Pink Slips

Although LGBT characters are gradually, more and more, showing up in TV and movies, it remains uncommon for a film of anything but the smallest scale to revolve around an LGBT protagonist. Go back 15 years or so, and it's basically unheard of, outside of a some (often tragic) passion project for the film festival circuit. Which is what makes Touch of Pink such a rare thing.

Made in 2004, Touch of Pink is the story of Alim, a young gay man with a complicated heritage. He lives in London, was raised in Toronto, was born in Kenya... and has never come out to his devoutly Muslim parents. When his mother comes for a visit, he feels the pressure of hiding his true relationship with his live-in boyfriend Giles, especially when she is constantly pushing to set him up.  His confidant in this trying situation? The imaginary friend/guardian angel/ghost of actor Cary Grant, who's always there to comfort and encourage Alim.

Movies that star an LGBT character may be rare, but so are movies starring a character of Middle Eastern heritage. The Venn diagram of the two might be this movie. It's almost becoming a cliche that "representation matters," but it really does, and there's a lot in this movie that shows why. In just 90 minutes, this movie is able to present a lot of emotional struggles: coming out, being less religious in a devoutly religious family, living an ocean away from your parents (for good and ill), and more. This is at times a silly, Birdcage-esque comedy, but you feel that writer-director Ian Iqbal Rashid had a more personal connection to this and was really trying to put his story on screen.

That said, while the movie is definitely novel, it's not exactly memorable. Though many of the ingredients to the story are different, the result is a parade of coming out rom-com parts that evaporates like mental cotton candy as soon as the end credits roll. It never pulls very hard on your heartstrings -- which would be fine, except that it also never rises to being laugh out loud funny.

The most distinct element of it, the one part that might leave a lasting impression, also doesn't gel particularly well with the whole. That's Kyle MacLachlan's performance as Cary Grant. It's a scenery-chewing impersonation of the classic actor that's pretty hammy, but also pretty fun. But it's also completely unexamined how a grown man has clung to an imaginary friend for so long. The "why Cary Grant?" of it all is left basically to subtext. The movie just seems not to want to get into any of this for risk of approaching anything too serious.

On the one hand, it's nice that an LGBT movie isn't a dark tale of repression, oppression, and suicidal thoughts. On the other hand... there really just isn't much to this movie. It's a forgettable C-, better as a curiosity than an actual viewing experience.

Medium -- Not Well Done

My gaming group is always on the lookout for new party games that can accommodate lots of players. But this one we tried pre-pandemic didn't really do that as well as I'd have liked.

Medium is a word game that tests your ability to think like a fellow player. On your turn, you and the player to your left each select one of six cards from your hands, each card showing a word. You reveal your choices, and then you must both try to think of a new word that connects your two cards. Something that's a "medium" between the two, if you will. Then, on the count of three, each of you says aloud the connection you were thinking. If you've read each other's mind -- like a "medium," if you will -- then you'll speak the same thing at the same time, and score! If you each say something different, though, you now have another chance to try to connect those two words instead... and a third and final chance to connect again if you fail on the second try.

That's the core of the gameplay, and there's no denying that it can generate a fun rush of a moment. It's a simple thrill, but a thrill nonetheless: when you and a partner speak in unison, it feels great! There's cheering and high-fiving. Sometimes there are stunned expressions from other players who can't believe you matched.

But unfortunately, there's a lot about the game that gets in the way of enjoying that fun at the core. First is down time. The game purports to take up to 8 players, but you only get to play twice each round: once each with the players on either side of you. If you actually play it with 8 players (and we did), you spend three times as much time sitting there, waiting for your turn, as you do actively participating. Most of our party favorites do a much better job involving everyone more of the time.

There are weird bits of unnecessary excess injected in the game design. Scoring is done with pools of tokens -- tokens worth a random 5 or 6 for when you get it right on the first guess, worth 3 or 4 for the second guess, and 1 or 2 for the third. In practice, this 1-point variance at each "level" doesn't really serve to help trailing teams feel like they can come from behind -- 1 point this way or that rarely makes the difference. It just feels like unnecessary complication.

The end of the game is triggered by an unnecessarily "gamery" kind of mechanism. Three cards are shuffled into the bottom third of the game deck. When you draw the third of these, the game ends after the current round. The uncertainty this adds -- is this round the last one, or will there be one more? -- really doesn't add much in the context of a party game. You can't "change your strategy" relative to the unknown end condition. Other party games are fine just using a fixed number of rounds, and this one would have been too.

Then there's one component that the game doesn't come with, but desperately needs: a timer. The problem of down time between your turns in a party game is compounded when there's no limit to how long those turns can take. We began play by simply allowing partners to take all the time they needed to come up with a word to say... and the experience was not very fun. Once we implemented a 15-second timer on each pair of words to step up the pace, things improved substantially.

As packaged, I'd say Medium is maybe a C- game, a neat idea lost in some unhelpful trappings. Limit the player count to 4, and I think it jumps to a C+. Throw in the timer while limiting the player count, and it might get all the way to a B. Yet it's still not exactly what you're looking for in a party game. I think it's better characterized as some light filler to close down an evening of weightier fare.

Not's Landing

Some movies don't quite seem worth the trouble of catching in the movie theater... but they just might be good for some fun on the comfort of your own couch? (At least, that's how it was in the before-times. The math has now changed on the idea of movies in a theater.) Ready or Not seemed like one of those "at home" movies, so I didn't take the plunge last summer when it was on the big screen. But it did recently show up on HBO, and turned out to be fairly fun.

Grace is marrying into the wealthy Le Domas family, and on her wedding night must take part in a family tradition: draw a random card, play the game it describes. But there's more to this game of "Hide and Seek" than she expects. Grace is soon trapped in the family mansion with all her new in-laws determined to kill her before sunrise.

I think perhaps the greatest aspect of this movie is its expectation management. After a brief opening scene that's dark and moody, it very quickly shifts into a lighter, more fun gear. There's plenty of flippant dialogue, a sense that the machinations of the plot are deliberately being left exposed... basically, the movie is telegraphing to you that it will not be taking itself very seriously, and you shouldn't either.

It's not serious, but it is oddly realistic -- as much as you could make a story like this, anyway. This is a story about a group of crazed killers who are bad at being crazed killers. They have a spectrum of enthusiasm and a spectrum of capabilities. Most are hilariously incapable and incompetent, not polished as movie characters normally would be. Because of this, it's remarkably easy to overlook the less convincing aspects of the movie, such as: this family is filthy rich from an empire started on board games?

The result is vaguely "what if Clue, but a slasher movie?" It's fantastically gory in a way that works. It has a dedicated cast starring Samara Weaving (who plays a great Scream Queen / Final Girl archetype), and featuring Adam Brody, Andie MacDowell, and many others. And notably, the ending pays off, delivering all you feel you were promised.

Is it amazing? Not exactly; it's not a movie that's ever going to convert people who don't like this kind of movie. But it's a brisk and solid piece of entertainment for the kind of people who do. I give it a B-. Horror fans should definitely check it out.

DS9 Flashback: Time's Orphan

At least once a season, the writers of Deep Space Nine felt compelled to make their most down-to-earth character, Miles O'Brien, suffer. Near the end of season six, that came in the episode "Time's Orphan."

Young Molly O'Brien stumbles into a time portal on an alien planet and is lost in the distant past. Though she is rescued in a matter of hours, 10 years have passed for her -- a decade she lived in total isolation, regressing to a state from which she may never recover to reintegrate with her family. As Miles and Keiko struggle to help their daughter, their son Yoshi stays with Worf and Dax, the former determined to prove his child-rearing abilities to the latter.

