than is probably healthy).

Since this post is starting to run long, I'll take this moment to pause the narrative until tomorrow, when I'll pick back up with the rest of this day and the final morning before our flight home.

This Space Is Reserved

For the first full day of our Louisville trip, my husband and I drove east toward Lexington. You can head pretty much any direction out of town and hit half a dozen major bourbon distilleries who distribute nationwide, but our first stop was actually a smaller, local place. In Lawrenceburg, in an unassuming, warehouse-looking building (with a kangaroo statue out front), you'll find Larrikin Bourbon Company.

We were prepared for this place to be hit-or-miss; it was really just a convenient stop before a scheduled tour we had a short while later. But it turned out that this random small batch distillery made really solid stuff. We sampled several good options, with the clear winner being their American Maple -- with just the right amount of "drenched pancake" flavor to be different without actually tasting like syrup.

Well... strike that. Their clear winner was their "Smidge of Maple Bourbon Cream," with a taste surpassed only by the bartender's endless suggestions on how to use it (as an ice cream topper, in hot chocolate, just to name a couple). But leaving a cream-based spirit in a hot car all day just seemed like a supremely bad idea, so the American Maple was the souvenir we took back home.

The next stop was Woodford Reserve, a more-well known brand with a huge operation on a sprawl of beautiful land. We took a guided tour of the place and saw all parts of the operation in full swing -- from fermentation (with giant two-story vats of sweetly bubbling goodness) to barreling (with freshly-filled barrels rolling down a gently-sloping track) to storage (with towers of racked barrels signed by everyone from state celebrities to fellow tourists sneaking in their graffiti) to bottling (sorry, you can't go in that room, but by all means take a peek through the door). Of course, the tour concluded with a guided tasting, sampling five different whiskeys in Woodford Reserve's repertoire.

I have no doubt that you could have a similar tour experience at whatever large bourbon maker might be your personal favorite -- all the big names have built grand buildings that are as much about impressing tourists as making whiskey. But Woodford Reserve has been around long enough for their buildings to receive historical preservation status, and to me the setting felt especially beautiful. I expect the sights we saw on the tour will flash to mind now whenever I have a pour of their bourbon.

We stopped for lunch at a small local place called The Stave. The extensive whiskey list might have you expecting a fancy restaurant, but really the place was a small bar with shelf after shelf of Kentucky bourbons stacked all the way the way to the ceiling -- because of course it is, when you can drive half a mile down the road to get some of them.

We were less than a mile away from another distillery called Castle & Key that merited a much quicker stop. I'd never sampled their stuff before -- but the distillery itself is built on the grounds of a much older, defunct distillery. Those grounds include a stone castle that's been standing since the 1880s, and a large garden area you can wander around. (And on an afternoon not at the height of summer, you might actually want to.) I wasn't wowed by the few things we tasted here, but the stop was more about the venue than the whiskey, so I can hardly say I was disappointed.

The afternoon was slipping away by this point, so we headed back toward Louisville for a non-whiskey activity, a trip to the Louisville Mega Cavern. It's a massive underground space left behind by limestone mining operations, and now you can tour the place... or, in our case, zipline through it. Ever since a trip to California, my husband and I had kept an eye open for novel places for a new zipline experience, and decided to take a chance on this one. I would say it wasn't quite as enjoyable... as you might expect, what really makes the experience is being able to see everything around you (and you obviously don't get that in a cave). Still, it was a fun change of pace -- and you can't drink bourbon all the time, even on the "bourbon trip."

We closed out the evening with a late dinner at Buck's Restaurant, which served a decadent meal of things wrapped in other things (shrimp in bacon, lamb in prosciutto...). When the waiter learned we were in town sampling whiskeys, and had visited Woodford Reserve that day, he brought a tiny splash of an 18-year bourbon from their own extensive collection (arrayed alphabetically around the bar).

Having had a delightful and full day -- and determined not to burn ourselves out with another full day ahead -- we decided that was a fine time to call it a night.

Bourbon and the Rose

I've been to Louisville, Kentucky twice for work. (Attending the GAMA Expo, since it moved there in 2024.) But in the way of work trips, all I got to see was a limited number of things within walking distance of the hotel and convention center. And with all the bourbon (and a few non-bourbon) activities in the surrounding area, is seemed like it might be a destination worth an extended weekend without work. So that's what my husband and I just did for the past four days.

