Supernatural - the legacy

It’s 21st November 2020 and the Supernatural finale happened two days ago. I’m still getting over it, but in order to do that I need to process what happened.

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Here be SPOILERS for Supernatural - the series finale!

So much to unpack here - the episode itself, the reaction from the ‘fans’, the feeling of knowing it’s over after so long. Let’s start at the beginning.

The Episode

In best SPN tradition, the big ending people thought was going to go down was actually resolved in the penultimate episode. This left one more round of 40 minutes to clear up everything hanging. Would we find out what happened to Castiel, would we see Jack again, would we find that monsters and demons and angels and everyone else - were they gone now? Cleared up by Jack reverse-Thanos’ing everyone back into existence? Were the other universes brought back too? AU!Charlie and AU!Bobby - were they back as they were? I hope so.

It seemed that Castiel really was gone - as was Death. Of course the next reaper would become the new Death so that would take care of people on Earth. Sounds like Castiel tinkered quite a bit with Heaven and its inhabitants, causing rebellion, sedition, incitement to tear down walls and have a peaceful Heaven as it should have been. From what Bobby said Jack apparently visited, set some things straight, changed Heaven from a place where you relive your greatest moments into a place where you can make new moments. Logically his would imply a new kind of life - an afterlife of new moments, made outside of normal Earth time. So everyone up there - and Bobby made sure Dean knew his parents weren’t far away - may be gone from Earth, but they’re still going. If Heaven is perfect and you have everything you could ever want, it sounds like the perfect ending.

As long as Dean doesn’t get bored of the easy life.

We see Sam’s life after Dean and it’s a good one. Briefly told in quick flashes, the only weird thing is that we never see his wife. Would it have hurt to add in someone from a previous series that he goes back for, and stays with? But he raises his own Dean, and the circle is complete. Dean raised Sam, so Sam raises a Dean. And when Sam finally goes too, there he is, right back next to his brother. Even the Impala made it - or did it? Was it just something Dean would have wanted, and it therefore appeared (with the original number plates), or did it take on enough of an imprint from its owners that it became its own thing, and was rewarded by getting to an afterlife? People will argue about this for the next fifteen years, I’m sure.

But Dean called it - like he always does. When he told Zachariah he’d ‘stab him in his face’, and then seasons later he did just that. When he said he didn’t shoot the deputy, and seasons later he did just that. When he told Sam his perfect happy ending would be Dean having died relatively quick and bloody in some average fight, causing Sam to leave The Life, have a family, and end up dying old and loved - he did just that, and Sam did just that. It was a good ending, the kind of thing I could see happening. Dean got what he wanted, after all the fighting and arguing and fallings-out and raging against the being who put them all through it. He got what he wanted. And after everything, it came back to just Sam and Dean. And I’m ok with that.

The Reaction from the ‘Fans’

It seems a lot of people were not ok with that. Twitter, tumblr, social media in general - the fall-out from the episode was horrific. At time of writing, I am ashamed of the way some of the ‘fans’ have treated the cast and crew who gave us fifteen years of a show that wasn’t pegged to last more than one. While outpourings of love, of loss, of grief and thanks overflowed between the final filming day and the moments before the finale aired, as soon as it ended it was a different story. People ranted, they swore, they sent tweets to cast and crew saying how the ending was shit, how it was stupid and didn’t make sense, how it ‘ruined’ everything, how it wrote off relationships. Ugly, ugly responses indeed considering the source material and how the fandom has been mostly supportive up to this point. I don’t understand how you can turn on something so quickly, so completely, after hungrily devouring everything given to you in the past fifteen years. Some people have fallen out of love with the show gradually, some have fallen by the wayside, and some have just plain given up with it, and I get that. I gladly cut ties with Doctor Who after the way they wrote Peter Capaldi’s first two episodes made me realise the showrunner was a complete and utter self-centred prick who thought racist digs and jokes about sentient beings burning to death in front of them were ok to air. I gave the show with Jodie Whittaker another chance, since the showrunner had been booted for losing 40% of its ratings. (It’s ok, but it’s not the Christopher Eccleston / David Tennant years.)

