Enterprise Flashback: Similitude

Season three of Star Trek: Enterprise was the long-form Xindi story arc, an effort to refresh the series. I've suggested that maybe it didn't provide as thorough a creative jolt as it might have. I would argue that a much larger one came mid-season, with the episode "Similitude."

When Trip is critically injured, the only means of saving his life is for Phlox to implant his DNA in a mimetic creature, creating a rapidly-aging clone from which he'll be able to harvest tissue. But the plan takes a number of unexpected turns. Thanks to the alien component of the clone "Sim," he possesses all of the real Trip's memories. Though he has only a short life span, he quickly bonds with members of the crew. And it turns out that the painless procedure Phlox had anticipated for harvesting tissue from Sim will actually be fatal if carried out.

"Similitude" marks the first Enterprise script by writer-producer Manny Coto, who joined the show in season three. Right out of the gate, he has delivered a solid episode -- and would make such a splash that he would become showrunner for season four (at which time, he'd initiate a much more real and effective creative reboot of the series).

I think this episode does a number of things very well. It presents an authentic moral quandary without it being a direct one-for-one analogy for any particular real-world issue. This gives many characters space to offer their perspective. (I find it interesting that T'Pol has the most outspoken ethical concerns, for example.) And it all brushes up against one of Star Trek's core tenets -- "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" -- without feeling at all like a retread of the story that first presented it.

The episode also honors the format of Star Trek: Enterprise as it has been, not swooping in like some episode of a new show. It uses the narrative structure the series seems to have grown fond of -- flashing back after a big opening teaser. (But here, it doesn't feel like a stunt to build tension; what we see in the teaser is completely recontextualized after we've watched the whole story unfold.) It also leverages its position amid the Xindi arc in a minor but believable way. (Archer says that in other circumstances, he might not have blessed Phlox's Frankensteinian plan, and I feel that's true.)

It also marks a big milestone in the show's ongoing Trip/T'Pol story. I've found the whole "Vulcan neuropressure" conceit to be juvenile -- as it is again in this very episode, with the two groping and rubbing each other's feet before she hangs her chest fully in his face. But this episode finally puts real emotion behind the titillating visuals. And even though it's T'Pol and Sim who connect on a deeper level in this episode, it happens in a way that feels impossible to undo later. There's only so much "will they, won't they" that the show will be able to play between T'Pol and Trip after this -- and if the show is angling to put them together, I'd rather they just do that and seize the resulting story opportunities, rather than keep focused only on the physical attractiveness of Jolene Blalock and Connor Trinneer.

As always, the series has big production values, even though this is more of a so-called "bottle show" that takes place all on existing sets. They have to cast multiple actors to play Sim at different ages, and they do feel like credible younger versions of the same person. Elaborate visual effects show the accumulation of debris on the Enterprise hull. And a rather expensive prop is created for a single scene: a fetus in an incubation tank.

The episode has its shortcomings, though -- beyond the "neuropressure" scenes it feels like Rick Berman and Brannon Braga forced into the script. Phlox feels quite out of character here. It's of necessity, so that the story can happen at all... and yet it's strange to me that he's so zealously driving off questions of medical ethics until we're too deep into the quagmire to turn back.

The story stops short of the really hard ethical consideration here, by having Sim ultimately agree to give his life for Trip. On the one hand, this feels like an easy cheat. But on the other, since Sim effectively is Trip, it would be doing Trip dirty to have Sim make any other choice. Plus, Star Trek has already done this story the other way, with Janeway's decision regarding Tuvix.

Other observations:

• This is yet another example of how poorly the show's theme song ends up playing in context. Here, we smash cut from what appears to be Trip dead in a coffin to "it's been a long roooooad....."

• This episode hits a lot differently in retrospect, when the events of the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise are known. 

All told, "Similitude" is a strong debut for Manny Coto -- and in my eyes, the best episode of Enterprise so far. I give it a B+.

Weapons Grade

Fans of horror movies have been championing the new film Weapons, from writer-director Zach Cregger. It's his follow-up to 2022's Barbarian, a movie I felt so ambivalent about that it seems I never even blogged about it. But Weapons is no "sophomore slump"; I went for it as completely as the zeitgeist promised I would.

At 2:17 in the morning in a Pennsylvania town, 17 children wake up and run out the doors of their different homes, vanishing into night. They comprise the entire class (save one boy) from school teacher Justine's class, leaving her deeply shaken and the entire town set against her -- especially one stricken father, Archer. In the weeks that follow, the community tries to move on as Justin and Archer separately try to get to the bottom of the disappearance. What they find is more dangerous and disturbing than they could ever imagine.

If you're a fan of horror movies, I feel like Weapons is going to scratch all the key itches you look for in the genre. The movie delivers a multi-ingredient stew of jump scares and skulking dread... with laughs to release the tension briefly before ratcheting it up again. (Josh Brolin is central to one of the best moments of the latter.)

It also features a number of profoundly creepy visuals. Moments that feature characters in the grip of complete intense hatred -- or the complete absence of emotion of any kind -- are effectively unnerving. The open front door of a surburban house has rarely looked as menacing as it does here, inviting you to imagine any terror that might be lurking just inside its unnaturally black maw. And the image that leads the film's marketing campaign -- children running with arms out, as though pretending to be airplanes -- feels like it might be as iconic a movie poster as The Blair Witch Project's climactic monologue to the camera.

