Wait (40 Years) for the Sequel

Assuming you're the kind of person who likes movies at all, I think everyone goes through this phase in childhood and early teenage years where you like pretty much every movie you see.... basically, because it's a movie. You might argue that's a matter of undeveloped taste, but I wonder if it might more specifically be that everything is new to you. You're encountering well-worn tropes for the first time, seeing things your parents haven't told you about, and so forth.

I'm of an age where Mel Brooks was a big hit with me in my youth. I wasn't seeing his movies for the first time as they were released (I was a little too young for that), but they seemed to be run on television all the time, so I caught them again and again that way. They were heavily edited in that forum, of course... so when I would catch up with the unedited original versions a few years later? They'd blow my freaking mind.

In those terms, there's always been one quintessential Mel Brooks movie for me. No, not the clever and thoughtful Blazing Saddles. No, not the widely-regarded-as-hilarious Young Frankenstein. I'm talking about History of the World, Part I. I encountered it before Kentucky Fried Movie or other "sketch comedies shows as movies," reveling in its anarchic fire hose approach to comedy. Years later, I'd discover just how much more crass it was in its non "edited for television" version, and laugh all over again. Objectively, it's not Mel Brooks' best movie (or even in the conversation), nor is it all that funny.

But History of the World, Part I has long been punching above its weight class for possibly one weird, specific reason: that "Part I" in the title... and the final sequence of the movie, a trailer of sorts for a "Part II" that was obviously never going to come. Except that now, over 40 years later, it has, in the form of an 8-episode TV series on Hulu.

History of the World was sort of a grandparent of Drunk History, an anarchic and inaccurate look at various history events. The original, using a film's run time, defied the conventions of sketch comedy television by letting each idea take as much time and space as it needed -- a segment could run half an hour or half a minute, depending on how many jokes there really were to explore in the premise. Part II leverages the serialization of modern television to get at the same thing; there are one-off bits, and other "story lines" that continue over multiple episodes. In doing so, II really does feel like a sequel to I.

Mel Brooks is still around (at the age of 96!), and he does serve in Part II as the narrator, setting up each bit. But it doesn't seem like his involvement extended much beyond this. (It's hard to imagine Brooks deciding to do a multi-episode run about a fake sitcom starring Shirley Chisholm, for example.) But the influence of Brooks looms large, and Part II feels like it's a sort of passing of the torch to a new generation.

There's a large writing staff on Part II, and an even larger number of recognizable actors who show up on screen for an episode or two. But leading the charge are Nick Kroll, Ike Barinholtz, and Wanda Sykes. The former two take up the mantle of the "Jewish, loud and proud" streak that's always been a hallmark of Mel Brooks, while Sykes builds on the larger awareness Brooks has often displayed about other oppressed minorities. (No, Brooks was there on LGBT issues 40 years ago... but I think his comedy has generally "punched up, not down.") 

As you should expect of any sketch comedy, History of the World Part II is very hit and miss. Some bits make me laugh out loud, others leave me stone-faced. Some sketches run long enough to do both. But at half an hour, it seems easy enough to sample one episode and see if this is the kind of thing for you. It was, mostly, for me. It wasn't outstanding... but good enough in bite-sized chunks. I'd give History of the World Part II a B-. Hopefully, I've name-dropped enough in this write-up; if you've liked any of the people or things I've mentioned, you might want to check it out.

Voyager Flashback: Counterpoint

Star Trek is famous for wrapping present-day social commentary inside a science fiction wrapper. But science-fiction is also good for adaptations of history... and that's what Star Trek: Voyager seemed to be doing with "Counterpoint."

Voyager is traversing the space of the Devore, an alien race with a ban on telepaths. Forced to take extreme measures to hide Tuvok and the other telepaths on the crew (plus a dozen telepathic alien refugees), Janeway is given a way out when a Devore inspector named Kashyk requests asylum and begins helping Voyager avoid his people's inspection ships. But is Kashyk really on the level?

At a high level, this episode seems to be a sci-fi take on hiding Jewish refugees from Nazi soldiers. We join the story already in progress; Voyager has endured many Devore inspections and has been hiding telepaths from them for some time. The script cleverly reveals the situation bit by bit. It handles the characters and the audience with intelligence, acknowledging that Kashyk's defection could be a trap and never trying to pretend otherwise. There are great "cat and mouse" elements woven throughout; it's a well-crafted puzzle with good suspense.

Parallel to all this is a romance story for Janeway and Kashyk. I'm not sureif  this effectively raises the stakes on the story or detracts from the whole... but Kate Mulgrew and guest star Mark Harelik have good chemistry together and make their scenes interesting. They play "good cop, bad cop" when trying to extract information from an alien contact. They flirt with each other in fun, subtle (for TV) ways. Mulgrew in particular walks a fine line, showing us a Janeway who's both kind of smitten and unwilling to fully let her guard down.

Yet while good overall, this episode does stumble in spots -- especially at the finish line. Janeway ignores the Prime Directive. Sure, to defy "Nazis," but hypocritically right after demoting Paris and imprisoning him for a month for doing the same thing. The running metaphor of the "counterpoint" in music never really seems clear to me. At the end, it's a complete mystery where the telepaths on Voyager's crew are being hidden as the alien refugees flee in two shuttles gifted to them by Janeway. It's even more unclear why Kashyk doesn't just seize the Voyager crew he can get his hands on, instead letting Janeway go in a sort of "game recognize game" finale. (But it all then ends so quickly that you're barely given the time to question this stuff.)