In the early days of Deep Space Nine, some of the stories were reworked concepts first conceived of for Star Trek: The Next Generation. You'd think that by late season six, nearly four years after Next Gen ended, those days would be over. But "Time's Orphan" was indeed a rejected idea from Next Gen writer Joe Menosky, which he concocted as a way to write the character of Alexander Rozhenko (who he didn't like) off of the show permanently. Then-executive producer Michael Piller had rejected the idea (reportedly because Alexander was his mother's favorite character), but René Echevarria, who moved from Next Gen to DS9, liked the concept and would periodically pitch his new series show runner, Ira Steven Behr, on reviving the idea. Behr finally agreed, adding his own idea of Molly as a "wild child" to the mix.

Speaking of mixed: the end results. Perhaps it's that O'Brien has endured so many other  potent hardships. Perhaps it's that "Children of Time" had already presented "a time-traveling family problem" to such great effect. For whatever reason, this episode doesn't pack much of a punch for me.

There are a lot of contradictions. Early on, Keiko dismisses the notion of trying to rescue a younger Molly from the past, before her 10 years of isolation, for rather flimsy and hand-wavey reasons. (Because we have to have an episode, is the real reason.) Yet in the end, what Keiko says it's not okay to do is exactly what the writers do. In the teaser, it's all laid on super-thick that Miles never wants to be apart from his family again. But when it seems Molly is going to be sent to some kind of facility for rehabilitation, there's no talk at all that her parents might accompany her there -- it's just immediately framed as a separation. The episode needs this to be an either/or proposition.

Still, if the framework doesn't feel rock solid, there are still a number of great moments to be found within it. Kira's rapport with Keiko while the team is working to rescue Molly is a nice nod to their history. A short while later, there's a fun little scene where Kira talks about maybe wanting a child of her own someday, and Odo avoids the topic. (The fact that he conveys so much while saying nothing suggests this was all Rene Auberjonois; there's no dialogue in the script.) Odo has another great moment when he catches the O'Briens trying to steal a runabout, shakes his head that Miles couldn't pull that off, and then lets them go.

Apparently, while they were filming this episode, they quickly realized it was going to come up around nine minutes short. Seizing on an already-filmed scene that everyone liked (Worf covers for playing with Yoshi by claiming he was testing the baby's warrior reflexes with a rattle), the writers decided to create a subplot around Worf trying to prove his chops as a father to Dax. (Also influencing the desire to do this subplot: the writers knew that -- SPOILER!!!! -- Jadzia was about to be killed off, and they wanted to play with the marriage one last time.)

As with the A-plot, there is a part of the framework in the B-plot that doesn't quite work for me. Worf's previous parenting of Alexander is mentioned briefly, but isn't really dealt with; I feel like Worf would want to prove to himself that he could raise a child just as much as he would want to prove anything to Dax. (He backed away from a challenge once. Never again.)

But also like the A-plot, there are moments throughout that I enjoy quite a bit. That "gong-gong-gong" rattle moment that inspired the whole thing is pretty cute. Dax's soft but firm reaction to Worf ("don't put words in my mouth") is the perfect way of refusing to play the adversary he's unwittingly trying to cast her as. And the reliable contrast between easygoing Dax, who has parented many times, and super-serious Worf works especially well.

Other observations:

• At the start of the episode, Molly wakes her parents up at "almost 7:00." To hear my parenting friends tell it, this would be a luxurious sleep-in.

• Chester the cat is back.

• Because Molly falls into the portal in the beginning, you get some "child stuck in a well" vibes in the opening minutes of the episode. You know, with a sci-fi twist.

• The scene in which Molly tears up Quark's bar features a lot of great stunt work, and very few camera cuts. It's a nicely done bit of action.

• Sisko is going to have to pull off some mighty off-screen lawyering after what happens here, but O'Brien seems sure the captain will be able to persuade the powers-that-be to be lenient over the whole stabbing/jailbreak/grand theft serial spree.

• In a fun little challenge for the show's art team, we see similar crayon drawings from eight-year-old Molly and "devolved" 18-year-old Molly. I can imagine quite a run of those images being created before they settled on just the right amount of "primitive."

"Time's Orphan" is far from the best "torture O'Brien" episode, but it's also not bad. I give it a B-.

As I Have Always Been

I was just talking about how "everyone does a Groundhog Day story," and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. went and did a Groundhog Day story. And it was their best episode of the season so far.

The Zephyr is caught in a "time storm," as Daisy and Coulson are caught in a time loop. They keep reliving the same few minutes, even as the ship is inching closer to destruction. Not only must they escape the loop and save the ship, they must discover who is trying to prevent them from doing so.

With this episode, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. made the same tweak to time looping that the movie Palm Springs made to such good effect: having two characters stuck together in a time loop really does change things up. To this, they added changes that served to depart even more from the formula: the duration of looping time was confoundingly short, plus we got the wrinkles that Daisy could "reset" if she died (quite a "pain in the ass"), while Coulson remembered -- but did not participate in -- every loop.

The script also didn't spend that much time actually showing us repeated moments. Aside from a few well-chosen jokes (the second opening title card, the moments of "well, that didn't work" humor), each loop basically skipped ahead to the important part. Not only did this preserve story momentum, it made sense. This team has worked together for too long, and has seen too much strange stuff, to be particularly thrown by being stuck in a time loop -- so not much time really deserved to be devoted to watching Daisy and Coulson convince the others of their predicament.

But there was time devoted to some impactful moments between the characters, and they were real highlights of the episode. We did get a great final scene for Enoch, all the more moving for what a 180 it represented after having to deal with him as an adversary earlier in the episode. The subtext of the scene was strong too, with Coulson of all people being positioned to tell Enoch he was more than just a machine.

That landed because of the episode's best scene, which came earlier, in which Daisy and Coulson really dug into the horror of watching their friends die repeatedly. Coulson spoke of the horror of immortality, of knowing you'll outlive everyone. Even the description of watching friends die as "soul-crushing" was salt in the wound, in Coulson's unique situation. Daisy got to express a more specific and concentrated pain, of watching one person in particular who means so much to her, dying over and over. Both Clark Gregg and Chloe Bennet were great in the scene.

It was also a stellar episode for Elizabeth Henstridge. She took the director's chair for the first time ever, and did a great job. No doubt being so familiar with the cast made things easier, and they all wanted to do their best for her. Still, there were very smart shot choices made to support the time looping shenanigans, and a mostly active camera throughout except during those more serious scenes I mentioned. Henstridge was also strong on camera, in the moment where removing her brain implant led to an emotional breakdown. (I don't want to be right about this guess, but her tears sure read to me that the memory she's been suppressing might not be Fitz's location, but rather Fitz's death.)

By a wide margin, this was the best episode so far of this last season. Really, the only "meh" note in the entire thing for me was the post-credits tag reminding us that oh yeah, I guess we're supposed to be worried about Nathaniel and Kora? Whatever. Could have done without that. But still, I think the episode merits an A-.

The Magic Word

Wonder Woman earned the DC film franchise some goodwill. I've sat through some pretty bad DC movies because of Wonder Woman, that one shining example that they're not all bad. But I probably didn't need that example to take a chance on Shazam!; the very premise guaranteed a movie that would shatter the dour mold of other DC movies to have fun.

Shazam! embraces a childhood fantasy in the form of Billy Batson, a troubled teen who gains the ability to transform into an adult superhero. It's a vehicle for a lot of humor, featuring the silly antics a kid would engage in if they suddenly had superpowers (and looked like an adult). Along the way, it lampoons the staple elements of the "origin story" (even while using them), makes overt references to the movie Big, and generally makes the idea of having powers look fun and not burdensome.

The comedy really works, and that's largely thanks to Zachary Levi in the role of the hero Shazam. I only sampled the TV series Chuck before giving it up, but it seems like you could draw a direct line from that to this -- Levi knows how to play the unlikely hero uncomfortable in his abilities; he can do serious action while bringing the funny. His performance here is also well-coordinated with Asher Angel in the role of Billy Batson. There's a continuity between the two that lets you effortlessly believe they're the same person.

There are some serious elements to the story, and some of those do work as well. Billy Batson is a foster kid who has bounced from home to home, always searching for his birth mother. The scenes surrounding this yearning, and searching for meaningful connection, is a surprisingly potent throughline in this mostly light movie.