We flew in on Thursday afternoon, rented a Honda Civic Sport... and I briefly wondered why I found those chords it played when you started the car to be so familiar. I put it out of my mind as headed out, checked in at our hotel, and made the most of the remaining day.

I've talked before about the large, canvas craft brewery map we have at home, where we stick pins marking all the places whose beers we've tried over the years. Gold pins mark the places we've been to in person, and my husband and I always look for an opportunity to add one to a new state. We decided to take care of Kentucky right away with a stop at the Bluegrass Brewing Company. Unlike the beer purists in Connecticut (who were shocked when I suggested that two of their beers together might taste great), this place had a blend right on their menu: "Schmeade," a combination of a wheat beer and a fruit beer influenced by the taste of raspberry mead. And it was quite good!

Now -- pausing for a moment to give some background: there's a place in the Denver area that hosts "Whiskey Wednesday" events all summer long, focused on different brands. When we attended one a few months back centered on one of my personal favorites, Bardstown, they revealed that they were now partnered with Green River, and so we got to try one of their offerings as well. Now, on the drive into Louisville, we saw a billboard proclaiming that a new Green River tasting room had opened on Whiskey Row. So with a little time to fill before a scheduled event, we went there and got to sample more of their bourbon and rye. (They don't supplant Bardstown for me, but they're a worthy partner.)

Unfortunately, this was the point where an unplanned activity interrupted the fun: a torrential summer afternoon downpour. I mean downpour. Thankfully, we weren't completely unprepared, having brought rain jackets with us. But we had a place to be at a specific time, and no choice but to go walking out in the weather. The jackets worked, but our shorts, socks, and shoes were utterly waterlogged, causing us to make a quick stop at the hotel to swap out for pants before moving along (still in the rain).

Next up was something we'd bought tickets for ahead of time: a "fill your own bottle" event at Angel's Envy. (Another personal favorite of mine.) You got to taste their standard bourbon (which I know quite well), alongside an ultra-limited single barrel that was exactly what you were about to bottle. You walk up to the counter, apply your own labels, stick the bottle under the machine, fill it, then use a clamp to get the cap on good and tight. (And then, due to some bizarre local liquor law, an employee has to literally take your bottle through the doorway to the next room to hand back to you.) I had imagined that perhaps you'd get to sample a few small batches to pick your personal favorite, so in that sense, this experience didn't quite live up to the imagined hype. Still, I liked the sample taste well enough, and now I have a "bottled by me" Angel's Envy in my cabinet for special occasions.

Everyone was quick and efficient with their bottling. (Even the poor woman from Down Under who was clearly being dragged along to a ton of bourbon activities despite her overwhelming dislike of the stuff. Those friends clearly wanted an extra bottle of single barrel for themselves here.) Because we finished up early, our host took us back to the distilling area to see where most of the magic happens. (Not all; the aging happens in large rickhouses outside of town.)

We had dinner at Merle's Whiskey Kitchen, where we enjoyed some Kentucky fried chicken (no caps on the "fried chicken"). But with the rain a clear deterrent and all the distillery tasting rooms closing early for the evening (our guide at Angel's Envy had called Louisville "the city that sleeps"), we decided we weren't walking anywhere else that evening. So instead, we went for a bonus gold pin on the beer map. We drove north across the river to Indiana and got a gold pin in that state for Floyd County Brewing Company -- a place with less memorable offerings. (But a gold pin is a gold pin.)

And on that journey, with a few more times starting the rental car, I finally clocked what it was about its slow, pulsing chords that sounded familiar. It's 100% the opening of Bette Midler's song, "The Rose." You might not recognize the song by name, but if you've ever seen Napoleon Dynamite, you absolutely know the song. And now you know exactly what it sounds like to start a Honda Civic Sport; the chords finally cut out just a moment before "some say looooooove......"

Considering that we'd only arrived mid-afternoon, we'd fit in a ton of stuff on our first day of the trip. But there was so much more in the days ahead. 

Getting Away, With Murderbot

Many years ago, I blogged about a novella I caught in audiobook format: the first book of the Murderbot Diaries series. Now, that book has been adapted into season one of Apple TV+'s newest sci-fi show, Murderbot.

Alexander Skarsgård stars as the self-named Murderbot, a security droid who has hacked his own systems, freeing him from the requirement to take orders from humans. Yet he must still play along enough to deceive the members of the planetary expedition he's been assigned to. He'd rather just take time to watch his favorite TV shows, but those hapless humans keep putting themselves in mortal danger.