Other observations:

• Keeping continuity, the character of Suder (a Betazoid) is mentioned. And in future continuity, the telepathic refugees here, the Brenari, are part of a key moment in one episode of Star Trek: Prodigy.

• The makeup design of the alien Torat is great: a fishlike being who can puff his nose area out to express emotion.

• I think the writers sometimes forget what the Prime Directive really is. (Or at least, how I understand it.) You're not supposed to interfere with pre-warp civilizations. If they have warp travel and invite you in, go crazy. Thus, while helping the Brenari here is said to be a Prime Directive violation, I'm not sure that it actually is.

If you can ignore the sloppy, rushed, "wait, what?" aspects of the ending here, "Counterpoint" is a fairly compelling episode. I give it a B.

Field of Screams

For several weeks now, I'd been looking forward to the release of the movie Renfield -- more than I should have, because honestly, how good could such a ridiculous-looking movie actually be? Pretty good, it turns out. At least good enough to fulfill its gonzo promise.

Renfield centers on the lackey of the vampire Dracula. (Actual Renfield; actual Dracula.) The pair have been making their way around the world for more than a century, and now are setting up in modern day New Orleans. Renfield has been in group therapy, struggling to find the nerve to stand up to his master. When he helps a local cop survive an assassination by a crime syndicate, he gets a taste of being a hero and decides his moment has come. Needless to say, Dracula will not be spurned so easily.

This movie comes from an appropriately anarchic creative team who seem tailor-made to have taken this on. It's directed by Chris McKay, who led The Lego Batman Movie in its fizzy mix of fast-paced humor and loving parody. The script is by Ryan Ridley, from a story by Robert Kirkman; Kirkman has a bucket of credits, but the most apropos here is Invincible, a wild blend of violence and genre retooling.

All of that, in a nutshell, is Renfield: a delightfully over-the-top tale of gore and humor. Remarkably, it has a lot of story crammed into its tight 93 minutes. I was expecting nothing more than you'd get from a one-sentence description, but there are actually several interwoven threads that are paid off in the end. And yet it's not so dense that it gets in the way of the main attraction here: the comedy.

The casting of Renfield is superb. Nicholas Hoult is the title character, and in the tradition of Mad Max: Fury Road and The Menu, Hoult is able to play a total freak of a character with surprising authenticity. Awkwafina has really carved out a niche over several movies where she somehow gets to be a "straight man" and the "comic relief" at the same time, and that's on display again here. Scene-stealer Ben Schwartz gets laughs as the non-threatening son of the very threatening crime lord (played by the always-intense Shohreh Aghdashloo). And yes, of course, there's Nicolas Cage as Dracula. He's let loose to be his most Cage-y, most deranged, most unlike any human would actually behave -- and that's absolutely perfect for this character in this movie.

With insane fight choreography, snappy one-liners, and what feels like half the movie's budget devoted to gore, Renfield is escapist fun. I give it a B+. If you're a fan of Invincible or The Boys, I think it will be right up your alley.

Picard: Võx

Recent episodes of Star Trek: Picard slowed down the pace of the narrative a bit. But in the latest episode, the next-to-last, the show stepped on the gas to give us the action-packed, eventful "Võx."

The truth behind Jack Crusher's unusual abilities is at last revealed, sparking an identity crisis and causing him to flee the ship. With the enemy plan for Frontier Day now finally clear, the Titan returns to Earth to warn everyone... but it's too late, and they too are caught in the trap. The Enterprise veterans evacuate to an unexpected (but totally expected) refuge.

I think it's become clear by now that when I write about a Star Trek episode, I do not try to avoid spoilers. Still, let me throw up a clear warning now, before I dive into the episode that many corners of the internet are hailing as the best episode of Star Trek: Picard -- I'm going to spoil everything about it.

Let me start by saying that absolutely, I enjoyed the episode very much. I'm not immune to the nostalgia hit of seeing the Next Generation crew back on the bridge of the Enterprise-D, speaking to a computer that sounds like Majel Barrett, charging into action to Jerry Goldsmith's iconic theme. This must be how fans of the original Star Trek who were actually there in the 60s and 70s felt when Scotty stepped onto a holodeck recreation of the Enterprise bridge... multiplied many times over. 

And let me also be clear that this was absolutely the right place for the story to go. The truth about Jack and the Borg was really there the whole time -- masked behind all the imagery being red and not green, but teased by a half dozen pointed comments from Vadic. Forcing Jean-Luc to face a consequence this personal from his time as Locutus is the perfect thing to do for the finale of this series. And thematically, everything is pitch perfect: bringing back one more "character" in the form of the Enterprise herself, setting things up so that only our heroes of old can save the day this one last time, making it so that it's the next generation that has to be saved. 

That said, I think that "the best Picard episode ever" would get to these great story points in a way that felt a little more natural. Does the Changeling-Borg team-up actually make any sense when you scrutinize it? (Are they going to scrutinize it further before we're all done?) Would the Borg really pursue a plan that would leave so many people unaffected? Do you really want a character to say "we haven't seen the Borg in over a decade" when they've appeared in every season of this series?

