Reading/Watching Log #45

Wow, I got through a LOT of stuff this month. I’m not entirely sure how, but September ended up being extremely bountiful. I saw Miss Saigon for the first time a couple of days ago (mixed feelings), bid farewell to Killjoys, delved deeper into my Treat Yo Self reading pile, saw the latest in my Disney Princess rewatch, and started to get into some Dark Crystal supplementary material to go with the Netflix prequel. And more – so much more.

Miss Saigon (Isaac Theatre Royal)

So the most astonishing thing about seeing Miss Saigon for the first time was learning that the Vietnam War lasted two decades. WHAT? That’s astounding. I had no idea it dragged on for that long, and it’s no wonder that it spawned an entire subculture of hippies that were vehemently opposed to war in all its forms. I was genuinely flabbergasted.

Having never seen the musical, I got my tickets months ago through a contact at work, and though I’m glad I saw it, I can’t say I enjoyed it very much. There’s something I’ve noticed when a story revolves around a minority character: if for example, a gay man is given a happy ending and a fulfilling life, then the story is for gay people. If a gay man leads a miserable existence due to his sexuality and dies horribly as a result of society’s prejudice, then the story is for straight people.

You can apply this logic to any story – film, show, novel – that has a minority figure at its centre, including this one. Miss Saigon is not for Vietnamese people, it’s entirely about how their suffering, culture and tragedy affects white people.

During the war young Vietnamese women were desperate to escape the country by marrying American soldiers, who were happy enough to visit them in the brothels, but not so keen to take them back home. Needless to say, a plethora of young American/Vietnamese babies were left behind when the US finally pulled out.

This is essentially Kim’s story, a seventeen year old girl whose parents were killed in the war, who comes to the Dreamland Club in a simple bid to survive. The show makes it clear that she’s pure, untainted and “not like the other girls” and when she’s pushed towards a GI called Chris, we’re asked to believe that they actually fall in love. Mmkay.

Three years later, Chris has returned to the US and married a woman called Ellen, while Kim has gone to Bangkok with her (and Chris’s) son Tam, desperate to be reunited with the man she still loves. Chris’s friend John, who now advocates for the American/Vietnamese children conceived during the war, tracks down Kim and reveals the situation to Chris – but Ellen doesn’t want Kim living in America, Chris is committed to Ellen, and the two decide the best course of action is to financially support Kim’s life in Bangkok.

But Kim is so devoted to the idea of her son being an American that she kills herself, thereby ensuring that Tam will return there with his father.

Helping or hindering the main players in this drama is the man known as the Engineer, the nightclub owner of Dreamland. He’s obsessed with the American dream and walks the uncomfortable line between the show’s comic relief, and the fact he’s an exploitative pimp to the vulnerable women in his employ.

The production itself was top-notch: I can’t fault any of the performances, stage management, or direction. And like I said, I’m glad I saw it, if not just to say I’ve now seen it. But it’s definitely a dated story that thinks it’s saying something profound about war, sacrifice, victimhood and love – yet however pure intentions were, it’s ultimately saying it all to a very specific audience, in which Kim is the pitiable object, not the subject, of her own story.

It’s a manufactured tragedy designed to “tut-tut” the Vietnamese War, in which Kim is victimized and commodified and treated as an obstacle to the happiness of Chris (who is a complete dud of a human being, failing both the women in his life) who nobly kills herself for the sake of her son, even though there’s not a single child on earth that would choose a bright future over the life of their own mother. I wish more mothers knew that.

Hicotea by Lorena Alvarez

This is the sequel to Lorena Alvarez’s Nightlights, a strange and rather disconcerting graphic novel about a little girl with artist talent who becomes friends with an equally strange and disconcerting little girl who dresses in white and demonstrates a rather unhealthy interest in her artwork. Though there was nothing overtly disturbing in the images, it was still a very surreal and creepy story – one that I likened to Alice in Wonderland at the time (and I never liked the Alice books as a child).

But the artwork was beautiful, with the cuteness of the characters belying the strange overtones, and glorious use of colour in the young protagonist’s artwork and subsequent dreamscapes.

Hicotea is a sequel to Nightlights only in the sense that Sandy returns as the protagonist – sadly, there’s no sight or mention of Morfie, despite the suggestion at the end of the first book that their struggle was far from over. Instead, this involves Sandy attending a class trip to the marshlands, where she happens upon an empty tortoise shell, and (in the dream-like logic that this series is built on) manages to wander inside.

The spacious interior holds a museum of sorts, with Hicotea the tortoise as its curator. Things get even stranger from this point, and soon Sandy is negotiating a barren wasteland, meeting a talkative group of marsh creatures, and running from a reality-altering creature that looks like a multitude of ravens.

There’s very little in the way of a grounded story here; it’s difficult to even grasp whether things are actually happening or just in Sandy’s head. This robs it of some of its power, as I’m not entirely sure what point Alvarez was trying to make with this: it’s a subtle environmental message wrapped in a vaguer admonishment to not let fear guide your choices… maybe.