What I’m saying is, I understand how people can go off a show and walk away. What I don’t understand it how they can continue to watch it if they don’t like it - why do that to yourself? Why torture yourself by making yourself follow a show you actively despise? Just walk away and leave it, go find something else you do like. Unfortunately, that’s a thing with many shows these days - people on social media are only too happy to leave comments saying how bad something is and that no-one should watch it. I reply to these people now, where I used to ignore them. “Then go watch something that makes you happy”, “then stop watching”, “you don’t have to watch it”, “take control of your life and stop watching if it makes you unhappy”, etc. I get backlash but I literally do not care. Someone has to make the point that no-one welcomes a step-by-step account of how they’re still torturing themselves by posting and commenting about something they profess to hate. I get that “sad is happy for deep people”, but behaviour like that toward people who are still enjoying something is just bollocks and they need to fuck right off and leave others to enjoy something they don’t. It’s everywhere in and out of fandom right now and it needs to die a horrible bloody death as soon as possible.

There seems to be a lot of ‘fans’ chucking their toys out of their respective prams because they didn’t get the ending they wanted. It’s childish and it’s so bloody entitled I don’t even know where to start. Yes I do - these are the kind of people who started or signed an actual real petition to try to get someone to re-write the ending of Game of Thrones because they didn’t like it. How bloody self-centred do you have to be to genuinely believe that just because you didn’t think it measured up, that you get to demand it be redone to be somehow ‘better’? How entitled are you? How far are you up your own arse? Someone wrote that and someone helped edit it. People produced and filmed and costumed and catered and rigged and lit and worked bloody hard to bring it to the screen. And what happened? People turned around and shat on everyone because they didn’t get the death they wanted, or the fight they wanted, or the satisfaction they craved. As Bobby says, “boo-friggin’-hoo”. It wasn’t made for just you - sometimes you just don’t get what you want and you have to step back and let it go. If someone gives you a birthday present and you open it in front of them to find that it’s not what you want or even like, you don’t throw it at them and insult them for it, you accept it and say thank you because that person made an effort. You don’t have to like the present, but you should have the fucking manners and self-respect to thank them and move on. No-one’s asking you to keep the present, or to tell everyone you like it - you don’t have to say you don’t like it, and everything is fine. It amazing how many people just cannot grasp that simple concept.

It’s not the way I wanted the show to go out. It’s not the way I want the cast and crew to be treated. It’s not how a fandom should behave. It’s beneath us and it’s ugly. I am ashamed of the fandom and how they’ve acted - and are still acting. To preserve my own sanity in these trying times of Covid and global madness, I can only conclude that these people are not fans. It’s not much, but it’s something.

The End

On top of all that shitshow, there’s the knowledge that this is The End. No more new episodes. No more new adventures. No more sounds of the Impala’s doors squeaking, that little rattle it made just under the dialogue. No more witty comebacks, slip-ups, dressing-downs, bitch fights, machetes, desperate Hail Marys, strained allegiances and tested friendships.

As I look back over the past fifteen years, at all the fun I’ve had at conventions, writing forums, rewatch parties, it brings happy tears to my eyes. I must be getting old. But those were good times - all of them, even the badly-run Rogue Events conventions, the arguments about spelling on those writing forums, the mismatched time zones during those rewatches. A bad day with Supernatural was better than some of my good days, for so many reasons. It was comfort, it was ease, it was familiarity. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a convention; you need to mortgage most of your organs to be able to afford a ticket to a Creation con these days, before paying for hotels and flights. It’s been a long time since I’ve been part of a writing forum; these days it’s all Wordpress and AOOO but it means it’s fragmented, it’s so open and wide-ranging that it’s no longer our corner of the internet. Instead of one person curating an archive of all the best we have to offer, now it’s just a filter on AOOO. This is not a bad thing, it’s just how things change. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a rewatch; those people aren’t available any more, or their time zone is now even further from mine. The pack has broken up, the people scattered over the globe in a way that only time can do. So gradually that no-one noticed, it all became so spread out, so far between that it wasn’t until I tried to get in touch with people that I realised it was too late.

Where are you when I need you, Hell Bus?

But then I realise: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yes, the show will have no new episodes. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be conventions till the whole platform itself ceases to be a thing. We still have social media and groups, niche follows and tags. We still have AOOO and FF dot net, Wordpress and Wattpad. It feels like we’ve gone into our fifteenth hiatus, only this time there’s no end date in sight.