But if this movie is more fun like Marvel usually is, and has a more rounded main character like Marvel usually does, it also inherits one of Marvel's most consistent flaws -- an uncompelling villain. Nothing against actor Mark Strong, but I'm beyond tired of seeing him as the villain in basically every movie made. (Somebody give him something different to do!) Yet he's not even the biggest miss here, because of course he has his brand of villainy down to a science.

The big problem is his "lackeys," a cadre of seven creatures embodying the seven deadly sins. That just sounds like an inherently awesome premise. (I mean...) The movie squanders that premise by giving the creatures indistinguishable personalities and barely distinguishable appearances; nothing about "Lust" is any different from "Sloth" or "Pride" or anything else. And sure, doing anything meaningful with those concepts probably would have been too sophisticated and serious for a movie meant to welcome children into the audience. But then... why bother writing them in in the first place?

Still, there's a much more to like here than to be disappointed by -- including a great supporting cast that includes Jack Dylan Grazer (another one of the kids from It), a strong group of child actors as Billy's other foster siblings, and some surprise appearances in the final act.

I think Shazam! comes out at a B+. I enjoyed it, and am looking forward to the announced sequel.

Crew Compliments

Sometimes, it feels like a great game idea is hiding in plain sight the whole time; it just takes the right designer to come along and see it. One recent example of this for me was with designer Thomas Sing, and the game The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine.

The idea is to have a cooperative trick-taking card game. It was sort of sitting there all along, for anyone who has ever played a game of Bridge or Euchre or anything similar. Those games pair you up with a partner seated across from you, and you work with them to collect all the tricks you can. It's sort of a short jump from there to the idea of putting everyone in the game on a team together.

The game comes with a booklet detailing 50 scenarios or "missions" that the team must advance through, in a multi-session affair that will take you and up to four friends many sessions to get through (depending on how often you gather and how much of game night you choose to dedicate to The Crew). There's a 40-card deck containing a 1 through 9 in four colored suits, plus a 1 through 4 in a special "rocket" trump suit. In each hand (mission), you deal these cards out to all players. It plays according to expected trick-taking rules: lead a suit; everyone must follow it if they can; highest card of that suit takes the trick unless a trump is played.

There's also a smaller deck of 36 cards -- copies of the 1 through 9 in each suit, omitting the rocket trumps. From this deck, you deal a limited number of cards face up in the center of the table, as defined by your mission parameters in the booklet. These become goals that players must draft in clockwise order around the table, specific cards which a player must win in a trick for you to win the mission. As you advance through missions, these goal cards get marked with special tokens that complicate the strategy: you might be required to take this card before that card, or take one particular card last. Some missions may present other kinds of curveballs, like designating one player at the start of the mission who will take no tricks at all during the mission.

In a game like Bridge, the bidding system is used to communicate information to partners about the cards in your hand. In The Crew, the communications rules allow each player (once per mission) to reveal one card from their hand just before beginning a trick. That trick must either be their highest, lowest, or only card of its suit in their hand -- and the player places a token indicating which of these it is. Otherwise, the group is on its own to determine whether they want to talk obliquely about strategy to nudge the game to victory, or enforce strict silence to make a win as earned as it can be.

Repeating this process through 50 ever-challenging, increasingly clever mission designs was great fun. It took only minutes for me to like The Crew, and the rest of that first session to know I'd want to come back with the same players and get as far through the booklet as we could. Sure, other campaign games may have a more compelling story, but the brisk pace of this one really hooks you in.

I would give The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine an enthusiastic grade A, but there is one shortcoming I feel worth mentioning: though it says it's for 3 to 5 players on the box, my friends who have tried with three report that it doesn't work very well at that player count. It's far easier, so much so that after release, the designer acknowledged this and "patched" the game with rules to make the 3-player experience harder. I'll maybe leave it to the reader to decide if that means A- because it was released with a key flaw, or still an A because the flaw was addressed.

In any case, the game held my interest the whole way through its campaign, and I could see playing it again with a different mix of people. The Crew is a great game that should be shared far and wide. If you're a fan of trick games or of cooperative games, it really belongs in your collection.

Springs Forward

I'm sure there are plenty of people in the world who have never seen Groundhog Day. But I'd wager there are very few who know nothing about the movie. "Groundhog Day" is near-universal slang for repeating the same day on a loop, or even deja vu generally. It's impossible to do a version of the story without being directly compared to it: "this TV show I watch is doing a Groundhog Day episode," "it's Groundhog Day as a horror movie," "it's Groundhog Day starring Tom Cruise," and so on.

So, it's not merely shorthand, but inevitable, to say that the new Hulu movie Palm Springs is "like Groundhog Day." Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti star as Nyles and Sarah, who meet at a wedding. Hijinks ensue, and yes, the hijinks revolve around living the same day over and over again. I could get into more detail, but let's be honest: you don't need to be told any more than "it's like Groundhog Day."

Nor should you be, because saying more would actually spoil some of the fun surprises that Palm Springs has in store. The story is actually quite clever, injecting several twists into the premise that I found novel and interesting. It also knows it can't get out from under the shadow of Groundhog Day, so it bakes in a handful of cheeky references to it.

I can say that I quite liked the pairing of Samberg and Milioti. They both have great comedic chops, his less restrained wackiness well balanced by her razor precision. The movie also slips into more serious terrain at times; while this is where Milioti really shines, Samberg is no slouch (as anyone who watches Brooklyn Nine-Nine would have predicted).

They're helped along by a great supporting cast that includes Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner, Tyler Hoechlin, and June Squibb. The standout here, though, is J.K. Simmons; though he won the Oscar for a serious role, he has long brought the same intensity to comedy as well, and this movie is no exception.

There is an odd flight of fancy here and there, including a truly oddball scene in the middle of the movie that seems meant to Be Important. (You'll know it when you see the CG.) And no, it's not as good as Groundhog Day itself; that's an awfully high bar to clear. But I enjoyed Palm Springs overall, and would give it a B+. If you have Hulu, it's definitely worth a try.

DS9 Flashback: Profit and Lace

Even a long-running show that has hit its stride is going to have the occasional bad episode. For a series that ran as many episodes a year as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (26! Simply unthinkable by today's standards!), it was even more inevitable. Still, many fans hold particular disdain for the sixth season's "Profit and Lace."

After changing Ferengi law to grant more equality to women, Grand Nagus Zek has been deposed and may soon lose his position to Brunt. There is hope: an influential Ferengi businessman has agreed to meet Quark's revolutionary mother Ishka. But when Ishka suffers a heart attack during an argument with Quark, a replacement business-savvy female is needed for the all-important meeting. Quark undergoes surgery to fill the role.

Ferengi-centric episodes of Deep Space Nine were already less popular with the fans. Add the scrambled tone of this one, and the result has "won" multiple polls declaring it the worst episode of the entire series. The writers were going for a light "Some Like It Hot" style romp. But actor Armin Shimerman used Dustin Hoffman's performance in Tootsie as more of a touchstone, and director Alexander Siddig directed with a hand so serious that he was asked to reshoot at least one major scene (Moogie's heart attack).

You can kind of see what both sides were going for. There's no way to read "Acting Grand Nagus Brunt" as anything but a running gag (and it does start to be funny, with enough repetition). There's Worf deadpanning that "I cannot think of any" repercussions to the fall of Ferenginar. Singing the Slug-o-Cola jingle (which I think would work better if they all sang the tune in the same key). The stare-down of the two giant, silent Nagus bodymen. There is comedy here, and you certainly have enough comedic talent among these guest stars to do something with it.

But the dramatic approach makes sense too. Quark's world is literally in upheaval, and it's a far better story for him if he actually learns something from his experience here. Plus, a darker touch that honored the truth of the situation would run less risk of being offensive. Shimerman reported later that the original script had even more of Quark/Lumba breaking down in emotional sobs, a negative stereotype he flat-out refused to play. And beyond the potential demeaning of women is the collateral insensitivity to the transgender community, who surely weren't in the writers' minds in the 1990s.

