The Gang's All Here (and All In?)

When someone first tells you about the game The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, you're likely to wonder how it would even work. A trick-taking game that's somehow cooperative? But it does work, brilliantly. And the innovation has spawned a sequel, many imitators, and a bunch of new games trying to apply player cooperation to inherently competitive gameplay.

The Gang is a cooperative game for 3 to 6 players, who try to pull off three successful bank heists before tripping three alarms. The mechanism for this is poker. The group plays a standard hand of Texas Hold 'Em, but at each moment where there would normally be a betting round, each player instead selects a chip with a number on it. This is the only way to pass information to the other players, who otherwise cannot discuss the contents or quality of their hands. After the final round of "betting" (chip taking), the players reveal their hands in order. The player who took the lowest-valued chip in that final round must have the worst hand, and so on up to the player who took the highest-valued chip, who must have the best hand. You succeed or fail completely as a group, playing a "best of five hands" format to win or lose the game.

Board gamers -- especially the ones trying to maintain a smaller, curated game collection -- will often talk about whether one game "kills" another, offering the same thrills and more in a new package that displaces some earlier release. I don't think that The Gang is a "Crew killer." But I think it does show that there's room for more games following in The Crew's footsteps.

For one thing, a lot more people are familiar with poker than, say, Hearts, or Bridge, or any of the trick-taking games commonly played with a standard deck of cards. If you're looking for a game that's easy to teach, and accommodates players with a wide range of gaming experience, The Gang feels like the far more approachable option to me over The Crew.

As a practical matter, the fact that The Gang takes up to six players is notable. The Crew caps out at five (and, realistically, is far better with four). Not only can The Gang take more, it's actually better (or at least, more of a challenge) the more players you have. And thanks to the simultaneous, cooperative play and people's likely familiarity with Texas Hold 'Em, it's still a fast game with six.

That said, if you're bound and determined to have only one game in your collection -- this, or a version of The Crew -- I'd say you're unlikely to choose The Gang. First, there's not as much variety here as there is in The Crew. The different goals you pursue in The Crew (especially in the Mission Deep Sea version) can make different hands feel wildly different in strategy. The Gang has less variety; you're always trying to rank the strength of your poker hand. Sure, the nature of Texas Hold' Em itself can make that trickier some times more than others, but you're always thinking about the same basic possibilities.

The specific thing you wind up doing in The Gang can feel quite similar too. When another player takes the lowest chip, and you're convinced you have a worse hand than they do, you're allowed to take the chip from them for yourself. They're allowed to take it back. You can "debate" through the passing of chips as much as you want -- so long as you don't actually say anything about the cards in your hand. And since you can't actually make any persuasive arguments -- as you could in, say, other cooperative games like Pandemic where players find disagreement -- you kind of just wind up having one player eventually say, "okaaaaaay" in a tone that clearly says they don't think it's okay.

In other words, the gameplay of The Gang can get a little repetitive over time. I think in recognition of this -- or at least to inject more variety generally into the system, the game includes a series of "temporary rules" cards you can optionally use. Whenever you fail at a hand, you reveal a condition for the next hand that helps out. Conversely, when you succeed at a hand, you reveal one that makes the next hand more challenging.

Regardless of whether you use those optional conditions or not, the game generally stays interesting throughout its quick play time -- especially if you're playing with a new player or even a new mix of experienced players. Each person has their own estimation of the strength of their own poker hand, which simply might not match how any other player might estimate the same hand. One player might use "betting" along the way to try to indicate potential (a "drawing hand," in poker parlance), while another player might always be trying to state simply how good the hand they have right now is. These quirks of communication make The Gang a different experience for each group that might play it.

I give The Gang a B+. There's a chance that playing it might just make you want to play Texas Hold 'Em or The Crew instead. But taken on its own terms, it's a fast-paced, fun enough experience.