The real hook here is the artwork, and as with its predecessor, Hicotea is a riot of colour, style, and imaginative force. Don’t read too much into the story; just enjoy the artistry.

Labyrinth Tales and The Dark Crystal Tales by Cory Godbey

Cory Godbey has only recently come to my attention as a children’s illustrator – though I’ve been reblogging his work for years on Tumblr, these books are the first time I’ve been able to appreciate his work in context. Obviously working in collaboration with the Jim Henson Company, Godbey combines his own distinct style to the characters and general aesthetic of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal.

It’s a pretty good match: Godbey’s lush colouring is gorgeous, and his sense of whimsy works well in capturing the labyrinth denizens and the Gelflings – though the dark streak that’s woven through these two films is entirely missing. Perhaps that’s only to be expected, as these are definitely children’s stories – though that’s a bit of a shame considering the source material and its potential for much longer, deeper, complex stories.

Each book is comprised of three (very) short stories, though of the two, The Dark Crystal is definitely superior. Unlike Labyrinth, which simply has three unrelated tales set in the labyrinth (and which are a tad uninspired – one involves Ludo looking for a cure to his cold, for example) The Dark Crystal links all three tales together via a little songbird and the running theme of the world’s interconnectedness.

In the first story, the Skeksis reject the gift of a tiny songbird from a hapless Garthim, deeming it too small to make a decent meal. In the second, Jen finds the bird and takes it to his master for healing, who demonstrates through the ripples in a pond how small kindnesses can have far-reaching effects. In the third, Kira sends Fizzgig out to fetch a healing flower for her sick Podling mother – and naturally, he’s assisted by the little songbird.

It’s beautifully done, so poignant and thought-provoking, and the sort of thing that would have sent me into a deep “muse and ponder” when I was a kid. If you’re ever in a position where you have pick only one of these two, go for The Dark Crystal.

Batgirl: Volume 1 – 4 by Hope Larson

I’m not exactly sure what moved me to pick up these issues (well, apart from the fact they were there) but I’ve always liked Barbara Gordon and have been in a bit of a Bat-fam mood lately. That is, I wanted the style and darkness of Gotham City without the gloom and angst of Batman himself.

Barbara is one of my favourite DC heroines, specifically in her ability to handle grim detective work with a relatively upbeat attitude (plus, she and Dick were one of my OTPs as a kid). In these issues she takes a trip across Asia before heading back to the suburb of Burnside in Gotham, dealing with your usual selection of costumed villains along the way.

Larson is interesting in that she tackles some pretty relevant social issues in amongst the crime-fighting – everything from homelessness to gentrification to a transgender person being misgendered. It’s not always done particularly elegantly, but the attempt is there and it puts a deeper spin on vigilantism – you can beat up as many criminals as you like, but the underlying social problems are still there, and can’t be solved with a punch.

There’s also a real sense of community at work, as Barbara calls on support when she needs it from a vast net of friends, allies and neighbours. Again, it emphasises that no single person can stop bad things from happening – it takes a village.

The multi-issue stories are inevitably the best ones, though there was some entertainment to be had from the shorter offerings, which mostly relied on the appearance obscure Batman villains – did you know the Mad Hatter had a Harley Quinn-esque sidekick called March Harriet? Or that there’s a woman out there calling herself Velvet Tiger who kidnaps people’s pets for ransom money? Wow.

Teen Titans: Raven by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo

A while back I read Mera: Tidebreaker, another graphic novel in this ongoing series which seems designed to attract more pre-teen girls to DC comics. It’s set in a brand-new continuity, and features largely standalone tales of some of DC’s most famous heroines at the beginning of their journeys (which in YA speech means they’re teenagers).

Of course, Raven always was a teenager in most of her incarnations, so this works out well for her. I only know Kami Garcia as the author of those Dangerous Creatures novels (Southern witches, if I recall correctly?) and so she’s a relatively good fit for Raven’s story. That said, it only keeps the basics of Raven’s backstory, instead running with the tired old memory-loss cliché after a car accident, which forces her to learn about her father and abilities from scratch.

I’m also pretty sure the New Orleans setting is new for Raven, and Garcia’s decision to fill the story with witches and voodoo seems to be a very specific interest that she’s grafted onto an established character.

Gabriel Picolo’s artwork is the real selling point here. Everything is beautifully designed and depicted, especially in his use of colour – most everything is in muted shades of grey (sans the purple shading in Raven’s hair) except panels of particular storytelling importance – then everything bursts into vibrant colour. Nicely done.

The Power of the Dark Crystal: Volume 1 by Simon Spurrier

With the release of Netflix’s Dark Crystal prequel, I’ve naturally been treating myself to all things connected to the franchise, which mostly involves a surprising number of graphic novels. According to the afterword in this volume, The Power of the Dark Crystal was originally written as a filmic sequel to the 1982 movie. When plans for that fell through, it was adapted into the graphic novel you see here.