For sure, Quark's opening scene, in which he sexually harasses an employee, is awful. (Don't worry, though, she's into it! Ugh.) The group reaction to Rom's skill at moving like a woman isn't great either. (Though it helps that Leeta doesn't share that reaction.) Quark having to fend off unwanted advances, played for comedy? Well.... yes, there is some terrible stuff in here. Yet overall, this episode doesn't feel remotely as sexist as say, The Next Generation's "Code of Honor" was racist. I think? Faint praise, for sure. I guess I'm saying: worst episode of Deep Space Nine? Worse than "The Muse?"

Other observations:

• Director Alexander Siddig does have a lot of fun with the visuals. The "cloud of smoke" transition from Zek's beetlesnuff box into the "phone call" montage is just wild. That montage is filled with strange zooms and fast cuts. And a shot of the group sulking at the bar is accented with color by a row of glasses prominently visible at the bottom of the frame.

• Laugh-In re-runs were on Nick at Nite a bunch when I was younger, so I know who Henry Gibson is. Still, my impression of him is of a soft-spoken, timid character. It's great to see him put on Ferengi makeup and act larger than life here as Nilva.

I certainly wouldn't tell someone to watch "Profit and Lace" if they weren't just watching all Deep Space Nine in order. But I also think there are worst Star Trek episodes (of various series). So.... call it a C?

After, Before

We're now beyond the halfway point of the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the show does seem to be answering questions more than posing them. This week in particular answered a recent question (why did the Zephyr time-hop so quickly?) and a more long-running one (what's up with Yo-Yo?).

With the Zephyr skipping like a stone through time in ever shorter bounces, repairs must be made or the ship must be abandoned. But time is very much of the essence -- we're talking milliseconds -- so only super-speed will be sufficient for the task. May and Yo-Yo leave to seek help restoring Yo-Yo's powers from the Afterlife retreat, where Daisy's mother Jiaying is still operating in this time. But Afterlife is threatened both from within and without.

I think most people could have guessed that the trouble with Yo-Yo's Inhuman abilities was all in her head and not physical. Still, the revelation didn't have to be surprising to be satisfying -- and I did find it satisfying. Yo-Yo and May are a fun pairing, and the episode did a good job of exploring their similarities and differences. They're both emotionally buttoned-up characters whose demeanor is largely informed by a particular past trauma (May's as the "Cavalry"; Yo-Yo's as we learned in this episode). But May has always worked to be detached from all emotion -- even embarrassment, as Yo-Yo very much isn't. (And of course, May's emotional detachment makes her new abilities especially resonant.)

It flowed well that the key to helping Yo-Yo was Jiaying first helping May embrace her abilities better. If I were to have made a list of characters from earlier in the series I would have hoped to reappear in the final season somehow, I doubt Jiaying would have made the list. Nevertheless, the character was used well here. In some ways, she's an embodiment of the moment when the show embraced having superpowers on a regular basis. (Hard to remember, but everyone was pretty much a "normal human" back in season one.) Plus, if Jiaying continues to recur, we might just get a little mini-Dollhouse reunion with actors Dichen Lachman and Enver Gjokaj.

While the Afterlife story line was the key one of the episode, there was interesting stuff happening aboard the Zephyr, too. I enjoyed the time-hopping jeopardy as a fun gimmick for the episode. But I was drawn into the illumination of two characters' pain: Simmons and her need to help everyone, and Coulson confronting multiple indignities to highlight that he is not in fact human. Both characters are the type to soldier on, of course, but neither is in a good space right now.

As for the villainy of the episode? Meh. Nathaniel seems a pretty rubber-stamp, mustache-twirling villain with only a vague sense of purpose. The season seems to be setting up for a climax that'll be particularly Daisy-centric: the Big Bad has Daisy's powers, and now his main "henchman" is her sister. (Half-sister?) That could yield some good drama. It might even be setting the stage for a big sacrifice on Daisy's part? But some more work needs to be done making Nathaniel and Korra into enemies I actually care about hating.

Still, I enjoyed the episode overall. I give "After, Before" a B+.

Who's a Good Boy?

The "teen comedy" is a pretty well-worn movie genre. They're generally profane, often revolve around getting laid, usually include a gross-out scene or two... and can be pretty funny when done right. The formula gets refreshed every few years when something comes along to push at the boundaries of taste from some new angle.

For the movie Good Boys, that angle is to turn the teen movie into a pre-teen movie. The three kids at the core of this story are sixth graders. Accordingly, the movie does make a few substitutions in the formula; one of the boys is chasing a kiss, and being caught by parents is more intimidating than embarrassing. There's no "friend with a car"; all they have are their bikes.

But it is an R-rated movie, and it works best in the moments where it doesn't alter the time-tested formula. I'm not just talking about the foul language, the run-ins with drugs or the cops, or the gross-out injuries -- not it and of itself. The movie is funny (funnier than you might think) when it actually lets the kids be kids as they try hard to punch above their weight in more adult situations. Surprisingly, the movie actually manages to have a heart too, running a soft touch coming-of-age story that's more than just a framework to hold the jokes.

If that isn't enough to sell you, then there's really nothing else I'd try. It's otherwise very familiar. There's stuff cribbed from American Pie, like the kid who's secretly into singing when he knows it's not cool. There's stuff cribbed from cleaner teen comedies too, like the Ferris Bueller's Day Off-style prized position of Dad's that the kids steal. But somehow it's different enough when it's done with 12-year-olds.

They're particularly well cast kids too. Jacob Tremblay is the most well-established, bursting onto the scene in Room and working steadily ever since. He's paired with Keith L. Williams and Brady Noon, who definitely have solid comic timing. The three together have a great rapport. There are also several funny adults that pop in and out to lend a helping hand, including Will Forte, Retta, Lil Rel Howery, and Stephen Merchant.

It's likely my reaction to the movie was juiced by expectations both low and perfectly calibrated at the same time: I was just looking for 90 minutes of fluff to sort of zone out to, but I didn't know that I expected the movie to be all that funny. I got a pleasant surprise. If you're into this kind of movie, I'd say Good Boys is better than most -- a B+.

DS9 Flashback: Valiant

Long before there were Short Treks, there were episodes of previous Star Trek series that played almost like a Short Trek: one-off episodes built largely around new characters. "Valiant" is a "Nog episode" of Deep Space Nine, but plays more for me like a Short Treks installment in which a couple of Deep Space Nine characters play a minor role.

When Nog and Jake's runabout is attacked by Jem'Hadar, they're rescued by the Valiant, a Defiant-class ship crewed entirely by cadets of Red Squad. They've been on a months-long mission under radio silence, and have built their own command structure after the deaths of the officers supervising their training voyage. But where Nog is intoxicated to join the elite group he once admired at the Academy, Jake just sees the toxic: a dangerously arrogant crew about to take on more than it can handle.

"Valiant" is a story about what happens when the hubris of youth and the obedient structure of the military intersects with cultism. "Captain" Tim Watters is a charismatic and persuasive Koresh-type figure who knows exactly what to say to sound oh-so-reasonable, getting people to do whatever he says. He's fiercely territorial against anyone else able to provoke an emotional response within his "cult," as Jake does in his conversation with Collins. Watters is probably not aware of his own manipulations, and probably not doing it just for self-aggrandizement. (If he were actually that self-aware, perhaps he wouldn't be addicted to pills.) But there's room to wonder, though, and that's fun writing.

All throughout the episode, we're given evidence that while these cadets think highly of themselves, they're not the full-fledged Starfleet officers they imagine themselves to be. They cheer when they destroy enemy ships in battle. They don't have the practical experience to know which "rules" on a starship are really more "guidelines," as a Chief O'Brien knows. You definitely get the sense of this being the "cool clique" in high school, or a college frat -- a group of people who are peaking right now and would look back from middle-age (were they to live long enough) to wistfully remember this as the best time of their lives.

