TV Review - Fear The Walking Dead Season 4 Episodes 1-8

   WARNING : FEAR THE WALKING DEAD SEASON #4 EPISODES 1-8 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

  I spent the last two months watching AMC’s ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ for my Sunday night post-apocalyptic viewing. The show had gotten better and better over its three-season run and I had high hopes for the fourth season. Season three had our zombie apocalypse survivors trying to escape from their latest home – a dam that was in the middle of an armed takeover. The dam had been booby trapped and Nick was on top of the dam holding the kill switch while his mother Madison, sister Alicia, and con-man Strand were escaping in motorboat. Nick blows up the dam and attempts to escape with special ops agent Daniel Salazar. We don’t know if anyone survives except Madison who is washed up on a shore as the last scene of the season.

The big bad of season 4 of Fear The Walking Dead was the oddly civilized 'Vultures'

  This seemed like a great cliffhanger well in keeping with the show’s history of having a new locale every half season four our survivors before finding themselves on the run once again. Then changes to the show runners and cast were introduced with the chief content officer role turned over to The Walking Dead show-runner Scott Gimple and the announcement that Morgan from ‘The Walking Dead’ was moving to ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ and a new cast of well-known character actors would be coming to Season 4 including Maggie Grace (Kim from the Taken movies), Jenna Elfman (Dharma from Dharma and Greg), and Garret Dillahunt (Simon from Burn Notice). I assumed the addition of Morgan was to goose the ratings and I liked the idea of new cast members since I always felt this show is not beholden to a comic book like the Walking Dead proper and could accommodate a cast of characters that die off and are replaced.

  The season started well enough with Morgan’s journey from the parent show conclusion to the All-Out War arc in Virginia to the southwest where he meets Althea (Grace) and John Dorie (Dillahunt) and the trio form an unlikely alliance after battling a group of scavengers with the help of Althea’s awesome fully loaded SWAT vehicle. At the end of the episode the trio are shanghaied by main cast members Nick, Alicia, and Strand.

  For me this was the high point of the season as the remaining seven episodes in the half-season turned into a mashup of flashbacks detailing the fall of the baseball stadium home that the original survivors had apparently spent a year in before being besieged by a group called ‘The Vultures’ who ride around the area scavenging everything that can be scavenged and trapping zombies in buildings or oil tanks or etc… while leaving banners proclaiming the zombie inventory outside each container. The Vultures send the young girl Charley in the stadium to get intel and then camp in the stadium parking lot where they offer the residents a choice of joining the Vultures or dying of starvation because of the weevil infestation of the crops.

Great set pieces like this zombie invasion failed to make up for the poor storytelling...

  The action continues to switch from the past to the present. There are some veiled references to how Madison found the rest of the group which would have made an interesting half season in itself except we have been fast forwarded to a disconnected future that we are seeing in the past. We never see Madison in the present and the rest of the cast hints around a terrible fate that befell the stadium at the hands of the Vultures but we also never see that until the season finale. One major event takes place in the third episode when Nick is shot dead by Charley after killing her ‘Vulture guardian’ in a fit of rage. The death was sudden and shocking and a high point of the season. I liked Nick the character a lot but the death seemed foreordained as it was revealed that actor Frank Dillane wanted off the show. The death was folded nicely into Morgan’s story arc as he warned Nick that killing the Vulture wasn’t going to work out the way he wanted and even seemed to be getting through to him before his untimely death. What made the death less meaningful was that Nick continued to show up in flashbacks with a lesser role in each episode.

The real time death of Nick was much more shocking than if it had been presented in flashback version...

  The season continued to teeter-totter between the past and future as we find that the woman John has been looking for all season (Laura) is really Naomi (Elfman) from the baseball stadium. There is an entire bottle episode of John and Laura’s time in his cabin before she runs away since Naomi not only can’t tell anyone her real name (it is revealed to be June in the season finale), she continually tries to run away from the stadium and is revealed to have joined the Vultures at the end of episode six while the flashbacks show the ballpark making a successful run for supplied and seeds to restart planting food at the ballpark which leads to the vultures leaving.

The scene was intense but I had no way of knowing why Alicia in particular was so upset since I hadn't seen the flashbacks yet.

  The seventh episode has the ‘climactic’ showdown between our group of survivors and the vultures but it happened before we understand that the vultures had a split in leadership that led to one group deciding to take the ballpark by force using all their stashed zombies while the other group wants to leave the ballpark alone. The siege ends the seventh episode flashback while the current day timeline has our survivors heading back to the ballpark to get medical supplies. In the mid-season finale we see an interview between Althea (a compulsive journalist that tapes the story of everyone she meets) and Madison between the end of season three and the discovery of the ballpark, fights between our survivor factions, and Madison sacrificing herself by leading the zombies into the ballpark and locking herself and the zombies in the stadium while the rest of the crew escapes. The finale ends with our survivors settling their differences over a feast of ramen noodles and ready for more adventures in the second half of the season. Yes, all it took was some ramen noodles to get everyone to forget their differences.

  The new characters were great, the music and cinematography gripping, and there was more than enough zombie action to make this half season a great one but the constant time jumps led to a confusing story line that made the half season a jumbled mess. It is possible that binge watchers may find this half season more cohesive but I doubt it. Not seeing the missing parts between the end of season three at the dam and the beginnings of the ballpark and having almost all the ballpark scenes in flashback made me not care about the ballpark at all. The struggles of the survivors to secure the prison in ‘The Walking Dead’ made me feel a real sense of loss when it fell. I had no similar investment in the ballpark. Once Nick died in episode three there was no point in showing him in flashbacks in the rest of the season. Having the dual timelines was a bold move that didn’t pay off due to poor storytelling. It would have been far better to have had the timeline run in sequence even if Madison’s ‘death’ (we never saw her die, after all) had to happen in episode four or five. A sequential timeline would have left no doubt to the characters motivations (why Nick wanted to kill Charley’s Vulture guardian and why Alicia wants Naomi dead so bad) instead of leaving the viewers wondering why our characters were getting so out of character.

Madison's death would have been much more effective if told in real time instead of flashback-style.

  The best thing that can be said about this half season is that it is over. Hopefully with what amounts to a new interesting cast with holdovers Strand, Alicia, and Luciana (Nick’s old girlfriend who took most of season three off and suddenly reappeared), the show runners can explore the zombie apocalypse landscape of the western U.S. with story lines that don’t needs flash backs and flash forwards to be interesting. Since Maggie Grace is already in the show I humbly suggest that the show runners do whatever it takes to get her Taken dad Liam Neeson to show up for a guest spot or even be a series regular. Neeson’s Bryan Mills character would instantly be the baddest actor in the apocalypse and would give an astronomical boost to the sagging ratings. Failing landing Neeson, I hope Daniel Salazar can make a return to the show since Ruben Blades portrayal of the Costa Rican black ops soldier would give Mills a run for his money in the bad actor department.

TV Binge Review - Better Call Saul

Better Call Saul mixes sophomoric lawyer 'action' with some of the best characters on television.

  Two weekends ago I found myself alone with my beagles while Kathy went to Long Island to get Ben back from school and visit Matt in Virginia. I didn’t have any side programming work to occupy myself with and it was a three day weekend to boot. With all the extra time on my hands I decided to have Daisy and Baxter’s now annual fried chicken taste test and in addition I had enough time to binge watch the first three seasons of AMC’s tragi-comedy 'Better Call Saul'.

  Better Call Saul is a prequel of sorts to the highly thought of ‘Breaking Bad’ which chronicled the transformation of high school science teacher Walter White into the drug kingpin known as Heisenberg. The prequel stars White’s lawyer Saul Goodman who left Breaking Bad in the next to last episode by paying a fixer for a new identity saying he would be lucky to be managing a Cinnabon in Omaha’. And that is where Better Call Saul starts – with Saul managing a Cinnabon in Omaha with a name tag listing his name as ‘Gene’. Each of the three seasons starts with a ‘Gene in the Omaha Cinnabon’ scene and then flashes back to the past which is the present as far as the show where Saul is Jimmy McGill, a con-man turned lawyer with his own cast of characters including a lawyer brother that is homebound due to a supposed hypersensitivity to electromagnetic fields, his girlfriend Kim who works for his brother’s law firm, and Howard who is brother’s law firm partner.

The show perks up considerably when Mike Ehrmantraut is on screen.