Even on a micro level, nearly perfect moments came with at least a hint of "yeah, but...." Shaw met the heroic and redemptive end we all probably expected from episode one of this season -- but it would have been more impactful had he not been so sidelined in the story for several episodes now. Seeing Shelby return, her ambition having carried her all the way to the rank of admiral, was an exciting and appropriate cameo -- but to kill her off so quickly and unceremoniously felt odd.

Yet like I said, they kind of were perfect moments if you could look past the flaws. And there were also a few moments that truly seemed flawless to me. Data consoling Picard. A "retcon" that really worked, explaining how it was Picard was hearing Borg voices during First Contact. Alice Krige returning to voice the Borg Queen (presumably because, tragically, the late Annie Wersching could no longer reprise the role she played in Picard season two). And, of course, the wonderful restoration of the Enterprise-D bridge.

All told, I think I'd give this episode a B+ -- a mark that perhaps will nudge either up or down depending on what the next, final episode brings us.

What will it bring us? Well, I'll take a stab at it and propose a few things I expect and a few things I hope for. I expect the death of a Next Generation main character -- and in particular think it will be Picard himself. I hope that while they're serving up a great final send-off for the Next Gen characters, that Raffi and Seven get a good subplot in the episode. I expect a couple more cameo appearances -- and in particular think they have to bring on Janeway after name dropping her so many times this season. I hope that they give us some closure on changeling Tuvok from earlier this season by showing us the real Tuvok, and I hope that Miles O'Brien is one more face from Next Gen that we get to see. (Anyone and everyone could show up to the funeral of a major character, right?)

We'll see what the finale brings!

Voyager Flashback: Thirty Days

Across the many series in the Star Trek franchise, there were occasional "big deal" moments in which a regular character received a promotion in rank. But Star Trek: Voyager featured one of the rare instances in which a character was demoted, in the fifth season episode "Thirty Days."

Tom Paris is busted down to ensign and thrown in the brig for 30 days. There, he contemplates the actions that led him to this, involving the people of a planet made entirely of water... and their refusal to do anything to stop a looming environmental catastrophe.

If you'll pardon the digression, I have an odd direction I want to come at this episode: by way of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. Throughout the run of that series, creator Ronald Moore released audio commentary tracks each week to share insights on the making of new episodes. (Today, we'd recognize it as equal parts commentary and podcast.) I vividly remember his talk about the second season episode "Black Market." It was a turkey of an episode, he admitted that frankly, and he spoke in detail about how that had happened and what efforts had been made to try to salvage it.

In the process, Moore confessed to a writer's trick he'd used on more than one occasion to pump up episodes that had come in short, were lacking in tension, or both: open the episode deep in the story, hoping to draw in the audience by teasing the moment of greatest tension. Then flashback to "48 hours earlier" or whatever, using that tease to pull the audience along through the slow parts of your too-short script. Now it's true that writers sometimes choose a flashback structure from the outset, and that structure can be used to great effect and not simply as a cheap trick. But ever since I heard Ronald Moore characterize flashbacks as a trick (one he uses freely), I can't help but be on my guard every time I see "XX hours earlier" appear on screen in the opening two minutes of an episode of television.

So, back to Star Trek: Voyager, and "Thirty Days." This episode opens with Captain Janeway demoting Tom Paris. He's then sent to the brig, and his introspection there becomes a framing device for the flashbacks that follow. Well, guess what? "Thirty Days" came in short when it was originally filmed. Ridiculously short -- 10 whole minutes, or nearly one-quarter of its necessary run time. Everyone just missed entirely on how much screen time it would take to tell this story, and when they got all the footage to the editing bay, they learned they had a big problem.

Time for a version of that trick Ronald Moore spoke of. They decided to open with Tom Paris getting perp walked, then devoted an entire day of filming to get new scenes of him in the brig writing a letter to his father. And they might actually be the best scenes of the episode. The character growth of Paris is articulated clearly: he's always been mouthy and flippant, but here he's put his irreverence toward a good cause. (This is restated from the other solid scene of the episode, in which it's his girlfriend B'Elanna who essentially nudges him toward his insubordinate course of action.)

But padding for time and underscoring the main theme doesn't change the fact that this story was so poorly understood in the first place that it came out 10 minutes short. Why does Paris suddenly care about this one obstinate alien culture so deeply that he defies the captain? Why is Janeway suddenly so disinterested in any diplomatic efforts of any kind? (Don't give me "Prime Directive"; these aliens already invited Voyager in.)

More to the point: how can a "soup" that contains so many interesting ingredients come out so bland? Perhaps because every cool thing is just slightly undermined at the same time. There's an obvious parable here about doing large scale environmental damage to a planet... but the aliens at the core if this story look too much like Dr. Seuss "Whos" to take seriously. We finally see the oft-mentioned but never-before-seen Delaney Sisters... and Tom Paris grossly tells Harry there's no real difference between them. The episode delivers on a lot of challenging CG surrounding this water planet... but doesn't really have enough money left in the budget to make the giant underwater monster look good. Paris really has to confront unresolved feelings toward his father... and in the course of doing so has the dumbest and most TV cliche dream about being a kid who's getting yelled at.

Other observations:

• Janeway says that Paris' punishment is going to be 30 days of "solitary confinement." He ends up receiving so many visitors in the course of the episode that this seems a gross mischaracterization. Which is good, I suppose, in the sense that solitary confinement is actually torture, and Starfleet shouldn't be using torture as punishment. (Definitely not in sending Neelix to deliver all your meals. Zing!)