After finishing (and mostly enjoying) All Systems Red years ago, I didn't continue on with the Murderbot Diaries series. In retrospect, I think I allowed my expectations to get the better of me. I had listened to the story in ignorance, enjoying the quirky tone that author Martha Wells had brought to her pastiche of science fiction tropes. Then after the fact, I heard of all the prestigious awards the novella had won, decided "I didn't think it was that good," and drifted away from the follow-ups.

This new Murderbot series gives me a new re-entry point, and I think it's just different enough in all the right ways that this time, it just might stick. If the problem was that the Murderbot Diaries didn't seem like prestige fiction to me, then "problem" solved: Murderbot the TV series does not feel anything like "prestige television."

The series turns up the volume on quirkiness of the source material. The core behavior of each of the human characters is magnified -- everyone a shade odder, more irrational, more creepy, what-have-you. It's possible they aren't even tweaked that much, but that the mere fact of having them embodied by a solid cast of skilled actors makes it feel that way. David Dastmalchian is the one I readily recognized from other work, but it's really a well-cast ensemble throughout, including Noma Dumezweni, Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tamara Podemski, and Tattiawna Jones. Together, they really nail the comedy of it all.

Yes, I said comedy, because Murderbot definitely leans into the humor of Wells' writing. This science fiction show is in a half-hour format -- and we're talking half an hour that leaves room for commercials (if there were any). Each of the 10 episodes of season 1 breezes by faster than you could ever imagine. And you have to pay attention, lest one of Alexander Skarsgård's quippy voice-overs slips by unnoticed.

Those TV shows that the Murderbot loves so much? In the series, you get to actually see scenes from them, starring the likes of John Cho, Clark Gregg, Jack McBrayer, and DeWanda Wise. That ensemble within the ensemble serves up the hammiest sci-fi you've ever seen, almost hitting too close to home in showcasing how thin a line really exists between Your Favorite Sci-Fi Series and... whatever this is.

It feels like the mission statement of Murderbot (the show) is to have fun, first and foremost -- a tone well-telegraphed from the opening credits (frenetic animation backed by slightly wacky theme music) to the exasperated voice-over that invariably ends each episode. I give Murderbot a B+. I'm looking forward to the recently-announced season two. And between now and then, I might just make it back to the books that started it all.

Enterprise Flashback: Twilight

If you go by the ratings on IMDb, the highest-rated episode of Star Trek: Enterprise is season three's "Twilight." (8.6 out of 10, as of this posting.) So what happens in that episode, and what did I think I of it?

Twelve years have passed since Enterprise entered the Delphic Expanse. An unfortunate accident has stripped Archer of the ability to form long term memories, and without his leadership of Enterprise, the Xindi succeeded in destroying Earth. The handful of human survivors live on a remote colony, where T'Pol personally cares for her former captain. But now, Phlox may have discovered a way to cure Archer's condition. And because of the strange temporal component to his affliction, the cure may be the key to winding back the clock.

I will come right out and say that I do think "Twilight" is a pretty good episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. But I truly hope it's not literally the best one in my eyes once I've finished this re-watch, because there's a ceiling on how much I truly enjoyed it. Mostly, that's because I find it to be a Frankenstein's monster of sewn-together bits lifted from other previous Star Trek episodes. It's a bit "All Good Things...", a bit "The Visitor," a bit "Year of Hell," a bit "Timeless," and possibly a few other episodes too. Since some of those episodes are regarded among the absolute best of their respective Star Trek series, a tinkered version of them will inevitably come out worse in comparison.

On the other hand, there's something about "Twilight" that defies an across-the-board one-to-one comparison to any of those episodes. It's taking single ingredients from all of them, and incorporating them in a new recipe that does somehow feel new, if familiar. Plus, there are a few new ingredients that make all the difference. Some are just fun Trek fan service, from seeing first T'Pol and then Trip become ship's captain, to seeing aged-up characters with new hairstyles and the haunted looks of what they've endured over a decade. Especially fun is the twisted irony that the last survivors of Earth set up on Ceti Alpha V -- a planet that we know from Wrath of Khan will become a barren wasteland in a century or so.