Hundreds of years after Jen and Kira restored the crystal and banished the Skeksis, the land of Thra has been at peace under Gelfing rule. With Jen and Kira lapsing into a magical sleep while Gelfings and Podlings alike bring tribute to the Castle of the Crystal, signs of affliction in the natural world have been ignored.

Then a strange creature appears: a Gelfing-like girl covered in living flame, who is on a desperate mission of her own. Called Thurma, and identifying herself as a Fireling who lives in the core of the planet, she’s after a shard of the crystal for precisely the same reason Jen and Kira were all those years before: to save her home.

It’s an interesting conundrum, as we’re sympathetic to Thurma’s desperation while knowing that separating the crystal will only lead to dire consequences. And yes, the story can’t help but bring back the Skeksis, once more divided from their more angelic counterparts, the Mystics (though didn’t they all blast off into space at the end of the film? This implies they were hanging out in the crystal’s interior all this time).

In any case, it’s a surprisingly meaty story with appropriately lush and detailed artwork, especially in its use of colour. Deep blues, bright violets, soft yellows for Thurma and her ever-burning flames – it all looks beautiful. Naturally, it’s only the first of an ongoing saga, but since Thra has got to be one of my absolute favourite fantasy worlds, I suppose I should be grateful for publishers stretching this out for as long as they’re able.  

Murder in Midwinter and Murder at Twilight by Fleur Hitchcock

I read these two books consecutively, and I have to say that “Fleur Hitchcock” is the perfect name for an author who writes what are essentially suspense thrillers for children. Much like Rear Window, Murder in Midwinter involves a young girl called Zahra spotting a potential crime from a window (though in this case, it’s a bus) and going into protective custody because of it. The police relocate her to her aunt’s desolate farmhouse, where her cousin is openly hostile and the winter weather makes it difficult for anyone to get in or out.

Murder at Twilight follows a vaguely similar trajectory, focusing on the fraught relationship between an adolescent girl called Vivienne and the young boy who is nannied by the girl’s mother. That’s a complex dynamic, and along with the custody battle over the mother/nanny’s time and attention, further tension manifests due to the fact Vivienne and her mother live on Noah’s family estate.

Naturally no love is lost when Noah goes missing after school, but when Vivienne’s mother turns out to be the prime suspect, Vivienne throws herself into the search.

The relationship at the core of each story is the acrimonious relationship between the female protagonist and the younger, rather spoiled boy she’s forced to live in close quarters with. And it's these dynamics that are the strongest part of each story: Hitchcock manages to perfectly capture the way children bicker with each other, which makes it all the more rewarding when they grudgingly put aside their differences to escape the dangerous situations they find themselves in.

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

I continue to work through my Treat Yo Self pile of books, and it’s wonderful. Leigh Bardugo is swiftly becoming one of my favourite YA writers, and her Grisha trilogy (soon to become a Netflix series) is a must-read. Yes, her grasp of Russian culture and language leaves a bit to be desired, but as it’s all set in a fantasy-based realm, I’m happy to handwave most of it.

Since the original trilogy she’s published the Six of Crows duology, which I actually own, but skipped over since my available copy of King of Scars was a library book. Was this a good idea? Probably not, since there are several characters and situations featured here that were presumably introduced in the previous books, and which Bardugo assumes foreknowledge of.

But it was easy enough to catch up, and it doesn’t appear that any major spoilers have been dropped (at least not from the duology; you definitely don’t want to read this without first having read the trilogy).

All the books are set in what’s Doylistically called the GrishaVerse (which is also shorthand for the series itself), best described as an alternative-world Russia shot through with fantasy elements. It focuses mostly on the nation of Ravka, ruled by the young King Nikolai Lantsov, who desperately wants to right the wrongs inflicted by the rest of his royal family, and lead Ravka into a prosperous future.

To do this, he relies on a select group of Grisha (individuals endowed with magical abilities, more like benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender than anything else that comes to mind) who are persecuted as witches in other parts of the world.

King of Scars is divided into three distinct plots: the first dealing with Nikolai’s search to cure a dark enchantment that sees him transform by night into a monstrous winged demon, the second with Nina Zenik, a Ravkan spy who organizes the transportation of fellow Grisha to safety, and the third with a young soldier that’s called upon to act as Nikolai’s decoy when the king goes missing.

Usually this type of plot division leads to one storyline that I’m particularly interested in, rendering the others less compelling by comparison, but here (despite Nikolai’s story dragging just a tad in the middle) all three manage to be page-turners. Nina has a suspense-thriller as she comes across a secret facility full of kidnapped Grisha, Isaak deals with statecraft and espionage as he struggles to maintain the façade of the absent king, and Nikolai and his commander Zoya Nazyalensky have the most fantasy-based plot, ending up in a strange no-man’s-land where a possible cure may be found.