• I'm not sure that actor Willie Garson was widely recognized at the time he guest starred in this episode, but his later work on Sex and the City would certainly change that.
  

• Seven of Nine has an excellent line about going along with the group: "It is in my nature to comply with the collective." (That said, she sure gets standoffish more often than she should if that were true.)
  

• At the climax of the story, when they have to stop the weapon Paris intends to fire, Tuvok describes what sounds like using a torpedo as a depth charge that will go off nearby and cause concussive damage. But what we see is basically one perfectly timed torpedo intercepting another mid-shot.

• Right at the end of the episode, there's a "dinner" at "0700 hours." That's not right at all. 

There are some interesting ideas and even a few compelling scenes scattered throughout "Thirty Days." But that barely salvages an episode that feels false and forced, like it was time to do a "Tom Paris episode" and this was the best they could come up with on short notice. I give the episode a C+.

New Orléans

I've played most of the Top 100 Games on Board Game Geek -- but one in particular (currently #30) holds an interesting personal distinction. Orléans might be the game I like most among those that, for whatever reason, I don't actually play often enough to remember in much detail. Put another awkward way, it might be the game I should play "most more often." But this is not actually a review of that Orléans. (Like I said, I don't remember it all that clearly, beyond generally liking it.) Instead, I'm here to talk about a newer and closely related game.

Joan of Arc: Orléans Draw & Write comes from Ryan Hendrickson and Reiner Stockhausen, built on the structure of Stockhausen's original Orléans. In the manner of many "and write" games, each player has their own personal sheet on which they mark off different areas during the game to amass points. But instead of rolling dice (where the "roll and write" genre really started, no doubt inspired by Yahtzee), players pull worker tokens of different colors from a bag, then draft those to dictate how they can mark their sheets.

Many "and write" games hit a personal limit on how much I enjoy them in how they handle simultaneous play. In a lot of these games, it's possible that every player faces exactly the same choice as everyone else at every juncture of the game. ("Everyone picks one of these three things; which will you choose?" or "Everyone must draw this shape on their grid right now; where will you draw it?") Those games can be fun, but some part of me is a little annoyed at the ultimately solitaire nature of that activity: if each of the players theoretically could have made exactly the same choices from beginning to end, I feel like it undermines the notion that this was actually a collective activity. Bottom line: I need some satisfying level of player interaction.

Joan of Arc provides all of that I could ever want. It does that in part by eliminating the simultaneous play that's typical of "and write" games. Each round begins by drawing tokens from the bag -- one more than the number of players. Everyone then draws one token in turn order, with the first player taking the last remaining token before passing the "first choice" to the next player for the following round. This does make Joan of Arc take longer than many "and write" games, but you get a lot more strategic maneuvering for your time. Limiting options for your downstream opponents is an important consideration, as is cultivating backup plans for when your upstream opponents limit you.

To the extent that I remember the gameplay of the original Orléans, I can also say that Joan of Arc has proxies for much of it that also increases the amount of player interaction. There's an array of upgrades that each can only be claimed by one player, sparking both a tense race and the need to realign your strategy to what you're able to actually get. There are multiple tracks where players are in competition to earn a bonus reward for being the first of the group to reach a given milestone. There's a regional map where players are trying to establish buildings in cities; each city can be built in just once, so as one player claims one, everyone else has to scratch it out.

Reinterpreting Orléans with different mechanisms has yielded all these benefits. (Plus, of course, the "name brand" recognition among gamers.) But there's also a bit of baggage Joan of Arc picks up in going this route. The game keeps all the iconography of Orléans for the sake of continuity (and perhaps also to drive home how many concepts are similar to the original). But all that iconography was designed in 2014, so the sense of style in games has evolved a lot since then. And it was all originally designed to be shown much larger than can be done on the sheets given to each player; symbols are teeny tiny, and a couple in particular (the grey and brown workers) are practically indistinguishable in anything but the kind of brilliant light that no gamer I know actually has at their play table. In short, it feels quite easy (almost even inevitable) to make a mistake in this game, in ways that an updated art design could have preempted.

But in terms of the gameplay experience? I've played Joan of Arc a few times, and would gladly play it more. At the moment, I'd rate it a B+. It's possible that, in the way of its big brother Orléans, it's destined to become the "and write" game I like most among those I don't play often? But I'm hoping not.

The Ghosts With the Most (Laughs)

In this era of abundant quality TV, the viewer's dilemma is often "which subscription services have the best shows?" What great show are you not watching because it's on a service you don't get? But remember old-fashioned broadcast television? It turns out you can find some good shows there too.

Ghosts is a sitcom on CBS, adapted from a British show of the same name. Couple Sam and Jay inherit an upstate country manor and decide to move there to open a bed and breakfast. But the house is occupied by the spirits of everyone who has ever died on the property -- a random assemblage of big characters who (to borrow a phrase from Quantum Leap) only Sam can see and hear. Hijinks ensue.

One of the strengths of this show was inherited from the British original: its wide range of interesting characters. Though I've never watched an episode of British Ghosts, I've seen a clip or two, and it does seem as though many of the characters were ported over to the U.S. version with few conceptual changes. There's seemingly no shortage of stories to tell when you can just turn to one ghost in particular, who may have decades or even centuries of back story, and simply explore that.