But there are more emotional elements that I find more worthwhile than all that. In the midst of this arc about saving the Earth from destruction, it's clever for this episode to find a way to show us just what that would look like. It's smart to position T'Pol as the caretaker for Archer when he develops a kind of dementia, an intriguing way to showcase the subsumed emotion beneath her logical exterior. We feel for her, imagining the way she had to repeat the same story to Archer, day after day, for over a decade. We feel for him, watching him struggle to still contribute to the mission, but being frustrated at every turn by his condition.

It's too bad, though, that it all has to end with yet another "total reset" like Voyager's "Year of Hell" two-parter. For me, it renders the story just a notch above "it was all a dream," stripping it of its full impact as it literally removes any lasting consequences. To me, it undermines the complete enjoyment of the admittedly cool moments we got along the way: T'Pol's desperate battle tactic to ram a docked ship into the enemy, the wild frenzy of Archer stabbing an invader with his Zefram Cochrane statue, or seeing the bridge torn open to space in an inspired VFX shot.

Other observations:

• This episode serves up an almost-Quantum Leap-style shot, where Scott Bakula looks into a mirror and his character is surprised by his own reflection.

• The writers continue their poor treatment of Travis Mayweather, this time killing his character off in an early attack so that he doesn't even live to the future with the rest of the main characters.

• There's a weird subplot about the Xindi paying a Yridian to track Phlox. The implication seems to be that they somehow know that Phlox is on the cusp of figuring out how to cure Archer and reset history. But... how do they know that? Phlox himself doesn't even know that curing Archer will defeat the Xindi, until he begins to actually do it. (But if they don't know it, why are they after Phlox at all?)

• Lots of great stunt work in this episode in the two separate sequences where Enterprise is boarded.

• Reportedly, the idea for this episode was originally pitched on Star Trek: Voyager, and centered on Janeway and Chakotay. It was apparently rejected because the Powers That Be refused to pair the two romantically in that way, even in an alternate future that would be undone.

I feel like "Twilight" centers on character in a way few Enterprise episodes to this point have. It's a shame that any emotional development is rolled back by the ending. But for spectacle alone, I'll put it a notch ahead of "Year of Hell"... which puts it at a B+ in my book.

Better Than Average Man

This weekend, people flocked to movie theaters to see writer-director James Gunn's newest superhero film, Superman. I'm people! I have thoughts! Since you know exactly who Superman is and what he's about (an approach the movie itself also takes), there's really nothing I can say about the story that won't get spoilery. So in lieu of a synopsis, let's jump right in.

There are a lot of successful ideas in this movie. It makes pointed commentary on weaponized social media and the systemic smearing of well-intentioned public figures by self-interested bad actors. It has an incredibly smart and topical take on the character of Lex Luthor -- painting him as a raging tech bro surrounded with young sycophants. It carves out its own niche for Superman himself, giving him more youthful dialogue that humanizes him and makes him less self-serious than other incarnations.

And the casting of it all is really great. Rachel Brosnahan should instantly be in the conversation for best Lois Lane ever; she commands each scene with her knowing delivery, never getting lost amid the comic book antics and generating sparkling chemistry with her lead. And while it feels like a far less crowded competition, Skyler Gisondo may also be the best Jimmy Olsen ever; it certainly helps that he's given one of the film's meatier subplots, but he really does give a pitch-perfect comedic performance that gets laughs without feeling like it's just clowning for the camera.

When it comes to the superpowered characters, Edi Gathegi makes a welcome splash as Mr. Terrific, Anthony Carrigan brings unexpected pathos to Metamorpho, and Nathan Fillion channels Captain Hammer in all the right ways as Green Lantern. At the top of the cast, David Corenswet and Nicholas Hoult feel like the perfect performers to capture Superman and Lex Luthor as this movie has written them.

But I think part of the reason this movie has so many successful elements is that it has so many elements. To say this movie is overstuffed with ideas doesn't begin to do it justice, gang. There are so many characters, so many narrative threads, that it was easy to forget about them entirely until they magically reappeared at some later point. This is supposed to be the beginning of DC's new movie universe, but to me it felt more like James Gunn feared that he might never get to make another movie again after this one -- so he stuffed every last idea he had into it. Consequently, there are a lot of misfires in the movie too: plot threads that don't feel fully developed, characters that are woefully underused (sometimes despite excellent casting).