To describe Bardugo’s work on the whole, I’d say she manages to create a folkorish ambiance that’s filled with world-weary characters who nevertheless provide a flicker of light through their unspoken but demonstratable affection for each other. That’s a win/win/win/win combination, so start reading Smoke and Bone before the Netflix series drops.

Verdigris Deep by Frances Hardinge

The third book I’ve read by Frances Hardinge, and chronologically her earliest. As such, it feels a little unpolished compared to Cuckoo Song and A Skinful of Shadows, even as it deals with her usual array of themes: families, trauma, identity, peer pressure, and empathy for others; all wrapped up in a dark fairy tale atmosphere. In her characters’ psychological complexity and her beautifully descriptive prose, Verdigris Deep is disappointing only in comparison to her later excellence.

The story revolves around the dynamic of three friends Josh, Ryan and Chelle; the former being the charismatic and forceful ringleader to the more introverted latter two. When they’re left stranded without bus fare in a district they’re not supposed to visit, Josh comes up with the idea to shimmy down a local well and collect coins from the bottom.

But stealing from an ancient wishing well has strange and disturbing consequences, and soon all three are gifted (or cursed) with mysterious powers: Chelle can read minds, Josh can manipulate metals, and Ryan is haunted by visions of a watery woman, who clearly wants something from him.

This is where the story gets a little… inelegant. The kids tumble to the conclusion that the spirit of the well wants their helping in granting wishes to those whose coins they stole. That’s quite a conclusion to draw, and yet it’s apparently the correct one, even as the application of their newfound powers in achieving this goal has dire consequences.

It all comes together in the end, it just involves some fairly staggering suspension of disbelief to get there – and I don’t mean in the fantasy elements, but in the way people think and behave. Still, Hardinge’s insights are as sharp and thought-provoking as ever, as when Josh starts to abuse his abilities. Here’s my favourite passage on the subject:

“Ryan suddenly thought of the tricksters in stories who made you laugh because they did funny things you didn’t dare do, and then did more wicked things that were still amusing, and then turned your stomach over by doing horrible, diabolical things that were only funny to them. It didn’t mean they’d changed; it just meant they’d slid off the far end of their own scale, an end you hadn’t seen before.”

I got mythological!Loki vibes from that, and given her contextual range, I doubt it was a coincidence.

Top Marks for Murder by Robin Stevens

Another Wells and Wong mystery! Last year I had a bit of a “kid detective” phase, and it’s resurged with the release of Robin Stevens’s latest mystery. Set in the 1930s at a highbrow boarding school for girls, it stars Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong: the former a shameless aristocratic “Sherlock”, the latter an introverted Chinese “Watson”.

Hazel’s nationality is worth mentioning, as Stevens makes sure it informs the plot and character development. She not only has to deal with stares and micro-aggressions, but often it allows her to eavesdrop on conversations considering people assume she can’t understand them. It’s an integral part of who she is, and across the eight books she’s grown in confidence when it comes to dealing with The English and Their Ways. It’s played for poignancy just as often as it is for laughs, and she’s easily the best part of the whole series.

After mysteries in London and Hong Kong, this book takes the girls back to Deepdean School for Girls during its celebratory Anniversary weekend. Daisy is perturbed to find her status as most popular girl has been swiped by a new student called Amina El Maghrabi, and so leaps at the chance to regain her status when one of their dorm-mates claims to have seen a man strangling a woman in the woods outside the school.

This isn’t the best mystery the girls have solved: many of the suspects are too interchangeable and the solution hangs on a clue that wasn’t divulged to the reader. But it’s Daisy and Hazel! Back at Deepdean! With hints that they’ll be heading off to Egypt in the next book! It’s great to be back.

The Aristocats (1970)

I have fond memories of watching this as a kid with my sister at Auntie Carol’s house, though on revisiting it all these years later… yeah, the Suck Fairy paid a visit. It’s not an unwatchable film by any means, but as the first Disney animated film to be released entirely without Walt’s supervision (he having passed in 1966) you can see why it would be the start of what’s now called the Dark Age of Disney Animation.

It’s best described as a pastiche of 101 Dalmatians (pets trying to return home) and Lady and the Tramp (a romance between an uptown girl and a streetwise guy) only with cats. It also features what has got to be the absolute nadir of the Disney villains: a butler called Edgar who on hearing that his elderly employer plans to leave her fortune to her beloved cats – with him as their protector – decides to kidnap the cats instead of … doing absolutely nothing.

Seriously, if he had just let events take their natural course, he would have been sitting pretty on a fortune controlled entirely by him that he could have spent (or not spent) on the cats however he saw fit.

Instead he decides to catnap Duchess and her three young kittens, leaving them stranded in the French countryside after he’s chased away by two farm dogs. Waking up in strange surroundings, the cats try to make their way home, helped out by a friendly stray cat who is imminently trustworthy based on his voice: it’s Baloo’s voice. And if you can’t trust Baloo, who can you trust?

