Reviews

I actually saw YOU'RE NEXT (2011) back when it first hit theaters over a decade ago and at the time had mixed feelings and not sure what to make of it other than it seemed like a passable horror film. But having re-visited it a couple of times over the years including a relatively recent horror movie watching marathon, it's actually a pretty weak entry into the genre that doesn't really hold up. I'm pretty sure that this film was actually billed as a "comedy-horror" when it first came out, the overall vibe of the movie is serious even although it does have several unintentionally funny moments. One thing I actually DO remember disliking about this movie was the insane plot armor of it's main character and "final girl" Erin (played by Sharni Vinson). Erin appears to be a popular final girl among the horror community, the typical badass female character that is better than every other character for simply surviving the night. Full disclosure, my all time favorite final girl is Sarah Connor from The Terminator and the REASON that Sarah was a badass had nothing to do being able to protect herself or because she was good with weapons and talked in a husky gravelly voice (all of which she did in the heavily overrated T2). Nope, Sarah was badass because of exceptional writing and acting for a character that felt completely lived in and relatable and who had a real arc throughout the film. T1 Sarah is pretty much the gold standard by which I judge final girls in horror. And Erin is most definitely no T1 Sarah! LOL Erin is conveniently a survivalist and has all these amazing skills with every kind of weapon. Herein lies my first problem with the film. I don't care how much of a survivalist someone is, there is absolutely nothing that could have prepared Erin for the events of this film.

The plot of this movie involves recent college graduate Erin on a holiday retreat with her boyfriend Crispian's (played by AJ Bowen) family. The family dinner holiday is hosted by the family matriarch Aubrey (played by horror movie icon and former soap opera actress Barbara Crampton) and patriarch Paul (played by Rob Moran). Crispian (unusual name that I've never heard before or after this film) was one of Erin's college professors that she fell in love with and when Crispian's jokey older brother Drake (played by Joe Swanberg) mumbled at the dinner table about it being inappropriate, I kind of agreed with him. In addition to Drake and Crispian, rounding out the sibling quartet are Aimee (played Amy Siemetz, an actual good actress that I've seen in other movies) and Felix (played by Nicholas Tucci). A couple other notable characters are Felix's girlfriend Zee (played by Wendy Glenn) and Aimee's boyfriend Tariq (played by none other than director Ti West who directed an actual GOOD horror film House of the Devil from 2009). The family and their significant others get attacked by a trio of masked psychos on the first night, all armed with bows and arrows for some reason. Returning to my aforementioned first problem with the movie of Erin being fully prepared for the attack, so we find out near the end of the film that Crispian was in on it all along and he wanted Erin to survive so they could be rich off his inheritance, then why would he even invite her there to put her in imminent danger in the first place? That makes no sense. Also, if he knew that she had survival skills and was 100% sure she would survive, why would the younger brother even allow the possibility of Erin screwing up their plans? Crispian, Felix, and Zee were all in on the plan so why let a completely oblivious outsider and wildcard like Erin even be part of the action? Also, the masked attackers were probably told to leave Erin alone, but there's no way that would adhere to that given she was hellbent on killing them to defend herself. She should never have even been at the retreat in the first place, yet she's the actual main character that survives the whole night. It reeks of the writers needing an excuse to have an unbeatable main character with absurd plot armor.

The second problem is that Erin's toughness felt completely unbelievable. She didn't come across as someone who could handle herself and also she had no idea what she was up against. It's like the character knew what both the audience and the actress knew because Erin was completely prepared for everything. She's just another shallow, undefined, magical girlboss character that moviegoers fawn over because she's good with weapons, the equivalent of a lead in a mindless 80s action movie. The final problem with the movie are the odd comedy moments. Like I said, the movie does actually have humor, but it feels forced and almost unintentional, like when the oldest brother was shocked the youngest was in on the plan and the younger brother yells for him to just die and when the overly quirky sister yells at the family that she can run for help. The movie had a lot of silly moments that undercut it's dramatic horror vibe. The movie ends with yet another oddly unintentional comical moment when the ONE cop that arrives gets blasted by one of Erin's traps and then roll credits. Everything about this horror film felt unnecessary, from the weird awkward comedy to the forgettable 1-dimensional characters and finally to the ridiculously overpowered main character with all the plot armor in the world.

"Beyond the Sea" is a Black Mirror episode marred with very manipulative and shallow writing. The writers throw in a couple of major shock value scenes and sandwiched in between extremely slow, predictable, and silly storytelling. First, the writers would have the viewers believe that this alternate universe could have this technology in 1969 yet they didn't have any kind of safeguards or backup plans for the tragic situation that happened to that astronaut after his family was murdered. The murder scene with the crazy cult members reeked of cheap, lazy writing with the main crazy giving some nonsensical speech about the astronaut's robotic form being an abomination. Also, are they telling me that a ROBOT can't fight off a few weak hippies? Even Josh Hartnett himself should have been able to take them on. The choreography in that scene was terrible. Hartnett's character swings a bat a couple of times, then literally just puts his hands behind his back so the actors playing the cultists could grab him. The astronaut could have easily subdued all of them, but the writing needed this boring story to happen. Why would the hippies think that the wife and kids are robots, too? That makes no sense. Also, did the government not deem their two very important astronauts important enough to have around the clock protection? Anyway, to the "plot" itself. After the early tragedy, it was obvious where this story was going with Aaron Paul's character letting Hartnett's character use his robot body down on Earth intermittently. It was also obvious that Kate Mara's character (who played Paul's sexually frustrated wife) would develop feelings for the widowed astronaut as he was inhabiting her husband's body and the two also shared similar interests. It was also very obvious that this already tragic tale would end in another tragedy. But the writing for it so bad. So we're to believe that the astronaut goes crazy and decides to kill the other astronaut's family out of spite and so they'd be even? Obviously, since the astronauts opted to keep the body switch to themselves, the world would think that Paul's character actually murdered his family, so what's stopping Paul's character from taking them both out in space at this point since he really has nothing left on Earth when the mission is over except a prison sentence? Does Hartnett's character REALLY think that the man is just going to force himself to work with him for the next 2 years they are stuck in space? The end of this episode was just done for pure shock value, but I felt nothing because of the incredibly empty writing for the entire episode. The extra star is solely for the acting of the 3 main characters, but everything else about this episode was terrible.

TERMINATOR 2:JUDMENT DAY (1991) is a movie that I recall back in the day garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success upon it's release. It came at a time when I really didn't have strong opinions about movies and I pretty much watched almost everything and didn't REALLY understand the nuances of what makes a good or a bad film to me. Years later, upon re-watching this film when I had a stronger opinion on films, I realized that T2 is truly one of the most overrated movies in film history. First, despite popular opinion, T2 is most definitely NOT better than T1! The Terminator from 1984 has now become my top film of the entire 80s decade. I've seen T1 multiple times and every time, I pick up on some nuance or plot point that was meticulously thought out and connects the story. T1 is a multi-genre (horror, action, sci-fi, tech-noir, romance) masterpiece. T1 is a film where there are no holes, no bad acting, no waste, no cringe and dated catchphrases. The same cannot be said for T2, which is in many ways the movie that helped usher in the era of childish, bloated, airheaded summer action spectacles that moviegoers go crazy over just because they have all these "amazing" effects. But if a film lacks a real story with 3-dimensional characters, regardless of all of the spectacle, it's as empty as a blown-up balloon.

The "plot" of T2 involves a new Terminator, the T1000 played by Robert Patrick, sent from the future to take out a now 10-year old John Connor (played by Edward Furlong in an awful performance). Young Connor lives with his foster parents as his mother Sarah Connor (reprised by Linda Hamilton, whose acting is utterly atrocious in this sequel) is confined to a mental institution for having delusions that there will be a nuclear war soon that will create an apocalypse where machines rule. For some inexplicable reason, Sarah's psychiatrist at the mental hospital is Dr. Silberman (reprised by Earl Boen), the police psychiatrist that led the interrogation of Reese in T1. Why would the guy who believed Reese's story was nonsense even be assigned to counsel Sarah? Also, who does Silberman think was the guy that massacred the police station after he left? Certainly not Reese! There were actual cops who survived that could totally describe Arnie's T800. Speaking of, I kind of buried the lead that Arnold Schwarzenegger returns as the T800 in this, except this time, he's John Connor's protector from the T1000. Yep, Arnie has been turned from one of the most frightening movie villains in T1 to a saccharine kid-friendly good guy in T2. And just like for both Sarah and Doc Silberman, the T800 has been watered down from T1 to T2. What really irks me is that T800, Sarah, and Silberman were these fully realized and lived in characters in T1. Arnie nailed the jerky, robotic movements of his character in T1, but seems way too human in T2. Hamilton gave T1 it's heart playing a relatable working class citizen oblivious to her destiny, but in T2 she's this unrealistic gruff-voiced psycho and Hamilton's acting is terrible. Boen was the best minor T1 character, convincingly essaying an overworked and underpaid cop shop doctor, but in T2 he's just another 1-dimensional sarcastic jerk typical of summer movies. Thankfully, Michael Biehn was spared from appearing in this much inferior sequel.

Sadly, the real main character of this movie is the kid John Connor and as previously mentioned, Furlong is awful in the role, reduced to spouting cringe, dated 90s catchphrases like "hasta la vista, baby" and teaching Arnie's T800 to do the same. T2 is basically some sappy surrogate father-son story that's been done a million times in Hollywood history. Also, I'm not impressed by Patrick's T1000 since for at least half the movie, his "performance" is essentially just liquid metal special effects. It's not even Patrick doing most of the heavy lifting. And when he does get to act, it's just him having an eternal downfacing scowl. Patrick in T2 doesn't come close to Arnie's brilliant T1 portrayal. It's also silly that the T1000 can just morph itself into any person on Earth and run faster than lightning, yet has a hard time catching his targets in this film. This movie should have been over as soon as the T1000 infiltrated the mental hospital. The supporting cast is nothing to write home about either. John's foster parents are the cliche "we hate kids but need the state's money" characters. Dyson and his wife are equally unimpressive as minor characters. No character, major or minor, stands out in T2. Counter this with T1, which had all of these awesome characters like T800, Sarah, Reese, Silberman, Traxler, Vukovich, Ginger, Matt, the Gun Shop Owner, the Wrong Sarah, and down to the random minor parts like the 3 punks at the beginning, the garbage truck driver, the tech-noir club characters. EVERY part in T1 felt authentic and lived in. The T2 characters all felt too aware they were in a movie, making them caricatures instead of characters. Another issue with T2 is that it slows down to a snails pace for a good hour of it's long runtime. T1 never let up, yet when it did "slow down" it was actually purposeful to forward the story through Reese's nightmares and Sarah's dreams and T800's repairs on itself. T2 just stops the plot dead in it's tracks for nonsense "father-son" bonding moments between T800 and John.