Enterprise Flashback: The Seventh

The seventh episode of the second season of Enterprise was the cheekily titled "The Seventh."

T'Pol is tasked by the Vulcan High Command to capture an escaped fugitive: a surgically-altered Vulcan who refused to return home after the completion of his undercover mission. This is a mission she failed at once before, decades earlier. But it soon becomes clear that T'Pol has repressed certain memories about her earlier mission.

This episode is pushing hard on the door the writers tried just recently to open, the notion that Archer and T'Pol might become a romantic couple. For no reason more than "I trust you," T'Pol invites Archer along on her secret mission. As things unfold, it's suggested that the information T'Pol hides from Archer is really just information she's hiding from herself. Ultimately, Archer has to help her face emotions she's not used to grappling with. And, I guess we're supposed to believe, the two become closer for it.

Except that Archer is acting quite out of character throughout the episode. Sure, he gets pissy early on about being jerked around by the Vulcans. But once he and T'Pol are on the mission and it appears that the Vulcans have lied about the fugitive they're chasing, it's T'Pol who questions her superiors and not Archer. Where is Archer's ingrained distrust of Vulcans?

That's just one of several weird inconsistencies throughout the episode. Much is made of an acid-drenched landing platform that the characters can't cross, stranding them on the planet for a few hours. But when a fire destroys their shelter, they DO all somehow get across (though we aren't shown how). The final climax centers on a classic "you won't shoot me" standoff -- as though phasers don't have a stun setting that undercuts the tension.

And more importantly, there's a huge hole at the core that's never adequately addressed. There are no doubt countless intelligence agents who could have been tasked to bring in this Vulcan fugitive. Where's the logic in asking T'Pol to do it? She specifically had her past memories of this target tampered with, so it's not like she has reliable special knowledge she can draw on. Why risk having the buried memories resurface (which, predictably, is exactly what happens)?

Perhaps above all: why structure this whole episode as a mystery, only to give it a title like "The Seventh" that's a total giveaway? The first time you hear that T'Pol once chased down six fugitives, you pretty much know what the big secret is going to be.

The episode is slow to get going. A situation that would have been set up in a single briefing room scene on Star Trek: The Next Generation or Star Trek: Voyager takes an entire act to unfold here. First, T'Pol won't tell anyone anything about her secret mission. Then she confides small details to Archer. Then it's Trip's turn to complain about all the secrecy. Finally T'Pol provides her personal backstory. None of this feels like a slow revelation of context that's the hallmark of skilled writing. There's no actual suspense, and little new context as more information is revealed. It just feels like the episode is being stretched for time.

But the episode does have a couple of things going for it. One is guest star Bruce Davison, a real "that guy" of an actor who plays the Vulcan fugitive Menos. His career has included a wide enough variety of characters that you can never really be sure whether this one is telling the truth. He seems awfully convincing when he says he's being persecuted by the Vulcan High Command, and guilty of no actual crimes. But when he's ultimately revealed as a truly bad guy smuggling bioweapons, that feels equally as plausible.

Another strong element of the episode is the subplot following Trip taking command of Enterprise. While this would have been better to see in season one (after all, I'm pretty sure Trip's taken command before this), it's fun to watch him struggle. First, he's putting on airs, watching water polo and inviting crew to dinner because that's what the "cap'n" would do. Then he's overwhelmed by the demands of the job, wanting to put off every consequential decision until Archer is back to make it. Finally, he has to put an extra pip on his collar and actually pretend to be Archer on a call with the Vulcans.

Other observations:

• I really do like the way Vulcan writing looks. It's just a nice bit of design.

• At one point, we see a sulking Archer bouncing his water polo ball off the wall of his quarters. Whoever lives on the other side of the wall must hate being next to the captain's quarters.

• Star Trek has had its share of scenes in alien bars over the years, and often struggles to include music that feels appropriate to the setting. Here, they don't even try. The bar in this episode has no music at all.