There’s some sweet stuff here: the dynamic between Duchess and her kittens, the effortless way that O’Malley commits himself to their safety, and the portrayal of Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, living her best life in what must be her late seventies. But many of the supporting cast is superfluous, the songs immemorable, and the animation scratchy and unpleasant.

In contrast with the aforementioned films, it pales. Simply put, 101 Dalmatians is a better “incredible journey home” narrative, and Lady and the Tramp is a better love story. Still, it was nice to revisit.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Here it is, Disney’s pièce de résistance, the greatest animated film of its canon and the only one to be nominated for the Academy’s Best Picture before Animated Features themselves became a category.

What’s there to say about it that hasn’t already been said? It’s a well-oiled machine of plot, theme and character development, with every scene adding something to the one that precedes and follows, and every frame filled with detail, colour, nuance and beauty. That it clocks in at a lean ninety minutes is astonishing, for the depth of the emotion that it pours into its run-time is enough to fill a film twice its length.

The opening scene of a woodland glen, those haunting notes and its solemn voice-over narration never fails to send a shiver deep down into my soul, and its final image of the stained glass window: the dancing couple, the transformed servants, the rose in full bloom, the way it harkens back to the original opening sequence, is absolute perfection. I would have been seven when I saw this for the first time, and yet I remember the roller-coaster of feels it put me on as clear as day.

Disney often gets (not undeserved) grief about how it “disneyfies” its source material, but you cannot deny it made pure magic with this one. This feels like the definitive version of the old fairy tale, and for better or worse, subsequent adaptations followed its lead in how they handled the dynamic between its titular beauty and beast.

I’m not sure how wide-spread this fact is (I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know) but in pre-Disney Beauty and the Beast stories, the impetus was very much on Belle to not judge by appearances and learn to love her suitor in his beastly form. He was a genteel and chivalrous nobleman who happened to look like a monster, which makes sense for a story that was originally intended as a metaphor for young women marrying much older men. You can see the trap that it lays for them: “if you don’t love and accept this wrinkly old man, then you’re clearly shallow and mean!”

Disney flipped the script, and made the Beast a spoiled brat who was punished for his lack of kindness in turning away an old beggar woman on a stormy night. This not only meant that Belle was relived of her responsibility to unquestioningly accept him (it’s the Beast that has to change, not her) but that the character development and the drive of the narrative now lay with him. And like I said, for better or worse, this film kickstarted (or at least consolidated) a new obsession with far-less-nuanced stories about how a pure, innocent, good-hearted woman is made responsible for the moral/social training and emotional caretaking of a broody, grumpy, perhaps even violent man.

For the record, Disney pulled off its own “beauty and the beast” narrative about as well as anyone could, knowing full-well that the material (which involves kidnapping, captivity, courtship and the desperate need for a woman to love a man) was ripe with problematic elements. Yet at the same time, how can you not have a Beast who is frightening and furious to begin with? To start with anything less would be to remove the power of his transformation.

So the film walks a very fine line between making the Beast worthy of redemption, while also giving him something to redeem himself from. More importantly, Belle herself is neither a perfect angel (she creeps into the west wing despite being told not to) or a passive “do-gooder” who turns the Beast into her project. She doesn’t have Stockholm Syndrome (eye-roll) because she clearly leaves when given the chance, and neither does she warm up to him until he starts rising to the occasion and behaving better.

So much of the story is found in the silent moments, like the Beast’s astonishment that Belle would be willing to take her Maurice’s place, or his visible uncomfortableness when she weeps at losing her father, or his devastated body-language when he screams at her in the west wing. The love story unfolds gently, and with an acknowledgment that Belle’s thoughts and feelings aren’t less important than the Beast’s just because he’s the one under a curse (which is where the live-action film went so terribly wrong).

These little details are what separate good beauty and the beast narratives from shitty ones. When a man isn’t a mass-murdering psycho, and when he genuinely tries to change (for his own sake as much as hers), and when he ultimately puts another's desires first, and when the woman doesn’t put up with any of his bullshit, and makes sure the courtship proceeds on her terms, and is clearly given the opportunity to leave at any point, then you have a good Beauty and the Beast.

Yet as beautifully as it’s done here, a part of me can’t help but sorrow over the absolute garbage that followed in its wake.

Gone Girl (2014)

Fandom is such these days that when dealing with a property like Gone Girl, you just know that one end of the spectrum is like: “yes, this is proof that women are all monstrous manipulators!” and the other is: “we should ban this story because its protagonist gives women a bad name and you’re a terrible person for enjoying it!”

Much like Beauty and the Beast, it’s a headache trying to justify your enjoyment of Gone Girl’s dark content while also trying to avoid being the person who justifies the actual in-universe behaviour of its characters, especially when there are real-world consequences to a popular novel/film that has a sociopathic woman framing innocent men for rape, murder and/or kidnapping. I mean geez, would a studio even touch this material these days?