The extra star for T2 is solely for the effects and some of the action scenes. Given when it came out in the early 90s, it's actually still a movie that looks good visually. Well, except for all of the blue! LOL Why is this movie so blue? The problem is that there's nothing underneath all the glow. In my opinion, director James Cameron peaked with T1 in 1984. A huge reason that T1 worked and is still great to this day is that it was made methodically with real care and the limited budget (for 1984) compelled Cameron and his crew to focus mostly on the actual plot, story and dialogue and have those things carry the film. Whereas by the time he made T2, he was already getting all the money he needed to make these bloated special-effects laden blockbusters and the tradeoff is that he lost the ability to write good characters that feel like real people. It actually started with the overrated Aliens in 1986 and kept going with T2 onto later Cameron films like Titanic and Avatar with Cameron focusing on style over substance. What's really sad is that T1 is all but overlooked now because people can't stop overpraising T2. It's almost like T1 doesn't even exist. Regardless, at least T1 can lay claim to being the truly better film and also the best of the franchise. T2 is a prime example of what's actually wrong with Hollywood movies and an early prototype of all of the cringe CGI/effects-laden garbage that's infesting movie theaters now. T2 was most definitely influential, but for all the wrong reasons.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2014) is another film that can be added to the list "extremely overrated sequels!" I honestly can't fathom how people actually think this plodding, meandering, poorly written and acted mess of a film is even good, much less better than it's far superior predecessor Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which came out in 2011 and is among my favorite films of the 2010s, which isn't really saying a lot as that decade wasn't a lot to write home about. But at least Rise can claim to actually be a good movie, while Dawn is sheer boredom with a completely uninspired cast, and yeah, I'm including Gary Oldman! Lol Oldman, while a great actor, is also one of those actors who feels like he pops up in EVERYTHING and it gets to the point where it's annoying. In the same year that this movie Dawn came out, Oldman also appeared in the weak Robocop remake, which also had Samuel L. Jackson, another actor who seems to show up in every other movie, and Michael Keaton, an actor who doesn't show up in near enough movies. Oldman, while one of the all-time greats, can also get long in the tooth always popping up in everything. His villainous role in this flick is definitely one of his weaker performances as he's just another cliche Hollywood evil leader with tunnel vision and zero subtlety or nuance. It gets annoying when movies cast actors just because they're famous and not because they're actually right for the role and Oldman wasn't right for this part. The thing is that as miscast as Oldman was, he's also the only remotely great actor cast in this movie! The good guy characters are played by the dubious likes of Jason Clarke and Keri Russell. Clarke was in a string of really awful films around this time like this movie (yeah, Dawn sucks despite popular opinion), Terminator Genysis (contender for worst film of that franchise), and the Pet Sematary reboot. And Russell is really not a movie actress at all, her biggest claims to fame being popular TV shows like Felicity and The Americans. The last remotely good movie I even remember her being in was MI3 way back in 2006 and that was just a bit part. Clarke and Russell play a couple (don't think they are married) and Clarke's character has an annoying teenage son who basically just gets into unnecessary trouble. Not only are these main characters lifeless and forgettable, but also the entire cast. Contrast this to Rise with it's memorable and well-defined human characters played by James Franco, John Lithgow, David Oleyowo, Freida Pinto, Brian Cox, and Tom Felton. The roles in Rise felt lived in and every character had a unique personality and something they brought to the film. But the cast of Dawn was a disaster! I could barely remember what any of the Dawn characters brought to the film from either an acting or relatability standpoint. The only commendable acting was of course from Andy Serkis (returning from Rise) and the other physical/voice actors playing the ape characters. But their actual story was as forgettable as the humans. Dawn focuses on the early stages of the apocalypse with a group of humans holed up in a huge abandoned building that was made over into a disaster relief compound. The film goes through the predictable beats of dissension among the ranks with Oldman trying to rest control and convince the humans to try to defeat the apes and the good guy character Clarke being his main opposition. It also contains boring family turmoil/bonding scenes with Clarke, Russell, and his goofy teen son. Meanwhile, the Apes have their own compound with Caesar having some internal dissent mimicking the human compound's unrest. Movie ends with some forgettable battle scene of which I can barely recall what happened. Even after having only seeing Rise once, I can recall almost every detail and important moment from that movie because that's how well it was executed. But Dawn is one of the most forgettable sequel I've ever seen, yet somehow it's praised among people as better than Rise. I just don't get it. Rise is so entertaining, emotional, and powerful, while Dawn is so boring, dry, and forgettable. Do modern audiences just like "saying stuff" because it sounds cool and just to go along with the popular opinion? Lol I've seen plenty of overrated sequels in my day, but at least for a healthy amount of them, I can understand how and why people liked SOME of the movie, but I just don't get how people liked Dawn, much less think it's better than the far superior Rise. Go figure.

In general, I'm not the biggest fan of film sequels. Now there ARE some sequels that I do like, but often times they tend to be from horror movies, a genre that is more of a guilty pleasure for me and I lower my standards. There are a few special cases in major Hollywood films where I much preferred the sequel to the original, a couple of examples being Batman Returns (far superior to Batman89) and Temple of Doom (technically a prequel but also the second and best film of the franchise and much better directed, faster-paced, and more entertaining than Raiders). But it's very much a rarity for me to prefer a sequel over the original. Just putting it out there, there are some extremely popular film sequels that not only do think are inferior to the original movie, but also I immensely dislike the sequels themselves, films like T2, Aliens, The Dark Knight, Spider-Man 2, Back to the Future Part 2, etc. I have extremely high standards for me to make a claim that a sequel is superior to an original. Batman Returns and Temple of Doom achieved those standards. Those later sequels I mentioned most certainly did not. And you can add to that list of inferior film sequels this film LETHAL WEAPON 2 (1989).

LW2 is indicative of many films from my childhood/youth that I immediately liked just because it was a big Hollywood movie and money-maker with the "bigger is better" tag, but that was when I didn't know any better and was too immature to understand the nuances of actual good filmmaking. When I was a kid and first watched this movie in the theatre, I recall the theater being packed and everyone, including myself, loving this movie and laughing at all of the jokes and humor and cheering on the good guys and jeering the bad guys. But over time in re-watching both this film and the far superior original movie from 1987, I realized that the original Lethal Weapon had actual heart and depth, while this sequel LW2 was just another soulless cash grab where everything was bigger and the filmmakers throw in everything but the kitchen sink: larger cast, more jokes, bigger explosions, more action scenes. But the key is that while LW2 is bigger, it most definitely is NOT better! The characters are silly and one-dimensional, the jokes are dumb, and the action scenes are showy. LW2 is a film that lacks heart.

First, the film really overdoes it with the connection between Riggs and Murtaugh (roles reprised by Mel Gibson and Danny Glover). All of a sudden, Riggs is a member of Murtaugh's family, basically his younger brother and honorary uncle to Roger's kids. I find it incredibly unrealistic that a guy of Riggs' age, personality, and demeanor would start spending all of his free time with his middle-aged partner and his family. He'd be out drinking with his buddies and hanging around people in his own age group, not having dinner every night with The Brady Bunch. It's like Riggs' traded one obsession from the first movie (psychotically catching bad guys) with another one in this sequel (using Murtaugh's family as an emotional crutch). The friendship scenes between the 2 cops were very overdone and schmaltzy in this. It's such manipulative writing that I see too often in Hollywood where they feel the need to have characters gaze into each others' eyes ad nauseum and cry and get overly emotional. These are some of the same issues I have with some of the aforementioned famous and popular sequels like T2, Aliens, Spidey 2, TDK, where the filmmakers overdo it by beating viewers over the head with forced sentimentality. I get it...these people really like each other! LOL But dial down all of the cheese and sugar, please.

Second, the humor is too much in LW2. Lame toilet humor with scenes containing condoms and a scene with a LITERAL toilet! I expect stuff like this from silly, gross-out early 2000s comedies, a specific sub-genre of movies which are not for me anyway. This film even starts out with a "humorous" callback to the first movie with Riggs trying to catch a getaway car on foot and Murtaugh retorts for him to "get his slow ass in this car." Now, as a kid, I laughed at that line but I was also in a packed theater of people laughing and sometimes I wonder if viewer response is tempered and conditioned by being around other people. This feels intentional by Hollywood where they are saying you just have to laugh at our funny dialogue even though callbacks are among the lowest standards for writing and done way too much in modern movies. To me, it's no less cringe or annoying when Hollywood did it in older movies. Good writing is the cornerstone for a movie being good and this film has bad writing for it's entire runtime. The only humor that really works in this movie is from the iconic Joe Pesci, but even he is long in the tooth at times in this movie, but also a big reason Pesci gets credit is because of how vastly different his silly and comical LW2 character Leo Getz is to the scary and psychotic Goodfellas character Tommy he would essay a year later, a role that won Pesci an Oscar. What's funny is that as a kid, for some reason I completely detached Leo from Tommy and it was almost like I was watching Pesci for the first time in Goodfellas because the 2 characters were that vastly different, so I guess in a way, Pesci really did do something special making me forget that he was the same actor who played Leo a year prior in LW2. Thus, why I even give LW2 the extra star here for Pesci's funny if at times ingratiating performance.

Third, the action scenes are too much, just existing to, pardon the pun, blow the viewers' minds. Again, as a kid...packed theatre...didn't know any better...things go boom...wow. As an adult...yawn...whatever. Just random scenes of a surfboard taking some disposable villain's head off and a soulless montage of random cops from Riggs and Murtaugh's team getting killed off one by one. Why should I even care about these characters who were just cardboard cameos that added nothing to the story? And this includes Martin's boring love interest played by Patsy Kensit. Their courtship was so quick and shallow that I just had no reaction when her character was killed off or when Riggs went crazy and homicidal over her. The first movie did it right with both Rigg's late wife and the Hunsaker characters. It had that phenomenal scene of Riggs actually contemplating suicide because of his mourning his wife's death. Gibson crushed that scene and deserved an Oscar nod for it, and this is Riggs mourning for a character that the viewer never even meets. And the film started out with that creepy and disturbing scene of Amanda jumping to her death and immediately established a genuine connection between Roger and MIchael and a motivation as to why Hunsaker would want revenge and also why Roger was compelled to crack the case for the guy who saved his life in Vietnam. Through minimal scenes of great writing, editing, and acting, the first film actually made the viewer CARE about the characters. Riggs and Murtaugh's interactions had gravitas and depth. In LW2, they just crack bad Dad jokes to each other.

Finally, the villains are lame. The writing made them to be bigoted South Africans because of the political climate at the time in the country, but also they did it to get a rise out of the viewer to doubly hate them for being the bad guys and also racists. But the movie does it in such a childish and comical way that I can't take the messaging seriously. Much like the heroes, this film gives the villains zero depth or nuance. The villains from the first film Joshua and the General were immediately established to be scary and vicious and felt 3-dimensional. I took those characters seriously. The villains in LW2 are basically silly comic book villains. The writing made them evil to the point of parody. And this leads to perhaps the most egregious sin of this much inferior sequel...the retcon of why Riggs' wife actually died! What made her death so powerful from the first movie was that she died in a random and senseless car accident, things that sadly actually happen all the time. It was the actual hopelessness and randomness of the situation that actually made Riggs' trauma even more powerful. Sometimes death happens for unexplainable reasons...except this sequel tried to explain it! Now, all of a sudden, right before he tries to drown a straight-jacketed Riggs in a pool, the main villain's henchman tells Martin that he actually sabotaged his car in an attempt on his life and that his wife being in the car was accidental. This retcon was so cheap and unnecessary and silly. It's exactly bad writing like this that's designed to manipulate the viewer and elicit manufactured feelings of additional anger towards the villains, but the twist feels unearned because it's just thrown in there for "a-ha" reactions and nothing more. I can tell when a film is trying to fool and manipulate me with nonsense storytelling and this film is a prime example. I've tired of action films that are quantity over quality. Gunfights, explosions, hand-to-hand combat, all of that is meaningless unless it's supported and carried by genuine writing. The first LW movie had a genuine humanity about it. This sequel LW2 is just another empty cash grab that tries to be bigger and better and fails miserably at the latter.

HAPPY DEATH DAY (2017) is an anomaly of a modern film for me because the actual film turned out to be just as good as the trailer! Maybe even better. I've seen a lot of movies where the trailer was good/great and the actual movie was awful. Happy Death Day is a horror-comedy (or comedy-horror if you prefer) centering around Tree Gelbman (superbly played by Jessica Rothe). Tree is a haughty sorority girl on a college campus and the movie begins with her waking up with a hangover on her birthday in the dorm room belonging to Carter Davis (excellently played by Israel Broussard). In these early scenes, we see that Tree is a real piece of work! Lol The writing lays it on thick that Tree is extremely vain and unlikable, but it works mostly due to Rothe's persuasive acting and her exceptional acting continues throughout the film as Tree progresses into a better human being as she is forced to re-live her birthday (and death day) many times until she finds out the identity of her killer. The movie tackles Groundhog Day with nonstop humor, twists, and turns and a winning supporting cast. In addition to Tree and Carter, there's Lori (Tree's roommate), Ryan (Carter's roommate), Gregory (Tree's very married professor and also her lover), Mr. Gelbman (Tree's father), and last but certainly not least scene-stealer Danielle (brilliantly played by Rachel Matthews). A huge bonus for me in this film is that I had virtually never seen any of these actors in anything before and also their performances felt so natural, it was like watching actual people in the context of a well-told story.

Rothe was a revelation as Tree, carrying this hilarious and at times heartwarming film on her back for it's entirety. And Rothe and Broussard had genuine chemistry as Tree and Carter that was methodically built up throughout the movie. And have to re-iterate how hilarious Matthews was as the vapid head sorority girl Danielle. One of the funniest performances I've seen in ANY film in recent years. In fact, this is a movie where the likable cast was even better than the script, which itself was pretty good. It got to a point where I was liking the characters so much I almost didn't care about the plot, which itself turned out to have a really clever twist. Happy Death Day is one of the best and most refreshing additions to the horror genre in recent years.