While I'd give marks to a lot of these weaker elements for at least being fun, I have to take a moment to call out the musical score as being a real disappointment. Sure, when you're using John Williams' iconic Superman theme, it's going to be a tremendous challenge to create other themes remotely as memorable to live alongside it. Still, the score always just gives up when it matters and trades on Williams' work to generate the feelings it can't make for itself. And it doesn't even deign to use ALL of the John Williams march, instead just regurgitating the same couple of phrases over and over again in the least inspired ways possible.

But despite its many flaws, I do feel like this Superman movie at least has its heart in the right place. And rising above the less successful elements is the overall feeling that the movie is fun -- exactly what it should be, and what a lot of superhero movies of recent years have forgotten to be (famously DC, but some Marvel efforts too). I give it a B-.

Well Seasoned

Everyone laments how "Hollywood has no original ideas" anymore, churning out little but remakes and reboots. So I have to acknowledge that maybe I'm part of the problem when I recommend a new series on Netflix, The Four Seasons.

The Four Seasons tracks three couples over the course of four group vacations taken throughout one year -- in the spring, summer, fall, and winter. (Classical music fans will know exactly what Vivaldi music accompanies these trips.) Relationships experience turmoil and fractures over the seasons... though comedy often ensues.

I think myself pretty well "read" in film history, but I wasn't aware of the 1981 movie from which all this was adapted. Written and directed by -- and starring -- Alan Alda, The Four Seasons apparently told a similar story. In my book, it's kind of the perfect thing to remake 44 years later. I presume that many people are like myself and had no awareness of the original. But even if they were, the changing nature of the world means that some differences would be baked right into the adaptation. The Four Seasons series leans into that in one way by changing one of the original movie's pairings to a gay couple. But brushes with social media, broader global awareness, and a widening generation gap all play small roles in the story.

The show has quite a cast, starring Tina Fey, Will Forte, Steve Carell, Colman Domingo, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Marco Calvani, and Erika Henningsen. Much of the surface appeal of the show is getting just what you'd expect from some of those names; there are moments of the show virtually guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. But at the same time, don't go in expecting a conventional half-hour sitcom. This is a heavy dose of humor mixed with a lot of relationship drama. Couples argue and reconcile, come together or break up, in a wide variety of situations over the course of these 8 episodes -- two each devoted to one of the titular four seasons. If you come to this because you liked 30 Rock, The Office, Saturday Night Live, or "whatever thing you liked that star in," I expect you will like The Four Seasons. You'll just also think, "but it's not as funny as that other thing." (Nor is it intended to be.)

Intriguingly, the show hit well enough (by murky Netflix metrics) to be renewed for a second season. So regardless of how closely the first season did or did not follow the original movie (which I have yet to watch), they're going to have to blaze their own story trail to continue things for another season. (Well, four seasons, I guess.) The writers of the series (which also includes Tina Fey) seem to have considered this possibility, with the final episodes teasing new potential ground for the story to explore.

I'd give The Four Seasons a B+. Moreover, it's probably going to be my "have you watched this?" option to inject into TV talk for the foreseeable future. I mean... by this point, I think everyone knows that Star Wars: Andor is not to be missed. But how many people have even heard of The Four Seasons?

Well... now you have.

Enterprise Flashback: The Shipment

The Xindi story arc on Star Trek: Enterprise was inspired by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But it being Star Trek, with inspiration also coming from the franchise's core moral code, some nuance surrounding the enemy was called for. "The Shipment" was a big step in providing that.

The Enterprise travels to the planet where the Xindi are refining fuel for their planet-killing weapon. Yet even as they have an opportunity to strike a blow against their enemy, they learn that not all Xindi are their enemy. A local scientist they capture knows nothing of humans, and is appalled to learn that his work is being co-opted for a genocidal purpose.

"Not all Xindi" might seem like a simplistic message, but at the time this episode first aired -- 2003, as the United States lashed out in all directions in response to 9/11 -- it's one that really needed highlighting. (And it's sadly an "evergreen" message that bears repeating.) The Xindi Gralik Durr is an interesting character. He's not a straightforward analog for an Oppenheimer; he's much farther down the chain of people whose life's work unknowingly feeds a war machine. And it feels like classic Star Trek in all the best ways that when he learns the hard truth, he quickly reforms and wants to make amends.