  The first season of the show starts out with Jimmy as a primordial Saul Goodman. He is not as slick as the later version but nearly as cynical and just as clever. He runs scams to try to convince an embezzling couple to hire him and shows off his pre-law scamming skills by conning bar patrons with his friend Marco. There is a slow but steady mix in the series to most of the Albuquerque drug underworld that became staples of Breaking Bad. The first episode featured appearances by Tuco Salamanca and Mike Ehrmantraut and later seasons have brought in Lydia, Gus, and Hector Salamanca.

  The progression of Jimmy is interesting to watch as his scams evolve from tricking marks at a bar out of a few hundred dollars to bribing a bus driver to fake a breakdown for time to convince his elderly nursing home passengers to join his class action lawsuit. His scams culminate in stealing documents from his brother’s house and changing the data to get the client to switch to his girlfriends new practice. This last scam gets him suspended from the bar for a year in a case of self-sabotage since the early Jimmy has a soft heart and confesses his chicanery to his brother to keep him from thinking he has made a terrible mistake and turning into a recluse, never suspecting his brother was scamming him and tape recorded the conversation. This is typical Jimmy who convinces one of the elderly members of his class action suit to settle for the first big offer by turning her friends against her but later getting her friends back by exposing his complicity. Jimmy and the law firms he competes and cooperates with is sort of LA Law in a funhouse mirror and entertaining but not something that would make this appointment television for me.

One way to bring down a truck!

  What did make me watch 25+ hours of ‘Better Call Saul’ was the adventures of the aging bald ex-Philly-cop turned parking lot attendant Ehrmantraut who is far and away my favorite character on the show. I know Mike as a enforcer for drug dealing Gus in Breaking Bad and his ‘breaking bad’ journey in order to first avenge his son’s death at the hands of some crooked cops to taking on odd jobs as a protection enforcer or second story man is fascinating. Ehrmantraut needs the money for his daughter-in-law and granddaughter but finds himself increasingly drawn into the drug business. Mike ended season three avenging the killing of a good samaritan who was killed as a result of Mike's robbery of a Salamanca drug running truck by making a deal with Gus to launder $200,000 in stolen drug money to give to the samaritan’s wife.

My favorite Mike Ehrmantraut scene!

  My affinity with Mike probably comes from my being an aging balding man myself. I have no pretensions that I ever was or could be the bad actor that Mike is but I can still dream. To me Mike is the star of Better Call Saul. My favorite Ehrmantraut scene is when Steven Ogg (Simon of Walking Dead fame) is giving him grief about not bringing a gun to a bodyguard job. Mike says if he needs a gun he’ll use one of Ogg’s and then proceeds to prove his point by taking Ogg’s a gun out of his hand, cracking him in the neck with the gun, and then relieving the choking Ogg of his other weapons. Another great Ehrmantraut scene shows him letting his granddaughter drill holes a garden hose while explaining to his daughter-in-law that he needs a soaker for some outdoor plants. Mike then puts spikes in the holes and uses the hose as a lightweight device to disable Salamanca’s drug running truck in the desert so he can rob it.

  I found the investment of 25+ hours watching Better Call Saul well worth my time. The action, storytelling, and cinematography are exceptional. I am of the opinion that I would not be nearly as enamored with the show if I hadn’t binge watched. Each episode had plenty of slow moving parts which were not as irritating when a morning or afternoon would have multiple scenes with Mike to balance out the lawyer drama stuff that I find boring. The show is scheduled to air Season 4 on Monday nights starting on August 6th. My live television viewing is mostly reserved for Sunday night apocalypse shows but as soon as season 4 of Better Call Saul ends I will head right to Netflix to binge watch the show.

The more Better Call Saul delves into the New Mexico drug running world the better I like it!

TV Review - The Walking Dead Season 8 Episodes 9-16

   WARNING : THE WALKING DEAD SEASON #8 EPISODES 9-16 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

  AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ concluded its eighth season Sunday night with the end of the ‘All Out War’ saga that pitted Rick Grimes and his hardy band of zombie apocalypse survivors against Negan and his group of Saviors over the past two and a half seasons. The show has been in a rating decline for some time but after talking to a number of fellow viewers I believe the decline is not as severe as previously imagined since many of my fellow viewers don’t watch the show week to week like me but binge watch a half season at a time. I agree that the show is no longer the pop culture phenomenon of a couple of years ago and I also believe the show is way more popular than the ratings would suggest.

  I thought the show had become slow moving in seasons six and seven but started to pick back up in the first half of the current season with the war between the baseball bat wielding Negan and his Saviors against the combined communities of the Hilltop, Alexandria, and the Kingdom taking full flight. Part of this feeling may have been because I watch a show week to week that may well be intended to be binge-watched. This past half season saw the show return to the terror of trying to survive attacks of flesh eating zombies.

  If I want to see people fight and argue I can watch any police or lawyer show but The Walking Dead gave me three solid episodes featuring zombie terror in the half season. In the half season opener the late Simon from the Saviors gave the order to massacre the mysterious trash people from the garbage dump. Trash leader Jadis was the sole survivor but had to escape from the reanimated zombies of her trashy companions. The 4th episode showed the Saviors attacking the Hilltop and cutting many of the residents with weapons dipped in zombie guts. The wounded were all placed in the main house of the Hilltop where they died and reanimated, eating survivors and spreading terror in their wake. In the 6th episode, Rick and Morgan are captured by a group of renegade Saviors and brought to a dive bar headquarters but the bar is soon overrun by a zombie horde. In a great battle scene, Rick convinces the Saviors to cut them loose to help fight the zombies which they do until the zombie danger is clear whereupon Rick turns into Savior-killer and as a bonus we get to see Morgan trap Jared (the most sadistically vile of all the Saviors) in a room with zombies and hold him through a conveniently placed gate while Jared is eaten alive! Most of the zombie action in the show over the past few years have been battles against a few straggling zombies suddenly appearing in the woods or a swamp or a sewer but these three zombie attacks were superior in their sense of menace and the actual destruction involved.

  I spent the weeks leading up to the conclusion of this season by reading the comics from issue 1 to the end of all-out war in issue 126. I didn’t have to buy any of the comics since they can all be seen on YouTube under various channels. Except for the death of Rick’s son Carl (who is still alive in the comics 50 issues past the end of the war) the show was reasonably faithful to the comics although it seemed to lurch and stagger between iconic comic scenes as if the showrunners spent more time hitting the iconic moments without reasoning out how to logically get from one point to the next. This led to inanities like Aaron sleeping outside in the woods outside the all-female compound of Oceanside to solicit their help in the war, never mind that Rick’s group had previously stolen all their guns and Aaron’s traveling companion (Enid) just shot and killed their leader. The plot conveniences (the oceansiders arrive just in time to save the Hilltop community from the saviors with dozens of Molotov cocktail explosives) were a small price to pay for the iconic zombie action that makes this show must-see television for me.

  I thought the showrunners and writers did a great job in showing Negan in a human context as opposed to the buffoon-like character spouting one-liners in season seven. Negan repeatedly passes up opportunities to destroy the allied communities, instead opting to make examples in order to bring the communities into line to pay their protection ‘fees’. His second-in-command Simon massacres the trash people and leads an insurrection against Negan which he puts down with a mixture of smarts and savagery. The show conveyed the idea that Negan really thinks he is saving the world by taking it over.

  Meanwhile the show paints Rick as a beloved and respected leader by his people but he does plenty of shady stuff in the War. When held prisoner in the dive bar by the Saviors he tells them they will be welcome in his community and gives his word saying, “A man’s word gotta mean something”. And it does until he gets the chance to stick his hatchet into as many Saviors as he can once out of danger from the zombies. In the climactic scene of the war, Rick asks for ten seconds of Negan’s time to invoke the wishes of his dead son. This gives Negan pause – just enough pause for Rick to slit Negan’s throat with a shard of glass.

  I really liked the juxtaposition of Rick and Negan ‘trading places’. Just as in the comics, Negan is held prisoner, the Saviors head back to their sanctuary to rebuild, and the stage is set for the ‘time jump’ from the comics where our survivors have established a medieval civilization of sorts until the next major threats come along. Without Carl, I see no reason to have a lengthy time jump and hope Season 9 can continue in the current timeline with conflicts between the existing communities (already Maggie at the Hilltop is plotting to kill Negan) and one yet to be discovered (there ares still the mysteries of the pantsuited-Georgie who trades knowledge for vinyl records and the helicopter that does random flyovers). This season and specifically the last half season has given me a renewed thirst for the show and I hope it won’t change from its newfound terror orientation when season nine appears in the fall.