All that was good to me -- but I really enjoyed Weapons for how clever I found the script to be. It employs a non-linear narrative with separate "chapters" centered on different characters, key events sometimes repeated from different perspectives as new chapters unfold. All that in and of itself is not new; Pulp Fiction won a screenplay Oscar for this technique, and Zach Cregger himself cited Magnolia as a major influence. But the way it's used here seems especially smart.

First: the movie clearly wants to evoke the emotions surrounding school shootings. The anguish of grieving parents is a major part of the story, along with images of memorials and heated debate about what might have been done to save children from an evil. The non-linear structure of the script allows the movie to begin in a more realistic place that engages most earnestly with these ideas. As new chapters unfold, the story descends gradually into more supernatural elements in a way that a straightforward narrative wouldn't have allowed.

Second, the non-linear structure highlights a secondary theme of the story, essentially that "hurt people hurt people." An opening narrator tells us that the disappearance of 17 children was almost just background for the story that unfolded next: and that is an extended example of how people struggling to cope with their own grief create a Butterfly Effect within their community that can affect others too. The self-destructive impulses that Justine displays in her story wind up dragging down her friend Paul when we get to his chapter. Archer's urges to lash out over the loss of his son end up magnifying Justine's pain. Paul's backsliding leads him to visit misery on a complete stranger, James... and the cycle continues all the way to the end of the film.

Third, the re-sequenced narrative allows leitmotifs to be sprinkled into the story early on, before you even realize they're important. I have found it deeply rewarding to think back on the movie and realize new connections throughout. It's hard to highlight connections without spoiling things, but there are a couple I think I can tiptoe around. One characters fear of needles (getting "stuck") proves eerily prescient. And very early on, the movie cheekily tells us exactly what's going on, hiding a massive clue in plain sight in a cunning bit of misdirection.

Is the movie absolutely perfect? Not quite. For one thing, it kind of wants to have its "cake and eat it too" when it comes to modern technology. Houses with Ring cams provide footage of the children running off in the dead of night... but there conveniently are none near the place that might have cut right to heart of the mystery. And to say that the police in this town are incompetent would be woefully underselling it. It's not that they should speculate on what we learn is really going on, but that any cursory investigation would surely have turned up some of the weirdness that Justine and Archer find in their own searches: a loose thread to at least begin pulling on.

But it's easy to overlook the shortcomings amid all the other cleverness I cited. And the movie features great performances from Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. I really loved Weapons. If it's not my favorite movie so far this year, it's certainly up there. I give it an A-.

Strange New Worlds: What Is Starfleet?

Because Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is a show that cares about continuity, when we were introduced to Ortegas' brother Beto early in season three and told he was making a documentary, it seemed inevitable that at some point we would see the culmination of that. In fact, we wound up getting entire episode presented as that documentary, in "What Is Starfleet?"

Documentary filmmaker Umberto Ortegas has been given unprecedented access to the U.S.S. Enterprise, and now presents the footage of his time aboard the Starfleet flagship: "What Is Starfleet?" In this film, he examines Starfleet's problematic posture as a military organization, by way of one particular mission to escort a space-dwelling life form that inflames tensions in an escalating political conflict.

I don't mind the idea of giving an entire episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to a fictional documentary, for a couple of reasons. The franchise is approaching a staggering 1,000 episodes of content, but I believe has never used this conceit before. And while the mockumentary concept may not be fresh in television at large, it's used almost exclusivity in sitcoms -- so to me it feels like there's still more to be mined in a more dramatic context.

That said, I still didn't find the execution of "What Is Starfleet?" to be as interesting as the concept. Partly, it's because I found myself not believing in the character of Beto or his journey. We've spent a couple of episodes with him now, but this is the first time we're really learning about the depth of his animosity toward Starfleet. The young man we've seen now over a few episodes doesn't seem like the kind of person who could bottle his emotions this long and not betray the fact that he was planning a hatchet job with his documentary. If he hated Starfleet this much, he surely would have let the mask slip before now. Or if he only "sorta" hated Starfleet, I'd have thought his earlier mission to an archaeological dig would have softened his stance more than the e*vents of this episode. 

I feel like the bigger issue, though, is that in focusing on Beto's journey of acceptance, the episode sidesteps other serious issues at play in the story. Or... maybe it is? It's a little hard to tell exactly what's going on with Enterprise's mission, and that's intentional in the writing as they embrace the documentary conceit. If Beto doesn't have access to something, we the audience don't get to know it.

But we are told that Starfleet is backing the more genocidal faction in a two-sided conflict, and we never learn why. It calls to mind the premise of Star Trek: Insurrection -- not a great movie (or even a great Star Trek movie), but at least recognizing that "allying with butchers" is a deeper topic worthy of a longer exploration. I can understand why the writers might not want to fully interrogate an allegory that could be, say, mapped on to the U.S. and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict... but to never get any answers seems odd. (At least the "empathy for life, no matter how alien" morals surrounding the space creature are more developed.)

Still, the episode does give good moments for several characters in their "talking head" interviews, voicing the importance of Starfleet to them in ways that a normal episode of Star Trek wouldn't allow them to do. I'm thinking of Ortegas, Spock, and Uhura mainly (in that order) -- but long time Strange New Worlds viewers who know the back stories of Number One and Dr. M'Benga will appreciate the subtle nods to their histories in their interviews as well. And Christopher Pike has a great moment of delivering the most diplomatic and biting form of a "we're done here" response, when he refuses to wax poetic about the deaths under his command.