Gillian Flynn herself has spoken out against actual cases in which suspected killers are using the “gone girl” defence: “hey, my wife has mysteriously disappeared after an acrimonious custody battle – clearly she’s faking her own death, just like that fictional character in that movie!” Talk about creating a monster.

It’s depressing to have to even say this out loud, but it’s possible to enjoy a work of fiction and the ideas it conveys, without taking any of them on board. Men can watch this without assuming all women are Amy, and women can enjoy the revenge-fantasy Amy indulges in without plotting their own elaborate schemes. Cos it’s fiction.

I read the book back in February, and this is about as faithful an adaptation as you could hope for, particularly since it was Flynn herself that wrote the screenplay. Stuff like their family difficulties are drastically pared down, but all the best parts are present and accounted for.

To say that Ben Affleck is utterly perfect as Nick Dunn is certainly a backhanded compliment – but hey, it’s true. And even in this case, you feel the same surge of empathetic adrenaline when he starts to figure out how to handle the situation, especially when it comes to his television interview. But the movie really belongs to Rosamund Pike, playing drastically against type and nailing the ice queen persona.

But what was most striking (and which didn’t come across as strongly in the book) was the critique of cable news, which is free to act as judge, jury and executioner on any subject they see fit. Assuming that it’s accurate, it astounds me that this sort of this is allowed to air in America; that a newsreader (who is totally unconnected to the case in any official capacity) could just spout off conjecture and rumour as though it’s fact. That’s terrifying.

Basically, a great adaptation: glossy, well-acted, intriguing and faithful to the book. Plus it gave us the Cool Girl monologue in its entirety…

Annihilation (2018)

You know what bugs me? Fandom’s frequent call for female protagonists, female dynamics, woman-based stories, and complex, diverse female characters... and its ongoing commitment to ignoring projects that actually deliver on all these demands – especially in genres that aren’t particularly renowned for doing so.

Annihilation involves an all-woman team of five scientists breaching the boundaries of a strange extra-terrestrial phenomena that is slowly expanding over the American coastline. Other teams have gone in, but only one individual has ever returned – Natalie Portman’s husband, who is now in a critical condition at a military base. Saying only that she “owes him”, she volunteers for the next expedition.

And though the five women fare about as well as an all-male team would do in a similar horror scenario, it’s always a thing of wonder to see three-dimensional women interacting with each other in a story that has nothing to do with their own womanhood (they don’t even really explain why this was a woman-only team – I think it was just a variable given that all the men had disappeared entirely).

Once inside the “Shimmer”, the women come across all sorts of strange flora and fauna, as well as what remains of the preceding team, leading to escalating tension within the group. I don’t want to say too much more, but interesting things are explored, from the team dynamic to early discussions (and eventual payoff) regarding humanity’s self-destructive qualities. I’ve even read a few metas that argue the whole thing is a metaphor for cancer.

There are some story elements that go unaccounted for (early on the women experience lost time, something that’s never brought up again) and the ending definitely leaves more questions than answers, but ultimately I like what Rolling Stone said about it: “It's a bracing brainteaser with the courage of its own ambiguity. You work out the answers in your own head, in your own time, in your own dreams, where the best sci-fi puzzles leave things.”

I would definitely recommend, but with the foreknowledge that things aren’t going to be wrapped up in a neat little bow. Now I might have to check out the books…

Brooklyn 99: Season 3 – 4 (2015 – 2017)

I started binge-watching season three and then before I knew it I was five episodes into season four. These sitcoms really flash by, don’t they. I also find it difficult to find anything insightful to say about them, as most have a pretty standard formula that doesn’t change much from one season to another. So although we have short arcs in which Holt and Jake are stuck in Florida, or the gang is forced to take the night shift, or the precinct is under threat of closure, or Gina gets hit by a bus, everything always comes back to the status quo eventually.

There are some odd creative decisions, like how Boyle suddenly has a live-in partner and a son that they adopt entirely off-screen, and some recurring guests, such as Adrian Pimento, a slightly deranged undercover cop, and even a Very Special Episode, involving Terry getting racially profiled by a dickbag cop.

But the highlight of each season is always the Halloween Heist, an escalating competition to see who can steal an item of significance from the precinct. They’re always guaranteed to be hilarious.

Reign: Season 3 (2015)

Slowly but surely, I advance on all the shows I started but never finished. This third season of Reign not only recaptures its specialized brand of teen-soap-meets-period-drama magic (with a side order of crazy supernatural bat-shittery) but begins to make serious headway into the actual history that the show is ostensibly based upon.

For the record, I didn’t hate the Mary/Louis love affair that made up so much of season two (there’s a lot I can forgive when two actors are that pretty) but it was all a bit of a damp squib in the end, and the third season starts on a note that indicates the writers want to forget it ever happened at all. Mary and Francis are reconciled so completely that it’s as though their estrangement never occurred, and the show’s focus now divides itself between them and Rachel Skarsten’s Queen Elizabeth.