But a unique strength of the U.S. version is how well all these roles were all cast. While the character descriptions largely sound the same in British Ghosts, the creators of this version seem to have instructed their cast to do their own thing and not watch the original. And they found a group of 10 (!) talented comedians without a weak link in the bunch. You'll have your favorites (and I have mine), but there's never a "weak episode of Ghosts" simply for the character it's focused on.

Unsurprisingly, this network show has learned many of the tricks of its streaming relatives. There's plenty of serialized storytelling here: the first season centers on trying to open the bed and breakfast, details we learn about the pasts of the ghosts come back again in later episodes, and (most importantly for a sitcom) a stable of hilarious running jokes accumulates over time.

Yet the show has its other foot in its network roots -- and benefits from this too. Commercials have so overrun the networks that each episode is a brisk 20 minutes that flies by as though "only the good stuff" is left in each episode. The episode cliffhangers (when there are any at all) are light-hearted fun; I smile when I have the opportunity to watch a new Ghosts, rather than feel the need to inject it into my eyeballs before the internet spoils it for me.

And if you've cut the broadcast cord? You can stream Ghosts: it's on Paramount Plus (which basically every Star Trek fan subscribes to, of course).

There are maybe one or two shows branded as sitcoms that I might rate a little bit higher than Ghosts; an episode of Shrinking, for instance, is likely to make me laugh out loud and tug at my heartstrings. But I would honestly say that if you just want to laugh and that's it, you probably can't do better right now than Ghosts. A third season was recently announced for next fall, and I'm thrilled to know it'll stay in my "TV diet" for another year. I give it an A-.

Picard: Surrender

The latest episode of Star Trek: Picard served up plenty to like... and made a handful of choices I found confusing.

With Vadic in control of the Titan, Jack Crusher considers turning himself in to save everyone else... though perhaps his emerging mental abilities offer another way out. Geordi is persuaded to risk Data's life in a desperate bid to retake the ship. Meanwhile, Riker and Troi reconnect emotionally while imprisoned aboard the Shrike, unaware that rescue is on the way.

This final season of Star Trek: Picard has been at its best in the scenes where two classic Next Generation characters have truly delved into big emotions, and this episode was no exception. Aboard the Shrike, Riker and Troi confronted their own reactions to the death of their son. It had bothered me at least a little that this season's Will Riker seemed to have "backslid" a bit on his emotional journey since Picard season one... but given that, this episode offered a satisfying exploration of how and why. Both Will and Deanna had made mistakes, it seems, but are now ready to move forward.

Elsewhere in the episode, Brent Spiner extended what must surely be his lead for "acting opposite himself" more than any other Star Trek actor. Dramatizing an "internal struggle" isn't easy, but this episode did a credible job, presenting a conflict between Lore and Data that built perfectly on this season's themes of nostalgia. (In particular, I love that the writers found a subtle way to include Tasha Yar in this grand reunion.) Then there was LeVar Burton, crushing it once again in his scenes. His pained reaction to the apparent death of Data tugged at me, even anticipating the coming reversal of fate. And the subsequent scene in which Geordi and Data speak plainly of their friendship actually choked me up a bit.

This episode turned out to be the end of Vadic, and I enjoyed Amanda Plummer's larger than life performance to the very end: all whim and demented glee, theatrical and epic and wild. The character's actual death was all of those things too, as she shattered to pieces on the hull of her ship (moments after delivering the most on-brand final words imaginable).

Finally, this episode put all 7 of the main Next Generation cast members together in one room -- and, of course, that was for a scene around a conference room table. (Nothing else could be as fitting.) And the road getting there was paved with fun touches of humor along the way, from more Worf one-liners to Troi's wish that Riker would learn a new Betazoid word to Geordi and Jean-Luc's wine-based test of each other's identity.

The fact that all this good stuff was happening in this episode made it easier to overlook the elements that weren't as strong. And unfortunately, there were a fair number of those. Some were small: if you're going to dunk on the writing of Picard season one, why pick "Nepenthe," the season's indisputably best episode, rather than the scattershot season finale? Why is Raffi fighting changelings using bladed weapons; how can that be effective? (Vadic's masked goons are changelings too, right? Am I the only one who's a little uncertain about this, even after eight episodes?) But a lot of the things that gave me pause were bigger, structural kinds of questions.

Why set up that B-4 and Lal and other Soong-android personas were also inside the Daystrom synth if it was only ever going to come down to a struggle between Lore and Data? Do the writers have another trick besides "teeing up the most important thing for next episode, only to not deal with it in the next episode?" (Last episode ended with Vadic telling us all we'd finally solve the mystery of Jack Crusher, but that's where this episode also ended.)

And strangest of all, to me at least, was the decision to kill of Vadic in this episode. She died before we ever got to learn what her plan was really all about. She never revealed the truth about Jack, or what she wanted with him. Sure, we're still poised to learn those things in the two episodes remaining, but I still find it wild to have a villain whose Evil Plan is never even revealed before they're dead. And yes, there's a "bigger baddie" out there still (whoever Vadic was speaking to when she "talked to the hand"), but it feels equally weird to trade out the only villain we've really known this season for a new one with just two episodes to go. Maybe all this will make more sense in retrospect, when the season is over?