  To mark the end of a great season I am going to pass along some of my favorite snippets. These YouTube clips will probably be taken down before long so enjoy them while you can!

Best Mass Kill

This category was very strong with the massacre of the trash people and the Hilltopers dying and reanimating for a midnight snack but the winner is Jadis's zombie puree using what may be the only working trash grinder left in the world.

Most Devious Double-Cross

This season saw the double crosses of Simon, Dwight, and even Eugene against Negan but my favorite was Rick giving his word to the Saviors before flipping his kill switch.

Best Fight

  Rick and Negan had two epic battles but the winner is Negan and Simon going 'Fight Club' for the leadership of the Saviors.

Most Idiotic Moment

  The entire episode of blind Father Gabriel and Doc Carson on the run was ridiculous and Aaron camping out at Oceanside even more so but Eugene's escape by projectile vomiting his mac & chess & sardine dinner on Rosita may well be the most idiotic scene ever captured on film!

TV Review - The Walking Dead Season 8 Episodes 1-8

   WARNING : THE WALKING DEAD SEASON #8 EPISODES 1-8 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Season 8 of The Walking Dead featured the 'All Out War'

  AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ just completed the first half of its season 8 ‘All Out War’ story arc in which our intrepid zombie apocalypse survivors of Alexandria, the Hilltop, and the Kingdom seek to fight off the oppressive regime of the band of Saviors and their leader Negan who receive ‘tribute’ from all the nearby communities in return for not killing them.

  This show is still the top rated cable show but its viewership has plummeted to six year lows and barely half of the season 5 average of 14 million viewers a week. I think the reason for the drop is that instead of following our cast of a dozen or so apocalypse survivors for the first five and a half seasons there are at least 3 dozen characters to follow. We still have our core group but now there are four to six people each at the Kingdom, the Hilltop, the Saviors compound, as well as the newly discovered communities by the ocean side and the trash heap. So many groups to keep track of and visit leaves less time for the viewers to stay connected to the main characters. Season 7 focused on a character or two in each episode but left the main characters unseen for weeks at a time. Season 8 has tried to patch in snippets of each group of each episode. It is great to see stalwarts like Rick, Carol, and Maggie in each episode but in most episodes it seemed they were guest stars giving cameos instead of the main characters we should be following all the time.

  The season started with a great premise as Rick Grimes and company use information given to them by Dwight the Savior traitor to lead thousands of zombies to the Saviors ‘Sanctuary’ compound during a meeting between Negan and his lieutenants in an attempt to starve out Negan and the Saviors. Escape seems impossible with a well-positioned group of snipers ready to foil any attempt to leave the compound. Meanwhile Rick has sent teams to destroy Negan’s satellite operations while all the leaders are trapped at the Sanctuary.

RIP Shiva the CGI tiger..

  The raids work although there is a heavy toll of redshirts from the Kingdom along with the death of minor character Aaron’s husband Eric who is left by a tree to bleed out and seemingly reanimated as a zombie. The main objective of not allowing reinforcements to free the Sanctuary from the zombie horde has been met. This storyline took the first five episodes of the season and contained intense side plots. One outpost has seen two dozen Saviors surrender, leaving Hilltop leader Maggie to decide whether to execute them or imprison them which requires using resources to feed and guard them as well as the knowledge that an escape attempt or riot could erupt at any time. At the Sanctuary, Father Gabriel and Negan are trapped in a trailer in the compound and must work together to fight their way through the surrounding zombies while inside the Sanctuary his lieutenants have to deal with a worker uprising without their leader. I found Episode 3 especially intense as King Ezekiel deals with the killing of his entire army by the saviors, having to escape from his now zombified-army, and if that wasn’t bad enough the king loses his beloved CGI tiger Shiva who manages to be devoured by a half dozen slow moving zombies while protecting her master.

If James Tiberius Kirk was in the zombie apocalypse this is what he would be like.

  The first five episodes had a lot of what I like about this show - zombies and more zombies.After a great first five episodes of the season the show seemed to go off the rails with many of the main characters leaving their lane in a rush to the ‘grand’ season finale. In episode six, Rick Grimes heads to the dump to once again enlist the help of Jadis and the monosyllabic trash people. These are the same trash people that sold out our group of survivors to Negan just last season which in show time was a few weeks ago. Naturally the trash people take Rick prisoner which did have a redeeming quality in giving us another Star Trek like fight between Rick and a helmeted zombie> Rick’s Captain Kirk like victory convinces the trash people to join his side at least temporarily. Meanwhile the plan to starve out the Saviors is working too well for Darryl who decides to ram a truck through the Sanctuary walls to let the zombies eat their way to victory. This idea meets with the approval of the snipers surrounding the Sanctuary.

  Daryl’s truck breaches the Sanctuary walls and the zombies flood in but when Rick arrives at the end of the seventh episode the zombies, Negan, and the Saviors are gone. What happened? How did the Saviors escape? We never find out but we do see despite having their vehicles blown up and there outposts destroyed there are enough Saviors to outnumber the communities of the Hilltop, the Kingdom, and Alexandria. The confrontation between Simon’s group of saviors and the Hilltop on a barricaded road is especially odd. After hearing for at least two episodes how Negan wants Hilltop leader Maggie must be captured along with Rick and King Ezekiel so they can be killed and have their zombie selves posted on spikes at the Sanctuary, Simon allows Maggie to take her crew back to the Hilltop after killing the obligatory redshirt. It was the equal of the many times one of our crew of survivors or snipers had the drop on Negan but failed to pull the trigger. Naturally Maggie heads back to the Hilltop after promising to be the Saviors minions but immediately kills one of the Savior prisoners and prepares for a last stand.

  There are some vague references by the Saviors how Eugene came up with the plan to drive the zombie hoard away from the Sanctuary but that doesn’t explain what happened to the snipers. It also doesn’t explain how Eugene has morphed from a fairly useless science teacher who can barely fix a radio into MacGyver. Another unexplainable occurrence happened in the season finale. Rick, Carol, and Jerry are driving when their car is rammed violently and we cut to commercial. Jerry ends up captured by Simon and shows up at the confrontation with the Hilltop people, Carol ends up at the Kingdom, and Rick at Alexandra for a showdown with Negan. How did they survive the car crash and end up in such disparate locations? The only explanation is that it was required to advance the plot. The confrontation between Rick and Negan featured both men taking turns hitting each other with Lucille the barbed-wire baseball bat and again in the name of plot advancement both men were able to walk away from the fight.

In a massive break from the comics, Carl has seemingly met his end...

  I don’t mind all the silliness of the plot consistencies or lack thereof - after all this is a zombie apocalypse show. What I want is to see the small band of apocalypse survivors fighting zombies and other groups to survive. There were plenty of zombies this season but there is no longer a small band of survivors – there are so many characters the show keeps track of that only one or two get any meaningful screen time in any given episode. That is my biggest problem with the show at present – the show needs a purge and get the group on the road instead of the current civilization building arc. There will be one less character after the mid season finale revelation that original cast member Carl (Rick Grimes’ son) has been bitten by a zombie and presumably will pass away in the second half premiere. While I hate to see Carl go the development gives me hope for the future of the show as it is a major break from the comics (where Carl is still around years after the ‘All-Out War’). Other characters have met an early end but other characters can have their roles replaces – not the main protagonist’s son. I suspect the falling ratings may prod the showrunners to ditch the comic arc and get our zombie survivors back to what made the show so attractive which is the constant quest to new locations and survive zombie attacks.

Coming in February..Hopefully a return to a tighter cast.

TV Binge Review - The Punisher

Netflix's 'The Punisher' mixed incredible violence with plodding inaction disguised as drama.

  Netflix released their latest Marvel Comics series ‘The Punisher’ on November 17th. I waited until the Thanksgiving weekend to binge watch the 13 episodes, watching four episodes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, three episodes on Thanksgiving, and two episodes on each of the remaining three days of the long weekend. The 2004 Punisher movie starring Tom Jane is one of my all-time favorites and I liked the Jon Bernthal version that appeared in Netflix season 2. In that series, The Punisher (real name Frank Castle) avenged the murder of his wife and children at the hands of a drug cartel aided by corrupt members of the NYPD.