So while I overall found "What Is Starfleet?" to be a mixed bag, I did nonetheless enjoy the narrative experiment. I give the episode a B.

You Should Hunt This One Down

If your social media feed looks anything like mine, then for the last couple of months, you've been practically besieged by people singing their praise for an unusual new animated movie on Netflix: KPop Demon Hunters. I finally succumbed to the hype and watched it... and to me it feels like the hype is pretty real.

The story centers on K-pop girl group, Huntr/x, who secretly use the magic in their voices to fight literal demons that are trying to devour souls and corrupt the Earth. They face their greatest challenge when they go up against a new, rival boy band who themselves are secretly demons in human form. It's a wild and fun premise that by itself sets the hook for its audience.

But the premise alone doesn't have to do all the work. The animation style is even bigger than the gimmicks: frenetic, candy-colored, and often influenced by anime. There's a deliberate decision to inject some jitter into the movement, which I think I resisted at first, but ultimately came to accept as a choice to make this feel more like stop motion than computer animation. It makes the characters and props feel a bit more like real objects somehow, which helps anchor the fantastical story about demons and magic.

KPop Demon Hunters is also a musical -- and a really good one. Purists might quibble about how many of the songs are diegetic, but they all speak directly to plot and character. And they are catchy as hell. Just when you think you've heard the movie's earwormy "song of the summer" candidate, along comes another banger to overwrite your short-term memory with another immediately hummable melody. As with the animation style, I needed an adjustment period with the music. I was convinced that the audio balance of the film was terrible when I couldn't understand half the lyrics... but when I turned on the subtitles and learned it was because they constantly weave back and forth from English to Korean, I had an "oh, duh" moment and settled in. (I've struggled to go to bed every night since, not quite able to banish some of the melodies from my restless brain.)

There's so much creativity here in the visuals and the music that the story almost inevitably can't quite keep up: the plot feels a bit familiar to me, and it's certainly the least exciting element at play here. Still, "familiar" isn't "bad" in this case. The story is well told, and the "be true to yourself" message at the core lands with more emotional oomph than you might expect from... well, a movie with a goofy title like "KPop Demon Hunters."

I finished the movie feeling that what I'd seen was pretty good, but also that I needed to think on it a day or two before I tried blogging about it. The movie has only risen in my esteem during that time. I'm reminded of a time long ago when I was telling people "I know it's called 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' but I'm telling you -- it's pretty great." KPop Demon Hunters is pretty great. I give it an A-, and fully expect it to be on my top movies list at year's end.

Enterprise Flashback: North Star

As I've been working my way through season three of Star Trek: Enterprise, I've commented that in the season-long story arc, not every episode is truly connected. But I think we reach peak disconnect -- no ongoing story threads, no Xindi-related reason given for this "side quest" -- in the episode "North Star."

Enterprise discovers a small colony of humans living on a planet in the Expanse. They are living at an Old West level of technology, and oppressing a second race of aliens. To learn how this all came to be, Archer and his crew head in undercover to investigate, and soon run afoul of local politics and police.

"How did these primitive humans get here?" is a pretty classic Star Trek trope, played out many times on the original series out of budget-saving necessity. Enterprise has more money and production capabilities at its disposal to more fully present an Old West town, but the episode doesn't really add to the trope so much as play all its greatest hits. We get horses and stunts. We get gunfights and a city-spanning final showdown. We get crossfades and wipes between scenes. We even get an Ennio Morricone-inflected score.  

I suppose we also get another classic theme -- an allegorical look at real-world racism -- woven in around all the action. But it's a pretty shallow effort that feels like it hasn't aged very well. Star Trek is fundamentally idealistic, so I suppose it isn't off-brand to think that you can "solve racism" by removing one particularly virulent racist and exposing everyone else to a larger truth. But watching this episode in 2025, it feels naive more than optimistic to assert that oppression that's this institutionalized can be reversed so simply.

But then, Enterprise has always been stronger at "having fun" than "giving morals" -- and at least it doesn't miss on the fun here. Trip has to barter away his harmonica to "rent" a horse... only to discover that riding a horse isn't as easy as it appears in a John Ford movie. Archer shows he's learned a thing or two from his adventures about blending in. And that final action sequence really is great, full of slow-motion stunts, phaser blasts causing water to geyser from horse troughs, great bullet hits everywhere (including when Archer takes a hit to the shoulder), and Reed finally (!) doing something smart -- when he takes advantage of the fact that with a stun setting, he can shoot a hostage to end a standoff.

And there are solid guest stars here, too. Glenn Morshower (a real working actor, known to many as Agent Pierce on 24) gives the perfect energy as no-nonsense sheriff MacReady. Emily Bergl (who you may recognize from Shameless or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) sells optimism as earnestly as possible in this action-oriented script. And James Parks plays a perfect heel as Deputy Bennings.

But don't think too hard here, or you will find no end of nits to pick. This colony has been here 250 years and hasn't advanced technologically at all -- not even with the knowledge of alien capabilities to inspire innovation? Why do communicators ("talking on a box") seem like such a leap in a society which has to at least be familiar with the telegraph? Does this town not have a mayor; why does the sheriff seem to act as the leader in all situations? (Like... are they fascists?)