Overall, I think the good outweighed the... if not "bad," then questionable. I give "Surrender" a B. With two episodes to go, now we'll see if this season of Picard can do what the first two could not: stick the landing.

War and Piece

We all know that when a movie bills itself as "based on a true story," it could fall anywhere within a wild range of fidelity to the actual events that inspired it. And that's fine, because for some stories, absolute faithfulness to the truth isn't the most important thing. Sometimes, an audience is perfectly happy to be lied to in the name of entertainment.

So.... Tetris.

Newly streaming on Apple TV+ is the movie Tetris, "based on the true story" of the efforts by Henk Rogers to secure handheld distribution rights to the megahit-in-waiting video game Tetris. The game is a "breakout" in more than the normal sense of the word, as forces in the Soviet government fear the cultural hole it could punch in the Iron Curtain. They step in to thwart Rogers, and danger ensues.

There is a true story here, and if you believe the Wikipedia entry, the contours of this movie's plot do more or less capture it. Even still, as you're watching Tetris, you can be pretty sure that Henk Rogers never got involved in a car chase with the KGB on his way to the airport. You wonder to what extent goons actually threatened the family of Tetris designer Alexey Pajitnov. You sense that this is a heightened version of reality.

And that's kind of fine. After all, you're getting a movie with car chases, hired goons, and more. This movie is part spy thriller, part heist movie, part family drama, and part love letter to video games. And while these elements never come together as perfectly as a long piece sliding in to complete 4 lines at the once, there is something satisfying here. (Yes. One is obligated to make a Tetris gameplay reference in the middle of any Tetris movie review. Sorry, I don't make the rules.)

The movie is at its best when it's being irreverent and fun-loving. Establishing shots are overlaid by 8-bit graphics, and the film is divided into "levels" rather than "acts." A delightful score from composer Lorne Balfe treats the entire affair like a Mission: Impossible movie, even as it (of course) weaves in phrases of the music from the game. Star Taron Egerton plays the whole thing like this is life or death, and you almost start to believe that at times.

Still... let's all be realistic here: this story here is slight. It's over-dramatized for this script because there probably aren't enough real-world twists and turns to create a compelling narrative more grounded in truth. The movie often lands in the uncanny valley of taking things seriously without doing it in the "too seriously" way that engenders the real fun; then it starts to feel like a sort of low-grade Bridge of Spies. (And let's all admit, if I asked you to name as many Steven Spielberg movies as you could, how many of you would have even remembered Bridge of Spies?)

I keep posting about different reasons you should subscribe to Apple TV+ if you don't already. (I just did that earlier this week.) This is not one of those posts. This is an "if you already have Apple TV+, you might have fun with this" post. Specifically, if you're a fan of games (and you probably are, if you're reading this), you'll probably find Tetris a bit of escapist, if slight, fun. I give it a B-.

Voyager Flashback: Nothing Human

"Nothing Human" is a Voyager episode that aspires to be a classic Star Trek morality play... but it's quickly undermined by weak writing.

When an alien creature attaches itself to B'Elanna, the Doctor looks into the ship's database for a holographic expert in exobiology to help save her life. But the expert is Cardassian, igniting tensions in some former Maquis aboard the ship... and leading B'Elanna to outright refuse medical assistance.

Unfortunately, "Nothing Human" feels like a remix of other, earlier episodes of Star Trek. It is perhaps a bit better than some; there are shades of "Jetrel" here, in how the crew must interact with a genocidal monster. But it pales in comparison to Deep Space Nine's "Duet," in which a main character must confront their prejudice and learn that individuals cannot be defined solely by their race.

There are some good aspects to the episode. It forces an interesting moral dilemma onto The Doctor. It features strong performances by Robert Picardo and guest star David Clennon (who plays the Cardassian "Josef Mengele" character). There's another decent guest star in Jad Mager, who plays the Bajoran Tabor; this episode gives an awful lot of important emotion to him, and it's risky casting -- it's not even like the show was elevating a character who had been around before (like a Vorik).

Paris is allowed to show genuine concern for B'Elanna. (Their relationship isn't actually "on again, off again," but the writers' interest in it sure seems to be.) We get a truly alien alien: the species isn't an actor in minor prosthetic makeup, and its only communication with Voyager is an odd shockwave that presents as a weapon without causing any damage.

So yeah, it seems like there's a lot in the plus column here. But a lot of what's good here is undermined by equal and opposite bad. The novel and different alien is the hokiest of rubber-looking props, and poor Roxann Dawson has to lie under it on a table for the whole episode. The Doctor wastes a lot of time palling around with his new holographic friend even though a patient's life is on the line.

The biggest problem, though, is in how the episode presents the moral dilemma here. "Is it right to profit from knowledge that comes from horrible people?" It's a fair question to ask, and there are even moments where the discussion is interesting, as when comparisons are drawn to animal testing, when Tuvok brings Vulcan logic to bear on the situation, and when Seven of Nine shares a distinctly Borg perspective. Yet the episode always has its thumb on the scales in a way that seems to simplify the more interesting and complex ideas here.

Crell Moset is cartoonishly evil, never choosing benign methods when something more akin to torture is an option. B'Elanna makes her wishes perfectly clear: "Do not resuscitate" -- but Janeway chooses for her anyway. (And declares "there’s been enough moral controversy on this ship for one day," being oddly flippant and dismissive of the idea of having morality at all.) Worst of all, the objections to Mocet start well before his reprehensible behavior is discovered; he's hated immediately just because he's Cardassian... and then it just so happens that he turns out to be hateable for other reasons. What's the lesson here, that sometimes racist prejudgement is called for?