Despite where the story ended up going later in the first season, I actually thought that the Pilot episode of this series "Rubber (Wo)man:Part One" got the AHStories series off to a strong start. This clever, creepy, and disturbing episode really did a good job of re-visiting and paying homage to the original series best season "Murder House" but also tying it in with the new family the Winslows, a married couple Michael and Troy and their daughter Scarlett. The daughter Scarlett (excellently played by Sierra McCormick) is a lonely, disturbed, rebellious, sadomasochistic teenager. On their first day in the house, Scarlett finds the infamous demonic rubber suit from Murder House. The 2 Dads (well played by Matt Bomer and Gavin Creel) find Scarlett's internet obsession and implore her to see a therapist (convincingly played by. Merrin Dungey) while putting limits on her internet access. During her punishment, Scarlett sneaks out to a slumber party with her new friends, who are led by. Maya (a surprisingly effective Paris Jackson). During the party, they play an awful prank on Scarlett and she gets her revenge in the end. I feel like this episode would have been remembered more fondly if it had just been a standalone. It had all the ingredients of a successful one-off story with good setup, an effective middle act, and a satisfying conclusion. Why the writers didn't leave this one as it's own thing and dragged it out in more episodes later in the season is a mystery to me, especially as this show is supposed to be an anthology series. Just looking at this episode in a bubble, it's actually one of the better episodes of the show so far.

Full disclosure, Tom Cruise is my all-time favorite actor. He's displayed a range and diversity in both roles and films his acting career more so than some of the most acclaimed actors. Prior to 2010, Cruise was one of the most unique actors in history constantly challenging himself and pushing the envelope from an ACTING standpoint! But post-2010, he's been almost solely dedicated to doing Mission Impossible sequels. And despite the insane popularity and financial success of this franchise starting with the 4th MI film Ghost Protocol and beyond, as far as Tom Cruise's acting career, I think he's done himself a major disservice. He's too good to only be doing MI sequels, especially at a stage in his life where his age is catching up to him. I noticed in this 7th franchise film MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE-DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (2023), there were a ton of scenes that Cruise himself wasn't in. It got to a point when a long scene would go on without Cruise and then it would get back to his character Ethan Hunt I would go "Oh, right, I forgot that Tom Cruise was in this movie!" LOL Another caveat I must mention before I get into my actual review of this film is that I still believe the first MI film from 1996, which was directed by the great Brian DePalma, is the best MI film even now. All of these sequels can have all of these amazing stunts and pseudo-labyrinthine plots and mercurial villains, but there's something incredibly soulless about all of the MI sequels, with this one being no exception and quite possibly a contender for worst of the franchise, even worse than the atrocious MI2 from 2000. The first MI '96 had heart. It was a tight, tense, claustrophobic, fast-paced, superbly acted, and brilliantly directed spy thriller that I can re-watch and find new things to love about it. None of the sequels remotely match the originality or brilliance of MI1. The sequels, while most of them are good movies, all feel like interchangeable cash grabs that throw in all these new random characters played by big name actors and a bunch of cringe, cheeky dialogue reminiscent of the dialogue found in like every other movie made since 2010. The first MI had a dramatic weight and seriousness that these sequels lack, in my opinion. But I guess I'm in the minority on this.

The first 30 minutes of this film was an absolute CHORE to get through! This movie starts off with a scene of pure exposition on a Russian sub with all the characters spoon-feeding details to the viewers. It's all tell and no show. The next scene is just as bad with even more exposition. All of the heads of the U. S. security agencies are gathered together in a room spoon-feeding the film's plot to the Head of National Security (played by Cary Elwes). I found myself sighing and yawning the whole time. The climax of this tedious scene was a reunion between Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and CIA Director Eugene Kittridge (reprised by. Henry Czerny from the first movie). I remember from the trailers being excited by Kittridge's return to the franchise, but this movie was so long and bad that it killed my enthusiasm. The fact that the bad guy of this film is AI is just plain laughable. The villain in this movie is called "The Entity" and it's basically gathering all of the information from every person on the planet and calculating their every move. So this movie is basically the same plot as Season 3 of Westworld, and Season 3 of Westworld was terrible. Get the idea? I literally laughed out loud at the big Venice party meeting scene between all the major players when the bad guy Gabriel (played by Esai Morales) revealed that the Entity was overhead looking at them. How did the MI franchise fall so low? Also, this scene was also nothing but exposition much like the early part of the movie. Actually this scene still counts as early since the movie was almost 3 hours long! The entire movie just felt like a long information dump instead of natural dialogue between characters.

The character work in this movie was baseless and one-dimensional. None of the characters in this movie left an impression for me. I felt so sad watching the first scene of Ethan, Luther (reprised by Ving Rhames), and Benji (reprised by Simon Pegg) together in yet another spoon-feeding dialogue scene. The trio looked so worn down and way past their primes. The fact that the movie had a lot of scenes that sidelined these older actors and had Luther and Benji sitting down most of the time told me all I needed to know. Cruise looked like he gave it his all with various running scenes (can't have a Tom Cruise movie without him running at some point), but it was painfully obvious that his age is finally catching up to him. The fight scenes looked terrible and uninspired, with characters flailing their arms and not simply going for the kill immediately. It was like watching a lightsaber duel in a Disney Star Wars show. Back to the characters, this film introduced a new one Grace (played by Hayley Atwell), who was supposedly a master thief that was key to the plot because she was hired to steal one half of the key that when put together with it's mate would control the Entity giving it's owner the power to dominate the world. The movie wanted the viewer to actually believe that Ethan cared as much about Grace, a girl he literally jlust met, as he did about Ilsa (reprised by Rebecca Ferguson), a woman he fell in love with like 3 movies ago! When Gabriel gave his condition that either Grace or Ilsa must die as a condition for The White Widow (reprised by Vanessa Kirby) getting the full key so she could broker her deal, I was like that's not even a choice! Ethan has no past or history with Grace. Why not make the choice more feasible, like between Ilsa and Luthor, or Ilsa and Benji, or Luther and Benji? Why should anyone care about Grace? Then there was the cliche scene of Ethan sparing the life of Gabriel's female goon (played by Pom Klementieff). First, I was like why didn't Ethan kill her? Then I realized I guess the director thought it would make him look bad killing a female. But this lady was trying to kill him and is working with the main villain. She's a legit threat to the lives of innocent people. I knew that Ethan sparing her would come back in some way and of course it did with her saving him and Grace's life on the train. This is one of the most predictable and cliche setups and it ends with the cliche of the redeemed girl asking Ethan why he saved her. The movie's train climax also had a completely filler scene between the main 2 IMF guys after Ethan on the train discussing Ethan's motives. And it's really obvious that the IMF guy who felt the girl's pulse and her are going to be a thing in Part 2.

The action scenes in this movie somehow looked cheaper and more fake to me than in some of the more recent sequels. Like, I could always tell they were staged. The big early car chase scene was too long and boring. Already mentioned how bad the fight scenes looked. And on top of that, most of these characters didn't look like they could fight. Morales looked bad in his fights with Ferguson and Cruise. How he took down Ilsa is a mystery other than the plot needed her to die so Grace could be her replacement. Ilsa took out that guy twice her size the Rogue Nation climax only to fall to a guy she should have taken out easily in this movie. Then the movie totally violates it's own universe with unrealistic fights on top of the speeding train in this movie versus that phenomenal train sequence from the '96 film. Somehow, Ethan and Gabriel can keep their footing and engage in a full on fight on top of a moving train with the wind blowing and everything, while the finale of the '96 movie had the characters realistically holding on for dear life and not being able to even stand up. Then somehow, Ethan and Benji are the ONLY two people driving on the roads in the middle of the day as Benji was navigating Ethan on how to get on the train. There were never any other cars around at all. Grace didn't look like a fighter at all yet she held her own for long stretches until someone intervened to save her when she should have been taken out way earlier.

This film suffers from having way too much padding. Unnecessarily long scenes of characters feeding the plot to the viewer throughout the film's runtime. Too much cringe humor. Absolutely no chemistry between Ethan and Grace. Terrible and forgettable villains. Tedious action scenes with a lot of obvious CGI. Long standing characters looking ragged and bored. I'm at a point where I simply have MI fatigue and as much as I'm not a fan of the MI sequels in general, even I could totally tell that this movie Dead Reckoning Part 1 is nowhere near as good as MI3, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, or Fallout. The only sequel Dead Reckoning Part 1 may exceed in the franchise is MI2, which is not saying much as that movie is terrible. Obviously, there will be a Dead Reckoning Part 2 and my hope is that it will be the last film of this franchise, mostly because I want to see Tom Cruise going back to being an actor instead of playing action hero.

This game show "Win Ben Stein's Money" was an anomaly in a good way. The series ran for 5 years on Comedy Central during the prime era of the network, with it's biggest hit being The Daily Show. Ben Stein's money was a refreshing supplement to the hit political comedy talk show. The star and centerpiece of this uniquely engaging show was of course Ben Stein, a man who himself had a uniquely interesting career. In his first act of his career in the 60s and 70s, he was a professor, lawyer, and presidential adviser/speechwriter. Then in his second act, in the 80s and 90s, he turned to the entertainment industry playing in various commercials, TV series, and films. His most notable acting role was a scene-stealing performance as an incredibly monotone Economics teacher in the iconic '86 teen high school comedy "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," the famous "Bueller, Bueller, Bueller..." guy. Then in the late 90s came this game show that Stein himself both co-hosted and competed in. I'm pretty sure that it was a new thing for the show's host to also be one of the competitors. Each 30-minute game episode was divided into 3 segments. The first segment had 3 contestants competing against each other win Stein asking questions that they got to choose from a Jeopardy-style game board where the player with the lowest money total would be eliminated. The second segment involved Stein competing against the 2 remaining players with the questions being asked by Stein's co-host and whichever player had the highest money total goes onto the final round. The third segment and final round was Stein against the player where the co-host asked them 10 quick-round questions they had to answer within the span of 1 minute and if the player answered more questions than Stein in this final round, then they win $5,000. My re-collection of the series was that in addition to Stein himself, he had 3 different co-hosts with comedy backgrounds during it's run: Jimmy Kimmel, Nancy Pimental, and Cousin Sal, who if I'm not mistaken is Kimmel's actual cousin, thus the moniker for the show. Kimmel was Stein's original co-host and had the longest co-host run of about two-thirds of the series. Then Kimmel left to do The Man Show and Pimental took over for a brief stint as co-host, and finally Sal finished out the final few episodes as co-host. Stein and Kimmel had a great rapport with Stein's old school straight-faced monotone perfectly countered by Kimmel's modern hip and irreverent humor. Pimental turned out to be a really strong replacement for Kimmel and it was actually cool to see a pretty hilarious rapport develop between Stein and a female co-host. Sal was probably the weakest co-host of the trio and didn't really seem to be quite as snappy or quick with the humor as Kimmel and Pimental, but he was still OK. Kimmel was obviously the most successful of the group as he has gone on to host his own popular nighttime ABC talk show The Jimmy Kimmel Show. Pimental sent onto do a few writing and acting gigs and for some reason, I mistakenly assumed she was a stand-up comedian as she really gave off that vibe. I recognize Sal as a sports analyst from random sports shows. Being biased here but the cute and attractive Pimental was my favorite co-host as I had a major crush on her from this show! LOL The early season intros were the best where Stein was more boisterous and vitriolic while the intro got watered down a bit in the waning years, most probably due to political correctness. Stein's monotone personality meshed well with the outgoing comic personas of his respective co-hosts to make for a refreshing and original game show during the late 90s-early 00s era.

Very reluctantly, I finally got around to seeing THE FLASH (2023) in the theater and it's even worse than I expected! The film had one of the most uneven tones of any major Hollywood movie I've ever seen. Generally, the film came across as very obnoxiously ingratiating. None of the dramatic stuff hit for me because I was always waiting for a punchline. And even in the action scenes, it felt like nothing was ever really happening. The early scene of Flash (Ezra Miller), Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) saving Gotham is a prime example. Flash and Batman spent an inordinate amount of time messing around instead of just saving the day, then in typical modern Hollywood fashion, the female hero Wonder Woman had to come in and finish the job. Batman took forever and a day to catch those toxin thieves while Flash was just standing around cracking jokes with a hospital building imploding and falling CGI babies and an unappealing screaming nurse. In fact all of the CGI in that scene looked pretty bad as well as virtually the rest of the movie. The scene ends with the dubious trio cracking jokes in the midst of death and destruction, a lot of which they caused.

My disdain for this movie actually has zero to do with star Ezra Miller's (who plays Barry Allen AKA The Flash) off-screen antics. It's simply that I find his version of Barry/Flash unbearable, disgusting, and unlikable. The whole nonstop cringe, jittery humor is very off-putting and I swear he spent half the movie with food on his face. And to make things worse there were TWO versions of him in this movie. I like how they thought having longer hair on the younger 18-year old Barry would distract from the fact that both he and the shorter-haired near 30-year old Barry look the same age! Lol Miller's constant unfunny jokes and overall silliness throughout the film were way too much and I wish he were more even-toned.