But despite Gralik Durr's nobility, he remains a rather shallow character. There isn't much sense of what he risks by helping Archer and company, nor hint of whether and how his "resistance" might continue once Enterprise takes off. And he isn't the only thin character in the episode. Even though the MACO Major Hayes reappears (again played by TV "that guy" Steven Culp), the episode doesn't devote any time to fleshing him out either -- or even having him contribute meaningfully to the mission by his presence.

Instead, time that could have bulked up character is given to odd world-building details, dropped in as if by a dungeon master who is really disappointed his players didn't more naturally come across all this background work he put in. By that I mean: why is it important that there was a sixth, now-extinct Xindi species? We don't need proof of the Xindi's genocidal proclivities; this whole story arc kicked off with that. We don't need reminding that Xindi sub-species don't get along with each other; episodes regularly start with mustache-twirling meetings of the Xindi's Evil League of Evil (including this episode). Why is a whole subplot devoted to tinkering with a captured Xindi hand weapon? It's novel and weird, I guess, that the gun is "slug worm operated," but it isn't clear there will be any impending ramifications to this knowledge in the plot at large.

It also feels a bit odd to me that the entire climax of the episode revolves around a plan to "tag" this new shipment of fuel in a way that Enterprise will be able to track... only to have that tracking fail the moment the shipment leaves this planet. Sure, sometimes plans fail, and that's bound to happen a few times over the course of a 24-episode story arc. But it undermines Gralik Durr's decision to help if that help amounts to little. And it's weird that Archer is the one to sneak aboard the Xindi ship to plant the tracker (as opposed to Reed or Hayes, also there with him on the planet).

Other observation:

• This episode must have come up short in the edit. I say this because it begins with a "previously on" clip package to orient you to the Xindi arc, for the first time this season. And while that does sound useful in principle, this package is a weird assembly of that telepathic alien hitting on Hoshi, as though the only important detail viewers need to watch this episode is "how we found out about this planet." (Which Reed actually answers anyway, in a bit of early exposition.) Why not remind us where the hand weapon came from that's the focus of the B plot?

I feel like the instincts of this episode to provide nuance to the Xindi are good. The specific message, that some Xindi are horrified by the actions of their leaders, is better still. But I find the execution a bit lacking. I give "The Shipment" a B-.

Enterprise Flashback: Exile

Star Trek will sometimes build an episode from the trappings of other story genres, reshaping them in a science-fiction mold. I was not a fan of the time Star Trek: The Next Generation took a run at Gothic romance... though enough time had passed that you can't blame them for trying again with Enterprise's "Exile."

Hoshi Sato is contacted telepathically by a reclusive alien who claims he can help the crew learn more about the Xindi. In exchange, he asks that she stay with him in his mountaintop castle as he works... though he intends to convince her to make that arrangement permanent. Meanwhile, Enterprise proceeds separately to a nearby sector where they may have located another of the mysterious spheres -- and learning more about it could be the key to understanding the region's strange anomalies.

"Exile" isn't just any old Gothic romance; it's rather specifically Beauty and the Beast. Tarquin, the "beast" of this story, is a monstrous figure who has been made an outcast. His abilities are tied to a strange artifact. Our female protagonist sees the potential for good in him... even though she stays in his secluded castle against her will. He gives her a book to get into her good graces. I find it all such an extreme one-to-one for Beauty and the Beast that the story suffers at all the points it can't follow the same plotting.

Because Hoshi is a main character on a television series, she can't actually fall in love with this guy, and certainly can't stay with him in the end. So the writers have to manufacture a reason they can't be together... and they land on making Tarquin terrible: a creep at best, a sexual predator at worst. His actions can easy be read as deception (he does not initially let her see his true appearance), gaslighting (he poses as people she knows, making her question reality), coercion (he tries to isolate her emotionally and physically from her friends), and assault (he reads her mind without permission). Plus, he's a serial offender; he wants to make Hoshi his fifth "companion."

Points to Hoshi for standing her ground, realizing when she's being tricked, and figuring out how to threaten him back to win her freedom. (And points to the writers for never really having her be tempted by his "offer.") But there's also no real story arc here for either character -- neither the "learning to see past the surface" moral of Beauty and the Beast, nor any substitute either. There's no hint that either one of them is going to be changed in the future for having encountered the other.

The B plot has its moments. The visual effects of the Enterprise hull liquefying and exploding are well executed. Archer and Trip nearly losing their ride while they're exploring the sphere is a fun scene. The revelation that the Delphic Expanse was artificially created feels like an intriguing twist -- even as the concurrent revelation that there may be 50 spheres or more suggests that our heroes still have a long way to go in solving their problems.