That’s the most encouraging thing I think I’ve heard since I watched the finale.

And I think that’s all I’ve got. It’s wet, it’s windy, it’s 12 degrees C and we’re into day 250 since my part of the world went into a Covid spiral of working from home / Tier 3 / national lockdown. However, I have a lot of memories and good times to think about, and I choose to do that rather than focus on the arseholes who have made a dumpster fire out of the series finale. I’m opening my SPN playlist and playing it loud.

Take care, everyone.

Stranger (비밀의 숲) - seasons 1 and 2

Lockdown 2.0 has us all confined to places we probably don’t want to be, at least for some of the time. Netflix has provided a plethora of stuff to watch, not least of all the stellar Kingdom (킹덤), the Korean imperial zombie horror / thriller that was a solid 9/10 for me. Great ideas, plot twists and proper full-on zombies, the whole two seasons were a blast that I couldn’t stop watching.

On the back of that Netflix recommended another Korean drama to me; Stranger (비밀의 숲) from 2017. Full of award-winning power houses from South Korea’s acting best of the best, and written by someone who enjoys torturing viewers with proper mysteries, I was hooked by the end of the first episode. The characters are new to me, fun to guess at, brilliant to get to know. The budget, the production, the whole thing is a different flavour of thriller than the sometimes plodding or predictable American and British fare that I’m used to. It differs again from the Hong Kong dramas of the day, and even from the Taiwan crime dramas I’ve seen.

You know that old adage, “you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all”? I feel like that with a lot of American stuff; there’s only so many times you can watch the straight white dude win in the end just because he’s the ‘good guy’. I needed something different, and Kingdom was my second foray into Korean drama. (Full disclosure; my first was Suspicious Partners [수상한 파트너], which was all love story all the time and that’s not my thing. I gave up on it after a few episodes.) It turned out to be a gateway to twisty-turny mysteries, where they don’t waste time building up to something only to find that there’s one mild twist at the end. Instead you get logical paths answered in one or two episodes instead of five or six, and then you get a twist that sets you off on a different path. It’s fun, it’s new - and while everyone in South Korea or the rest of the K-drama world will think this particular series is nothing new, it’s new to me, and I’m having fun discovering a whole new genre.

Kingdom was my primer. Stranger has been, for me, the ultimate game of Cluedo - after you determine what the root crime is about that kicks off everything to follow. It’s clever, it’s full-on, it’s fascinating. We have political intrigue where people are trying to one-up each other, jockeying for positions they covet in police and prosecutors’ offices. We have personal dilemmas, where employees have to think very carefully about what they are doing by opening up cans of worms. We have chains of events kept in motion by people unknown, until it all finally comes out. Strap yourselves in for a long, slow burn of many twists and satisfying discoveries: keeping all these plates in the air at all times is the amazing cast of characters.

It would be remiss of me not to mention how big the stars are behind this series. While they are heavyweights in the movie world they also appear in TV dramas, mostly to keep themselves paid, like every actor. We have big names here, totally unknown to me except that they bring so much life to the characters I found myself picking favourites within the first ten minutes of air time. The way the characters come over, bit by bit, layer by layer, revealed only by their interactions with everyone else serving their own ulterior motives, kept me glued to the subtitles. So who are these people?

We are presented with two main characters, who I attached to very quickly. The first is Lieutenant Han Yeo-Jin, a police officer with the tenacity of a ratting terrier but the heart of someone who knows what it’s like to be on the outside due to the cruelty of others outside your control. Played with brilliant flair by Bae Doona, she is a stark contrast to the prosecutors we meet. Her police colleagues are half with her and half against, not really understanding her. Her one true friend, Jang Geon, is a great detective but needs her guidance in navigating the structure of the police force. She doesn’t seem to care for all that on the surface, although she sees it going on. She dresses in brighter colours than everyone else, she draws little cartoons of people or things she thinks about, she is lively, animated, fun and probably too much sunshine for her colleagues on some days.