The first half of this film was an absolute slog to endure. There was the aforementioned overlong opening action scene followed by excruciatingly dull scenes of Barry's personal life which includes his 2 nerdy co-workers (one guy, one gal), his cliche overbearing boss, and his potential girlfriend, the incredibly bland Iris West. I've made no secret that I can't stand the TV version of Iris from the CW series, but this girl takes irrelevant to a whole other level. The actress was pretty bad with very flat line delivery and she and Miller had no chemistry whatsoever. And on the topic of females in this movie, between Bland Iris, Screaming Nurse, and Plain Co-Worker Girl, when and why exactly did Hollywood decide to stop casting actual hot actresses? Remember when females in superhero movies used to be beautiful and gorgeous? I do! After this wasteful look into Barry's personal life, he randomly gets the idea to go back in time to save his Mom, thus the movie's actual plot. Speaking of, how exactly did a Hispanic lady and the guy from Office Space sire Ezra Miller? Lol Hollywood just doesn't care about believability in any arena anymore.

After Barry figures out time travel and goes back to save his Mom, as he tries to get back to 2023, he instead ends up in 2013 instead circa the events of Man of Steel where General Zod (reprised by Michael Shannon) is using his World Engine to take over the planet. Also, Barry runs into his 18-year old self and in the process of getting him his powers, Barry loses his. Barry has screwed up time and there are no metahumans on the alternate 2013 Earth. The only superhero is Michal Keaton's Batman, who is now an old hermit shelled off in his decrepit manor. Apparently, Gotham is crime-free (yeah, right), so no need for him to superhero anymore. Even though Keaton admirably tried his hardest and he's the only reason I wanted to even watch this film, he just couldn't remotely save this film for me. I was actually annoyed by his opening scene flying around the kitchen chandelier attacking the 2 Barrys. It looked pretty silly and cringe, much like most of the action in this movie. Keaton's acting was actually on point, but sadly stuck in an awfully constructed movie. The writers also awkwardly inserted some of his iconic lines from the Burton movies like "you wannat get nuts?" and "how much do you weigh?" and they just came across as try-hard.

After an unconvincing scene of Barry convincing Keaton's Bruce to resume his cape and cowl help save the world, Bruce and the 2 Barrys head to Russia to save Superman from an Arctic imprisonment, but they instead find another Kryptonian, Kal-el's older cousin Kara (played by newcomer Sasha Callie) after they rescue her, of course she rescues them (girl power, ya know). They quartet head back to Wayne Manor and a bunch of randomness happens: Kara goes off to see what's up with Zod and the military, Bruce sets up some contraption to get Barry his powers back, Barry #2 overhears Bruce and Barry talk about his Mom's death, etc. Etc. They all go off to fight Zod and his crew in one of the most worthless and confusing fight sequences ever. Basically, it's just the 2 Barrys standing around talking while the fighting is going on, Kara messing around with Zod, Batman flying around, and CGI soldiers running around in the background. THIS terrible sequence was the climax. The 2 Barrys go back in time to try and save Kara and Bruce, meet up with an even older version of Barry, realize they can't change anything, so Barry goes back to make it so his Mom dies and restores the timeline...sort of.

The fact that this movie had what should have been an incredibly emotional plot and payoff and left me feeling nothing says it all. There was so much nonstop comedy and bad jokes that didn't land that it took me out of the movie. As much as I eventually turned on the CW TV series, at least for the first couple of seasons of The Flash, they did a good job making the viewer feel emotions towards Barry and his relationships with his friends and his parents and feel for his mother's death. And the show even had a lot of humor, but somehow balanced it well with the serious, at least in it's first 2 seasons. This film was overloaded with cringe comedy to the point that the drama fell flat. And Keaton's serious gravitas he brought as Batman in the Tim Burton movies just doesn't fit in with these silly 21st century superhero films. I'm personally not a fan of the cringe, cartoony vibe of post 2010-superhero movies and all the CGI and fake-looking fight scenes and saccharine surface emotions. From what I hear, this Flash film is the end of the dubious era for the DCEU movies initiated in 2013 with Man of Steel and even though popular opinion is seems to think this movie is actually good, I think it's almost bottom of the barrel with some of the worst DCEU output like Justice League and Wonder Woman 1984. I certainly don't think that it deserves it's current lofty rating of 7.2. Switch those digits around then we might be onto something.

This episode "Mazey Day" is easily the worst of Black Mirror. Set circa 2005, the plot involves a persistent and desperate (is there any other kind?) paparazzi photographer (played by Zazie Beetz from Joker) who is struggling to survive in Los Angeles. All the cliche plot beats and characterizations are there. None of the characters are memorable and just come off as bland and cliche. The main character is the typical protagonist who is the only one of her peer group that possesses any kind of a conscience. Then there's the supporting cast consisting of (1) the frenemy potential love interest rival photographer, (2) the slimy uncaring tabloid boss and equally slimy other rival photographers, and (3) the weird and VERY annoying neighbor. This neighbor is so shy that he actually reads from cue cards as a subsitute for natural interaction. How quirky of you, writers! Lol The flip side of this boring story involves the title character Mazey Day (played by Clara Rugaard from the Netflix movie I Am Mother), a Hollywood starlet who goes missing after an overseas movie shoot, and the reason she goes missing is that she is in disarray after a hit and run accident that she caused by driving under the influence. So Mazey goes into hiding. The magazine publisher promises 30,000 dollars as incentive to get photos of Mazey Day, wherever she is. The lady photographer sets off on a mission to locate the missing actress and through a series of convenient plot devices, she and her cohorts find her at a remote wellness retreat in the California Valley. As stated, everything was just handed to the main character on a silver platter to find the actress. This includes an incredibly shallow scene of that curly-haired, bug-eyed diner worker (could have done without close-ups of this guy) telling her exactly where the actress was heading. The plot couldn't be any more transparent and the dialogue nothing but exposition with characters explaining their actions and stating the obvious. The payoff of this episode was shocking in a bad way. Werewolves? Really, Black Mirror writers? This series is supposed to be about the horrors of technology, not ACTUAL horror! I can totally see the writers in the writing room patting themselves on the back for this cheap, tacky ending. If I wanted horror, I would watch actual horror anthology shows like American Horror Stories or re-runs of Tales from the Crypt or The Twilight Zone. Black Mirror is not supposed to be a supernatural series. The climactic chase scene was a tiresome retread of scenes from other horror output with the very predictable ending of the heavily plot-armored main character miraculously surviving. I get it Black mirror writers. Paparazzi will do anything for a photo, a story, and a big payday. Also, famous people aren't everything the public thinks they are and have secrets. And these "messages" were delivered in the most ham-fisted way possible in what is now the worst episode of the series.

This second episode of Season 6 entitled "Loch Henry" actually got off to an entertaining start with the couple visiting the boyfriend's mother. The next day they visit the local pub. The bartender was by far the best character and the actor stole every scene he was in. Every one of his lines was on point. The best scene was the early one in the bar with the boyfriend and bartender telling the girlfriend (more on her later) the story of the missing couple and the serial killing village pariah from the late 90s. The flashback imagery while they were telling the story was well done. But it was pretty much downhill from there as the episode degenerated into a crime drama/horror story complete with the predictable fakeout killer twists and horror movie chase scene. First, the bartender's Dad was a really bad plot device, doing virtually nothing for the entire episode, then he pops up in the guy's hospital room to spill the beans. So he just sat on this incriminating information since the late 90s. Why did he just conveniently get a crisis of conscience after over 25 years? Why wouldn't he tell the cops his suspicions back when it happened? Second, so the psycho mother just stopped being a psycho for 25 years because her husband and their accomplice was dead? Also how old is the son? He looks early 20s, yet his father died 25 years prior. And despite the story being awesomely told by him and the bartender, it's hard to believe they'd know the details (of the version that was the supposed truth) to the letter like that. Finally, the last 30 minutes of this was just waiting for predictable ball drop. Therefore this episode felt like stuff that's been shown on TV many times before. It was basically just a mystery/whodunit/crime drama in the vein of Law&Order, Columbo, or Murder She Wrote, with a climactic killer chase scene reminiscent of the final scene from virtually every slasher movie ever made. The acting was really good with one notable exception. The acting of the girlfriend was terrible! All of her acting felt telegraphed and forced with the actress shouting all her lines and over-expressing through jerky body movements. The biggest problem was how utterly predictable and cliche the story felt. Much like most of Season 6, this didn't feel like a Black Mirror episode, but more one that relied too much on cheap twists and shock value to sell the story.

One thing I never felt about this series was that it was too preachy, but this one takes the cake! Also, when did this show become about the supernatural? The makers "got away with it" by calling this a Red Mirror episode instead of Black Mirror. Very clever, showrunners! Lol This episode "Demon 79" was about some magical talisman that when activated (specifically by human blood),the person gets contacted by a demon from another realm. The unwitting activator is a young Indian lady who works in a department store in a small Northern English burg. On a lunch break in the store basement, she cuts herself and her blood gets on the supernatural item. Also, she encounters nonstop bigotry and racism from all corners during the episode, including having to eat in the basement because other employees complained about the smell of her food. The writers probably thought they were being subtle, but not really.

A huge issue with this one for me is what exactly what was the message? Because the bigotry angle had almost nothing to do with the actual plot. The woman was compelled to kill 3 people within a 3-day deadline, but except for the last one, the kills had almost nothing to do with her personal experiences. It's like the writers just threw in all the bigotry to preach to the audience instead of telling an entertaining story, and this episode was far from entertaining.

The rules of the killing plot were confusing and contradictory. The demon says she doesn't have to be selective on who to kill, yet after she kills the 3 people, somehow the murderer that she killed doesn't count. One would THINK the reason that it doesn't count because of the 1-kill-per-day rule. But no, it's because the murderer guy already murdered someone. How does that make sense? Why wouldn't it be his innocent brother that she killed who doesn't count? Speaking of, she had to kill the brother because there can be no witnesses. That's not a rule, just a requirement so she won't get arrested and be able to finish the job. Also, why wouldn't the demon just always possess her and trick her to get her to kill to get it over with quickly? As soon as he showed the first guy's crime, she killed him immediately. Just do this for the other 2 victims and get it over with. Why drag it all out taking the chance of the world ending? How is turning an innocent person into a triple murderer not enough? Why all these conditions? Also, how do these guys just succumb to this smaller woman when they could easily fight her off? She had a hammer, not a gun. Just grab her arm and overpower her. If someone is coming at you with a hammer, especially a smaller person that you can take, you aren't just going to stand there like an idiot or act like a much bigger person is coming after you. There were all kinds of objects in that house the brother could have used to counter her attacks with and the first guy was much bigger than her.

The main character's logic and motivations were very unclear. Why didn't she kill her bullying co-worker who made her job life a living hell? She could have easily just taken her out at her apartment during off hours. Why did she decide to grow a conscience at the last minute and not kill the politician? Somehow, the other 2 guilty guys should die, but a man who is a future dictator deserves to live? So she let the world burn because all of a sudden killing is wrong, even if it's for the greater good, and all because of some weak speech from that bland cop? And why did the demon give her so much pushback when she wanted to kill the politician? He was very eager for her to kill before, but all of a sudden became skittish when she wanted to kill the last victim.

The plot was too convenient and cliche. The cops just know to go after the woman even though they couldn't possibly connect her to either of the first 2 crimes. She somehow has the instincts that the politician will be a dictator. The train just happens to come at the right time to slow down the cop. Also, I didn't think the acting was anything special. The main actress spent a good hour of this overlong episode just blankly staring into the camera. I hardly call that great acting. The demon was annoying always hovering over her like a devil on her shoulder. The remaining cast was just there exhibiting almost no personality. And when did this show just become another Supernatural? The extra star is for the late 70s aesthetic, which looked fairly on point. But the most important elements were severely lacking in this forgettable and preachy episode.

Evil Dead Rise (2023), or should I say Evil DARK Rise, is yet another generic, slog, boring, forgettable modern day horror movie. Basically a sequel to the far superior 2013 Evil Dead remake, I kept putting off watching this follow-up movie and avoided spoilers or reviews to go in with an open mind because of how good the 2013 film was. But this decade-later follow-up was terrible. When I saw the running time was only 90 minutes, I thought I could get through the movie easily, but I found myself getting bored easily and stopping to do something else. And when I can't get through a 90-minute horror movie without getting bored, that's a bad sign. I also had to actually stop and rewind the movie a ton just to try and figure out what was going on. Even as the film was winding down in the second half with minutes left, I kept wishing it would just get to the end and be over with because I was THAT bored.