Other observations:

• There's an interesting theme to be explored here, in what happens when the oppressed turn around and become oppressors -- as humans did against the aliens who abducted them. I just don't think this episode even begins to scratch the surface on the topic.

• Why does Trip go on this mission to the planet? (Aside from the fact that the writers only care about three characters on this show.) Why would you send an engineer to check out the Old West planet and not your tactical officer? Or even your communications officer, for possible language barriers?

"North Star" is well-made, well-acted, and has a final shootout that's totally fun. Yet for all that, it's stale re-heated leftovers, explored at least this well many times over on Trek series past. I give it a B-.

Strange New Worlds: The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail

With the sixth episode of season three, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally broke the "serious one / fun one" pattern it had established, serving up a sort of "origin story" for Captain James T. Kirk. This is "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail."

When the U.S.S. Farragut is ruthlessly attacked by powerful alien scavengers, Enterprise warps to the rescue. But when the scavenger ship scoops up Enterprise inside it and warps away, first officer James T. Kirk must take command of a skeleton crew aboard the Farragut, to rescue both Enterprise and an inhabited planet threatened by the aliens. Kirk faces a crisis of confidence, as those aboard the Enterprise face a boarding party working toward the rapid dismantling of their ship.

I've heard a few online grumblings from some Strange New Worlds viewers that disliked this episode, feeling it was more of a "backdoor pilot" for a "Kirk Year One" television series than a Strange New Worlds episode. Without conceding anything there, I'll just point out that the whole reason we have Strange New Worlds is because Pike, Spock, Number One, and the Enterprise were all woven into Star Trek: Discovery. Let's pay it forward, people!

I can hardly imagine a more skillfully constructed setup for Kirk's first adventure in the captain's chair. So far on Strange New Worlds, he's been shown as the cocky, self-confident person we all know him to be from the original series. It's great to see that it wasn't a smooth, bump-free road for that person to just one day sit in the captain's chair. Indeed, I think that showing Kirk question himself so deeply before coming out the other side with his self-confidence intact helps him earn all that bluster.

And who was there in Kirk's "darkest moment" to help him pick himself up and put himself back together? Spock, of course! -- along with many of the crew members who will one day form the core of Kirk's Enterprise crew: Uhura, Scotty, and Chapel. That's pitch perfect craftsmanship on the part of the writers, and I felt the cast met the moment. (So did composer Nami Melumad. In the very moment where Kirk regains his ingenuity and swagger, her score is skillfully evocative of James Horner's work in Star Trek II -- without copying it exactly.)

But the episode wasn't all about the adventures of the future Enterprise crew. Aboard the current Enterprise, the remaining characters engaged in a fun run-and-gun scenario to save themselves. The episode was a bit too packed to find all the individual character moments that Strange New Worlds usually hits; I would have liked a bit of lingering friction around Number One and the rebellious Ortegas having to work together this closely, and putting Dr. M'Benga on a joystick steering the ship was a choice only about giving Babs Olusanmokun something to do. Still, it all made for some fun action.

Yet one aspect that didn't play as well for me was the final reveal of the identity of these alien scavengers. (Uh, spoilers, I guess, if everything you've read so far didn't already qualify.) Clearly, the idea that these "alien" scavengers were in fact a splinter group of humans was meant to add some moral ambiguity to the story -- a chance for some soul-searching, as Pike and Kirk do in the final scene. I'm just not sure that moral complexity looms larger than the raft of logistical questions raised by the twist. One ship of humans (even if they were the "best of the best") somehow surpassed all of the rest of humanity over a period of 200 years, to become that technologically advanced? And also, so fundamentally incurious as to not attempt communications of any kind when they learn they're dealing with other humans? The original Star Trek had its share of implacable alien menaces throughout its run; I feel like leaving this adversary similarly mysterious might have served the story just fine.

Who knows if we really will ever get that "Kirk Year One" spin-off. If not, seeing this "first ride of the classic Enterprise crew" was pretty fun. I give "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" a B+.

Strange New Worlds: Through the Lens of Time

With this post, I'll finally get up to date with the current season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. (Except... they're releasing a new episode today. Shh!) Here are my thoughts on "Through the Lens of Time."

Working with Dr. Korby, Enterprise is set to explore an underground alien complex that may house knowledge from an advanced, extinct race. Ensign Gamble is thrilled to be assigned to his first landing party, and Ortegas' brother Beto is also coming to gather footage for his documentary. But then a horrifying accident sends Gamble back to Sickbay, and soon the remaining team becomes trapped inside the complex, cut off from communications with the world outside. Can our heroes solve the mysteries that past explorers did not?

I'm often sad that Strange New Worlds gives us only 10 episodes a season, less than half of what the Trek series of the 80s and 90s delivered. But we're in a television age of quality over quantity, and this episode in particular benefits from the writers being able to map out an entire season before a frame of film is shot.

The Star Trek landscape is strewn with the bodies of hundreds of redshirts. (It happens to some poor security guard in this very episode.) Usually, these deaths don't really "matter" to the audience or even the main characters, doing little more than advancing the plot. But here, knowing what they had in store for poor, doomed Ensign Gamble, the writers were able to backfill him into earlier episodes, playing up his youthful exuberance in a way that makes his fate here hit harder for Dr. M'Benga.