Her counterpart in being devoted to truth and tracking it down works in the prosecutor’s office, not historically a place where alliances with police are welcome. Prosecutor Hwang Si-Mok is diligent, effective, sharp as a knife and equally as dangerous as he refuses to take part in office politics, agendas or camps. Partly the reason for this, and the wrinkle that keeps this whole drama ticking toward its conclusion to well, is the surgery he had to go through as a teen. A problem with some part of his brain caused incalculable pain as he got older, something to do with loud noises or certain frequencies (I guess like a severe attack of super-concentrated tinnitus). In order for him to live something like a normal life, he undergoes a partial lobotomy. This causes him to lose empathy and other most emotions. He is now a model prosecutor, just as intended - he has no sentiment, no pesky emotions getting in the way of his duty to finding the truth and bringing it to court with winning cases. He appears dour, uninterested in small talk or social niceties other than what protocol demands, and is totally aloof from life in general. He should be a boring character - but a wonderful portrayal by Cho Seung-Woo makes him fascinating to watch, where every micro-expression carries more weight than anyone else’s emotion.

Enter Lieutenant Han. Over the next 16 episodes she will bully Hwang into acknowledging that he has sporadic attacks and it’s physically painful enough to render him unconscious. She will bully him into accepting her little sketches of him, of how his brain should be slowly filling back up with emotional control since the surgery, how there is hope of him not turning out totally alone for the rest of his life. And she does all this by smiling at him, speaking to him like a human being, treating him carefully rather than being harsh with him and using the clenched jaws and dirty scowls the men in his office direct at him for being different.

Between them they will uncover everything that’s going down, sharing things on the quiet, working out theories and reasons and motives over ramen, text messages, shared looks. By the time we get to the conclusion, their very quiet, understated teamwork will be legend. And for good reason - they are a force to be reckoned with, one with the determination to see it through because you uncover the truth to prevent further harm, to stop people being hurt, and the other determined to get to the truth because it’s the right thing to do and who cares about privilege and people thinking they can get away with anything because they’re your senior?

I’m not going to lie, this was epic for me. Two people getting to the resolution through different means and being Team Awesome despite everyone’s complete disdain and disapproval? Totally platonic BFFs who don’t even know they’re BFFs, taking down anyone who’s connected to the whole sordid case? I’m in.

And let’s not forget the supporting cast - we have magnificent cockroach Seo Dong-Jae, who is doing his best to kiss the right arse at the right time in order to secure promotion. He is a focal point and so important to everything that goes down, and I enjoy watching him attempting to insert himself into the lives of strategically important people. The way he gets himself into scrapes and then manages to get out again by falling into a bigger one is epic and is a fascinating juxtaposition to what everyone else is up to. He could not be any more opposite to Hwang Si-Mok in every way; he’s loud, he’s brash, he’s immaculately dressed and perfectly coiffed at all times. He’s confident in his ability to come out on top at everything… until he doesn’t. Lee Joon-Hyuk is so good in this role it’s like he was born for it.

With season one done, I had to find more stuff to occupy me - and then it turns out there’s a season two.

Ok, if I thought season one was good with the plot twists and the fun friends shenanigans, then ai-yah I was naïve. Season two is like season one on steroids. Honestly, it’s great stuff and it covers so much more than season one. The writer has said that she has enough for five seasons, and I for one hope that’s a promise. Season two gave us separation, personal discovery, deep dives into office politics and best of all, the most epic Hwang/Han shipping we could ask for. Still Team Awesome once they hit their stride, him letting her help in times of dire vulnerability when he spends his life covering it up, him going over everyone’s heads to step in for her without her knowledge but only when she needed it - everything I could have asked for, and especially as it’s without all that boring romance shit.

The final scene made me grin uncontrollably at the way certain characters were coming to terms with things, and although it ended in a frustrating way, I have heard there may be a season three some time in the next two years.

Just about time for me to move onto new dramas, miss these two seasons, and then go back and watch them all again.

Perfect.

New stuff now please

Anyone here old enough to remember the original Miama Vice TV show? I saw it on reruns, I think, when I was in my teens. The final scene of the proper big end-of-everything finale stuck with me and I’ve never known why. But every now and then I think of it and it makes me wonder.

It was the scene where Tubbs asks Crockett where he’s going to go next. And Crockett says: “Somewhere further south. Somewhere the water’s warm, the drinks are cold and I don’t know the names of the players.”