Unlike the great opening scene to the 2013 remake that got me pumped for what's in store, the opening scene to this film was bland, just like the entire movie. Bland girl sitting by a lake with a fakeout panning shot scene of something ominous approaching. Turns out it was her cousin's Jerk Boyfriend playing a prank on her with a remote-controlled toy airplane. Jerk Boyfriend then delivers the first exposition of the movie of what the plane would do to a person's face. And he just purposefully flew it towards her face! Bland Girl walks to cabin to get her cousin, who is speaking indiscriminate mumbo jumbo, and then she rips bland girl's hair off, Possessed Girl goes to lake and ends up decapitating her boyfriend, floats in the air. Cue title credits behind her. It turns out that this first scene in the movie's timeline takes place after all the events of the film. So basically, everything that happened in the apartment building that night was only experienced by the main characters and no one else in the building was ever aware what happened until the morning? Even though the complex was tagged for demolition in a month, there were obviously still other tenants in the building. Opening Scene Possessed Girl implied that the thunder blocked out any other noise. It's hard to believe no one else could hear all of that racket.

As indicated in my review title, this film was way too dark for virtually it's entire running time! I literally could barely see most of what was happening or understand how scenes were oriented or where characters were coming from within scenes. This was same with the recent 2022 Hellraiser reboot movie. It was much too dark throughout to see what was happening. I get that this movie is set during a blackout, but for whatever reason, modern movies do a terrible job with lighting in nighttime scenes and even some daytime ones, too. When I literally can't even see what's happening, it is an automatic strike against the film. The characters conveniently had these objects and special skills that served the plot, with some of them being some kinds of tech experts in fixing old things. Plus they all strangely had zero to minimal reactions to being stabbed with sharp objects, like the main character had no reaction to being stabbed through the hand by her possessed sister. And for some reason, the main character was pregnant which really didn't add a single thing to the plot. Also, it's painfully obvious in every major Hollywood film that comes out, there has to be some kind of woke insert, like the old picture from 1923 with the 3 diverse group of priests, none of which look remotely look accurate for the time period. Very subtle, casting department! Lol

The characters were flat and unimpressive with zero chemistry among the cast. The actress playing the main character Beth had like one facial expression and the personality of a snail. I never bought her emotions because she didn't display any. The actress playing her sister Ellie wasn't much better, delivering all her lines prior to being possessed in a monotone manner. To me, the most important hook for this film should have been to establish the sisters' bond and the family's connection and they didn't feel related at all, not because of being a fractured unit, but simply due to poor acting. I didn't buy for a second that Beth and Ellie were sisters or those 3 random kids (who didn't resemble each other) were Ellie's children. The Ellie actress looked way too young to have teenagers and looked more like a fashion model (which I assume she actually is in real life) playing Mom. And I'm not hearing the excuse that half the cast were "child" actors. I've seen excellent acting in recent years in such horror output like Mike Flanagan's Haunting series as well as Ryan Keira Armstrong's superb acting in the Red Tide arc of Season 10 of AHS. But the acting of the 3 kids in this just didn't land, in my opinion, and they were just occupying space. The 2 teenagers were incredibly annoying with the brother having an eternal constipated look on his face and the older sister being yet another modern-day SJW crusader. The writers just had to throw in that protest dialogue. And the youngest daughter had the "precocious little kid" trope that movies overdo. Then there was the unimpressive supporting cast playing the neighbors and tenants on the same floor as the main characters: the cliche younger single guy who probably had a crush on Ellie, the crotchety old man with a cat, and the 2 annoying neighbor siblings, the oldest of whom (crushing on the obnoxious daughter for some inexplicable reason) sounded like a bad parody of an 80s teen bully with the modern horror movie trope of bringing up other horror franchises within the movie. And there most definitely ARE bad Freddy movies, dude! Lol

The actual horror and action moments were nothing to write home about, with a lot of stabbing and cutting with very fake-looking effects accompanied by cheap insults and one-liners. Then there was all of the exposition, like the ghost story scene, then that SAME night the son conveniently finds the abandoned underground shrine that unleashes the evil spirits that terrorize the family that night. And also a lot of elements were very on-the-nose, like the daughter being a short-haired SJW, the Justin Bieber lookalike son wanting to be a DJ, the polar opposite sisters Beth being an irresponsible band groupie with loose morals, and Ellie being a responsible Mom. But all of these were surface character details and never felt organic. There was much of the movie telling us about the family's background instead of showing us their closeness, a lot of repeating each other's names throughout. The older siblings spent the first half of the movie yelling each other's names back and forth. I must have heard "Danny" and "Bridge" (annoying nickname) said a collective 50 times during the first act! The last act just threw in a ton of blood like the shameless copy of the famous blood-spattered elevator scene from The Shining and characters covered in blood, which looked kind of silly.

The nonstop darkness made it virtually impossible to engage in the film, but of the parts that I could actually see, it was a generic cast exchanging generic dialogue with almost no emotion. And lots of standing around doing nothing just waiting for something to happen. For some reason, the possessed Mom wasted time taunting in the hallway when she had all this strength and could have just broken the door down. And it's hard to believe that they couldn't summon any help. Beth yelled out a window like once for a few seconds and after that they didn't just ever keep yelling for help. Surely with all of that noise and disturbance, neighbors would have complained and cops would have arrived. Finally, there was all of the cringe dialogue scattered throughout the movie with the main character getting most of it, adding to her utter unlikability. I never thought the acting in Evil Dead 2013 was world class, but it was much better than whatever these "actors" were doing in this movie. The last 30 minutes of the movie was a lot of blood effects for show. Even with the relatively short running time, this is a film that doesn't warrent re-watch, in my opinion. Just another generic modern horror movie with interchangeably dull and forgettable characters. And dark, much too dark.

Season 2 of Yellowjackets is mercifully over with the finale titled "Storytelling" and it should have been called BAD storytelling! I had a bad feeling about this season after the underwhelming S2 premiere. This finale mimicked the premiere with the long running time, short scenes with quick transitions, and a lot of back-and-forth between the past and the present. This season never took the time to breathe between timelines the way that Season 1 did so well. Virtually every aspect that was well done in the first season was significantly worse in Season 2. The acting was the only thing that remotely held up and even in some cases there were cracks in that armor, mostly because the dialogue was just plain awful and unintelligible. The actors did the best they could with an atrocious script. This episode starts with the now cannibalistic soccer girls slo-mo carrying Javi's dead body back to the cabin, replete with loud, obnoxious music playing over the scene to drown out any dramatic power. I noticed that a lot of intro scenes this season had these unnecessary musical cues played over the scene. The way the writers downplayed Travis' reaction was really troubling because the writers downplayed how it affected him in favor of the girls' reactions. Quick mini-second scenes of Travis sandwiched around extended scenes of the girls. Then we get a weird later scene of just Travis and Van staring at each other and him calling her out for being evil, yet what about all of the other girls' culpability? Why wasn't there a scene of Travis going off on the entire group, including Nat? Why did he just so easily accept his younger brother's death and go along with the cannibalism? Travis' arc is a perfect example of how the writers have just rushed the cannibalism plot and have had the character behavior irrationally serving the plot rather than them having natural reaction and actions to progress the plot.

The worst subplot of this season was the cop subplot and the writers just magically wrapped that up in this finale with Walter, who just appeared back in the story after having been MIA for several episodes. The whole plot was bad, but this conclusion makes little sense. First, why would a supposedly smart, experienced cop like Kevyn just casually accept that cocoa from Walter, someone he thought was part of a crazy cult, especially since he got an anonymous tip to show up at the compound? Somehow, the authorities are supposed to buy that it is feasible for Kevyn to have been a dirty cop criminal mastermind who was responsible for the blackmail of the YJs, the murders of Adam and the Reporter Lady, and the subsequent cover-up and attempted framing of Shauna. But what about Kevyn's fellow cops who can vouch for his impeccable record over the years? What about alibis that he would surely have for at least one if not both of the deaths? Also, Walter had no way of knowing that Nat was going to die and since she and Kevyn were good friends and she actually has morals AND she met his son, there was no way she would have allowed Kevyn's reputation to be dragged through the mud after his death, much less let Walter and Misty get away with it. The writers really didn't think any of this through at all. They basically knew Nat was going to die and since she was the only YJ who was close to Kevyn, pinning it all on him wouldn't have an affect on the rest of the group. Also, the entire logistics of those external scenes with the 2 cops, Jeff, and Callie didn't make sense. Kevyn said he and Copstache followed Jeff and Callie to the compound, but I thought Walter was the one who lured the 2 cops there. So how and why were Jeff and Callie even there? Jeff had no idea about Walter's plan (and vice versa) and there's no way that Walter would know what either Jeff or Callie were up to. Jeff just randomly happened upon Walter and Kevyn in the kitchen and was conveniently there to help him with the body, and Callie was just roaming around the woods with the gun that Shauna stole from the carjacker and could have easily shot Copstache, thereby ruining Walter's plan to blackmail him. It doesn't compute. It was literally just the cliche of the entire cast converging in the finale, but none of it felt believable.

Also, this episode is the one that finally confirmed the show's dedication to the supernatural aspect, which is for the worse, in my opinion. For this entire second season, characters were speaking in riddles and theorizing about "it came back with us" and "the wilderness choosing" and it completely detracted away from the originally tight, focused, palpable survival tale that the writers set up in the first season. And the show introduced plot threads that went absolutely nowhere and ended abruptly due to key character deaths. What was the deal with Crystal's dead body disappearing? Who was the lady that Javi was referring to who told him to stay in the mystery tree? Why did all of those filler Ben sideways flashbacks even exist? It would have been much better to show Ben interact with the team during the season and show his increasing disgust with them becoming cannibals instead of hokey and boring glitching effect flashbacks. Is that convoluted story that Lottie fed to Nat early this season really the truth and end to the "mystery" of Travis' death? The show built up Travis' death in the present timeline as this huge deal and it seemed like Season 2 would have a major focus, but instead the writers chalked it all up to the wilderness choosing. And if the wilderness chose Travis, then why did the ladies need to do yet another group game and sacrificial card draw and hunt for one of them to get killed?

The past timeline has now become absurd, too, with the writers simultaneously moving too fast and too slow. The group goes full cannibal early in the season only to back off of it for the bulk of the season and re-visit it late because the plot needed it to happen. In between there was a bunch of random storytelling like Ben's boring flashbacks, Misty and Crystal's forced friendship, cringe meta comical dialogue from the background characters, hunting contests, and sporadic visions and hallucinations. I think a good half of the scenes this season have just been characters hallucinating. In this finale, everyone just has the hive mind of becoming cannibalistic while Lottie anoints Nat the Antler Queen because the wilderness chose. Where was the actual scenes of characters scavenging for food and struggling this season? They were just hanging out in the cabin all season. Where was the desperation like more people going out to hunt looking for anything in the woods for sustenance? They just waited for divine intervention and Lottie to guide them. The supernatural belief should have been a last resort option, not the main one.

This leads to the biggest disappointment for the episode which was the death of Nat, one of the most popular and important characters of the series and also my personal favorite character (both versions combined). In my opinion, Nat is the one who easily had the most intriguing present timeline subplots with Travis' murder mystery and the cult compound, yet the writers completely botched these two subplots. Nat was easily the most likable and had the most humanity and accountability for her actions. Also, one of the very few bright spots in this season to me was the developing relationship between Nat and Lisa and while I get that Nat saving Lisa's life was a symbolic redemption for her part in Javi's death, I was interested to see where the Nat-Lisa dynamic went in future seasons which included my theory that Lisa was actually Nat and Travis' child, but now with Nat dead, that hope is all but gone.

I was already contemplating giving up on the show with all of Season 2's bad writing anyway, but now that they've basically killed the adult version of my favorite character coupled with the atrocious storytelling in Season 2, I don't even see a reason to continue with this show anymore. Nat was far and away the heart of the series, in my opinion. Misty is easily the best adult character remaining, but her character is more of a scene-stealer than a centered main character. Shauna has degenerated into one of the most unlikable protagonists I've ever seen on a show, constantly doing awful things and getting little pushback or taking accountability, and I find her whole vibe to come across as too silly like she belongs on a comedy series, which this show has unintentionally become. Van is a glorified minor character that fans over-adore and all she does is follow Tai around. I've seen this act before where the writers force fan favorites into main parts but they amount to getting filler dialogue and scenes. Tai has had a thankless story all season of her alternate personality just popping up randomly in a mirror and she just abandoned her wife and son and what about her political office?