In short, the writing of this episode is super muddy -- just like Tom Paris in the "vacation slides" that The Doctor forces on everyone in the teaser. Some compelling arguments aren't even raised. (Couldn't you argue that if you don't benefit from the evil and murderous research, then those deaths were for nothing?) Characters who get their way have no argument at all. (Janeway has no reason for stepping in to save B'Elanna against her wishes, beyond "but I need you.") The whole thing just winds up leaving a bad taste.

Other observations:

• When Voyager is hit by the alien shockwave, we're in the mess hall, and we see lots of practical shaking of items on the set -- something the show rarely did.

• I love how Seven of Nine says point blank to Tabor that she knows he doesn't like him, and she doesn't care. I feel like maybe there's a life lesson in that somewhere.
  

Maybe it's not so much that this episode is bad, as that for me it lives in the very long shadow cast by Deep Space Nine's "Duet." (That episode is possibly in the top 10 or 20 of ALL Star Trek, ever, and maybe not a fair comparison.) But however I get there, I can only see "Nothing Human" as a C.

Highly Ratted?

Certain themes are ubiquitous in board gaming; you'll find empire building games, city planning games, and wilderness exploration games in seemingly endless numbers. So on the occasion that a game with a more unusual and unique theme appears, it can immediately stand out from the crowd.

In First Rat, designers Gabriele Ausiello and Virginio Gigli cast the characters at rats racing to build a rocket ship that will be the first to take them to the moon (which, of course, is made of cheese). You amass tin cans for the rocket body, calculators for your guidance systems, and baking soda and vinegar for your propellant -- all while advancing on a light bulb track of bright ideas to make building easier, and paying cheese to opponents to use the opportunities they're otherwise blocking from you.

You begin the game with two out of four rats of your color at the start of a long and winding track (with ways to add those remaining two rats to the start of the track during the game). Spaces on the track are each marked in one of five colors, each color generating particular kinds of resources for you when you land on them. On your turn, you must advance one or more of your rats to a new space on the track. To land on a space occupied by any other players, you must pay each of those players one cheese. If you move only one of your rats, it may move up to 5 spaces forward. But you many instead move any number of your rats each up to 3 spaces, so long as they all land on the same color.

There are other wrinkles in there to satisfy more experienced gamers. There's a "maze" where different rewards can be unlocked, depending on the path you take. There are special bonuses to be claimed on the main track if you land on the right spaces; you must decide whether to pay for them with an exorbitant amount of cheese, or by sending your rat all the way back to the start of the track. There are several different ways to score points, each of which diminishes in value as more players claim them. You must balance all these considerations as you navigate the central challenge: how do you get what you want, and when is it worth paying other opponents to do so?

Explaining all the little ins and outs of the game is a little tricky. Really grasping how to best use the "multiple rat move" potential of a turn doesn't necessarily come naturally to everyone early on the first play. But fundamentally, your decision tree on each turn strikes a good balance between offering options while not being hopelessly complex. The game takes up to six players, and actually seems better on the higher end of that number for offering more opponents to get in your way on that central movement track. And it still moves fairly quickly with more players, as a turn doesn't involve much: make a move, take stuff, spend it if you can.

I've only played First Rat a couple of times so far. I did much better on my second play than my first, giving me a sense that there is strategy here to master. I enjoyed the experience both times in any case. I'm not yet sure if the strategy goes deep enough for the game to have real staying power... but everyone I've played it with so far has really enjoyed it and talked about wanting to play again.

So for the moment, I'll give First Rat a B+. I could see that either rising or falling a little as I get to play it more. There's probably not enough meat on the bone here for gamers who really like things epic and sophisticated, but First Rat seems like a solid choice for a group that likes to play through three or four different titles in an evening.

You Will See the Doctor Now

Ted Lasso has returned for its third (and by some reports final) season on Apple TV+. But today I'm talking about a different show from the same creative team, that just wrapped up its first season.

Shrinking centers around therapist Jimmy Laird. As he tries to get his life back on track after the death of his wife, he decides to stop bottling up his emotions around his patients and start telling them all exactly what he thinks. Hilarity ensues.

The "secret sauce" of Shrinking is that there's a good deal more going on in it than any simple description like that can encapsulate. It's part workplace sitcom, as Jimmy works with two other therapists in a practice (each with problems of their own). It's part family/neighborhood sitcom, as Jimmy trades barbs with a nosy neighbor and tries to bond with his teenage daughter. It's part friendship sitcom, as Jimmy reconnects with a close friend he pushed away in his grief. It's largely and specifically about personal growth and therapy, as one of Jimmy's patients is a main character (and many others recur).

Like Ted Lasso, Shrinking always aims first and foremost to be funny... but would never do an episode where it doesn't get serious at select moments. Characters crack wise with each other, but are allowed to process real emotional issues: death and grief, a serious health condition, divorce, anxiety about retirement, teenage love, PTSD, and more. No lie, there are moments of especially good episodes that will bring tears to your eyes, even as it makes you laugh out loud before and after.