I feel like putting Archer and T'Pol together overrode all other story considerations for this episode. I think a much better version of the story would have been just leaving the mission at T'Pol and Mayweather, as is suggested at the outset. Watching Travis struggle with helping the emotional breakdown of a superior officer could have been quite compelling. As it stands, though, I have to take the fun where I find it in the "Trip in command" subplot, and give "The Seventh" a C+.

It's in the Bag

Director Steven Soderbergh has served up a one-two punch at the movie theater to open 2025. I missed his first movie a few weeks ago, Presence. But this weekend, I did catch Black Bag.

A British spy is tasked with investigating five people who might be a traitor to his organization -- and one of them is his own wife. But when practiced liars are pitted against each other, it's nearly impossible to tell what's true.

Having recently finished the television adaptation of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that (and the original movie) were certainly on my mind when watching Black Bag. There really aren't that many moment-to-moment similarities, but to distill things down, Black Bag is a more cerebral version of the "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" story. There are no chases, no epic shoot-outs, and very little of what most people would call "action." Still, I found Black Bag to be full of intriguing suspense and engaging cat-and-mouse games.

It also feels incredibly fast-paced. Black Bag clocks in at barely more than 90 minutes, and packs in a ton of story in that small package. The plot is a touch Macguffiny, with the actual "why" of it all not being hugely important. Yet it's still enough for the movie to lull you into an expectation, only to thwart it a few times along the way. (The script is the work of the incredibly successful David Koepp, so this should probably come as no surprise.)

Steven Soderbergh is no stranger to sleek and stylish scheming. This movie draws a lot on Out of Sight and his Ocean's trilogy, in the way it's about clever people being clever. But it's different too -- much more controlled in the use of long single takes and tight closeups. It's like a drawing room version of a James Bond movie.

And it even has a James Bond in the cast. The supporting players include Pierce Brosnan, along with Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, and others. But the real draw, of course, is the two leads: Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender. Both excel at portraying people who keep their cards close to the vest. They don't feel like emotionless ciphers, but you can't tell exactly what's going on behind the eyes -- perfect for a twisty spy thriller.

It's perhaps nostalgia for the earlier Soderbergh films I've mentioned here that makes me think Black Bag is not quite as good. But I still thoroughly enjoyed it -- I'd give it at least a B+.

Enterprise Flashback: Marauders

Seven Samurai, by Akira Kurosawa, is a massively influential film. It famously inspired The Magnificent Seven, a high star-powered remake, and countless other stories. If you bother to click on that pile of links to my older posts, you'll learn that none of those versions of the story resonated particularly well with me. So it will likely come as no surprise that I didn't think much of Enterprise's take on it, the episode "Marauders."

The Enterprise stops to refuel at a small mining colony, but finds them unwilling and unable to help. They soon learn this is because of the regular visits from a group of Klingons who have left the colonists barely able to survive. Archer sets out to teach the colony to stand up for itself and repel these marauders.

Even assuming that you like the Seven Samurai story structure more than I do, this episode undermines the structure in several ways that I think compromise its effectiveness. First, the "samurai" in this story actually need something from the "villagers." While it's true that Kirosawa's samurai are paid to help in the original story, Enterprise's need for fuel gives them a more personal stake in this story that mutes the nobility of helping a group of helpless strangers.

In Seven Samurai (and The Magnificent Seven), not all of the saviors survive; some end up dying to protect the villagers. But the seven main cast members of a Star Trek series all have script immunity, of course, once again undercutting the nobility inherent in the original story's structure. And they don't kill any Klingons, either, simply trapping them all in a ring of fire and telling them to "go on, git!" What in the prior 36 years of Klingon behavior suggests to the audience that this will be a sufficient deterrent? (As usual, T'Pol is right: this time when she says that likely killing the marauders is the only way to end the unjust situation.)