  I was hoping that having dispensed with the ‘origin’ in Daredevil, The Punisher would be moving on to his war on organized crime and corruption in government. Instead the main plot brings more layers to the death of Castle’s family by linking it to a drug-smuggling ring in Afghanistan that was unknowingly aided by an elite Black Ops team named Project Cerberus that Frank Castle was part of. The team would capture, torture, and kill unquestioningly at the command of group leader ‘Agent Orange’. The project comes under the scrutiny of Homeland Security agent Madani in New York when a video of her former partner in Afghanistan being tortured and killed by the as yet unknown members of Cerberus.

  The video was sent to Madani by a former NSA agent who is shortly shot and left for dead by ‘Agent Orange’ but survives and is off the grid except for his being able to hack into seemingly every computer and camera on the planet. The NSA agent (code named ‘Micro’ who is the Punisher’s aide and confidant in the comics) then locates the Punisher and convinces him that ‘Agent Orange’ was really behind his family’s death and sets off the 13 hour adventure.

  I understand the need for a ‘big bad’ for the series but dredging up the death of Castle’s family as the reason for the Punisher’s involvement seemed like overkill to me. Since we are introduced to many of Frank Castle’s military pals from his previous life and special emphasis is given to how the Punisher will risk his life for his friends there could have been many other ways to get to the main conflict between Punisher and Agent Orange underway. Having the constant flashbacks of Castle’s family being murdered combined with Micro’s anguish at being able to see his family (through cameras he has wired into their home) but not let them know he is alive made the series extremely dark. In addition, there is the massacre of a team of Homeland Security agents (including the brutal neck slicing of Madani’s confidant Sam Siegel). The Punisher is such a dark character that the rest of the cast doesn’t need to add more to it. The supporting cast doesn’t need to bring comic relief but they shouldn’t add to the darkness. The only character that didn’t brood their way throughout the series was Punisher’s fellow ‘Project Cerberus’ member Billy Russo. Russo has a great time dressing up in nice suits, having an affair with agent Madani, and running his ‘army-for-hire’ contracting business. Unfortunately for Russo he is also Agent Orange's right hand man and gets his comeuppance by series end.

Believe it or not this is one of the least violent confrontations in the series...

  To say the series was violent would be an understatement. In all but two episodes there are brutal fist fights, gunfights with head shots at very close range, and knife work with neck slicing and regular run of the mill stabbings. Agent Madani is shot in the head, shot in the side, and has her car smashed by a truck with each incident requiring downtime. The Punisher seems to need no rest after countless stabbings, shootings, being beaten to a pulp by ‘Agent Orange’ to the point of having his teeth knocked out. The only time Castle needs a break is when Micro poisons him and when he is shot with an arrow that causes a massive infection (that is cleared up within hours after the arrow is removed. I would rather have seen the Punisher being maimed one or twice in the entire series instead of hourly. After all he has no super powers and should be wearing body armor to protect him instead of miraculously healing in time for his next confrontation.

  I liked the show primarily because of Jon Bernthal’s portrayal of the Punisher. Bernthal is unrelenting and vicious in his Punisher persona and I liked his ‘New York quiet tough guy’ Frank Castle. There was a lot of violence which OK with me but the show had a lot of warts also. With the extreme violence in each episode came a lot of slow moving plot development that seems to be a staple of the Netflix/Marvel shows. The intrigue at Homeland Security and the CIA was interminable as was Madani’s soul searching talks with her mother. The only slow moving parts of the show I liked was Castle’s bonding with Micro’s family as he infiltrates the household in order to keep an eye on them. I was expecting Castle to get involved with Micro’s wife which didn’t happen and was a nice fakeout.

This is more of the typical Punisher violence in the series.

  The overarching mission of once again finding his family’s killers intermixed with the slow moving plot development made the show lurch from one confrontation to the next. My favorite parts of the series was when the Punisher finds himself as part of the day to day violence of life in New York. In the opening episode Castle works at a construction site slamming a sledgehammer against concrete walls for hours on end in an attempt to forget his past when he stumbles on a co-worker being dumped into a cement foundation for his part in a robbery gone wrong. Castle switches from crazed sledgehammer guy to Punisher mode in a heartbeat and quickly and painfully dispatches his co-worker’s assailants. In another show Punisher saves his friend Karen Page from being killed by a PSTD suffering veteran turned suicide bomber while confronting the FBI, homeland security, and the NYPD. I would have liked to have seen more of the Punisher in the role of protector of the ‘somewhat innocent’ than once again seeking revenge for his family’s death. I can only assume the showrunners did not think the revenge plotline was exhausted in the Punisher’s stint in Daredevil.

  If there is another Punisher season it will likely be in 2020 at the pace Netflix is moving with their Marvel sagas. The stage is set for Punisher’s nemesis ‘Jigsaw’ to make his appearance. I am hoping I get to see more of the Punisher stopping random crimes in short bursts rather than the epic tale that season one attempted and failed to deliver.

TV Review - Fear The Walking Dead - Second Half Season 3

   WARNING : FEAR THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 3 EPISODES 6-16 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

The highlight of Season three was the massive zombie horde!

  My last review of AMC’s 'Fear The Walking Dead' was in June after the fifth episode of the current third season. I wrote how I felt the show had turned itself around from a lackluster second season with more action, unpredictable character deaths, and utilizing horror genre staples. The third season concluded last Sunday with a double episode to make way for the parent ‘Walking Dead’ show.

  The first five episodes of the season was tight and suspenseful with rising tensions between the Broke Jaw Ranch of survivalist Jeremiah Otto and sons and the Black Hat Reserve and takeover of a Dam and it’s coveted water supply by Costa Rican black ops soldier Daniel Salazar and Lola the water engineer (AKA The Water Queen). The remainder of the first half of the season focused in the ranch and reserve but descended into plot improbability. In order to secure a peace between the ranch and reserve, one of Otto’s children (Jake) arranges an exchange of ‘hostages’ with Walker, the reserve leader. Coincidentally, the exchange is for two series regulars with Ofelia (Salazar’s daughter who was shown in flashback fashion to be rescued in the desert by Walker) heading to the ranch and post-apocalypse first family daughter Alicia heading to the reserve. Meanwhile Otto’s other son, Troy, murders a ranch family that wants no part of the conflict and tries to leave the area. Troy’s murder is covered up by post-apocalypse matriarch Madison who pins the blame on the Indian tribe in order to keep the ranch united against the reserve.

  As if covering for a murderer wasn’t enough, Madison and Troy then break the peace by leading a raid on the Reserve in order to get Alicia. The raid succeeds despite the Reserve having shown themselves to be strategically superior to the ranch in every way up to this show. In order to preserve the peace, Jake returns Ofelia who is dumped back to the ranch. The ranchers and Indian tribe seem to really hate each other but the ranch allows Ofelia to work in the camp kitchen whereupon she immediately poisons the entire ranch militia with anthrax! This leads to Madison leading yet another raid against the Indian reservation. The raid is once again successful this time leading to the theft if an entire tractor trailer full of Indian artifacts. The Indian tribe then circle the ranch for the first half of the season finale. I was expecting a battle but instead after having led two successful raids against the Indian camp, Madison decides to kill Jeremiah Otto as part of a peace deal with Walker’s tribe.

  Madison doesn’t actually kill Otto, her son Nick does as the final scene in an odd ending to the half season that started with great promise. How many silly plot devices were there? Need to have the militia poisoned? Have the girlfriend of the enemy leader show up and put her in charge of making coffee. Need to get the superior enemy to show up at your doorstep? Have a couple of raids that take an entire Indian tribe by surprise. Need a reason to kill the founder of the ranch? Just kill him to keep some sort of nebulous piece with the man who sent his girlfriend to poison the militia!

  The second half of the season continued with more inane plot twists designed to put our main characters in ever increasing jeopardy. To start the season the Indians and ranchers are all of a sudden sharing the ranch and living together in an uneasy truce but minutes later Madison realizes from some old maps she just happens to find that the ranch’s wells are going dry. To make matters worse Troy gets into a shootout with some of the Indian tribe and is banished. Madison and one of the tribe takes Troy to be exiled but Troy kills the tribesman. At this point Madison has a gun pointed at Troy but inexplicably lets him go to wander in his exile instead of killing him.