This opens up a whole new realm of court intrigue and political manoeuvring, though a side-effect is that almost everyone but Catherine di Medici (because it would be a crime to waste Megan Follows in this role) is rather short-changed. Kenna is gone, Greer is ushered to the side-lines, Francis preps for his inevitable passing, and Bash languishes in a profoundly superfluous subplot involving a hunt for a serial killer.

Of the original cast, that only leaves Lola, who is permitted to be precisely as intelligent as the plot requires of her, but who nevertheless gets some juicy material once she’s sent to English court as a hostage. The younger Valois siblings (Claude and Charles) do okay, but they’re never particularly compelling as characters.

And once Francis dies, you can tell the writers are loath to remove Mary from French court. You can’t blame them, since the soap opera nature of the show means that its plot has been constructed almost entirely from an interconnecting web of relationships (and the Mary/Catherine pairing finally reaches its full potential as a ruthless mentor/reluctant student dynamic), but their stalling gets a little painful after a while.

Just looking at Mary’s Wikipedia page makes it clear that all the juiciest parts of her life happened in Scotland, and though she gets there by the season’s backend, there’s now only one more season to start wrapping everything up. (It’s all especially strange when you consider her marriage to Francis only spanned three years in total).

But despite all this, the show is… well, it’s Reign. On the heels of Game of Thrones it’s hard not to take note of its portrayal of women and power, particularly in how it’s wielded by the likes of Mary, Catherine and Elizabeth. The difference between the shows is these writers are actually interested in the responsibility and price of power as it pertains to women; whether it’s the difference between hard and soft power, or the way in which each woman manages the men that constantly surround them.

On a lighter note, the costumes have changed from Hot Topic prom dresses to gowns that are better described as “medieval fantasy”, which certainly works in favour of the show’s more serious tone. We also get a few familiar faces, from Partrick Garrow (who plays Turin on Killjoys) to John Barrowman himself as a Scottish clan leader. More than anything else, it’s just fun to watch.

Yet it ends on a bittersweet note: history is set in stone, and we already know that despite her passionate declamations, Mary ain’t winning this.

iZombie: Season 3 (2017)

iZombie finished its fifth and final season earlier this year, which seemed the impetus for me to pick up where I left off. Though it never became a huge hit, five full seasons is certainly nothing to be ashamed of, and it manages to juggle an overarching zombie apocalypse plot (with a twist, given our protagonists are the zombies) with weekly cases that hinge on our heroine’s unique skill-set: visions brought on by eating the brains of murder victims.

Yes, this show truly has the most bonkers premise I’ve ever come across: when Liv Moore is scratched by a zombie at a boat party, she herself transforms into an undead brain-eater. Actually, scratch the “undead” part of that equation, as in this story zombie-ism is more akin to a disease than anything supernatural – complete with specialized food and medical cures.

In order to prevent herself from reverting into a mindless zombie state, Liv gets a job in the morgue in order to access fresh brains, discovering in the process that they bring on visions of the deceased’s life – and since she’s largely feasting on murder victims, they can provide clues as to how each person died.

Yeah, it’s a lot. But the writing and performances have a lightness to them that invites the viewer to just go with the flow, and everyone has a lot of fun with the fact that Liv also takes on some of the personality traits of each victim after having consumed their brain.

All that said, this season struggles a little, churning wildly through a whodunit/conspiracy plot that takes place largely off-screen. Would you believe that there’s a zombie coverup going on, including a family murder, prison suicides, infected teenagers, government conspiracies, mayoral campaigning and an infected dog that our main cast barely get involved with? The denouement finally comes with a confession from the mastermind who has only been a peripheral character, and who’s immediately killed by a supporting character before any of our heroes even turn up! It’s a baffling way to go about telling a story, and because the leads are barely involved, nearly impossible to keep track of.

There are still some strands I’m not entirely sure were wrapped up properly: do we ever find out who stole the cure from Ravi’s lab? Or what the deal was with the secret room in the D&D player’s apartment?

They also start stretching the established rules with Liv’s brain-eating side-effects: in the past she’s usually taken on the basic personality traits and skill sets of the victims; but now it’s like she transforms into a totally different person. On dominatrix brains for example, she wanders around in leather issuing commands to everyone she meets – you don’t need me to tell you that dominatrixes do not act like this 100% of the time.

Later she eats the brain of a kindergarten teacher and starts talking to everyone in a little baby voice, which makes absolutely no sense considering the man only used this on children in the classroom. Even the show itself inadvertently highlights the absurdity of what’s going on, as Liv ends up interviewing the man’s girlfriends, and they’re absolutely baffled at her behaviour, which clearly bears no resemblance to the guy they were sleeping with.