Most critically, the mining colonists don't ask for help. Archer observes the colony leader caving to the Klingons, and decides that he needs to teach them all to defend themselves. And sure, by the time all is said and done, it seems to be the right decision. (Though crucially, we'll never be there to see if the Klingons return someday when Enterprise is not around, and how that goes.) These "samurai" are not answering a plea for help, they're forcing their help on a group who hasn't asked for it.

But as usual, Enterprise has excellent production values going for it. (Indeed -- my greatest discovery on this re-watch of the series has been just how much things improved between Voyager and Enterprise.) This episode is filmed largely on location. (In a quarry, from the look of it.) There's elaborate camera work including the use of a crane. There are huge set pieces brought in to create the environment of the colony. Up in orbit, we get a cool new tanker ship design -- clearly Klingon, but clearly meant for hauling.

The climax feels a bit more "Home Alone" than combat, but the action is captured very well by director Mike Vejar. T'Pol's defense-heavy martial arts is well-conceived, we get plenty of phaser blasts to satisfy (although Malcolm Reed displays the accuracy of an Imperial stormtrooper), and that outdoor environment is maximized in the visuals.

Other observations:

• T'Pol's desert outfit is pure white. Where's the logic in that?

• The Klingons have transporters, and aren't at all reluctant to use them as Starfleet is.

• Seriously, though, what is Reed good at? He can't shoot straight, and he can't teach others to shoot straight either: Hoshi is shown to a better shooting instructor.

• It's not that I want them to kill the cute kid that hits it off with Trip. But it feels emblematic of the "Nerf toy" approach of this episode that he never even feels in serious jeopardy.

Sky high production values really do go a long way to making up for a weak script. But I still find "Marauders" to be a low C+ of an episode.

It's a Good Performance, I'll Grant You That

Can a movie with a strong opening and one great performance still be worthwhile despite a jumbled mess of a middle and final act? That's the question I've been wrestling with after watching Heretic.

This horror movie from last year is about two Mormon missionaries, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton. When they knock at the door of the reclusive and mysterious Mr. Reed, and accept his invitation to come inside for his wife's blueberry pie, they quickly come to regret their decision when they become trapped in the house. An uncomfortable conversation about religion soon gives way to an ominous test of faith... and then far worse.

I think it's important to classify Heretic as a horror movie and not a suspense movie or thriller. Otherwise, the audience may find itself trapped just like its Mormon characters, having gone too far too escape a situation they didn't set out to find. Heretic is ultimately a gory movie in which its protagonists are menaced by a violent man -- and you really ought to be prepared for that going in.

But I don't think the movie presents that way at all in its summary, nor does it seem to be unfolding that way for the first 30 to 45 minutes. At first the movie's villain, Mr. Reed, comes off as an intellectual "Jigsaw killer," a lightning-fast mind who has thought of everything and has the created the perfect cerebral trap from which his victims can't escape. And for my money, this is when the movie is at its best.

Before the blood starts flying, Heretic actually makes excellent points about religion -- and even allows one of its missionary protagonists to make excellent counterpoints. There's just the right amount of moral debate on display, and it's perfectly woven into an unsettling and tense situation where you feel like anything could happen next. Strangely, Mr. Reed seems to me to be at his most menacing before he actually does anything. His bark is so deliciously malign than his bite seems less interesting to me. Plus, Heretic's plot twists -- of which there are several -- grow increasingly far-fetched. If you like a movie willing to take big swings, you'll probably be with Heretic all the way. But I was missing the early cat-and-mouse tension long before the end credits rolled.

It's likely the reason I found Heretic's first half-or-so so compelling is because of the casting of Mr. Reed. Hugh Grant delivers an absolutely amazing performance. I'm hard-pressed to think of a more compelling "mannered villain" since Anthony Hopkins' indelible take on Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. He puts the perfect spin on Reed -- a mix of professorial elitism and bottled menace. You wouldn't need to know you were watching a horror movie, wouldn't need the dramatic music heightening the danger, to feel that this character was a looming threat. You just feel like he's a predator playing with his food.