Nog, of course, latches onto this immediately. He wanted so badly to be one of these people two seasons ago. He is starved for a sense of belonging and maybe even for a taste of glory (though he has been in battle before). His is the big story arc of the episode, being drawn into a cult, then breaking free of it at the end to deliver the message: Watters was a good man, but a bad captain.

Beyond that, though, it really is the cadets' story, which is where I get the Short Treks vibes. There's the cult magnetism of Watters. Farris is a dedicated, hard-ass first officer determined to be the stick to Watters' carrot in every scenario. Collins is a soft-hearted acolyte who speaks beautifully of her home on the moon in one moment, but pushes that aside in the next to remain Watters' most deluded defender to the very end.

Besides mostly featuring new characters, the scenario here is different too, more Star Wars than Star Trek. The plan to attack the Jem'Hadar battleship has what I can only assume are intentional "Death Star run" vibes. (Or perhaps Kobayashi Maru vibes -- a test I assume these cadets probably haven't taken yet.) It's sometimes filmed differently, most notably in the cross-fading montage as the cadets prepare for battle. It's also rather un-Star Trek for the heroes to utterly fail in the end (though Deep Space Nine has dipped its toe in that water from time to time).

Jake's role in the story is pretty minor. He sees the trouble from the outset, but is outnumbered and unable to do anything about it. His is a more interesting story for a fan who has watched the whole series, though, considering his experiences in a war zone from last season. When Nog says he knows nothing about a soldier's life, that's simply untrue. Jake is really trying to keep these kids from repeating his mistake. Also adding to the sense of Jake as the only adult in the room: he towers over all the actors cast as cadets, his head almost scraping the ceiling of the cramped, submarine line Valiant corridors.

Other observations:

• Valiant was the name that writer Ronald D. Moore had wanted to give the Defiant back when it was introduced, but with Star Trek: Voyager around the corner, the V-name was shot down. He finally reused it here.

• The original draft of this episode was a Jake and Kira story, but Moore said it didn't work: "you couldn't believe that Kira wouldn't kick every one of their asses and take back the ship single-handedly."

• The episode opens with a typical "single scene to feature the other characters," in which Odo recognizes Quark's feelings for Dax. Given that Quark knew Odo's secret about Kira for some time, and was a real friend to him about it, this could have been a deeper moment. Instead, both Quark and the audience get a longing stare at Dax's butt.

• Early in the episode, Jake and Nog operate a runabout together as they flee the Jem'Hadar. They've come a long way since the second season finale, when they dismantled a runabout trying to pilot it.

• The helmsman of the Valiant is the cocky Red Squad cadet Sisko interviewed in "Paradise Lost."

• The crew of the Valiant is mostly human. (And mostly white; a mark of more biased time in TV casting, or a deliberate choice at the time to hint at Red Squad's attitudes?) But we do see a Vulcan in the mix, suggesting that Watters' charm could pierce even cold logic.

• It's a ruthless touch that the Jem'Hadar destroy all the Valiant escape pods they can. No survivors.

There is a lot to like in this episode, but it's not the strongest story for Nog -- and less strong still for any of the other characters we know and love. I give "Valiant" a B-.

Super Anti-Heroes

We all may be right on the edge of complete superhero overload at any moment. Then again, maybe there's always room for a different take. That's what you get from The Boys, an Amazon Prime TV series that approaches the usual superhero tropes from this angle: "what if superheroes are actually all total dicks?"

The series is based on a comic book by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, but the main draw of my interest (besides a few recommendations from friends) was the creator behind the TV adaptation: Eric Kripke, the maker of Supernatural. Both shows feature just the right blend of embracing their genres warmly and not being too precious or sacred about them. The Boys has the advantage of not being produced for broadcast television, and hoo boy does it lean into that.

The story posits that with great power comes great entitlement, and that if you're capable of doing anything, you pretty much will. You quickly learn when watching The Boys that in any given scenario, the worst thing you can possibly imagine is exactly what's going to happen -- assuming your imagination can venture into places as dark and dangerous as that of the writers. Black comedy and wickedly over-the-top violence get free reign.

But while a lot of The Boys is played for laughs (for those with a dark sense of humor), it also takes the underlying emotions very seriously. Characters in the show are victims of sexual assault, on quests to avenge the deaths of loved ones, and tormented by the erosion of their own idealism -- and their responses to all of these are played genuinely, despite the fantastical setting. It's a rare blend, and really not for everybody... but for many, it will be an engaging mix.

The cast is excellent. Karl Urban (who should always have a television show whenever he wants one, and who sadly has had a few thanks to cancellations) gives great brood as Billy Butcher, dry but charismatic, tortured but not all dark. Elizabeth Shue gets her best role in too long as Madelyn Stillwell, scheming vice president of the company that manages the "supes," taking charge of nearly every scene she's in. Jack Quaid (son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan) is a likeable lead as Hughie Campbell, drawn into circumstances that change him irrevocably. Erin Moriarty delivers a perfect blend of naivete and nobility as Annie, pretty much the one hero trying to truly be the stereotype. Those are just some of the highlights of a very large group of regular and recurring stars that's well cast all the way down.

It's by no means a perfect show. There are so many characters that some of the subplots can get lost (while others never quite grab you in the first place). But there's a lot more good than bad here, and I'll be interested to see if the second season (coming soon) can keep things rolling. I give The Boys a B+.

The Totally Excellent Adventures of Mack and The D

The latest Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. marked the time-traveling season's first trip into the 80s. Mack and Deke are stranded in 1982 when the Zephyr departs without them. Deke is determined to hunker down and build support for the future return of the team, but Mack is reeling from the loss of his parents. Meanwhile, the Chronicoms are not so vanquished after all, as Sybil plots their rebirth.

I think this episode is probably Exhibit A in proving what a powerful drug nostalgia can be, because on paper, it's riddled with flaws that should overwhelm my reaction. We're at the halfway point of the show's final season, and here's an episode that sidelines most of the cast to introduce a whole bunch of new characters and try to make you care about their fates. We have only a few hours left with characters we've followed for seven seasons, and one of those precious hours was stolen for this.

The mechanisms of the plot were unexplained, and may indeed be unexplainable. Why did the Zephyr jump away after only minutes, stranding Mack and Deke? The conceit has been "we go where the Chronicoms go," but then what was their plan, and how did they still have the means to carry it out? Even some of the details, though minor in the grand scheme of things, made no sense. How strange and particular is Mack's version of "letting yourself go": somehow growing a (not entirely convincing) bushy beard, while still regularly shaving his head and clearly working out more in a day than I will in my entire life?

Ah... but then the nostalgia kicks in. And what an absolute masterpiece this episode was on that front. There were 80s (and late 70s) shout-outs woven explicitly into the story, from Coulson as Max Headroom to Chronicoms as Cylons. There were quick little accents thrown in just to see how much you'd notice: references to Wargames, Weird Science, Short Circuit, The A-Team and more.

Even the camera work took on an explicitly 80s tone, with awkward zooms and tweaked saturation designed to mimic slasher films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Chopping Mall. And that's when they weren't busy specifically recreating shots from Rambo, Aliens, Predator, and others. I'd say this was like a test challenging you to spot every reference you could, but no test is this much fun.

And it was actually a pretty good episode for the two featured characters. Notably, neither Mack nor Deke were around in season one of the show, but they're very much a part of the ensemble now. We got very on-brand behavior of Mack internalizing his pain, and Deke hustling any way he could to keep surviving. Plus, actor Jeff Ward really went for it with his wild performance of "Don't You (Forget About Me)" (and note the lyric change that shows he's still got a thing for Daisy). I guess one way to make me miss Fitz less is to remove most of the characters from an episode.

I think the episode probably works out to something around a B+? (Though as a nostalgia-seeking missile, it's a totally tubular grade A.) With just six episodes left, I'd imagine there isn't any more time for a fun romp like this, so I think I'm glad we got it while we could.