It also serves a hell of a meal for guest star Chris Myers. He's been so goofy and bright as Gamble for several episodes now that when he switches to the persona of a merciless Vezda, it's creepy as hell. And the combined makeup and visual effects used to present his eyeless sockets amp up that horror. (But side note: ask LeVar Burton how hard it is to act without being able to use your eyes. Myers' switching between two characters -- or really, one character pretending to be another -- seems even more well-realized in that light.)

As Gamble is featuring in his final story, Beto Ortegas is figuring into one more chapter in his. Part of me found it odd that he basically had zero interactions with his sister in this episode. Regardless, I really appreciated the conceit of putting a total civilian (even more so than Korby) into a full-fledged Trek adventure. Almost every Trekker would imagine themselves to be a cool, collected Starfleet officer in such a situation; the reality is that most of us would be losing it just like Beto.

However... this maybe isn't so much a full-fledged Star Trek adventure as much as it is a high-tech escape room. An escape room borrowing heavily from Indiana Jones movies in particular. Watching our heroes solve an escalating series of puzzles wasn't dull, but it did feel more intellectual and clever than emotional and engaging. And Korby's presence on the mission wasn't nearly the liability or source of strife I might have expected. (I suppose the writers have him on a longer character arc than I'm imagining.)

A few burning embers of season three plot elements continue to get a bit of oxygen here: Batel is forced to acknowledge the "devil" inside her in a potent way, Beto and Uhura perhaps edge a bit closer to a relationship, and Korby's obsession with his research slowly builds. Still, this episode of Strange New Worlds feels more on the "stand-alone" side of the series' "stand-alone, but connected" format.

Once again, the series has served up a pretty good episode -- a B+ in my book. But now, halfway through the season, I'm surprised it hasn't yet given us an "all-time great" for the franchise, as I felt both of the first two seasons did more than once. But there's also something to be said for the remarkable consistency Strange New Worlds achieves each week.

Hitting the Squids

Netflix has moved on at least one or two "can't miss TV shows" since the three-season run of Squid Game wrapped up a few months ago. But it loomed so large in the zeitgeist for a minute there -- and I haven't written about it since the first season -- that I feel like I have to go back to the well to offer an opinion.

Which, paradoxically, is that this is one particular well? I don't know if you can go back to it again.

Squid Game itself follows in the tradition of narratives like Battle Royale and The Hunger Games, putting a cast of doomed characters in a fight to death. The trappings of Squid Game were new and different, contributing to its success: it used the longer run time of a television season to more fully develop the characters, and the "child's game" hook of the competition worked even for audiences less familiar with the Korean games depicted.

But after an "unlikely protagonist" survives the game in the first chapter of one of these stories, there's kind of only one place for the sequel to go: back into the game again. And I sort of feel like whatever steps are taken to refresh that, the "been there, done that" feel of it can't be totally erased.

Seasons two and three of Squid Game (which really play more like one connected, extra long season) do bring some new ideas to the table. An elaborate subplot tracks the world outside the game as its being played. Another subplot takes us more into the world of running the game, following a character who has become involved for motives and principles of her own.

We also get a number of interesting new characters that double down on Squid Game's original premise of focusing on people who have been passed over (or even worked over) by society. An over-the-top, drug-addicted influencer makes a big splash. A mother/son pairing injects a fresh family dynamic into the story. A pregnant woman leads to a new set of complications, while highlighting some central themes. And the way the story weaves in a trans woman feels satisfyingly about more than just visibility -- it's real inclusion.

But all of that, no matter how compelling it can be at times, is always subsumed by other elements of the story. They still play all the hits of season one -- reality-show-style plotting and backstabbing, inevitable votes, wild games (though at least there are new ones). There's one truly new aspect of the story -- the main protagonist's quest to burn the whole system down -- yet even that fades into the background of the flashy, yet familiar. (Honestly, it feels super weird when we get a whole episode, as we do multiple times, in which he does and says almost nothing.)

It's possible I'm expecting too much of this show, this format. Like, maybe I'm asking for it to transform from Survivor to Andor or something, when all it can ever really do is be Survivor: Africa instead of Survivor: Micronesia. But if all Squid Game can do is offer diminishing returns -- I'd given seasons two and three a collective B -- then I'm glad creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has seen fit to end it at this point. And I can't say I'm all that enthused about the rumored English-language re-make/re-boot/re-heat.

For a few brief moments, tons of people were united in watching Squid Game. Let's go find the next big thing, shall we?

Strange New Worlds: A Space Adventure Hour

Season three of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds continued its apparent alternating pattern of serious and silly episodes with the fourth installment, "A Space Adventure Hour."

La'An is tasked with stress-testing a new holodeck system aboard the ship. She decides to cast herself as detective Amelia Moon, and is soon working to solve a murder behind the scenes of a 1960s science fiction TV show. But when the holodeck discontinues safety protocols, draws a crippling amount of power from Enterprise systems, and cuts off her communications with the world outside, La'An finds she must solve the mystery to save both herself and the ship.

In the chronologically ordered history of Star Trek, this episode is presenting the very first holodeck story. But in the real world, of course, The Next Generation gave us so many different malfunctioning holodeck episodes as to completely wear out the premise; later Treks would have to get increasingly clever in their narrative gymnastics to make the old feel new again.