Heretic is nearly a "three-hander" play, and so it's worth praising the other two performers in the mix. Sophie Thatcher is good as Sister Barnes, the more strong-willed of the missionaries whose answer to this terrible situation is "fight." Chloe East is also good as Sister Paxton, her timid partner whose initial answer is "flight." In any case, Hugh Grant's already-great performance is made better still by having two good scene partners to work with.

Ultimately, Heretic lost me. I'd only give it a C, and normally I wouldn't have even bothered to blog about it. But it starts so good, and Hugh Grant's villainous performance was so exciting to me, that I felt compelled to at least partially praise it. Perhaps fans of the right horror subgenre -- a wilder, weirder one -- will like it. Perhaps going into it with more properly calibrated expectations would help too. In short... perhaps this is for you?

Hit Movie?

Glen Powell is one of Hollywood's more recently-minted pretty boys. While he has popped up in the occasional popcorn movie I've watched, I never had the impression he was much of an actor until I streamed Hit Man on Netflix.

Hit Man is very loosely based on the true story of Gary Johnson, a mild-mannered college professor who works on the side for the police department. One day, he's made to step into a sting operation and pose as a contract killer. When he proves surprisingly adept at this, the one-off performance becomes a regular gig. Then one sting brings unexpected complications, as he becomes tangled up in the case, romantically involved with "the mark," and made to keep pretending to be someone he's not.

My route into Hit Man was knowing that it was a movie co-written and directed by Richard Linklater. He's made movies I've hated, but many more that I've truly loved. (And that's not even getting into Dazed and Confused, which many people seem to revere.) I feel I can rely on a Linklater movie to at least be worth a shot.

I didn't know that star Glen Powell was the other co-writer on this project, nor that he'd probably helped Linklater craft this as a vehicle to show what he can do as an actor that his other projects hadn't tapped. In that respect, Hit Man is a surprising success. The story essentially has him playing two characters -- the real Gary Johnson and his dangerous alter ego "Ron." And on top of that, we get tastes of a dozen other one-off hit man personas, each a fun little riff on a rapid-fire improv sketch premise. It turns out, Glen Powell can act!

But since he's purportedly half of the team responsible for this script, the bigger question might be: can he write? I think the answer is... mostly? Movies tend to have a three-act structure, but Hit Man is unusual in that each of those acts feels stylistically like a completely different movie. It starts as an undercover cop story, albeit one clearly striking a comedic tone. By act two, it has become a rom-com, the quirky and light tones lingering even as the real meat of the story arrives. But in the final act, Hit Man almost becomes a film noir -- a much more serious movie with many of the character and plot conventions of the "hard-boiled" genre.

It seems as though the movie's north star is to try to keep you guessing. Every time it changes modes, it settles in just long enough for you to think, "okay, I think I'm on this wavelength," before suddenly changing everything up again. And while it is refreshing to not feel like you know every twist a story is going to take, Hit Man takes some wild swings, especially in the last 30 minutes.

Still, I can make the case for each "segment" of this movie being worthy and entertaining. The cast helps a lot here. When Hit Man wants more than anything else to be amusing, Retta and Sanjay Rao are there, playing a pair of police officers with truly funny banter. When it wants to be a romance, Adria Arjona is there as Glen Powell's romantic foil, giving a solid performance and generating all kinds of chemistry with her screen partner. When then movie wants to be suspenseful, Austin Amelio and Evan Holtzman are two weaselly characters each posing a separate danger to the main character.

The result is that Hit Man is both an oddity you can't easy compare to one single movie. ("If you liked that, you'll love Hit Man!") But it's a movie with perhaps half a dozen different in-roads. ("If you liked that -- or that, or that, or that -- maybe you'll like Hit Man.") I give it a B.