With the death of Jackie in Season 1 and now Nat in Season 2, the show really has a habit of eliminating it's most interesting characters who actually drove the story and plots and have actual personalities other than being sick, twisted killers. So I don't even know where they go from here or how they redeem the other ladies. All we're left with is a bunch of immoral, twisted, unlikable characters as well as suspect minor characters who will probably have expanded roles in future seasons only to become expendable because we already know which characters actually survive the wilderness. So where's the suspense in the past timeline anymore? If the wilderness is going to always choose, then there's no more pragmatic survival story, which was a huge reason that the first season worked. Personally, I don't see how this series can survive (no pun intended) 5 seasons. And to me, after a show loses it's plot like it did in Season 2, it's impossible to get it back. So I think it's safe to say that YJ jumped the shark in it's sophomore season.

Season 2 is almost done, thankfully, because this season is nowhere near it's freshman season's greatness! This penultimate Season 2 episode entitled "It Chooses" is a microcosm of everything wrong with the season: random storytelling, vague supernatural plot, poorly written police subplot, exposition and over-explaining from characters, cringe dialogue and humor, obnoxious music, and terrible editing. Did this second season have a bunch of new writers? Also, the acting is starting to decline along with the weak writing and the show has degenerated into having a very self-aware, unserious vibe in the present-day and a lot of the seriousness of the past timeline dialogue is coming across as unintentionally laughable.

First, ALL the scenes involving the present adult timeline in this episode were bad. It was literally the 6 main characters Shauna, Tai, Nat, Misty, Van, and Lottie sitting in a circle, either willingly or unwillingly, revealing all of their dirty secrets from the past 2 seasons. These scenes came across as 100% comedy with all the characters wincing in embarrassment and making weird faces throughout, and were the most exposition-heavy scenes of the show. In particular, Melanie Lynskey's annoying acting style with her goofy facial expressions and choppy sentences has become very grating and comes across as silly compared to the rest of the adult cast, whose characters feel more serious. I feel like I'm watching a different show whenever Adult Shauna talks. In fact, what human beings would even talk like the 6 did in these scenes? Did Tai tell Van about the 18-wheeler and even so, how does Van even remember details like that? Who would admit that they kidnapped and killed someone in an open forum? I've literally heard dialogue like this on soap operas and networks like the CW. It's like the writers are having the characters just deliver plot synopsis dialogue, not natural dialogue that would happen with normal adult conversations. And the slimy, smarmy, smirking Mustache Cop is easily the worst character of the series and dumb as a rock. Did the writers really think this guy comes across as smart? Also, I find the actor's line delivery very annoying. Speaking of cops and line delivery, why does Kevyn talk in such a drawling whisper all the time?

Second, the past timeline is just as bad as the present, again with all the characters gathering in a circle pontificating about "the wilderness" making the rules and telling them how to survive and sounding more and more like modern teens and not 90s ones. Gone is the pragmatic survival story of the first season in favor of this supernatural nonsense in the second. The storytelling for these characters' hallucinations has been poorly written. Mari was having hallucinations way back early in the season when they were still eating fairly well and hasn't had any in like 4 or 5 episodes while the group was supposedly starving. Akilah also first saw the "mouse" early on when there was enough food. Why wasn't anyone else having hallucinations due to starving? In fact, none of these characters feel like they've been starving all season. They've just been sitting in that cabin arguing with each other and going about daily routines as if everything is normal. The writing tells the viewer that they are starving, but doing a bad job showing it. Why did they just skip over the decision to draw cards to decide who gets sacrificed? Are we supposed to believe that after all these months, the only food has been the meat from the bear that Lottie slaughtered and Jackie's burned corpse, which they stupidly ate all in one night instead of rationing it out over time? Why aren't they ice fishing?

Third, the dialogue is atrocious. Again, there's the incessant use of the F word for dramatic effect and it's gotten to the point of being obnoxious. And the acting is worse mostly because the writing is so bad. And the winter snow set looks completely fake like they are on a sound stage. You can tell they're not actually in the woods anymore like they were in the first season. The editing transitions are obnoxious where they shift from the older to the younger characters. Why do this now when they didn't do it previously? What was all that stuff with Ben figuring out Javi's drawing and the location of that tree? He's just now figuring it out? Javi told him episodes ago about the mystery woman and he saw his drawing back then. Why did he wait until this episode to go looking? It reeks of the writers just deciding to give Ben something to do, similar to giving Van something to do earlier this season with "figuring out" Tai's sleepwalking pattern. Also, why did no one just keep trying to ask Javi where he was? He actually knows about the place and just kept it secret for episodes. If he was afraid to tell anyone, why did he keep staying with these girls who he knew were going cannibal?

Finally, the whole last act made no sense. Again, these characters don't look like they are at a point of desperation and even if so, why not just have Nat and Travis go hunting? They've just been sitting in the cabin doing nothing for episodes. The cannibalism subplot just happened in the second episode, was ignored all season, then popped up again in this one. No signs of the characters' struggling or starving. No showing of characters' ever reaching points of desperation. Just a random drawing of cards for manufactured and unearned suspense. How did all the girls go from being mortified that Nat, their friend and teammate who's been doing all the hunting, was about to die by Shauna's knife to chasing after her like bloodthirsty animals? You'd think they hated her but nothing this season has earned that scene. And what was all of that cringe howling chasing after Nat? LOL Don't they realize that all of that noise would make it easier for Nat to hear them and tip her off to their proximity? Why would Nat just give up and let Javi drown, especially since both he and Travis just tried to save her life? Why do all these girls look so happy that Javi died? Where's the shock, the regret, the sadness over this innocent boy losing his life right before their eyes? How are they all just one hive-minded group of cannibals at the snap of a finger?

And the music has gotten really over the top to the point that scenes are starting to feel like mini music videos to showcase popular 90s songs instead of music actually complementing the plot. This writing is terrible. But what's really scary is that this episode so far has the highest rating (over 9 so far on this site) for the series so far. Not only is this one of the worst episodes of Season 2, like easily bottom 2 or 3, but also there hasn't been a single episode in the entirety of Season 2 that's as good as any episode from Season 1. And I highly doubt the finale will break that pattern.

At this point, it's become obvious that the YJ writers don't have a legitimate, fluid story anymore like they did in the first season. They may say they have multiple seasons mapped out, but the getting there so far has been very shaky. If there's any episode that fits the definition of the term "filler," it is this episode entitled "Burial." The past timeline focused on the search for Crystal, a character that should never have been introduced to the show in the first place. She basically only had interactions with Misty (thus the popular theory that she may have been her imaginary friend), albeit a couple of very minor instances where other characters told her to stop it with her annoying singing. But otherwise, every time we saw the character, she was always joined to the hip with Misty and shadowing her everywhere. This was Strike 1 for the episode because it's based on the search for a completely irrelevant, unimportant character that added nothing to the series and felt like a waste of time. Also, did the writers forget their own story in regards to Lottie? Why couldn't she "feel" that Crystal was dead in the same way that she felt that Javi was alive? Continuing with the past, Coach Ben had yet another empty, meaningless glitching effect vision of his boyfriend Paul, who basically told him the end is near (yadda, yadda), then Ben is about to throw himself off a cliff until Misty interrupts him in a scene littered with terrible dialogue. The writers just spent the last 6 episodes (thus 2/3 of the season) with Ben giving up hope, then he just decides to do a 180 based on a character in Misty, someone who he legit can't stand? What does Ben care that Misty will tell the world about him when there's all those other girls there, especially Nat who he bonded with, that would actually tell the truth? And Ben's 180 felt laughably forced as he looked like a guy who just changed his mind about something trivial. A very poorly constructed scene and I knew the entire time that he wasn't going to go through with it, so there was a complete lack of tension or suspense. Then there was that cringe exchange between those 2 upgraded background girls (Gen and Cap Girl) in the cabin about eating Crystal's remains if they found her dead. It was like listening to dialogue from a CW show and I've noticed a lot of this type of dialogue this season. Cap Girl in particular is pretty bad and I can see why the writers gave her no lines in the first season. But the capper for the past timeline was that very disturbing and completely unnecessary scene of Shauna beating up a willing Lottie while everyone else just stared in horror. I don't care what state of mind Shauna was in after losing her baby, it wasn't anyone's fault and just because she's got all this anger doesn't give her the right to take her aggression out on someone else for her loss, especially when Lottie tried to help her in her own way. Shauna is fast becoming one of my least favorite characters of this series in both timelines.

The present-day scenes in Lottie's compound of the main 6 ladies, now all together as a group, were very bland with boring scenes of Shauna taking care of a goat, Tai painting a barn, and Misty in a healing chamber, which resulted in what may be the worst sequence of the entire series yet. While sleeping in the chamber, Misty has some ridiculous dream of a Broadway musical dancing number of herself with Walter and the human version of her parrot Caligula. That scene didn't work at all and was utterly lacking in wit and humor. It's literally like something you'd see on a daytime soap opera. That scene reeks of fan-favorite writing for a character that shouldn't need gimmicks. If this scene ends up being Christina Ricci's Emmy submission and she actually wins for this nonsensical scene, then 'll never take that award seriously ever again! Lol Also, as previously mentioned, I'm really getting tired of Shauna's character, who has YET another scene where she breaks out with her emotional crying and ranting, this time to Lottie. All season, I've felt that the writers don't know what to do with Adult Shauna, so they just create these random scenes like the chop shop, police station, and now the cult compound, for Shauna to have these now-annoying monologues just so Melanie Lynskey can have a bunch of Emmy-submission reels to choose from. But Shauna's subplot has arguably been the worst written all season with a complete lack of narrative focus and some very suspect supporting characters like Callie and Mustache Cop. In fact, the way that the writers got all these ladies together feels forced and an excuse for them to do all that slow-mo montage dancing near the end.

Finally, this episode encapsulates a couple of things that have been bugging me all season. First, there's been a real overuse of swearing that at this point feels incredibly unnatural, in my opinion. It's not me being prudish having a problem with profanity because of course people swear, but this episode just seemed to take it to another level where it was overdone. And also, this episode brings up the vague "we brought it back with us" spiel that the writers have been going with this season to feed into the supernatural nonsense. And there's been a ton of exposition with the writers having characters tell us everything with monologues and awkwardly forced interactions rather than just showing us through a well-written story. With only 2 episodes left in Season 2, it's really feeling like this show is in an official sophomore slump. The showrunners supposedly have 5 seasons mapped out, but I don't see this series could reasonably continue past Season 3.

After a generally mediocre first half of the season (actually slightly more than that since there are only 9 episodes), this episode #6 entitled "Qui" is actually a standout, but more so as a standalone episode than moving the plot forward in a natural way. Starting at the end, this episode finally reunites the (now) main 6 characters Shauna, Nat, Tai, Misty, Van, and Lottie together at Lottie's cult hideaway. And the getting there was actually entertaining. In the present timeline, this episode features several well-written and acted interactions between Shauna and Jeff, Tai and Van, Misty and Lottie, and Nat and Lisa (my favorite of the new characters). Despite me not into this season overall, I think the best subplot has been Nat at compound and her scenes with Lisa and Lottie. Another strong staple of this episode was the humor. In fact, all of the humor worked in this episode. Modern humor is tricky because very often it ends up coming across as cringe and try-hard, but this show really nails it more often than not. There was relentless funny banter within all the interactions, but the 2 funniest moments were (1) Misty's bongo session with the cult and (2) Jeff's rebellious music outside the police station! Lol Speaking of, despite this police subplot being the worst of the present timeline, it was actually tolerable in this episode as Kevyn and the young detective played good cop-bad cop with Callie and Shauna, respectively, with a pair of well-written interactions, although I'm still not sold on the new cop character, who feels much less smart than the writing is making him out to be. As for the past timeline, it was pure gut-wrenching emotion and drama as Shauna finally delivered her baby in the wilderness with the group trying it's best to keep both her and the baby alive. These past scenes packed a real emotional punch and all of the actresses (and actors) really hit their dramatic marks, especially Sophie Nélisse as Teen Shauna. I suspect that this young actress will be a lock for at least an Emmy nod later this year based on her performance in this episode alone. The acting on this series continues to be it's strongest suit, which is too bad the storytelling and pacing hasn't lived up to it this season. As for the negatives, because this episode focused solely on the birth of the baby and specifically of course Shauna, there wasn't any movement for any of the other subplots like the deal with Javi, Lottie's visions, Tai's sleepwalking "friend", and the writers still brought up this vague "darkness" thing. And that overhead shot of the ladies meeting up and the compound setup looking like the symbol felt like a cheap, meaningless gimmick. At this point, I have no idea where the last 3 episodes of Season 2 are leading and unlike Season 1, I'm not really anticipating episodes anymore. But I can confidently say that this specific episode is in my top 2 of the season so far along with "Edible Complex."