  There is a good side to inane plot twists and the middle part of the half season brings it all together at the ‘bizarre bazaar’ which is sort of a swap meet in a soccer stadium. Madison and Walker leave the ranch and bargain for a tanker of water using the Indian reserve of gold when Madison sees Strand the con-man. Strand has been missing in action for a few episodes and is working off his debt to the mysterious bazaar bosses ‘The Proctors’ by being chained to a fence killing walkers. So what does Madison do? She steals Walker’s gold to buy Strand’s freedom and then Strand, Walker, and Madison head to the dam to bargain for the same kind of water that had just been bargained for. At the dam, more plot twists ensue as Daniel finds out his daughter is alive and cooks up a plan with Strand (whom he despises) to bomb the dam’s water trucks to convince Lola (the Water Queen) to trade water for the guns at the ranch in order to fortify the dam.

Trapped in a airtight pantry with dozens of fresh zombies? Not a problem!

  This sequence led to the set piece of the ‘zombie horde’ and ‘panic in the pantry’ where Troy (the same Troy that Madison let free and the same Troy that murdered the ranchers that wanted to leave the ranch) leads thousands of zombies to the ranch. Nick and Troy’s brother Jake head out to stop the horde and when Jake is choking the life out of Troy what does Nick do? He clocks Jake with a shovel to save Troy! Jake gets bitten by a zombie and dies while the zombies overrun the ranch leaving the surviving ranchers and Indians to hide in the pantry.

  No matter how contrived the circumstances, the zombie horde and pantry episodes were the best of the entire season. There is plenty of food in the pantry but the air duct is blocked. While cast regulars Ofelia and Crazy Bear head off to clear the duct, Alicia gets the task of conserving the remaining air by euthanizing the survivors that have been bitten by zombies. That was grisly enough but as the survivors start to suffocate they turn into zombies and eat the other survivors that have passed out from lack of air. Somehow Alicia survives until the rest of the group returns from the dam but everyone at the ranch except Alicia, Ofelia, and Crazy Bear are all dead. The ranchers were redshirts without even knowing it.

  The penultimate episode brings our now small group of 7 survivors back to the bazaar to reunite Daniel with his daughter. The problem is that Ofelia was bitten by a zombie while clearing the air vent. Madison brings Ofelia to meet her father but Strand thinks that Daniel will be less than pleased and makes a deal with the leader of the bazaar (Proctor John) to sabotage the dam to allow the Proctors to take it over. Alicia has struck out on her own but is taken prisoner by the proctors and becomes the head nurse to Proctor John’s back operation which coincidentally goes well enough for Alicia to be Proctor John’s good luck charm.

  In the final episode of the season the group girds for the battle with the Proctors which doesn’t go very well, thanks to Strands sabotage. Madison finally comes to her senses and beats Troy (the last surviving member of the ranch) to death with a hammer although I think Troy may survive even this incident given his charmed life so far. The Water Queen and all the followers that work in the dam are killed. It seems that the entire population of the dam were also redshirts. There is a final battle at the top of the dam and a standoff with Nick holding a detonator that is wired to blow up the dam in order to give the rest of his family time to escape from Proctor John and his army of biker refugees. Nick explodes the dam and the only survivors we can be certain of are Walker and Crazy Bear (who pick off some of the proctors at the top of the dam with a sniper rifle far from the action) and Madison who washes up on a riverbank in the last scene of the season. I don’t know if Madison really survived since the episode was full of her dream sequences of Christmas at the ranch with everyone having a great time and the main course being Jeremiah Otto’s head under a silver platter.

  The second half of this season had unbelievable contrived sequences and coincidences to move the plot to the predetermined showdown at the dam. But I didn’t mind since the payoffs of the epic zombie horde overrunning the ranch, the episode of underground terror with the air running out and people turning into zombies, and dam explosions were well worth the unbelievable twists and turns to get our characters in the right places at the right time. Our merry cast of West Coast zombie apocalypse survivors have seen the west coast, the Abigail farm, the Black Hat Reserve, the Broke Jaw Ranch, and now a massive dam crash and burn with almost no survivors. Where it takes the parent Walking Dead show seasons to destroy nascent post-apocalypse civilizations, Fear The Walking Dead destroys multiple civilizations In weeks thanks to the freedom of not being tethered to a comic book plot written years before. This show remains one of my favorites and the third season was the best of the bunch.

In Fear The Walking Dead destruction is the name of the game...

  The show has been renewed for a fourth season with Scott Gimple as the new showrunner, likely as an answer to second straight year of declining ratings. Gimple has been the showrunner for the parent show for the past four seasons and has shown a penchant for splitting up the cast and bringing them together as the thread to hold seasons together. With our cast split to the four winds and only Madison having proven to possibly survive the finale there is no way of knowing which of our characters will make the cut and there is the possibility of at the next season will hold. I find all the remaining characters are interesting enough to be carried over and especially hope that Walker and Crazy Dog continue as series regulars but with a new show runner all options are on the table.

TV Review - The Last Ship Season 4 (Second Half)

   WARNING : THE LAST SHIP SEASON 4 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

  When I wrote my last review of TNT’s Sunday night post-apocalyptic drama ‘The Last Ship’ I expressed my disappointment at the transformation of an action-oriented show to a melodrama centered on the angst of the main characters. The show had deteriorated so much that I had been opting to spend my Sunday night post-apocalyptic television viewing time watching AMC’s ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ and catching up with ‘The Last Ship’ from the TNT website Monday nights. The fifth episode of the ten episode season was a low point in the series with the primary plot point Captain Tom Chandler’s angst over retaking his oath to join the Navy and take command of his ship and the rest of the crew’s angst over his upcoming decision.

  I had high hopes for the second half of the season with the promise of a confrontation between the USS Nathan James and the Greek warships commanded by mad scientist Dr. Vellek in a massive Mediterranean storm and I was not disappointed. Starting with this episode the show did an about-face and gone from the most disappointing show of the year to the most compelling.

  Having Capt. Chandler resume his command allowed the writers to put away the angst plotlines and put the show back on an action-oriented pace. ‘Tempest’ featured the chase through a massive storm with the Nathan James breaking through a blockade by the warships by heading past them directly into the storm knowing that the enemy would not engage in battle because the Nathan James was in possession of the seeds from the only plant that is naturally resistant to the ‘Red Rust’ plague wiping out all the food on the planet. The way the ship eludes their enemies was reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon heading into the asteroid shower to escape a horde of tie-fighters in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. The seafaring action was accompanied by the side plot of the British spy planted in a group of refugees that were rescued in a prior episode stealing the seeds that have been the focus of the season and passing them to Fletcher (the British liaison to the Nathan James). Fletcher has been instructed to betray the alliance and bring the seeds to Dr. Vellek in return for the assurance that Britain will receive the rust resistant crops that Vellek will be creating with the seeds.

The second half of 'The Last Ship' season four displayed excellent writing like this bit of naval trickery...

  Episodes seven and eight are focused on away missions to determine Vellek’s location. ‘Feast’ brings Chandler and company to Vellek’s island that was used as a fighting arena where they hope to get their hands on Vellek’s communication equipment. When they arrive they see Vellek’s older son Giorgio throwing a party so they change their plan and kidnap Giorgio while they transmit the information to the ship. The plan changes yet again when a group of Middle Eastern terrorists that were betrayed by Giorgio earlier in the season invade the island. A firefight ensues with Giorgio escaping in the confusion, heading back to Vellek’s base which we later find out is one of the Greek warships. The crew of the Nathan James finds out that Vellek is experimenting with drugs to prevent aggression. Meanwhile we find from Fletcher and Vellek that the good doctor is adding his docility drug to the ‘Red Rust’ resistant crops he is creating. We see the experiment come to fruition on the former Greek Admiral who is drugged and is only able to meekly obey Vellek’s orders to take off his medals, eat more of his drugged food, and go to his room.

  Another away team mission is on the docket in episode 8’s ‘Lazaretto’ as the team sneaks onto another island in order to bug a satellite and obtain Vellek’s real time location and communications. The fly in this ointment is that the island is the prison home to Vellek’s mind-controlled fighters who for some reason are guarded by a large number of heavily armed thugs even though the prisoners are drugged and completely docile, unable to summon the will to fight or their captors or even disobey their orders. Our crew sneaks in and pretend to be mind–controlled as well until the mission is completed. This was pretty much a repeat of the previous episode but was only the prelude to the most inventive plot twist I’ve seen in years. During the previous episodes we have seen Vellek collaborate with his youngest son Kristos (also a brilliant scientist) to bind the cure and drug to the crops that will be spread across the world. Kristos is clearly Vellek’s favorite and he continually rubs that in the nose of his older son Giorgio. Fletcher catches on to this and once he figures out Vellek’s mind control scheme tries to split Giorgio from his father. Giorgio doesn’t bite and turns Fletcher in to his father moments after Fletcher manages to get a message to the Nathan James. Giorgio then shoots Fletcher in the head. I was wondering about Giorgio’s blind loyalty to his father and expected him to turn at some point until it is revealed that Kristos died in a mugging years ago and Vellek is only imagining him via the use of the same mutated hallucinogenic drug that was seen in an earlier episode. This explains Giorgio’s blind loyalty and Vellek’s desire to use the crop cure to prevent all aggression, and set up the show for Sunday’s epic double episode season finale.