Enterprise Flashback: A Night in Sickbay

Enterprise was created by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, and the two wrote a large portion of the episodes during the first two seasons. I wonder if in fact they were writing so many of the scripts that they were starting to get bored of it. At least, I wonder what other explanation could account for "A Night in Sickbay," an episode where they seemingly just decided to just troll everyone.

When Porthos falls critically ill after tagging along on an away mission, Archer spends a long, fraught night at his side in Sickbay, as Phlox tries all sorts of methods to restore his health.

This episode trolls the audience by putting Porthos (the best character on Enterprise) in jeopardy for cheap theatrics. Either you never believe that Enterprise would actually kill the dog, in which case this is a true waste of an hour... or you actually believe these monsters would kill the dog for the sake of a one-off episode, in which case any trust you might have been extending the writers is lost. Meanwhile, all the dog lovers in the audience have to see Porthos forlorn and abandoned in the decon chamber, desperately hugging Archer's surgical glove for any bit of physical contact he can get, and ghoulishly submerged in water.

The episode trolls anyone who until this point has tried to defend Archer as a well-intentioned starship captain finding his way. Here, he's a clueless Karen of a dog owner who lets Porthos pee on a sacred tree and then can't understand how this has caused a problem. (What if some alien creature came aboard Enterprise and took a dump on the warp core?) Archer whines about how hard it is to be diplomatic, yells at everyone who points out this whole crisis is entirely of his own making... and Phlox tells us he's probably this way just because he needs to get laid.

The episode trolls the entire cast of the show. Dominic Keating and Anthony Montgomery are only brought in to stand around for a few seconds in Archer's dream sequence. John Billingsley has to dangle a giant origami crane on a stick as he makes weird screeching noises. Linda Park and Jolene Blalock once again endure the indignity of rubbing goo on each other in the decon chamber.

And poor Scott Bakula. He has to deliver the line that "Starfleet didn't send us out here to humiliate ourselves" as he stands in his underwear and smears goo on a dog. He has to manufacture sexual chemistry with one of his co-stars out of nowhere, after 30 episodes of the show have suggested nothing of the kind between the characters. He has to deliver Freudian slips like "breast" and "lips." And he has to go shirtless, drape beads on his head, and wield a chainsaw -- all intended to look as ridiculous as it sounds.

The episode trolls the entire production department. Props has to come up with fake beagles to perform surgery on. Set construction has to come up with a graveyard for a few seconds of screen time in a ridiculous dream sequence. Visual effects has to use CG to depict Phlox scraping his tongue and a bat swooping around Sickbay. Paul Baillargeon is made to compose some of the most over-the-top music yet heard on the show, just to make any of this seem interesting.

This episode feel like it trolls reality itself. Are we really now being expected to "ship" Archer and T'Pol as a romantic couple? To believe that Archer, a person with no medical experience at all, should assist in a major surgery on his own dog? And that he thinks it's a good idea to engage Phlox in distracting conversation while doing it?

There would be absolutely no redeeming qualities to this episode whatsoever, were it not for the Herculean efforts of John Billingsley. Phlox is very much the "Neelix" of this Star Trek series, but the writers have at least done Phlox the favor of writing a competent character with actual skills. That gives more room for the clowning around, which Billingsley is excellent at. This episode is written as though it's funny, when largely it's just silly without actually generating laughs. But Billingsley is the exception, who somehow makes entertaining Phlox's weird quirks from public toenail trimming to Frankenstein-like surgical ideas. He even nails the closest thing this episode gets to a "moral," a conversation near the end of the episode about cultural insensitivity. John Billingsley as Phlox doesn't make this episode good, but he does at least make it watchable.

Other observations:

• Nope. I'm tapped out. What were they thinking?

John Billingsley is so good that I'm actually going to give "A Night in Sickbay" a C-. But make no mistake, this is the worst episode of Enterprise to date, and I feel embarrassed for the people who made it.

Grade C-