Unfortunately, Strange New Worlds doesn't have a new take. (In fact, it's really close to "Elementary, Dear Data" in most key ways.) This episode is mostly just invoking nostalgia. There hasn't been a new holodeck episode of Star Trek in over 25 years, so you should be excited to see this one, right? (Assuming you haven't been watching old episodes -- like me and many Trekkers.)

But thankfully, there's another source of nostalgia here: for the original Star Trek series and the lofty and noble aspirations that have attached to it over the decades. La'An's holodeck excursion brings us into the world of "The Last Frontier," with a creator quite like Gene Roddenberry, a benefactor similar to Lucille Ball, a production budget befitting a 60s TV show, and a credit sequence exactly like the show that brought us all here today.

In the proud tradition of sketch comedy shows that have poked fun at Star Trek over the years, "A Space Adventure Hour" is Star Trek's chance to razz itself with hokey dialogue, exaggerated melodrama, technicolor lighting, rubber makeup, and cardboard props. Yet even as the episode has some meta fun at Star Trek's expense, it equally serves as a heartfelt love letter to some of the people who fought to keep it on the air in the beginning. Celia Rose Gooding (as Uhura, as "Joni Gloss") gets the most direct thesis statement in support of Star Trek that's ever been put into the mouth of one of its own characters. She advocates for the goodness of storytelling in the most abstract, television in general, and Star Trek in particular. I found it delightful.

So is the fun we get (as always) when the cast of a Star Trek show gets to cut loose and play other characters. Jess Bush gets to play things up in her native Australian accent. Anson Mount transforms completely into alcoholic writer "TK Bellows." Paul Wesley, who for seasons has perfectly walked the line of giving us James T. Kirk without giving us an impression of William Shatner, here gets to give us... a perfectly exaggerated impression of William Shatner. There is, in short, a lot here to love -- and likely the more minute trivia you have about the behind-the-scenes history of Star Trek, the more you'll find.

Yet even though the cast and director Jonathan Frakes inject this with every bit as much fun as last season's Lower Decks crossover, I still had a hard time getting over the "been there, done that" qualities of this being another holodeck misadventure. (And, if I may pat myself on the back for my own insightfulness, the rather easy-to-guess solution to the central mystery.) I had fun, but this was not an episode that put the "new" in Strange New Worlds. I give "A Space Adventure Hour" a B+.

Shuffle Up and Re-deal

It's been two years since I raved about the television series Poker Face. But now season 2 has come and gone, and I think it worth one more moment to highlight what a top-notch series it is.

Poke Face stars Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a woman who floats around the country bumping into crimes, and solving them thanks to her uncanny ability: she can instantly tell when a person is lying. The Columbo-inspired format generally shows us the crime in the opening act, before Charlie arrives on the scene. The game is not to solve the whodunnit, but to watch the dance between amateur detective and perpetrator -- how will Charlie figure everything out, and how long will the criminal be able to evade her?

Another big part of it is: what stars are going to show up this week? Natasha Lyonne has been working in the business for a long time, and has presumably developed a lengthy contact list of friends. The creator and sometimes-director of the show, Rian Johnson, has one too -- thanks in part to all the ensemble films he's been making. Add to that the fact that Poker Face has its own reputation now as a good show that's always going to have some juicy part for a guest star, and you shouldn't be surprised who's showing up each week.

Season two episodes include Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Katie Holmes, John Mulaney, Richard Kind, Kumail Nanjiani, Carol Kane, David Krumholtz, Margo Martindale, Corey Hawkins, John Cho, Awkwafina, Alia Shawkat, Method Man, Justin Theroux, Haley Joel Osment... and a host of other television royalty who anchored a successful show at some point in their careers. It's easy to attract these kinds of people when you're offering them the opportunity to play characters from a set of quadruplets to grating internet personality to a con artist to a hitman. The invitation seems simple: come on Poker Face and have fun.

With Natasha Lyonne remaining the magnetic anchor of this show, and a writing staff able to constantly find new twists on the core premise, I found myself looking to Poker Face more than anything else in my viewing rotation for the 12 episodes it was back on the air. To me, this show is the reason to subscribe to Peacock... and you can stumble across enough deals online to get an entire year's subscription for around $20 that I don't feel bad at all if I never watch another thing on the service in that entire time.

Right at the end of the season, Poker Face served up a two-part finale episode that personally wasn't my favorite -- its clear Sherlock Holmes inspirations didn't serve the show as well in my mind as the Columbo roots. But even that was only "slightly less enjoyable" to me, not "bad" -- and it came at the end of 10 other episodes that had made me smile every single time without fail.

If anything, season two of Poker Face was even better than the first. I give it an A- (the "minus" only because the finale wasn't as perfectly suited to my tastes as the rest). No word yet on whether they will get a season three, by I'm happy to let them take another two years making it if that's what's necessary to make it happen.

Strange New Worlds: Shuttle to Kenfori

The third episode of season three of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds picked up the story baton from an excellent season two episode featuring Dr. M'Benga... and gave us zombies! Join me on a "Shuttle to Kenfori."

When it becomes clear that Captain Batel has not recovered from her ordeal with the Gorn, Dr. M'Benga is forced to explored more radical treatments for her condition. Enterprise must retrieve a unique flower from a planet in disputed space, even as Klingons prowl the area, and an unexpected obstacle meets M'Benga and Pike on the planet surface. Meanwhile, the effects of encountering the Gorn also linger with Ortegas, who becomes increasingly insubordinate in clashes with Number One.