Now at the halfway point of Season 2, I am the firm belief that it will not be as good as Season 1. There's a lot going on while at the same time nothing is really happening to move the plot forward. Each episode has had it's share of filler, but this one takes the cake! This episode might actually be worse than the mediocre S2 premiere. While the acting for the most part is still top notch, the storytelling is incredibly slow and random and a lot of this season has felt like filler. It used to be that the past subplot was the best and tightest storytelling, but now it's just as bad as the present day storylines.

First, there's this random, undercooked subplot between Misty and this magical new character Crystal, who didn't even exist in Season 1. There's no way that this girl was with the group all of Season 1 and no one ever called her out on her odd behavior. What was she doing, hiding in the woods or something? Misty and Crystal had all of like 1.5 scenes this season before the writers had Misty reveal her big secret about destroying the plane's black box to keep them stranded, Crystal turning on her, then Misty going psycho and forcing Crystal off the cliff and killing her. Why should anyone care about this random girl that literally only had significant scenes with Misty? And they only ever had ONE real scene together. After an entire season of building up and developing Jackie and Laura Lee as characters for them to have tragic, impactful deaths, the writers create this annoying Crystal character with no depth, then just kill her off halfway through the season with the cliche of her backing away while on the edge of a cliff. Incredibly lazy writing. Their whole exchanging secrets interaction right before Misty's big reveal was cringe, talking about stuff that sounds more like how writers THINK teens interact with each other than how they actually do, trying hard to ingratiate these 2 already weird characters with cheap toilet humor. It felt like I was watching 2 teens from a Nickelodeon show. Also, what was all that kissing each other's hands after revealing secrets nonsense, especially since they were doing it while dumping excrement?

To the other past stuff, what did Shauna think she was going to accomplish running off into the frozen woods by herself? Did she think she and her baby had a better chance in the middle of nowhere with no food of shelter? How was she going to deliver her baby by herself? Then there's Lottie with all this "feel the wind, feel the trees" nonsense. And after almost an entire episode of being silent, Javi finally decides to talk by throwing out some vague reply to Ben about some mystery woman telling him what to do. The show is being purposefully obtuse just to drag everything out and make it more mysterious than it really is. Something else I've noticed about the show this season is it's "meta'" commentary on itself, like that background girl jokingly saying that Javi is a ghost, which mimics all the outlandish online fan theories about this series. It's like these writers have started breaking the 4th wall and slowly turning this show into some parody of itself. And while I've noticed a lot more profanity this season, this episode took it to a whole new level! Every other word out of the characters' mouths was swearing. It reminded me of Season 1 of The Leftovers where half the dialogue felt like profanity. It's like modern writers think swearing somehow makes dialogue sound more realistic. Speaking of, the 90s dialogue is starting to sound suspiciously modern. They are adopting 2020s slang for the 90s timeline which is making it not feel like the 90s anymore. All of the incredibly naturalistic and era-appropriate dialogue from Season 1 has all but disappeared in Season 2 in favor of constant profanity and obnoxiously self-aware humor.

Second, to the adults. What is going on with Adult Tai's sleepwalking/split personality subplot? Every episode this season, she just walks around in a daze, looks in a mirror, then her alter ego tells her to go to the next pit stop. Hardly compelling storytelling. And after a season and a half of anticipation of Tai's reunion with Adult Van (admirably played by the talented Lauren Ambrose from Six Feet Under fame), I was underwhelmed by their interactions in this episode. A couple of episodes ago, Tai's alter says "go see Van" then in this one it's "go see Lottie". Then there was that weird scene of Lottie hypnotizing Nat and the latter revealing something about the darkness following them back to civilization. THIS is what the writers are resorting to for their storytelling, some supernatural force bringing all these women together? They've just completely abandoned their grounded, gritty plot of these adults suffering from the PTSD of their traumatic wilderness experience in favor of the supernatural. Are we supposed to believe that at the same time that Misty is conducting her search for Nat using her smarts and concrete investigative techniques that this mysterious force is just telling Tai where to find Nat using voodoo? And that the incredibly pragmatic Nat is now a believer in the supernatural? The show is going full supernatural and it feels forced.

And to cap off the adult stuff, Shauna's subplot with Callie and this annoying undercover detective (who looks like he belongs on a 70s TV cop show) is the worst writing of the adult storylines. Callie just conveniently finds out he's really a cop seeing his credit card bill at the bowling alley. Why would he use a card under his real name? Why not just pay cash for everything? Then she goes to her parents revealing she's been dating said cop, they concoct some dumb plan to make him think Shauna is really having an affair with Randy and not Adam, which shouldn't matter since there's already proof she'd been seeing Adam a ton during Season 1. I don't know, maybe she has MULTIPLE lovers! Lol And to cap it all off, the cops do exactly everything Shauna thinks they will do by breaking in to their room and checking for proof they had sex. It's like this subplot was written for a CW show.

And the episode as a whole was just too many subplots packed into an hour, with not a single one of them amounting to anything important. To make things worse, I think this episode had the worst ending of the entire show so far. At the halfway point of Season 2, I can safely say that this show is nowhere near as good as it was in the first season. The acting is the only thing saving it and that's not good enough. It needs an actual coherent plot and good writing (which the show had in Season 1). And the showrunners are supposedly going to stretch this story out to 5 seasons. Not only can I not see 5 seasons, but I can barely tell where they are going with Season 2.

While this fourth episode was slightly better than the third episode and most definitely better than the mediocre premiere, the show is still kind of slow and meanders too much in Season 2, in my opinion. The main positive about this episode "Old Wounds" is the show's biggest plus in Season 2 and that's the acting. The acting for this series is head and shoulders above much of the acting I've seen on a lot of modern TV shows in the last few years. The actors (well, most of them) are doing their best job to deliver the material to the best of their abilities and make the viewer believe in what the characters are saying, but the plot and storytelling is really failing them this season. So many questions, very few answers.

Getting the best out of the way first, the Nat-Lisa, Misty-Walter, and Young Nat-Young Lottie scenes were the standouts of the episode. The show is finally starting to enforce significant interactions between some of the YJ characters and non-YJ characters. The Nat-Lisa bonding scenes were my favorite and I could sense from the first couple of episodes, the writers were building a rapport between Nat and Lisa, which at this point is the only relationship that feels like it's developing this season. And the Young Nat/Lottie scenes were cool seeing their competitive bonding as teens versus their more guarded interplay as adults this season. Pairing Misty with Walter (Elijah Wood in a winning performance) is a slam dunk for her character because she doesn't even need a sidekick or partner to be entertaining, so it's just icing on the cake. My least favorite subplot in Season 1 was that kidnapping subplot between Misty and that forgettable reporter character (played in the most obnoxiously monotone way by that actress). Also, Nat and Misty are my top 2 adult YJ characters anyway, so again...icing on the cake. Another bonus this season has been the development of minor characters Akilah and especially Mari, who serves as a strong antagonist to the group in Season 2, a la Jackie in Season 1. Also, Lottie's fantasy mall sequence during her hypothermic shock were pretty cool.

Now to the rest! Lol Tai's subplot has gotten to be the most infuriating of the season. While Tawny Cypress is acting excellently, the subplot is moving much too slowly. Tai's subplot this episode was incredibly predictable because it was obvious in the last episode that her alter was telling her to go see Van. Tai spent the entire episode in a daze with some throwaway hitchhiking scene until we get that "surprise" ending with the introduction of Adult Van (played by Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under and Servant fame). Speaking of Van, unlike most fans, I'm not sold on the casting of Ambrose from just a physical standpoint because I frankly don't see the resemblance between Ambrose and Liv Hewson and it's going to take some major convincing of me that they are the same character. For example, people are saying the 2 Nats look different, but I totally buy that Young Nat morphs into Adult Nat because of Sophie Thatcher nailing Juliette Lewis' mannerisms, Nat's drug addict storyline which explains the drastic change in her physical appearance after 25 years, and also their voices are eerily similar. And despite being aware that Ambrose is a good actress, her show Servant went bad after a strong first season, so the last I watched of her and that series was that atrocious second season. The red hair and same scar makeup is simply not good enough to sell me that I'm watching the same person. I'll just have to see how Adult Van fares.

Shauna's family subplot has also been very slow with Shauna finding Adam's driver's license (something that should have been destroyed in the premiere) in Callie's drawer and finally coming clean to her about Adam's death. Everything about the license subplot has been poorly done, from Shauna and Jeff not making sure it was burned completely to Callie just carelessly "hiding" it in her bedroom dresser. It feels like a plot convenience to lead up to the big confession scene in this episode. That entire scene of Shauna's confession and Callie's immediate acceptance felt so blasé. Shauna just confessed that she murders a guy and Callie's first response is "I knew Dad was innocent!" First, it was like she was glad that her Mom was guilty over her Dad. And second why would her mind even go to her Dad other than the writers needed a convenient way for Shauna to expose Jeff's role in the blackmail-murder conspiracy? What's the deal with Ben's subplot? In both the previous episode and this one, it looks like he was completely out of it on his deathbed having visions of his boyfriend Paul, yet in between he has scenes of being fully awake and aware and moving around normally.

Next up are the weak and useless characters. Callie's character is a contradiction who changes her mind like the wind. She spent 1.5 seasons hating and judging her parents for being liars and hypocrites, then when she finds out they are murderers and blackmailers, she relents and decides they are good people after all. One minute, she's sanctimonious when she thinks it's only Shauna who's guilty and Jeff is innocent, then when she finds out they're both guilty, she'd rather be a hypocrite herself and be guilty along with them. But what really hurts Callie is the writing because it doesn't feel like interesting, nuanced writing for a potentially sinister, creepy character. It just feels like the writers wrote a cringe, one-dimensional teenager and the only thing they can do to make her remotely interesting is to turn her into a mini-Shauna, but it won't feel earned. Onto the next useless character this season, I have zero idea why Crystal is even on this show. In the premiere she was introduced randomly (and annoyingly) humming and singing. Then in the third episode, she gives that weird acting advice to Misty, which only served as a showcase for Misty's amazing monologue and added nothing to Crystal's character. Then in both the second episode (fake sword fighting) and this one (once again singing), she's just playing in the background with Misty. Crystal's sole existence appears to be Misty's sidekick. And was Crystal part of the JV team or something because she seems quite younger than the rest of the team? At least with Misty, we know she's younger because she's the team towel/water girl. And the Paul flashbacks are boring and don't add anything to the show. The show is really starting to pad episodes in the guise of making them seem more complex and deep than they really are.

Finally, the general storytelling feels contrived and aimless and makes little sense now. The whole reason that Young Lottie was able to cultivate followers in the past timeline is because she was off her meds and was having supernatural visions. Yet the Adult Lottie is back on her meds and has formed a cult, but based off of what? On her meds, she's normal and doesn't see things. So how and why did she form a cult without using her abilities? Lottie uses meds, yet she encourages her followers not to use meds that would actually help with their illnesses. How did Nat see that same Moose in a vision in the prior episode, but see it for real in this one? Lottie's the only one who's supposed to be having visions. How does Nat all of a sudden have them, too? What is with the final scene of Van and Tai just randomly finding Javi? Van somehow quickly and miraculously figured out that the pattern of Tai's nighttime sleepwalking adventures matches the mystery symbol and that there's only one spot left for her to sleepwalk to and THAT leads them to Javi. Really? This feels like made up nonsense by the writers to both turn Van into a believer as well as make Tai a candidate for Antler Queen. How exactly is someone with dissociative identity disorder going to get people to follow her? Speaking of Young Van, her character has really lost her mojo from Season 1. She's gone from a funny scene-stealer to a boringTai worshipper, similar to how Crystal worships Misty, except unlike Crystal, Van actually existed in Season 1 and had real character development.

Also, why the change in the awesome intro music to this terrible Alanis Morrisette rendition? The original theme was a big hook that really got me pumped for each episode, but this cover song sounds atrocious. And what show changes it's opening intro DURING the season? Usually, they premiere a new intro with each new season. At least the intro was something that I could still enjoy even if the episode wasn't very good. And now they've taken that away, too. It's jarring how well thought out, suspenseful, and intriguing this story was in Season 1 versus now in Season 2 where it feels like the writers are just making it up as they go along. They seem to have completely abandoned the pragmatic survival aspect of the show and fully embraced the supernatural elements with very mixed results. I fear that YJ is going to follow the Westworld model where everything in Season 1 made sense while everything afterwards just felt like pretentious filler. The mostly stellar acting from the talented cast is the main thing keeping Season 2 afloat.