Too Much of a Good Thing?

It's been a good time for fans of Philip Pullman's fantasy series His Dark Materials. A good television adaptation has wrapped its first season on HBO, and a new trilogy in the same universe, The Book of Dust, is underway. The first in that series, a prequel called La Belle Sauvage, was a welcome return to the universe. But now the second book, a sequel to the original trilogy titled The Secret Commonwealth, has come along... and has turned out to be the longest slog of a read I've had in quite some time.

This novel is set several years after the events of the original trilogy, picking up on its protagonist Lyra as a young adult. Her relationship with her daemon, her animal companion and manifestation of her own "soul," has grown strained, even combative. This in turn leads to a whole new adventure. Caught up in events is Malcolm Polstead, the college professor who, as a boy, once protected a newborn Lyra.

It's worth stressing first that I find Pullman's craft, his way of stitching words together into evocative sentences, as polished as ever in this latest book. It's not so precious to read as poetry, but it never settles for just telling the story; it's clever and insightful prose.

It's the narrative itself that turned me off this time, an anchor dragging on that precise language. The first quarter of the book was a breeze, revisiting characters from the original His Dark Materials trilogy. Seeing how time has affected them, and watching a new adventure begin to unfold, was great fun, and quite a page turner. But once the characters take to the road in earnest, the pace of the story began to slow considerably.

I found the bulk of The Secret Commonwealth to be painfully long-winded and repetitive. Emotionally, each chapter continued to hammer the same points over and over, characters expressing the same regrets in almost exactly the same way, again and again. The story then becomes episodic, like stand-alone installments of an otherwise serialized television series that's clumsily marking time until the cliffhanger season finale. For hundreds of pages on end, no one really seems to get any closer to much of anything -- not their intended physical destination, not to any moment of emotional development, not to any signpost that suggests any end in sight. The novel simply continues to fill pages.

It got to point where I really had to keep fixed in my mind how much I enjoyed the previous books in this world, and even the first chunk of this one, because I found myself feeling a growing contempt that I'd been reading and reading and reading and still didn't feel like I was ever going to get to the end. Finally, I did: an unresolved scenario meant to tee up a third and final book in the series. As of this moment? I'm not sure I want to read it. But I still feel very keenly the disillusionment of how meandering this book felt to its more taut predecessors. In presumably a couple of years, after I've had more distance, and a second season of the television series to perhaps restore some goodwill? Maybe I'll feel differently.

For now, though, I'd have to say that The Secret Commonwealth was a C- for me at best. It's a good thing this isn't the first book of either trilogy, or they'd be quite a hard sell on potential new fans.

Disc Building

The board game Orléans has been around since 2014, but it's already considered a classic, beloved by many serious gamers and rated in the top 25 on BoardGameGeek. I've played it before (and liked it), but never got around to blogging about the experience. After years on the shelf, Orléans made it back out a couple of times earlier this year, and I figured that this time around, I should set down my thoughts.

Orléans is a "pool building" game, using wooden discs you pull from a bag instead of decks of cards. It's also a worker placement game, and it has an interesting tweak in this regard. Most games give you a number of identical workers you place somewhere on a board to take a particular game action. In Orléans, the worker discs come in a variety of colors, and you must place combinations of colors into a specific action slot in order to trigger them. Well-designed worker placement games always force hard choices ("I want to do this, but I also want to do that"), but this system adds a neat wrinkle to that: "I have all the workers I need to this, but I really want to do that and I only have two of the three colors I need." Do you take what you can get now, or save toward what you really want on a future turn?

Designer Reiner Stockhausen put a lot of clever balances into his design. You're constantly acquiring new worker discs, which dilutes your bag and can make it harder to draw the colors you want to use in each round. But here, the "trashing" mechanic so common to these sorts of games is a progression mechanism: assign a worker to fill a slot on the construction side board, and it will both permanently leave your pool and earn you money (or another reward). There's a juggling act here that I find more satisfying than the typical deck builder's "trash all your lame starting cards as fast as you can" strategy.

There are also multiple paths to victory, and in my experience, all of them seem viable. There's a merchant mechanic where you can travel around France trading in goods. There's that construction side board where you can squeeze out bonuses. Each new color of worker you can acquire advances you along its own track that comes with its own rewards each step of the way.

But I have a couple of minor reservations about Orléans. I still enjoy it, to be sure, but less I think than the gaming community at large. Those multiple avenues to victory are a double-edged sword, because it's up to the players to keep watch on them all. You yourself might not be trying to win a certain way, but one of your opponents might be. You have to keep tabs on everything, or the game will end in a blowout -- and this seems to mean that if you don't play the game regularly, if you're not familiar with all the ways to win, the winner is going to run away with it.

There's also an aspect to the worker placement that can really slow the game down. There are two stacks of tiles (Level I and Level II) that provide alternative places to place your workers for specific actions. When you advance on a particular game track, you get to look through one or both of those stacks -- at all the tiles -- and choose one to take; you and only you will be able to use it for the rest of the game. The number of options is overwhelming, too many to look through and process if you don't play the game regularly, and you will invariably end up pausing the game to wait for someone trying to make this choice. On the other hand, frequent play and familiarity with the tiles doesn't seem great either; with every choice available to you, you can always go for the couple of tiles you personally think are the best ones. You can always run the same strategy game after game, only being forced into something new if another player rushes to tile stack before you do.

These negatives about the game don't rise to the level of making me not want to play. I still enjoy Orléans, and I can see why some people really enjoy it. But I also think there are other games in the pool-building genre that I find a little more fun, a little easier to wrap your head around, or a little faster to play, without really sacrificing too much of Orléans' special sauce. I'd give it a B+. It would be a good game to keep more in rotation with my play group than we have. But I'd say it has worthy competition too.

Adapt or Die

Last week's episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wrapped things up in the 70s with an episode that was a bit lighter than usual on action, but packed full of more meaningful character moments to compensate.

The gang is split up. Mack and Yo-Yo head back into the Lighthouse to rescue Mack's parents. Coulson and May try to convince Stoner they're not the enemy. Daisy and Sousa suffer in the hands of Malick. And Deke suspects that Enoch is betraying the team when he catches him in a nefarious-looking situation with Simmons.

This episode had its stronger plot threads and weaker ones, but I do sort of suspect different viewers may rank them differently. It was a good "something for everyone" kind of episode. (Except for people wanting to finally see Fitz.)

Being captive the whole episode, there wasn't much happening with Daisy and Sousa. The entire subplot, capped by a villain who offed himself, seemed constructed to push the two toward a romantic relationship. That in and of itself works for me, and I'm certainly glad that Sousa has more to do than when he was first brought into the series a few weeks back. But there's also something a little icky about actual torture as the vehicle to bring the couple together.

Finally, we got context for Simmons' mysterious behavior. The fickleness of her implant is a sort of ticking clock toward more jeopardy -- albeit one whose countdown we can't quite see. (I guess it'll last until Iain De Caestecker finishes making a movie somewhere else, or whatever was happening behind the scenes.) Between now and then, I hope the show can dig more into the sacrifice in all this; this episode focused more on her fear that she'd remember something that would put Fitz at risk, but it feels to me like the bigger thread is the cost of forgetting things about the person she loves.

The rescue of Mack parents seemed a little too neat and easy. Thus, that his parents wound up being fake was not exactly the most shocking twist (not after Coulson and May's discovery that the Chronicoms had evolved to be able to express emotion). Still, Mack was shocked, and that's what mattered. Having the faces of his parents turn on him -- and having to kick the face of his mother out of the back of the plane -- was an effective twist of the knife, and one of the more dramatic situations his character has faced in some time. (The post-credits scene made this especially tantalizing; he and Deke are going to be separated from the group for some years, it would seem. And not at all on the same page at the start of it.)