I cannot say enough about how much I like the way Strange New Worlds approaches serialized storytelling. Instead of devoting an entire season to an intergalactic threat, the writers honor continuity for the characters as they nimbly hop from one classic weekly episode to the next. A quick "previously on" catches us up (and you'd be forgiven for needing that after two years), and then we're onto an interesting tale about the consequences of M'Benga's actions against a Klingon war criminal, coming home to roost.

I'm pretty sure you have to reach all the way back to the Next Generation's Lursa and B'Etor to find Klingon women -- adversaries, at least -- as charismatic and fun as this episode's Bytha. She's a character with a legitimate grievance, a distinctly Klingon way of pursuing it, and the right concept of "honor" to serve up a great twist at the end of the story.

More compelling still, though, were the interactions between Pike and M'Benga throughout the episode. I enjoyed the silly moments (like when they lost their shuttle), appreciated the way the show depicted zombies (and then was unafraid to actually say the Z word we were all thinking), and applauded that M'Benga had to come clean and confess to Pike: he'd done exactly the morally-compromised thing Pike believed he'd never have done. What's more, Pike basically has to "be okay" with it -- whether that's his instinct or not -- because M'Benga is the only one who can save Batel's life.

Speaking of Starfleet heroes behaving in unheroic ways, the B-plot with Ortegas was an interesting look at PTSD and how it can alter someone's behavior, perhaps without them even realizing it. I like the way this subplot gave us a long stretch of Number One in command... and even included La'An in a nice scene where she weighed in. But then, this is another thing Strange New Worlds does so well -- finding at least one meaty scene for almost every character, even when they aren't the episode's focus. (They also did that here with Spock and Chapel in the mindmeld scene with Batel.)

The show continues to be ridiculously ambitious. It would have been so easy to save money in the script stage by cutting the two or three pages of zero-gravity aboard Enterprise during the final act... but the production decided to take that on just to add punch to a key action sequence. Add in dozens of background zombie actors in elaborate makeup, multiple indoor and outdoor environments on an alien planet, and extensive shots of spaceships navigating debris, and you get an episode that feels like it had a massive budget and put every dollar of it on screen.

Alright -- not every element of this episode felt pitch perfect. The idea that all this was motivated by a quest for a flower? I imagine that with choices like this, the series is trying to embrace its nature as a narrative prequel to a show made in the 1960s. Still, to me this felt like one step too hokey to gel with modern television sensibilities. And that climactic knife fight between Bytha and M'Benga gave such overt Michael Jackson's "Beat It" vibes that it was hard not to laugh.

Still, I think that even a Strange New Worlds that isn't hitting a homer on every pitch (like it seemed to be in season two) is still a Star Trek show I eagerly await each week. I give "Shuttle to Kenfori" a B+.

Drop In?

Earlier this year, I blogged about how a trio of films driven by some core gimmick all disappointed me in some way, and had me thinking it was time to take a break from what basically amounted to cinematic clickbait. I failed to clock that barely a month later, I watched a film that was decidedly gimmick driven, and absolutely loved it. So I suppose context matters: exactly what is the hook, who is delivering it... and maybe what is the environment you're watching it in.

They have done studies showing that your mood is affected by airplane travel. I can personally attest that when I watch a movie -- even on the tiny screen on the seat back in front of me -- I have found myself enjoying things I probably wouldn't have received as well otherwise. And so it was when, on my way to Gen Con last week, I watched Drop.

Drop is a tight 95-minute horror-thriller about single mother Violet, going out on a date again for the first time since the death of her husband. As she settles in at the table with her date, she's being pinged by annoying "drops" on her phone from some unknown party in the restaurant. When she's compelled to actually receive the messages, she finds herself in a blackmail situation -- steadily escalating demands are made of her, all as she must keep her date in the dark, and struggle on her own to discover who is sending the drops and putting her in this situation.

This is obviously quite a gimmick-driven premise. But unlike No One Will Save You, where the gimmick of no dialogue is a stylistic formality, here the gimmick feeds oddly into the thriller genre. "How will the writers navigate keeping the story alive in the confines of this one restaurant?" is kind of a suspenseful question of its own, echoing the plight of the main character. 

I won't pretend the movie excels in this. There aren't really enough suspects put in play to make a big mystery of it. And when the villain's motivations are finally revealed, it's impossible to believe there wasn't an easier way to achieve the goals than this. But set all that aside, and the movie is fully exploring the space it sets out for itself. The protagonist basically does try about every reasonable thing you could think of to get out of her situation. The movie itself basically deploys every twist you could imagine within the conceit of "being terrorized via text message." The movie eats, and leaves no crumbs.

Meghann Fahy stars as Violet, and makes a good horror heroine. I'd only ever seen her before on season two of The White Lotus, but that was very much an ensemble show. Here, she has the spotlight and manages to ground some rather unreal situations with a sense of reality. She won't win any awards here, but this kind of movie doesn't work at all without a strong lead.

And I felt that the movie does kinda work. Perhaps only in the context of "it'll do for an airplane flight," but I'd give Drop a B-. If you like thrillers, and are up for a more modern take on Scream's classic "spooky phone calls," it might be worth your time. 