Even though it's hard to tell from my Season 2 ratings, I still actually like this series, but after 3 episodes, it's become painfully obvious that the showrunners and writers have lost the magic touch that made the show special and unique in Season 1. The MAIN thing that this series did well in it's first season was to masterfully shuffle between the past and present timelines and always connect them together within each episode. But now in Season 2 it's just a lot of random scenes strung together to fill an hour of time until they get to the really good stuff, which will probably come in the second half of the season.

This episode "Digestif" reminded me more of the stretched-out Season 2 premiere than it did of the better focused second episode of this sophomore season. A lot was going on in this episode and the plot kept jumping between scenes to the point of making me kind of dizzy. First, the writers tricked the viewer into thinking this was going to be a Ben-centric episode with the opening scene between him and his boyfriend Paul in a '96 flashback scene, then they proceeded to completely ignore this subplot for most of the episode, only having like one other scene of the duo much later in the episode, which turned out to be a "what if" scenario. This subplot was done kind of poorly, too, coming across as really cliche with a lot of tell instead of show, including the cheap "camera glitching out" effect to show that Ben was having hallucinations and nightmares.

Second, the present-day subplots are really starting to drag. It's just random scenes like Jeff whining about being a boring husband to Shauna, their car getting stolen so Shauna can go into badass cannibal mode to retrieve it (a scene which will most likely earn Melanie Lynskey her 2nd Emmy nod), multiple pointless scenes of a comatose Simone, and repetitive and filler scenes of Tai and her alter ego. This latter subplot is really moving at a snail's pace this season, with every episode of Young Tai's alter waking up and doing something weird with Adult Tai just looking in a mirror and her alter looking evil. And while the Misty scenes with Randy and Elijah Wood's character were certainly funny, there's an overly comic vibe to the present that kind of undermines the more serious, compelling scenes of the past. The most interesting present-day subplot are the cult compound scenes with the feisty and sympathetic Nat and the increasingly shady and manipulative Lottie. The best tie-ins between the past and present were the Nat-Lottie scenes as the younger versions get more overtly antagonistic in the wilderness to counter the more laid-back antagonism between the older versions. This episode would have worked better if it only focused on the Nat-Lottie stuff, but just like the premiere, it jammed in way too random stuff.

Third, speaking of random, even the past timeline has a few issues. While Young Misty's big movie monologue scene was awesomely performed, it felt more like a showcase to give the actress something to do rather than being organic because Young Misty has really been a non-factor so far this season. How did she so effortlessly perform that speech with just one night of practice? And when and where exactly did she practice it in that short time, out in the freezing cold of night? I honestly didn't understand the whole acting conversation between Misty and Crystal (a new character that I could really do without). The flow of it made no sense. I guess the message was that all actors are liars! Lol Much like that annoying scene between Misty and the motel clerk in the premiere, this Misty-Crystal scene is an example of "burying the lead" just so the writers could give Crystal a couple of fake deep lines to try and make her more interesting than she actually is. It's forced writing. I honestly feel that minor characters like Mari and Akilah (both of whom actually existed in the first season in the past wilderness scenes) have far more potential than this oddball Crystal character that appeared out of nowhere. Also, why is Travis more worried about what Nat and Coach are doing than grieving over the "death" of his little brother? It's like the writers completely forgot that he just found out the day before that his brother is gone (in his mind) forever. There's a lack of continuity this season while the storytelling in Season 1 was much tighter.

Finally, a couple of other more quibbles. The 90s music really feels off this season. It's strangely forgettable in the sense that it doesn't match the mood or scene. And the wilderness scenes reek of looking phony because it appears that they are shooting on a big movie set, not in the actual woods when they were doing location shooting in Season 1. The whole lived-in vibe of the first season has all but disappeared into a more stylish and less gritty atmosphere in Season 2. So why 6 stars? Mostly because despite some shoddy writing and editing, there's still some really great acting in this episode, namely the aforementioned Adult Shauna and Young Misty monologues as well as Young Nat's monologue to Jackie's burned and ravaged corpse. The show is still surviving and thriving off it's well-chosen cast, but right now, it feels more like an acting showcase in Season 2 than the more tight, compelling, focused story that existed in Season 1. Hopefully, the rest of the season gets back to it's Season 1 roots.

Thankfully, this second episode of YJ's sophomore season is much better than the Season 2 premiere! First, this episode had a much better focus, unlike the premiere which bounced all over the place. This episode "Edible Complex" was mostly focused and centered around the late 90s timeline with the group now 7 months into being stranded in the Canadian wilderness. The main subplots involve the Shauna-CorpseJackie scenes, Tai's continued sleepwalking, and the Nat-Travis trek for sustenance which includes Travis' sidequest to find Javi. The acting in these past timeline scenes was exceptional with the young actresses deftly starting to slowly morph into the characters that we will come to know them as in the present timeline. Also, in the present timeline, the Adult Nat-Lottie interactions were cool with Juliette Lewis stealing scenes and moments with her amazing non-verbal and physical acting, and Simone Kessell deftly portraying Lottie as a manipulative and devious cult leader in the present timeline. But Lottie's "explanation" of how Travis died was all too easy and is assuredly a huge lie. On the Travis topic, both actors were excellent portraying the characters desperation and grief in the two timelines. The best moments of the episode involved a couple of montage scenes: (1) the one showing how Young Nat lied to Travis and faked out Javi's death and (2) the shocking closing scene which shifted between reality and fantasy as the group feasted on Jackie's burned corpse as Coach Ben looked on in horror. The non-verbal acting from Steven Kreuger in that scene was spot on. The only gripe about the past timeline is that I fear that the writers may have rushed the cannibalism subplot. Shauna's first foray into being a cannibal was the result of tons of buildup and had as much to do with her connection to Jackie as it did the hunger angle. But everyone deciding to go cannibal without reservation feels a bit forced. Also, the present-day scenes are starting to drag. I felt like this episode could have only featured the Adult Nat-Lottie scenes for the present and scrapped everything else. Callie continues to be annoying. And I honestly couldn't care less about Tai's wife and kid, but at least Sammy was actually interesting in Season 1 when he was silent and troubled, while now he's just the standard TV kid who smiles and talks all the time; but Simone has always been a dull character. Finally, Adult Misty and Adult Shauna didn't get much to do in this episode. It seemed like back in the first season, the show did a better job of shuffling and smoothly transitioning the past and present timelines while now they flash between scenes that have almost no connection to each other. Minor nitpicks in a generally well written and acted episode, with the past timeline carrying the proceedings.

I really hope that Yellowjackets doesn't pull a Westworld! Lol Small sample size, but the similarities are jarring so far. Much like the first season of Westworld, Season 1 of Yellowjackets was superb and looked like one of the best new series. And also unfortunately just like Westworld, the Season 2 premiere of Yellowjackets is below it's Season 1 standards and is already starting to reek of retconning. This S2 premiere episode of Yellowjackets was an example of quantity over quality. There was way too much going on, easily the most subplots the show has tried to juggle in it's short history. All of a sudden there are all these new characters stranded in the wilderness added to the ones we got to know in Season 1, including this dubious new Crystal character whose schtick seems to be constant singing and annoying everyone around her. Exactly where did this girl come from? Are the writers telling me that she actually existed the entire time in Season 1 and was doing all this constant humming and singing and no one noticed it? Kind of takes away from Jackie and Misty being the only 2 outsiders of the group. Adding new characters just to be cannibal fodder is not the best idea, especially when the viewer isn't invested in them. Next, there's all this random stuff that feels like filler, like yet another Shauna-Jeff kinky sex scene, random panic attacks, Jeff's head-banging to some popular 90s song in his car, that motel clerk's incredibly cringe and cheesy monologue to Misty, and any scene with the overly bratty and angsty Callie, easily the most useless, irrelevant, unlikable character of the show. All the interesting stuff (Lottie's cult compound, the Nat-Travis search for Javi, Tai's inner turmoil, the investigation into Adam's disappearance) was buried in a sea of randomness. Hopefully, this was just the typical premiere that sets up all the major subplots and the show gets back to the better paced writing and fleshed out characterization that existed in Season 1. Otherwise, this will be yet another one-season wonder that's fast becoming the norm in modern television.

Probably the best episode (or episodes if you prefer) from Season 1, this one is the show's first 2-hour cruise. It was probably a 2-part episode back when it first aired with each part premiering one week apart, but it's the same 3 stories spanning 2 episodes. And on re-watch, it's easily one of the most entertaining early episodes. The main plot overlaps 2 stories of a quartet of bumbling jewel thieves (played by Harold Gould, Larry Storch, Karen Valentine, and John Schuck) trying to steal a million dollar diamond belonging to a famous and rich celebrity couple (played by Michele Lee and Fernando Lamas). Lee and Lamas have great wit and sophisticated chemistry. The comedy involving this subplot is hilarious. In particular, Schuck is a hoot as the cliche "lovable big dumb ox" character and Valentine (obviously wearing a wig) is just plain hot as the stereotypical dumb blonde. Also, Gould and Storch are sublime as the smarter duo of the quartet, throwing nonstop insults at the lesser pair. The 2nd subplot involves a very sweet and natural romance between 2 ex-students at a school for the blind (played by Desi Arnaz Jr and Stephanie Zimbalist) with Arnaz's character having been cured of his blindness while Zimbalist's character is still blind. Arnaz and especially Zimbalist (convincing as a blind person) display strong acting in this subplot. The 3rd and final subplot (weakest of the 3, imo) involves a triangle of a cheating husband, his wife, and girlfriend (played by Dan Rowan, Juliet Mills, and Adrienne Barbeau, respectively). Even though this subplot was boring, thankfully it was mixed in with the 2 much stronger subplots and played a minimal role in the 2 hours. In fact, I would literally forget this 3rd subplot existed at times. Re-watching these episodes is fascinating connecting all the guest stars to popular shows they were on: Lee (Knots Landing), Rowan (Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in), Barbeau (Maude), Zimbalist (Remington Steele), Storch (F Troop). Also on re-watch, I notice that this episode flowed perfectly as well as having a really funny and charming script. Finally, this was the first episode that actually showed the faces of the guest stars in the opening credits, but this was the only Season 1 episode that did it. It became the standard starting in Season 2. The show really started to find it's footing with episodes like this and it was smooth sailing (pardon the pun) going forward.

For some reason, I always thought that the character of April Lopez (played by the iconic Spanish singer Charo) was introduced in a later season of The Love Boat. But this very early Season 1 episode actually marks her introduction to the show. Charo was a pop culture sensation in the 1970s who appeared in a bunch of sitcoms and variety shows. Her hook was her distinctive Spanish accent and interesting spin on the English language that was played for laughs at a time when you could make fun of anything. Including this first appearance on the long-running series, Charo guest starred in 10 episodes, average of 1 per season the show was on the air. My guess is that this is a record for the most appearances of a guest star, but I could be wrong. In this particular episode, there are several hilarious moments where Charo butchers certain words and characters openly mock her but in a friendly, funny way. The timing from the main cast was pretty spot on and April fit right in. Charo plays a stowaway who sneaks on the ship during it's first Mexican stop in order to get to the United States for better opportunities. Comic chaos ensues as Stubing and Julie find April hidden in a laundry cart, then Gopher and Doc make arrangements to put her up in the medical bay before Stubing demands that April must leave the ship at the next stop. After embarking at stop #2, April sneaks back on ship for a second time and so the quartet of Doc, Julie, Isaac, and Gopher put their heads together to figure out a way to trick Stubing into helping her. Their solution? Have April do a surprise performance wow-ing the passengers with her singing and guitar skills. The plan works as Stubing ends up getting April a job as an entertainer with the cruise line. Retroactively, it makes me think Charo could have just become a semi-regular on the show instead of just making the random guest appearance. The second subplot of the episode involves a sports journalist (played by none other than Bill Bixby of The Incredible Hulk fame, the greatest comic book superhero series ever, in my opinion) who banters with and romances a wheelchair-ridden tennis star (played by Brenda Benet, an actress who looks familiar from that era) that is scheduled for a surgery that will allow her to walk again. The remaining subplot involves a middle-aged married couple played by the iconic comedian Milton Berle and Audra Lindley (Mrs. Roper from Three's Company) as the husband is an insufferable practical joker that goes one step too far and needs to be taught a lesson by his wife and a couple that he's been playing pranks on. But the April subplot dominates this one with nonstop wit and humor. Very entertaining early episode.