I can see why it would be tempting to run with the gag of Liv taking on bizarre personality traits, but it contradicts the show’s established rules, and feels more like a mental illness analogy than a narrative tool.

It’s also clear that at this point they have no idea what to do with Blaine (like Sylar back in Heroes, he’s done his dash as a villain, but the actor is so charismatic the writers clearly don’t want to get rid of him) and though Ravi is usually a highlight of the show, here he’s reduced to a miserable Nice Guy™ who mopes after Liv’s best friend Peyton and generally makes an ass of himself. 

In fact, the MVP of this season is definitely Clive Babineaux, Liv’s police partner who is now in on the zombie secret and doing his best to provide a human ally to the cause. He has a great season, possibly because the case-by-case investigations are the selling point of the show, and that’s the part he’s mostly involved in.

But hey, I’m in it for the long haul. Let’s hope they right the boat in season four.

Killjoys: Season 5 (2019)

As with iZombie, Killjoys made it to a very respectable five seasons before going out on its own terms this year, and I’m gonna miss this fairly breezy, always witty, sci-fi… lark? Romp? Those words sound a little patronizing, but as this show was fundamentally about having some fun with its premise (as well following in the ever-lingering spirit of Firefly) they’re the ones that fit.

By this point, the plot is pretty impenetrable. There’s a being called the Lady, and I’m not entirely sure what she is or where she’s from (well, I know she’s from the Green, but don’t ask me what on earth that is) or even exactly what she wants. Terraforming Old Town with mind-altering rain to give a bunch of tentacled aliens a home planet? I think?

Whatever, our intrepid band of killjoys have to stop her. In terms of the central trio of Dutch, Johnny and D’avin, the show does well. Their relationship has always been the heart of the story, and the writers make sure that every dynamic is given time and space to be wrapped up, while still hinting at further change and development. Zeph also gets a good season, with one episode in particular delving into her roots, as does Khylen (lord, I hate that spelling) whose relationship with Dutch surprisingly takes centre-stage in the grand finale.

Sadly, it’s the supporting cast that suffer. The likes of Fancy, Turin, Pree, Jack, Aneela and Delle Seyah Kendry are present, but none of them are given anything particularly meaty or crucial to do (except, oddly enough, Gared). Jack in particular seems oddly superfluous, especially in the context of the show in its entirety. Born as a sort of “miracle child” with a grand destiny, he… doesn’t really do much of note – in this season or any other.

Which probably has a lot to do with Dutch and the boys spending most of the season either brainwashed or separated from the rest of the crew. So much time is spent off the usual planets that it feels like the writers had ideas concerning set-pieces brewing for years and only just realized this was their last chance to use them. So we get episodes set on the prison ship, the military theme park, and a religious sect, and it’s not that any of them are bad persay, but it’s a surprise to be spending so much time away from familiar locations so close to the finish line.

Still, the season commits to a happy ending while still leaving the door open for more adventures (it reminds me a lot of The Musketeers in that respect) in that it’s less like an ending as it is one chapter closing and another beginning. Johnny is heading out on his own for a while, the mystery of Pip’s inexplicable return remains unsolved, Delle Seyah gets away with far more than she deserves, the hatchlings still present a big problem – even Clara and the hackmod factory, which was perhaps this show’s biggest dropped plot-thread, gets a shout-out in literally the show’s final seconds.

The stories go on, and so do the killjoys. This was as good an ending as I could have expected, especially since it feels no need to throw in any last second tragic deaths – unlike other shows that have ended this year. Killjoys knew what it was, and delivered.

Disenchantment: Season 2 (2019)

I enjoy Disenchantment, but… well, I wish it was better than it is. The characters are lovable, the animation is beautiful, the premise is solid – so why is it just mildly entertaining? My friend’s brother had a suggestion: that whereas Futurama could call upon all of sci-fi to shape its stories, Disenchantment has a relatively small pool of fantasy stories to parody. I’m… not entirely sure about that, since you have ALL of mythology and folklore to delve into, but it’s also clear that with forays into Hell and “steampunk land”, the show is struggling just a little.

There are two types of episodes at work in Disenchantment: standalone stories in which the extended cast deal with the difficulties of living in a medieval fantasy realm (they’re pretty trope-heavy and not hugely funny), and ones that deal with the overarching story of Bean’s mysterious destiny, her mother’s masterplan, and the various clues that point to… something important. Two seasons in and we’re still not any closer to figuring out what this might be, but as it’s the most interesting part of a show that’s airing on Netflix, notorious for cancelling seasons after two outings, I’m getting twitchy.

Bean is still a total delight, and mercifully Elfo has been toned down (the ship-tease seems to have been abandoned, and THANK GOD. NO ONE wanted that. NO ONE), but Luci has also been defanged a little. Wasn’t he part of Dagmar’s nefarious plan, sent to watch over Bean for some undisclosed reason? Either I imagined it or it doesn’t come up here.

Come on, Disenchanted. Be better! We’re all rooting for you!