The 'Kristos' revelation was reminiscent of 'The Sixth Sense' and an equally stunning plot twist!

  The double episode finale was indeed epic with a few blips along the way. The Nathan James heads to Malta to intercept the plants that will give Vellek world domination. The problem is three Greek warships are between the ship and Malta. The US warships and Greek Navy engage in a battle of wits where the Nathan James discerns that Vellek’s ship is not one of the Greek warships and the Greek Navy manages to shake one of their ships loose from the U.S. radar. The Nathan James loses its lone helicopter while managing to blow up one of the Greek warships. Vellek orders his boat to speed to Malta which gives its location away to the Nathan James, who use the new information to discern where the remaining warships will head to protect Vellek and manage to blow them out of the water also, killing Giorgio in the process.

The end of the season is the time to say farewell to some familiar faces. So long Sunshine and Giorgio....

  The season finale leads the crew of the James to Malta where Dr. Vellek has loaded three planes with the mind-controlling cure. After the epic sea battle of the previous episode the finale seemed rushed. The five member away team gets pinned down on an airstrip but manages to outshoot dozens of soldiers and a sniper with two or their number getting shot and even destroys two of the planes, leaving the James to shoot the third plane out of the sky. Chandler and his former romantic partner Sasha head to Vellek’s warship and sabotage it while the Nathan James rams the warship and boards it like some sort of pirate movie.

  Naturally our heroes all survive their encounter with the Greek warship, rescue the remaining seeds, and even get some of Vellek’s cured plants that have not been infected with the mind-control drug. At the climactic confrontation between Chandler and Vellek, Vellek’s daughter Lucia shoots Chandler in the leg before being gunned down by Sasha. I would have been happy to see the season end with Lucia crying ‘Daddy’ as she died but the plot turned maudlin as Vellek and Chandler have to share pontifications about how dark the world is and Chandler’s belief in humanity finding the light in the darkness before Vellek tells Chandler that heaven is ‘out there’ as he points to the horizon and jumps off the ship (presumably to his death).

  The second half of The Last Ship’s fourth season more than made up for a boring angst-filled first half. Peter Weller’s Dr. Vellek was fantastic up till the last episode where he inexplicably was turned from an evil mastermind to a sniveling drug addict searching his lab for one more fix of his hallucinogenic tea. Aside from that one quibble, the last five episodes were tightly written and self contained with each focused on a clear cut objective and was far superior to striving for the ‘epic narrative’ of Capt. Chandler finding himself that seemed to be the focus of the first half.

  Season five of The Last Ship was shot at the same time as season four and will likely be the final season of the show. The ratings have fallen of a cliff this season with not a single season four episode having two million viewers and the season finale ratings well behind ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ and even ‘Fear The Walking Dead’. A Season Five teaser shows a Pearl Harbor type attack with a South American protagonist with mad computer skills which holds promise for travel and action. I don’t think the show would have been picked up for a fifth season but having already been produced should ensure it making the airwaves next summer. I saw enough the second half of this season to make me look forward to the next season. Hopefully the show will be worth my anticipation.

'The Last Ship' will be back in 2018 for a fifth (and final?) season. Here's hoping it will be worth the wait!

TV Review - The Last Ship Season 4

   WARNING : THE LAST SHIP SEASON 4 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

The Last Ship still has its share of great action but has added a heaping helping of angst to this season's menu...

  One of my favorite shows is TNT’s ‘The Last Ship’ which has aired on Sunday nights in the summer for the last four years. The show explores a post-apocalyptic world through the eyes of the crew of the navy battleship USS Nathan James on an earth where 80% of the earth’s population is wiped out by a man-made virus. In the first season our intrepid heroes, led by Captain Tom Chandler, devised a cure while battling a Russian destroyer and traveling to the Artic, Guantanamo Bay, Central America, and finally Baltimore. The second season saw the crew battle a submarine and the leaders of ‘The Immunes’ who recruited people naturally immune to the virus and wanted to take over the world by spreading the virus and thwarting the Nathan James’ efforts at spreading the cure.

  Having saved the United States and established a government in St. Louis, our crew then headed to China in season three to prevent the evil President Peng from poisoning the cure to ensure Chinese dominance, obliterate rival nations, and sow distrust of the United States. Once Peng was dispatched, Chandler and crew had to save the United States yet again, this time from five territorial leaders that had taken over the government and armed forces. In the final battle aboard Air Force One we find that Chandler’s father was killed by the territory leaders in order to capture his children. With some help order is restored but Chandler murders a territory leader in cold blood. Not able to come to grips with the new world order, Chandler resigns his commission as we head into season four.

  At its best this show reminds me of the classic Star Trek television series with the crew meeting disparate groups of survivors that have evolved or devolved their society in unpredictable ways and having to come up with inventive methods to deal with man-made or natural obstacles. What I especially appreciated was that even though each season had an overarching theme each episode was fairly self-contained with definable concrete objectives and obstacles to be overcome. Much of that was lost in the third season and the took on a soap-opera tone as the group was split up at the beginning of the season with multi-episode dramas of some crew members being taken hostage for their virus free blood and the fight against the government coup. The show still had plenty of action but seemed more suited for binge watching than Sunday night appointment television because along with the action came plenty of angst on the part of the crew over humanity’s seemingly inexhaustible capacity for inhumanity.

  Season four and five were both filmed this year and this year’s season was delayed while Eric Dane (Chandler) battled some real-world depression. I think the cause of his depression may have been the first half of the current season which I found improbable to say the least. The season starts with Chandler and his children living in a Greek village where he works on a fishing boat. Meanwhile a mutated version of the virus from the first three seasons called the ‘Red Rust’ is slowly wiping out the global food supply. The good news Is that mankind has hope in a container in virus-immune palm seeds from the Global Seed Vault whose genetic code can be merged with crops to make them immune to the virus. The bad news is that the palm seeds have been stolen and are being sold to the highest bidder. But there is more good news because the crew of the Nathan James has been tasked with following the seeds from Algeria through the desert to Italy.

  Meanwhile, Chandler’s village is having their daily catch of fish extorted by a gangster type named Giorgio. Chandler and the owner of his fishing boat steak their fish back and the owner of the fishing boat is killed with the boat set ablaze. In the normal gangster/extortion genre Giorgio would kill Chandler, his children, and the entire village but instead he recruits Chandler to join his crew of gladiators that fight each other for entertainment. Chandler signs on, leaving his children in the apparently defenseless village to join Giorgio’s crew to fight in the arena against other fighters.

  While aboard Giorgio’s yacht, Chandler seduces his sister Lucia in order to steal the key to the stateroom where he discovers test results and eventually finds out that Giorgio and Co. are headed to Italy to buy the same palm seeds the Nathan James is searching for. It was a cacophony of coincidences interrupted by brief bursts of action as Capt. Chandler (who fights under the name of Hercules) demolishes Giorgio’s best fighter and the Nathan James has to make their way through the Strait of Gibraltar while overcoming a mobile missile launcher on tracks in the Rock of Gibraltar. In episode three Chandler and crew are reunited Italy and join forces to take the seeds which are left in the hands of Chandler’s right hand man Slattery who is stabbed by Lucia and drugged with a super hallucinogen strain of weed (one of the byproducts of the plant virus) but manages to make it to the top of the tallest building in the town which is a church steeple.

  In episode four Chandler and the away team search for Slattery and the seeds while the Nathan James wards off an attack by a Greek warship and uses radar trickery to buy their rescue helicopter enough time to get to the church tower and pull of a daring rescue. It was a great episode only marred by the many cutaways to Slattery’s hallucinatory flashbacks to his early meetings with Chandler and family outings with his now missing wife and children.