Other observations:

• In the opening scene, Hoshi's bathroom is weirdly laid out specifically for the camera. Only in TV land would a mirror NOT be positioned directly above a sink.

• In an episode featuring a villain who gaslights Hoshi, it's not great that both Reed and Phlox initially tell her she's probably imagining things.

• When Tarquin asks for an artifact important to the Xindi upon which to focus his telepathic abilities, it's a good thing we've already seen the proof that he is telepathic. That sounds like straight-up con artist stuff.

• The marginalizing of Travis Mayweather continues. In this episode, he's replaced at the helm in arbitrary scenes with a speechless, no-name pilot... even though there are other scenes where he does appear. also without saying a word.

• While Tarquin's telepathic powers are well established, it's completely unexplained what technology he possesses to actually threaten Enterprise at the end of the episode.

While Hoshi sticks up for herself in this episode, it's hardly what I'd call a "good Hoshi episode." Good moments for the Xindi arc overall are muddied with the pervasive ick factor of the alien Tarquin. Overall, I give "Exile" a C+.

Wild Assertions

The current entertainment pipeline often sees movies passing from theaters to streaming in a matter of weeks -- so even when you fall behind, you don't fall that far behind. But occasionally, we get a reminder of "the old days," when it would take many months for a movie to become watchable at home. I had almost forgotten that I wanted to watch the animated film The Wild Robot when it finally showed up on a streaming service.

The movie from DreamWorks Animation is based on the first of a series of children's books of the same title. In it, a robot abandoned in the wilderness comes online on an uninhabited island. In trying to fulfill her purpose to help, she befriends the local creatures, becomes mother to an orphaned goose... and ultimately attracts the attention of less-nurturing forces.

I enjoyed the movie overall, though I fear that praising it is going to come off as a series of backhanded compliments. For instance, one thing I really appreciated about The Wild Robot is how it doesn't try to push the boundaries of animation. These days, it seems like every animated movie is built around trying to pioneer some new way of rendering the most realistic animation you've ever seen. And while there is some clear effort put into the environments of this film (particularly in the extended forest fire sequence at the climax of the story), the character animation is refreshingly more simple.

I think this choice was perhaps forced on the production in at least two ways. One is that it's all based on a picture book. The movie is not trying to emulate the art directly -- it's not that basic. But I think those illustrations probably served as a reminder to streamline and simplify wherever possible. Secondly, I think all the talking animals of this story blocked off the possibility of too much hyper-realism -- at the same time that an abundance of pre-existing "talking animals movies" blocked off other ways you could have presented the characters. In order to chart its own course, distinct from Disney, Pixar, what-have-you, the movie needed to embrace a simpler animation style.

The story is sweet, with a few nice moments where the sentiment lands well. It is not the product of the well-oiled story machine that was Pixar in its heyday, nor Disney in its... though neither are Pixar and Disney themselves these days. The Wild Robot has some lovely things to say about found families, environmentalism, and more -- and that feels "good enough" even if it doesn't feel sharp enough to really tug on your emotions throughout.

The voice casting is the area where I can most unreservedly shine a spotlight. Lupita Nyong'o stars as the title character, deftly walking the tightrope of lending emotion to an ostensibly emotionless character. Surrounding her are Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, and Catherine O'Hara -- a deep bench of wonderful voices who lend pathos, comic relief, and texture to the world of the story.

Ultimately, I'd give The Wild Robot a B. That's not "can't miss" viewing, but I think it is good enough that just about anyone would find something to like in it, and find it worth the time.

Enterprise Flashback: Impulse

When Enterprise set up the idea of the Delphic Expanse, teasing us with the strange things that might happen there, they hit the audience with two specific "ghost stories" to sell the spookiness of the place: that the crew of one ship was turned inside out, and that an entire Vulcan crew was driven insane. Being a network show, they were never going to follow up and show us more about that first idea. But the second one takes center stage in "Impulse."

The Enterprise encounters a dense asteroid field, full of an element that can be used to protect the ship from the hazards of the Expanse. But as the crew makes plans to mine it, they discover a Vulcan ship adrift deep inside the field. When a team boards the ship, they find the entire crew compromised by an affliction that has turned them into rage-fueled monsters... a condition which begins to affect T'Pol.