But my favorite thread was the one with Coulson and May, as they dug into her peculiar reaction to his return and he embraced his "superpower" of death. I really like the writers' decision to almost immediately kill Coulson again in the wake of his revelation, and I love that they're not trying to wring suspense from it. May speaks for all of us -- he'll be back. That takes "you're not fooling us" right off the table and let's us all enjoy speculating about how it'll happen. That's just a much more interesting place for the story, I think.

I'd give "Adapt or Die" a B. After a couple episodes that were a bit uneven for me, I feel like the season is trending back in a promising direction.

DS9 Flashback: The Reckoning

A fifth season Deep Space Nine episode, "The Assignment," had personified the Pah-wraiths as devils opposite the Prophet's angels. But the writers felt there was more material to mine there, and that the Pah-wraith had been dealt with too easily. So they concocted a way to revisit the subject in the form of an epic showdown between good and evil for the episode "The Reckoning."

An ancient stone tablet is discovered on Bajor, with a message to the Emissary that "the reckoning" is at hand. With the station at risk, Sisko unwittingly releases an imprisoned Prophet and Pah-wraith to inhabit corporeal vessels and do battle with one another for the fate of Bajor. It's a showdown that tests the faith of many -- Sisko's in the Prophets' ability to protect his son, Odo's in honoring Kira's spirituality, and Kai Winn's in whether risking so much is really the right thing to do.

Although the writing staff concocted this "battle of good and evil" independently, there was concern that the concept itself was too similar to one previously pitched by a pair of outside writers. Covering their legal bases, they bought the story to then develop what they wanted... eventually. The first draft reportedly pit a Kira-Prophet against a Kai-Winn-Pah-wraith in a fireball-hurling contest all over the station that would have cost a fortune -- until Sisko put a stop to it.

Staff writer René Echevarria, who had not been there during the original story breaking, was sent in for repairs. It was his suggestion that Sisko be the faithful one determined to see the conflict through, and from there it was a short hop to riffing on Abraham and Isaac, casting Jake as the Pah-wraith. Kai Winn, whom the writers wanted to return to a more villainous mode after her most recent appearances, became the doubter who short-circuits the prophesied clash. (Meanwhile, director Jesús Salvador Treviño, looking to save his budget and shooting schedule, was the one who proposed turning the showdown into the goofy "Care Bear Stare" it ends up being -- which was reportedly hilarious to film and weird to look at before the visual effects were added.)

Perhaps this rocky creative road explains some of the elements of the episode that don't quite land. Dax's characterization feels pretty off, her normal playfulness with Sisko dialed up to disrespect and almost belligerence. Kai Winn's resentment of Sisko, while understandable (and perfectly diagnosed by Kira) seems to fit a two-seasons-old incarnation of the character and overlooks her more recent growth. Odo and Kira's relationship is a touch hit-and-miss too; it's good that this episode happens after they've become a couple (because of the stakes that adds for Odo), but we've seen so little of their relationship that their expressions of love still feel strange -- and too public and easily accessed for the bottled-up constable.

But then, there are plenty of moments all throughout the episode that do work. Jake has a chance to articulate his feelings about his father's role as Emissary, and he is completely sympathetic in his fears. Winn has her most defensible point of view in the entire series, in her anger that Sisko has plundered a Bajoran artifact from the planet (like a Cardassian invader) without permission. And there are tinier, resonant accents too: Worf telling Odo he could not leave Kira in danger were he in the constable's place (indeed -- he did not); Odo's view that the Prophets should be explicit when they want people to do something.

Other observations:

• In the background, the war continues. An intriguing notion is put into play: that even though the Romulans are helping now, they may not yield the territory they've taken once the war with the Dominion is over.

• It's not anywhere near the point of the episode, but you get a real demonstration here of how easy it is for a religious zealot to manipulate "evidence" in support of their point of view. Sisko basically argues that he's doing the right thing throughout the episode because of his special relationship with the Prophets (he's always been right before). Winn argues that the environmental catastrophes on Bajor are evidence that he's done the wrong thing. Neither can be proved right, empirically.

• Winn is played as the villain this episode, but I find her a sympathetic one. For all her scheming, I believe in this episode she really does offer herself to the Prophets in sincerity... and Prophet-Kira won't even talk to her.

• A sort of reverse tug-of-war is implied by the light between Prophet-Kira and Wraith-Jake, and it seems the Prophet is about to win at the moment Kai Winn intervenes -- an extra twist of the knife for her lack of faith.

• The writers sometimes talk about how hard it was to ever have any conflict between Benjamin and Jake Sisko, but it's possible they missed an opportunity for it here. Jake lets his dad completely off the hook in the end, saying that when the Pah-wraith was possessing him, he'd have gladly given his life to stop it. He might just as easily been clinging to life, and horrified that his dad seemed not to care, and that Kai Winn of all people saved his life.

"The Reckoning" has some rough spots, but good spots too. I give it a B-.

Yes, It Is That Good

After years of impossible hype, the musical Hamilton arrived this holiday weekend on Disney+ for all who couldn't secure the hottest-ticket-in-town to finally see. For some, absolutely impervious to the charms of any musical, it was never going to satisfy. (They will never be satisfied.) But my social media is now peppered with many forms of "I didn't think I was going to like it, but I totally did."

Because, yes, it's really that good.

I'm also seeing a lot of contrarian think pieces on various web sites, taking click-bait stands on various supposed shortcomings of the musical. "It strays quite far from the facts to craft a lionizing narrative." Of course! This is not a documentary, it's a "biopic." It wants you to think something of its protagonist (and the other characters; I'll get to them), and is definitely curating the experience to that end. But as with the best "based on a true story" stories, it's compelling enough to drive a desire to learn more once its over.

"It's racially diverse, but it's still lacking when it comes to women." I suppose you can squint hard and arrive at that conclusion, if you want to ignore that the musical is about an incredibly patriarchal point in history that has been preserved for centuries in a patriarchal frame. And moreover, if you want to ignore the fact that the scenes and songs featuring the female characters are the most impactful ones in the entire piece, preferring instead just to count minutes on stage. (Jonathan Groff's King George would like a word with you about making an impression in little stage time.) Perhaps a decade or two from now, when every high school everywhere is performing Hamilton, there will be some gender-blind casting along with the color-blind casting.

(Indeed, the only bit of contrarian criticism I've seen that landed with me is that the release of a filmed Broadway production like this shouldn't be a rarity. The New York Public Library has an archive, going back 50 years, of thousands of productions that can only be viewed for professional or academic reasons, a veritable dragon's hoard of treasure secreted away in a cave. But I digress...)

Sorry, nay-sayers, but Hamilton really is as good as the hype. Even on film, its highly theatrical presentation doesn't feel hokey or cheap. Even at a remove, it has songs that will move you. And it's endlessly clever; only the people who have been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack on a loop for the last four years have any sense of every funny or smart lyric in it, and the rest of us still have more to discover.

I'll just offer this particular observation (which surely isn't that original): I'm struck by how much Hamilton is not a show piece written by Lin-Manuel Miranda for himself. Yes, he plays the title character. But all the best material in the show, he crafted for the other characters. In writing, casting, and performance, this musical is an embarrassment of riches. Every time you're blown away by an actor and their show-stopping number, there's another one yet to come: Phillipa Soo as Eliza, Jonathan Groff as King George, Daveed Diggs as Lafayette and Jefferson, Christopher Jackson as Washington, Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica, and Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr... Each of them, impossibly, is the best thing about the show. (Or, if you prefer that in a less paradoxical form: you could easily make the case for any of them being the best thing about the show.)


Seeing this filmed production has in no way diminished my desire to see the real thing on stage someday. (Once the live theater industry -- and everyone else -- is back to work.) The only negative I could muster: I do think this presentation renders any prospective film adaptation utterly unnecessary. (Shrug?) It's an A, all the way.

Deckscape Clause

There are a lot of board game series out there aiming to capture the experience of an escape room on your own gaming table. Even though they're all inspired by the same "source material," there's a surprising amount of innovation in the genre, with different franchises using different mechanics. Recently, I tried another system for the first time when I played Deckscape: The Mystery of Eldorado.