  Episode five was my least favorite episode of this show to date. There was no action whatsoever with the focus of the show turning to Chandler’s angst at his upcoming decision to sign back on as the commanding officer which not only means assuming command but shaving his ‘Hercules’ beard. The other subplots were Slattery’s angst at missing the great memories from his hallucinations in what surely seems to be the harbinger to an ‘addiction episode’, and in the only advancement of the plot the rescue of a fishing trawler which is commanded by a British spy who is trying to convince the other British agent on the Nathan James to steal the seeds which will be turned over to Dr. Vellek (Giorgio and Lucia’s father) in return for the first batch of disease resistant crops. The seeds are conveniently located in a refrigerated unit in the ship’s sick bay where almost anyone can steal them. I’m not sure why the seeds have to be refrigerated since they have been through the desert on a camel and Slattery’s backpack in scorching heat but at least there was more action in watching the container of seeds in the refrigerator than there was in watching Chandler shave and take his oath of office and seeing Slattery descend into addiction.

The second half of the season started with an action packed angst-less chase in a massive storm and gave me a reason to look forward to the rest of the season.

  After a muddled beginning with some great action, ‘The Last Ship’ turned into an angst-a-thon interrupted by brief bursts of action. When I had to make the choice between this show and AMC’s ‘Fear the Walking Dead’ I chose to watch ‘The Last Ship’ Monday night from the TNT web site. This is a decision that would have been inconceivable last year and is a sad indicator of how far the show has fallen in my eyes. I had high hopes for this week’s episode six and was not disappointed with an action packed episode of two rogue agents stealing the seeds while the Nathan James eluded Greek warships by sailing through a massive storm. With only four episodes left in the season our heroes have to recover the seeds, defeat the Greek Navy, and have the final showdown between Capt. Chandler and the evil Dr. Vellek (superbly played by ‘Robocop’ Peter Weller). I can’t imagine any room left in the series for character angst and I am glad of it. There is enough angst in a world decimated by plague and plant virus without having the main characters of my post-apocalyptic Sunday evening sharing their personal angst with me.

TV Review - The Defenders

   WARNING : 'THE DEFENDERS' SPOILERS BELOW!!!

  I binge watched ‘The Defenders’ over four days a couple of weeks ago. This is the latest Netflix series based on the Marvel comic books and the climax of the previous Netflix series featuring the adventures of two seasons of Daredevil and one season each starring Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist. I thought the first season of Daredevil was great, really liked Luke Cage and Jessica Jones, was lukewarm towards the second season of Daredevil and found Iron Fist to have a maximum of teen angst and a minimum of action.

The long awaited 'Defenders' series has arrived via Netflix. Was it worth the wait?

  Even though there are four times the superheroes in ‘The Defenders’, the series was only eight episodes instead of the standard 13 episodes that comprised each of the previous five series. This was a welcome change as the 13 episode series invariably included entire shows devoted to character development with little action or (in the case of Daredevil season two and Iron Fist) increasingly tedious battles with dozens upon dozens of ninjas with swords, ninjas with arrows, ninjas with throwing stars, and ninjas with more ninjas behind them. Luke Cage and the first season of Daredevil and Jessica Jones avoided some of this tedium with genuine villains to battle in Kingpin, Cottonmouth, Diamondback, and Killgrave. Each of these villains were explored during the 13 episode season which cut down on the angst or ninjas that Netflix seems to call upon when there is more screen time than script.

  The major villain of the Defenders is ‘The Hand’ which has been portrayed as the source of the never ending supply of ninjas in Daredevil 2 and the sworn enemy of Iron Fist’s city of K’un-Lun. This means that our heroes yet again get to fight against hordes of interchangeable ninjas but in this show we get to see the leaders (or the five fingers) of the Hand who are revealed to have been banished from K’un-Lun after finding the secret to immortality by using what is mysteriously referred to as ‘the substance’. The crux of the plot is the Hand trying to find more of the substance under Manhattan by digging a massive hole in the basement of a Hell’s Kitchen skyscraper which is causing tremors in Manhattan and will ultimately lead to the city’s destruction by earthquake.

  We had already met two members of the Hand previously – Bakuto from Iron Fist and Madame Gao who has been featured as a crime lord in Daredevil and Iron Fist. The two are joined by weapons and fighting expert Murakami, Sowande, and the Hand leader Alexandra played by Sigourney Weaver. Alexandra is introduced at the series beginning as having a terminal disease with slow reveals that she lived a long time with references to Bach’s state of mind when he composed a particular piece of music and how a particular meal was better than the first time she ate it in Constantinople (instead of Istanbul). It is also revealed that Alexandra has used the last of ‘the substance’ to resurrect Daredevil’s deceased lover Elektra in order to make her the Hand’s master weapon and forfeited the group’s immortality unless more of ‘the substance’ is uncovered under Manhattan. Alexandra shows no special fighting abilities or skills which makes me wonder how she was chosen to be the group’s leader. There is considerable animosity among the fingers over her choice to use up the last of the substance to resurrect Elektra but no open revolt against her leadership.

  The first half of the series is pretty slow moving. The first episode has to introduce Alexandra and Elektra, show Luke Cage’s release from prison where he ended up at the end of his series, and follow Iron Fist’s pursuit of the Hand from the end of his series. What little super hero action there is centers on Jessica Jones’s investigation of a missing architect only to find he has enough C4 to take down a certain Hell’s Kitchen skyscraper that is covering the giant tunnel to the ‘substance’. Over the next two episodes our heroes are slowly introduced to each other with a great battle between Iron Fist and Luke Cage, the reintroduction of Daredevil’s mentor Stick (a prisoner of Alexandra) and his escape by cutting his hand off, and more backstory for Electra and the Hand. Eventually our heroes converge on Alexandra’s headquarters at the top of the skyscraper where they fight an endless supply of ninjas while escaping and making their way to a Chinese restaurant where they spend the entire fourth episode talking while we wait for the inevitable attack by Elektra and the Hand.

  Things pick up in the second half of the series. We get a lot less character interaction by talking and more character interaction by fighting as our heroes start to team up to take down the Hand and we get to see each character’s support groups get together as they are all tucked away in a police station for protection from the Hand. The problem I have with the all the battles is that they are almost exclusively martial arts matches with the occasional burst of gunfire so Luke can show off his impenetrable skin. The only super powered villain (discounting martial arts skills) appears to be Madame Gao who can summon a wall of force with a gesture very much like the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four.

  The big plot twist happens at the end of episode 6 with a switch in villains as Electra takes over the Hand by killing Stick, kidnapping Iron Fist (whose power is needed to unearth the substance), and then run Alexandra through with a sword. The villain switch is fast becoming a staple of the Netflix Marvel shows with the same device used in Luke Cage and Iron Fist. There is a battle in the tunnel under the skyscraper with the good guys naturally winning although Daredevil is presumed dead. Daredevil and Elektra had a classic fight scene in the last episode with Daredevil trying to convince Elektra she is the good person he used to know instead of her current persona of criminal mastermind. Elektra for her part seems to still love Daredevil but wants to turn him into her partner in seeking power. It is the 21st century version of the Batwoman/Catwoman dynamic from the old Batman television series. Presumably Elektra, Daredevil, and the uninjured Madame Gao meet their end as the skyscraper is demolished and collapses on them but if Daredevil survived the blast (which we see in the final scene) there is the possibility that Gao and Elektra did also.

  The Defenders was a good series that had some glaring flaws and is not something I could recommend except for fellow super-hero watchers. When it was clicking it was great – the heroes and their respective supporting casts had great chemistry and played off each other superbly. Daredevil and Jessica Jones made a great team of detectives while Luke and iron Fist played off their disparate backgrounds to explain their motivations. The action scenes were fun when Jones and Luke Cage were given chances to show their super strength. The scene with Jessica, Luke, and Daredevil riding the subway with Jessica stealing a can of beer from a passed out drunk was an instant classic. What made the show hard to watch was interminable amount of ninjas and having someone with no discernable paranormal skills in charge of the Hand. I can’t understand going to the trouble of getting a star like Sigourney Weaver to play the lead villain and relegate her to boardroom work. It seemed as ridiculous as having the other four more capable fingers of the Hand follow her lead. If Weaver had been given some sort of Killgrave-like mind control type powers then I could have understood her being in charge but her only super power seemed to be her refined taste and that was not enough to make her a super-villain I want to binge-watch. The series would have been far better served by having Alexandra be a lesser known actress that could be gutted by Elektra in the first episode. Nothing against Sigourney Weaver but the best episodes of the series were the last two when Elektra was in charge and the money saved by not paying Weaver could have been used for same special effects to keep the Stick’s arm with the decapitated hand from being longer than his unblemished arm.