"Impulse" is a straight-up horror episode, featuring Vulcan zombies. Boiled down that simply, it sounds pretty hokey -- though it's actually better than that, thanks in large part to the series' consistently high production values. Veteran Star Trek director David Livingston really leans into the stylistic shift, working with the production team to establish moody lighting, over-exposed film, arch camera angles, lots of fog, and superb makeup to give us a zombie story that legitimately honors the genre.

I do find myself wishing that there had been something a little more distinct about the fact that these are Vulcan zombies, some kind of Star Trek spin on the classic trope. (We don't even get that they're strong zombies, as they should be compared to the humans.) It's possible that what I'm really feeling is fatigue over the parade of zombie television in the decades since this episode was made. But if all this episode is going to do is "play the hits," it at least does so well -- zombies staggering inexorably toward the camera, clawing as people escape up a ladder, protruding through a barely-opened door... and all set against the ticking clock of an "infected" person slowly being turned. The episode even ends with "one last jump scare" as T'Pol has a nightmare about what she's been through.

But a huge measure of the tension is undercut by the "24 hours earlier" trope tacked on at the beginning of the episode. "Impulse" doesn't begin with the creeping dread of finding the Vulcan ship drifting in the asteroids; it begins with T'Pol already succumbing to zombie-ism, teasing us with the threat that she might die screaming on Phlox's Sickbay bed. (Jolene Blalock acts her ass off, full-on screaming into the camera... before we awkwardly smash cut to "it's been a long roooooad.....")

We know T'Pol isn't going to die here. But the show's insistence on teasing us with this schmuck bait compromises so many other aspects of the episode. We don't know the "zombie rules" going into this situation, but by showing us that teaser, we've been told that only T'Pol is at risk of "being turned"; we lose any tension that the humans on the mission might be threatened by "zombie bite." We've also seen exactly how bad T'Pol is going to get before arriving in Sickbay, which ultimately deflates any tension over how long the team might be trapped aboard the Vulcan ship. I'm hard-pressed to think of any horror movie that uses a flashback structure, and I'm pretty sure this is why: it just undercuts everything the genre is trying to do.

At this point, it's become comical how much this series hates several of its own characters. Travis Mayweather is involved (barely) in the B-plot about mining ore from an asteroid, but there's no possible justification for why he -- their best pilot -- didn't fly the shuttle to the Vulcan ship. (We just can't have him getting anywhere near the A-plot.) And just when you think nothing more can be said or shown about Reed's ineptitude as a tactical officer: Archer saves his life in a hand-to-hand fight with a zombie, and then later messes up "hotwiring" a console on the Vulcan ship, locking them out and angering T'Pol.

While I praised the horror-specific aspects of the production, I should still highlight that this episode is also good in many of the ways the series typically excels. We get the visuals of a super-dense and dangerous-looking asteroid field, a transporter accident that fuses rocks into the walls and floor, a shuttle crash on an asteroid, lingering shuttle damage, and a huge ship explosion. There's also multiple solid action sequences that involve fist fights, shoot-outs, crawling and climbing, and scurrying across a narrow beam over a chasm. Once again, this show does action well -- even if that unfortunate "24 hours earlier" tease has deflated much of the tension from it.

Other observations:

• This episode is something of an inversion of the earlier "Strange New World." There, an "infection" turned the humans against T'Pol; here, one turns T'Pol against the humans.

• For the larger Xindi story arc, we learn that the very ore which can protect the ship from the anomalies of the Expanse is toxic to Vulcans. T'Pol says Archer should leave her behind and protect the ship, but Archer says he can't save humanity by losing what makes him human. That would have been a better line if the Xindi arc hadn't taken Archer as far down the "Jack Bauer road" as it already has.

• As much as I hate the use of the "24 hours earlier" trope, they at least have the good sense not to repeat the same scenes when the flashbacks catch us back up to where the story began. 

• On movie night, Phlox once again talks during the film. (I guess the writers aren't willing to count him completely out of the "worst character on Enterprise" contest, despite the stiff competition.) T'Pol once again has a perfectly Vulcan way to shush hum.

I really love how Enterprise went for a horror movie here, and how far the behind-the-scenes team went to realize that vision. I'm disappointed in how much the writers let them down with a poor script structure and a lack of any "Trek-specific" spin on the zombie trope. Overall, I give "Impulse" a B-.