Okay, there's one more "secret sauce" to Shrinking, and that's its exceptional cast. It's led by Jason Segel -- and though he's perfectly fine, he's also probably the least compelling reason to watch the show. (Sorry, How I Met Your Mother fans). Jimmy's co-workers are Harrison Ford and Jessica Williams; Ford hasn't let himself be this vulnerable in ages (though he's still hilariously prickly), and Williams is a comedy assassin who delivers some of the best lines of every episode. Michael Urie plays best friend Brian, who somehow manages to make "cloyingly happy" not be an annoyance on the show. And Christa Miller (my personal favorite from Cougar Town) is neighbor Liz, whose drier than dry delivery always makes me smile. (And these are just the names/faces you're likely to recognize. Newer actors in the main cast are just as strong, and the bench of recurring characters runs deep.)

About the only negative thing I can say about Shrinking is that it didn't hit a home run in its first at bat. It took me a couple of episodes to realize that I did indeed like the not-always likeable characters, that the show was truly going to be funny more than mopey, and that the story really was going somewhere interesting. (Though I don't think that last thing is by any means a requirement for a sitcom.) By the end of the season, though, I was all in; I wanted to finish up Shrinking completely before beginning the new season of Ted Lasso (which did overlap it a bit).

I'd give the first season of Shrinking an A-. If you liked Scrubs, Cougar Town, or Ted Lasso, then this is a no-brainer: you are going to like Shrinking. If any other part of this feels like a hook (you want to see Harrison Ford in a comedy; you used to love Jessica Williams on The Daily Show), you are going to like Shrinking. Basic odds are, you are going to like Shrinking.

Picard: Dominion

The latest episode of Star Trek: Picard faltered in the quality we've been getting so far this season. When all is said and done, if this was the "worst episode of the season" (something has to be), then we'll be in good shape overall. Still... this felt to me like the worst episode of the season so far.

Picard decides to try turning the tables on Vadic, setting a trap for her forces when they come after the Titan. And it would have worked, if not for that meddling Lore; the latent personality inside the Daystrom synth surfaces to commandeer the Titan and sow chaos. Meanwhile, in fighting back against the Shrike's boarding party, Jack Crusher unlocks strange new abilities he did not realize he possessed.

This isn't exactly a "bad" episode, but it felt like a very messy one to me. In the effective juggling act that has been season three of Picard, there are now one or two too many balls up in the air -- so many that they cannot all even be addressed in one episode. For example, the cliffhanger at the end of the previous installment seemed to be telling us that The Most Important Consideration on the show right now was that the changelings had captured Riker and Troi, and were planning to use them against each other to force a betrayal of Picard and company. Big stakes! We don't want to see our heroes be tortured!

Well, lucky us (I guess?), because we're not going to see that. Now, it's true that television generally uses the torture trope a bit too readily, and we've all seen twelve versions of whatever scene we might have been likely to get. It's also true that Star Trek: The Next Generation already gave us the definitive look at torture, and that nothing more really needs to be said. Still, to ignore Riker and Troi in this episode -- and start out the episode by telling us that Tuvok, wherever he is, is probably being tortured too? It seems a lot of heightening the tension on a story that isn't going to be addressed this week. But okay, the cameo appearance by Tim Russ was great. It was a very well-written scene of Seven seeking authentication of Tuvok's identity, and Russ' transformation from his classic character to a sneering villain was chillingly effective. (A taunting "corpse Riker" was a great touch too.)

From there, though, the rest of the episode felt increasingly incoherent. Ultimately, we learn Vadic's back story; it is interesting, and delivered interestingly by Amanda Plummer. But the idea that she and the other "super-changelings" are the result of a Starfleet experiment sounds a bit far-fetched. Not that Starfleet (or Section 31 in particular) wouldn't do such a thing... but how exactly were they planning to control their creations and keep them from going rogue exactly like they are now? If Starfleet is going to be this stupid, seems like they should get what's coming to them. (And speaking of which, this is the second major time this season that a Jean-Luc Picard plan has blown up in his face. Not a good look for our esteemed hero.)

Over in the Jack Crusher story line, I'm back to being nervous again. Clearly, whatever is going on with him is not that he has inherited his father's brain condition. The emergence of some kind of mental powers did make for a great looking fight sequence (in which he seemingly "puppeteers" Sidney LaForge into self-defense)... but it was big stride away from the necessary central premise that Jack is Beverly and Jean-Luc's son, and I'm back to hoping the writers don't do anything to undermine the emotional heft of that.

The biggest disappointment for me in the episode, though, was the Data/Lore plot thread. There was stellar acting, to be sure; Brent Spiner always has fun mugging as Lore, and LeVar Burton was superb in Geordi's tearful pleas to Data and confessing the raw emotion of what it was like to lose him. But the entire arc of the subplot was nakedly manufactured. When it became necessary to introduce jeopardy in the episode, Lore surfaced for no particular reason. When it became necessary to resolve that jeopardy later, Data surfaced for no particular reason. It did not seem to me that Geordi did much to precipitate or address the danger -- it was purely a question of what page number of the script we were on.

There's a lot of story to tie up this season in not many more episodes, so I'm hoping that the messiness of this hour helped clean things up a bit for what's to come. And I'll acknowledge that even amid the mess, each subplot of "Dominion" did have at least one good moment in it. Still, the chaotic whole of the episode left me disappointed after so many consecutive episodes of effective build-up. I give the episode a B-.