Until 'The Punisher' arrives at Netflix later this year, we can all enjoy this 2012 Punisher short featuring the iconic Thomas Jane in the title role!

  Next up in the Marvel/Netflix Universe is 'The Punisher' with Jon Bernthal reprising his epic role from Daredevil 2. Bernthal’s Punisher was a mix of the familiar no holds barred criminal-killing vigilante mixed with a confused almost insane sadistic pleasure in punishing criminals. The series will be 13 episodes which may be too long for a character as dark as the Punisher but a series I think will be great as long as I don’t have to see Frank Castle battle endless ninjas for 13 hours.

TV Review - Fear The Walking Dead Season 3 (Episodes 1-5)

   WARNING : FEAR THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 3 EPISODES 1 through 5 SPOILERS BELOW!!!

What has season three of 'Fear The Walking Dead' been like? Let's find out...

  I did not have high hopes for season three of AMC’s 'Fear The Walking Dead' zombie apocalypse summer companion show to the long-running classic ‘The Walking Dead’. Season two ended with our band of survivors split up as the apocalypse power couple Travis and Madison beat a hasty escape from their refuge at a Mexican resort along with daughter Alicia due to Travis going on a murderous rampage after learning of the death of his son Christopher, not only murdering Christopher’s killers but the resort’s lone doctor. The trio left real estate con-man Victor Strand behind as they headed north to find Madison’s son Nick. Meanwhile Nick had led the residents of the Colony he was staying at to the US-Mexican border where they were assaulted by an unknown paramilitary group. The lack of action at the end of season 2 along with the reality-suspending coincidences that made the disparate groups aware of each other made this season more of an afterthought to me instead of a summer event to look forward to.

  I was pleasantly surprised when season three opened with the reunion of Travis & Co. and Nick already having taken place instead of using two or more episodes of the season to build up to it. While the family being reunited was good news, the bad news was that they found themselves as prisoners of the paramilitary group run by Jeremiah Otto Sr., whose son Troy has used a fuel expedition as a chance to take prisoners and then kill them in order to time how long it takes them to reanimate as zombies. While Travis, Nick, and Nick’s girlfriend Luciana await their turn in the timing test, Madison and Alicia have found favor with Troy who attempts to talk the pair into leaving the rest of the family to their fate and accompanying him to the Broke Jaw ranch that serves as the group’s headquarters.

I was willing to suspend my belief that Madison could outfight soldier wannabe Troy for this epic 'spoon' scene!

  Madison declines the offer in grisly fashion by sticking a spoon in Troy’s eye and demanding he take her to the rest of her family. In the meantime Travis and Nick have escaped their imprisonment. Nick and Luciana are trying to navigate their way through the conveniently located underground sewer pipes while Travis is recaptured and forced to battle multiple zombies in a huge pit.

Travis is a seriously BAD ACTOR when so motivated!

  Travis defeats all the zombies with the aid of his berserker rage, some rebar, and a cement block while Troy’s brother Jake arrives to calm Madison enough into taking the spoon out of Troy’s eye. The camp is then overrun by zombies and everyone beats a hasty retreat with Nick and Madison in a truck convoy while Travis, Alicia, and Luciana exit via the group’s helicopter.

RIP Travis. He was one of the main characters on FTWD. Emphasis on WAS...

  It was a great season premiere with everything I want in a zombie apocalypse show: people killing people, people killing zombies, and zombies killing people, and as a special bonus someone getting their eye gouged out with a spoon! Episode two immediately followed the premiere and was a game changer for the series as the militia’s helicopter came under attack and Travis got shot in the neck. In prior two seasons I’m sure this situation would have been milked for weeks but in this season Travis sees how much blood he is losing and jumps to his death rather than become a helicopter zombie. The loss of Travis changes everything. The rest of the episode shows Alicia and the other survivors of the helicopter attack get back to the ranch where Madison becomes acquainted with Jerimiah Otto Sr. himself and decides the family will stay at the ranch for the time being instead of striking out on their own as originally planned.

  Now that our group has a place to stay for the season episode 3 showed us more about the Otto family via pre-apocalypse videotapes that show Otto as a survivalist that predicts the end of the world while selling his survivalist videos (including a survival bucket complete with a shovel and iodine pills). We also learn that Otto’s wife (since deceased) bears a striking resemblance to Madison which likely explains how Madison and family weren't killed after she tried to gouge the younger Otto’s eye out with a spoon. A great moment occurs when Alicia is invited to the youth bible study which turns out to be an excuse for the teens of the ranch to get drunk and high while playing 20 questions with a chomping zombie head.

  There is plenty of drama at the ranch as the survivalist-minded residents (except for the youth who are getting drunk and high) are setting out for expeditions to hunt for wild boars and find out who shot down their helicopter. That situation took a spot on the back burner as we catch up with con-man Strand at the resort hotel. Strand quells a mob outside the resort gates by pretending to be a doctor that will give needed medical attention and even delivers a baby successfully. His heroism backfires as he is kicked out of the resort by the leaders who are fearful of a riot when his lack of medical knowledge is exposed. Strand typically lands on his feet by obtaining the keys to a brand new Ferrari and drives away from the resort in style. Strand heads north until he runs into old friend Dante who has taken over a reservoir with his armed goons and now controls the local populace with his control of the only water supply. The only problem is that Dante knows Strand as the supreme con-man he is. Strand is taken to the top of the reservoir where he witnesses someone who crossed Mr. Dante thrown over 100 feet into a pile of zombies where is eaten alive after surviving the fall. Strand is almost thrown over but is instead led to a jail cell.

Daniel Salazar to the rescue!

  While in his jail cell at the end of episode three, Strand receives a surprise visit from an old friend from season two: Daniel Salazar, the CIA-trained Costa Rican Black Ops torturer turned Los Angeles barber. We last saw Salazar at the season two mid-season finale when he burned the Thomas Abigail farm to the ground and hasn’t been seen from again. His daughter Ofelia has been missing since the end of season two. Daniel asks Strand about his daughter but Stand can’t just say that Ofelia made it to the resort and disappeared and instead spins one lie on top of another until Salazar catches him in one of his many lies and leaves him in the cell to rot. From there we get to catch up with Salazar who was left for dead but rescued by the clownish Efrain and Dante reservoir water expert Lola. Lola has been siphoning water to a group of people Efrain belongs to via a fountain in a shopping mall that activates for a few minutes every Tuesday at 5pm. Aside from being a plumbing expert, Lola is a skilled medical practitioner who cures Daniel of an infected and burnt leg by slicing the infected flesh off with a large knife.

  Daniel leaves Efrain’s group but soon find himself washed through the sewer system into Dante’s reservoir where Lola rescues him yet again by getting him a job on her janitor crew that clears the dead bodies from the water inlets. Shortly Daniel is recognized by Dante as the black ops killer he is and gets promoted to the goon squad where Daniel immediately helps capture Efrain. Daniel is then charged with torturing Efrain into giving up Lola but Lola confesses while Daniel is savagely beating Efrain. Efrain, Lola, and even Strand are then brought to the top of the reservoir to be thrown into the zombie pit below but Daniel saves the day but taking out the goons and killing Mr. Dante for good measure.

The 'quiet' Episode 5 featured this extremely creepy scene...

  ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ has turned from Sunday night post-apocalyptic television filler into appointment television. Even the slow-moving fifth episode with lots of dialogue and the meeting of a group of Native American survivors that claim the Broke Jaw ranch as their territory kept my attention with the opening of an elderly man waking up to discover his wife had died and turned to a zombie overnight. I was expecting the man (who we had seen dancing with his wife in the previous episode) to kill his wife but instead he hugs her and puts a bullet through both their skulls at once. There was also a classical horror scene showing an old man sitting in a chair on a rock continually reciting a poem about a man who wasn’t there as the reveal shows his exposed skull with crows pecking away at his brain. The viewership of the show has been steadily declining although it is still leading cable television for Sunday nights among 18-49 year old viewers. I’m hopeful that as news of the improved quality of the show and the newfound unpredictability of the characters’ fates (as evidenced by Travis’s early demise) spreads this ratings will improve. Since this show isn’t beholden to the story lines of a comic book like the parent ‘The Walking Dead’ show I wouldn’t mind seeing all the main characters get killed off with the show following the zombie apocalypse around the world instead of viewing it through the eyes of a small group of survivors.