Strange New Worlds: Wedding Bell Blues

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has a well-established track record of mixing light and dark episodes. So after the heavy season three premiere, you might well expect the next episode to be something like "Wedding Bell Blues."

Enterprise has spent months undergoing repairs, and now Nurse Chapel is returning from her fellowship. But when she arrives with a new boyfriend, Dr. Korby, Spock is not quite able to control the resulting emotions. At one point, he makes an idle comment and suddenly, his wedding to Chapel is imminent -- without most people even realizing that reality has changed. But even when the fantasy is shattered, what can be done to stop the all-powerful alien entity who made Spock's "wish" happen?

This episode may feature Spock learning to dance, but I won't attempt to dance around spoilers -- if you haven't caught up with this episode, you might just want to skip to the final paragraph here. Because while the episode itself makes an effort never to say "Q," John de Lancie's vocal cameo at the story's climax tells longtime Trek fans exactly what's going on here.

Actually, what's going on is that the writers are finally making "canon" the lazy choice made by Gene Roddenberry back in 1987 for the pilot of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Looking for a subplot to pad out a one-hour episode into a two-hour premiere, Roddenberry lifted the idea of a powerful, playful alien -- Trelane -- from the original series, and grafted it into script. Q had massive staying power, arguably overstaying his welcome as he reappeared again and again throughout the franchise. Strange New Worlds makes Trelane and Q part of the same "family," with some hand-waving about the logistics that one is forced to allow when mixing "magic" and science fiction.

I personally feel like I did not need yet another Q story in my life. But if you're going to do it? I feel like this is how you do it. Strange New Worlds has a high hit rate with its comedic episodes, and leaning into the comedy of Trelane/Q felt to me like the right way to go for this appearance. What's more, I can't think of better casting for a comedic Trelane than Rhys Darby. He gives a pitch perfect performance that lands all the jokes, captures the moments of whiny petulance, and is tinged with just the right amount of dangerous menace.

But it's not like Darby is the only one having fun here. The show hilariously pokes fun at itself with jokes about everything from Samuel Kirk's mustache to Pike's hair style. It goes meta, with a musical score that mimics the memorable "something's sinister" music of the original Star Trek. It cuts loose, allowing music to be played at a wedding reception that isn't a string quartet from the classical era. (Admit it... Wham! was not on your Star Trek bingo card.)

Best of all, the episode isn't just about having fun. Even this lark of a story progresses the arc of Spock and Chapel, and finds room to develop story for most of the other characters too. We see a lighter side of La'An now that she isn't obsessed with the Gorn, Pike and Batel must face a crossroads in their relationship, and we meet Ortegas' brother (while seeing her mask a greater trauma by focusing on his flirtation with Uhura). There are even a couple of other new secondary characters that the writers skillfully imbue with personality in just a few well-crafted lines: the playful nurse Gamble and a new alien bartender (marking, I believe, the first appearance of the three-armed Edosians outside of an animated Star Trek, in an exceptionally well-done combination of stagecraft and camera work).

All told, "Wedding Blue Blues" isn't really an episode I would have thought I wanted... but it's still one I enjoyed reasonably well all the same. I give it a B+.

Modern Family

I have returned from Gen Con, with both my voice and brainpower feeling temporarily eroded from when the con began. So today I'm going to blog about something without high brainpower demands: Mid-Century Modern.

Mid-Century Modern is a Hulu sitcom created by Max Mutchnick and David Kohan -- the latter of whom was a co-creator on Will & Grace, among other shows. That sense pervades every frame of this multi-camera, "live studio audience" (juiced with laugh track) series that feels like a throwback to network sitcoms. It's even directed by James Burrows, whose direction of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, Taxi, Frasier, Friends, and more basically defined what network sitcoms are.

But the show it arguably feels most like is The Golden Girls. The core cast of four is three older gay men -- crotchety Bunny, airhead Jerry, and sassy Arthur -- along with Bunny's mother Sybil. In some episodes, they leave the house; in some episodes, they don't -- but at every turn they're trading barbs with one another. All that's missing from a typical Golden Girls episode is the cheesecake. (Well... there is cursing. The Golden Girls could never do that, but this is Hulu.)

The characters are all big archetypes, and the actors who play them lean in. Nathan Lane plays Bunny with such a heightened panoply of neuroses that you can imagine the casting directive was for a "Nathan Lane type." Matt Bomer is channeling Betty White's clueless Rose with his guileless delivery of stupid one-liners. Nathan Lee Graham is a flamboyant force with bite. Linda Lavin has been doing sitcoms since Rhoda, Barney Miller, and Alice, and knows exactly how to deliver a line -- especially a "blow" to end of scene. And the four all work off each other well. 

Still, it would be generous to call the show "good." There are episodes that succeeded in making me laugh out loud once or twice. And they did an archetypal "very special" sitcom episode when Linda Lavin died of lung cancer in late 2024. But really, the thing about Mid-Century Modern is that it feels like a minor milestone in LGBT+ rights. This isn't subversively ahead of its time like Three's Company or Soap. It isn't blazing a trail for acceptance like a Will & Grace. Instead, it simply asserts that gay people too can headline a kinda-middling sitcom.

I give Mid-Century Modern a B-. It's hardly an essential watch in a crowded streaming landscape. Yet I didn't have much trouble finishing all 10 episodes, enjoying something that felt like warm and familiar "comfort food" even though it was released fresh this year.