The angle taken by the Deckscape series is "you don't need anything but this deck of cards." Where other escape room games include booklets with elaborate illustrations, crafted components to give you actual puzzles to hold in your hands, or smart phone apps you must use to enter solutions, Deckscape strips away all the bells and whistles. It's just you, your friends, and a deck of cards.

There is a marginal, theoretical advantage in this. You could play it literally anywhere, even without a smart phone or internet access. There's a thematic purity to it: where other escape room games may be trying to recreate the actual escape room experience as faithfully as they can, this game has thrown the switch as far toward "traditional board game" as might be possible.

But I think Deckscape lost more than it gained with this approach. Because there's no "decoder wheel" or book or app you use to check your answers, you get exactly one chance to solve every puzzle. Players must agree on a solution, then flip a card over to the back and see if what they've described is what the card explains. If you're wrong, you're wrong, and you take a penalty. But you don't have a chance to try again and get it right, because you've now seen the answer. There's no tentative exploration like you often experience in an escape room, none of the "what if I tried these numbers in this combination lock" or "what if this random object I found in this drawer goes with this somehow?"

The game's hint system lacks incrementalism too. Most escape room board games find a way to give you multiple hints to a puzzle, each gradually more revealing, before giving you the solution. Deckscape puts a couple of hint cards into the mix, each with a single clue to a share of the game's puzzles. If you go for the help, you're pretty much given the answer, which is quite unsatisfying. (And in this particular Deckscape product -- small spoiler here -- one of the "solutions" to one of the puzzles is to look at the answer. Lame.)

The game does tell a rather elaborate story of being stranded in the jungle looking for treasure. The scope of it is nice, and many of the illustrations are fun. But the story is also a bit disjointed in how you can encounter it. As you work your way through the deck of cards, you're asked to lift off groups of cards and set them aside to mark "forks in the road" of the story. Within each pile, a story is being told in sequence. But the game isn't really presenting you choices, and you must eventually work your way through all the piles you create along the way. Going back to an earlier pile after experiencing the story of a later pile often creates a rather illogical story flow.

Some of the puzzles are pretty good -- and you could well argue that this is where you want this kind of game to be best anyway. Still, I'd say that based on this one Deckscape game, this is my least favorite of the escape room board games I've tried. I give The Mystery of Eldorado a C.

Artemis -- Foul

It's been well over a decade since I read Artemis Fowl. The particulars of the book have long since faded from my mind, but I remember a few things. It was decent enough that I read a few of the books that followed in the series. I later ended up quitting the series because it slid rapidly downhill for me. (I suppose it was aimed at the especially young side of the "young adult" audience.) Also: "This is going to be a movie some day."

That day is now. And that movie is terrible.

Artemis Fowl is a young boy of towering intellect. When his father is abducted by a villainous fairy creature, he hatches an elaborate scheme to acquire the magical artifact needed for the ransom. A vicious standoff at his lavish family manor ensues.

It's something of a head-scratcher, but this movie is directed by Kenneth Branagh. To be clear, it's been many years since Branagh was precious about directing only the most highbrow entertainment. He's made plenty of blockbusters -- some quite enjoyable, others not so much (though even Thor looked pretty great, and was obviously effective enough not to derail the Marvel roller coaster in its early days). But this movie is so lacking in any hint of why Branagh would want to make it, one can only conclude a vault load of money was involved.

I would also conclude that Branagh did not get final cut. Artemis Fowl clocks in at a scant 95 minutes, and it feels as though an hour or more has been excised. I don't say that from any memory of the books -- the plot was only coming back to me in dim snippets as the movie unspooled. I say that based on the perplexing dump trucks of exposition crammed into tiny capsules (even as huge swaths of the movie go without any explanation whatsoever). I say it based on the enormous percentage of the dialogue that's spoken off camera in voice-over: as we watch computer screens, while we stare at the backs of people's heads, or as other characters listen oh-so-intently. It looks like fully half of what's said was recorded in a marathon ADR session months after the filming wrapped.

It also seems to be edited by someone deathly afraid of there being any moment of stillness in the movie -- or perhaps someone who hopes that if it all whizzes by at a breakneck pace, the audience won't notice how little of it makes sense. Characters drop in and out of the narrative without explanation. Motivations change in an instant without reason. The action is incoherent in its machine-gun intensity.

And the performances are uniformly bad. Actors clearly like working with Kenneth Branagh, and I suppose one doesn't have to wonder why. Here, Branagh has dipped into his Murder on the Orient Express contact list to cast Judi Dench as fairy Commander Root and Josh Gad as "giant dwarf" thief Mulch Diggums. Dench just has to look intense and boss people around, like her M character from James Bond, but without the charm or wit. Gad is saddled with a terrible voice-over to try to glue the chopped up movie back together. Both of them adopt a ridiculous gravelly voice, as though they're auditioning to replace Christian Bale as Batman -- a weird affectation also shared by the movie's faceless cliche-spewing villain. Colin Farrell's here too, but instantly forgettable. Needless to say, the child actors are all simply lost at sea in this mess; if Judi Dench can't be good here, what hope has an actor who's been alive less than a quarter of the time she's been performing?

It looks kind of cool in a few moments? I guess? There are perhaps two or three lines that'll make you laugh in spite of yourself -- but perhaps that's only because the bar has been lowered so much by then. Yet basically... they had to put this movie up on Disney+, because the thought of seeing in a theater (pandemic or no) seems ridiculous.

I'd say this was clearly the worst movie I've seen this year, but the truth is it was really running neck-and-neck with Aquaman for me. (Still, it seems some people liked Aquaman; I can't imagine who would enjoy Artemis Fowl.) It's a D- that probably only escapes being an F by taking only an hour and a half of my time.

Cut Rating

I've never listened to The Thrilling Adventure Hour -- my podcast diet is quite bloated as it is. But it's a podcast I've thought about sampling a few times, a scripted show in the style of old-time radio, featuring a host of funny actors. I was given another push to try it out recently, when I listened to an original audiobook by the show's writers (Ben Acker and Ben Blacker): Cut and Run.

Kidney thieving is serious business, but that doesn't mean the people who engage in it are serious people. Samantha and Abe get into a complications on their latest organ heist when their target turns out to be a federal agent... who Sam has feelings for. Blowback ripples out to the long-time girlfriend Abe wants to propose to, the illustrator who does her children's books, and the sentimental middleman who sells the kidneys Sam and Abe steal. Presiding over the chaos is a sassy narrator almost too bemused to bother.

This roughly three-hour audiobook is a piece of classic comedy: taking a potentially dark and serious topic and simply refusing to take it seriously. It's not all about puns (though there are puns), and it's not all farcical (though there is farce). It's a pinch of rom-com, a dash of inept workplace comedy (The Office or Veep), and a whole lot of larger-than-life characters. It's not exactly trying to be laugh-out-loud funny (though occasionally it is), but it is a breezy little confection that goes down easily and delightfully.

It's the cast that really makes the experience. D'Arcy Carden (from The Good Place) is the unflappable Samantha. Sam Richardson (from Veep) is the most definitely flappable Abe. Rachel Bloom (of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) is the crazy current girlfriend of Abe, thirsty for adventure. Thomas Lennon (Reno 911!, among many other shows) is the agent giving chase. Ed Begley Jr. (you know him) is the most relaxed criminal you've ever met. And the wry narrator? None other than Meg Ryan, who puts a fun twist on her every intrusion into the story.

As is sometimes the case in comedy, the setup and the middle act hijinks are more fun than the ultimate conclusion."Yes and"-ing to build the story (even though this isn't improv) is a lot more fun than actually having to wrap things up. Still, I really enjoyed the tone of this production -- and the story was a fine delivery method for that tone.

I give Cut and Run a B+. If you're a fan of any of the performers, from any of their other work, I'd suggest you give it a try.