We never did find out if he made it, or what happened to Tubbs back in the big bad Bronx. But that feeling of needing to have a fresh situation, to be in a fresh environment where you need to learn or assimilate all over again… I think that’s always stuck with me.

When I was in my early twenties I took a holiday to Hong Kong, mainly to see the sights but also to see the international film festival. It was awesome, and alien, and everything that I needed at that point in my life. I felt like I wasn’t done discovering, that there was more to see, to try, to experience there. Within a year I had passed a CELTA teaching certificate and got 6 months teaching experience under my belt, so I headed back to HK with a suitcase and a one week bed-only booking at a YHA hostel. I got jobs, I got visas, I learnt about the way of life, I went to uni to learn Cantonese… it was a dream.

But all dreams must end. After eleven years out there I was beginning to get bored. I was feeling the drag of the constant changes in visas, the sniping by bosses and the general crowdedness of the city. I made the monumental mistake of leaving HK to return to England. At the time it seemed like a good idea - doesn’t it always? But if I had sat down and weighed everything up, I would have taken a 2 or 3 month break, back-packed around southeast Asia, had a change. And when I had wanted to return to something familiar and routine, it would have been HK. That’s what should have happened. But didn’t.

Instead I returned to the UK and spent time assimilating to the foreign place it had become. People were smaller, more parochial, tiny-minded. Everything was too far apart and public transport was shocking. Food was expensive, rent-related bills a joke. And all my friends and found-family were still in HK. In one fell swoop I had cut myself off from normality, comfortable familiarity, and my favourite people. I lost it all. And it was my fault.

After a stint in the south of England, it came to pass that my job was up for redundancy. There was nothing like-for-like so I was free to take the redundancy payoff and run. I had a choice - go back to HK where I felt I belonged, or try somewhere else. Money not being my friend, I opted for Manchester, the place I had been born but never lived in. And so I hauled my arse 300 miles up the country and started again. I was in a city again, with bright lights, places open till late, neons and crowds and excitement. It didn’t have my friends, it didn’t have my circle: I had done it to myself again. I had cut myself off from everything familiar and everyone I liked.

I’ve been here coming up to 2 years now, and every day I regret leaving HK when I did. That was 7 years ago, and I’m still thinking about that. I still miss the lifestyle, the people, the place itself. But I can never go back (due to a little bit of back-stabbing that I’ve already been over) and even if I could, it wouldn’t be the same place. It’s moved on without me, and I should follow its example.

Sometimes I think about other places I could go to. But it’s a circular argument - if I go to a fresh country to start learning all over again, my friends will still be in HK and England. But if I don’t go somewhere else, what am I doing here? Treading water because I have bills to pay because I’m treading water because I have bills to pay?

You know how people say you need a third place - you have home, you have work, and you need another place that’s not either of those things, so you can recharge from the other two? I’ve tried a few different third places over the course of my life - martial arts, writing fiction, archery, going to the pictures. And while I still have an interest in all of these, it’s writing fiction that’s always been the main one. I cannot seem to get my own original fiction published for love nor money, so I continue with where I got started - fan fiction. I still watch movies and TV, I still end up with muses and I still write the further adventures of these characters. I get reviews and emails, I get thank yous and requests, and this fills a void that getting countless agent rejections have made (and continue to feed).

My third place then - writing - could be done anywhere. I did some of my best work on a repurposed Mahjong table in my spare room in HK. I’ve done some new stuff, for new fandoms, in my old shared house in Manchester and a completely new fandom, muse and story at this flat I moved into just now. I’m doing more writing than ever before, for the things I like and want to expand upon. I could take it anywhere with me, as I have Billy II my MacBook Air within reach at all times, and connected to SugarSync to back me up on a constant save basis.

All I need is somewhere to go, but it feels like the world is shrinking and my best bet is Mars. I’ve missed the Mars One programme and I’m too old, so that’s out. Maybe there truly is nowhere left. Maybe I’m oversimplifying and there are tonnes of places I could yet still find on Earth.

Maybe I just need to go further south, where the water is warm, the drinks are cold, and I don’t know the names of the players.

Now that would be a good place to start.

ST: DIS 3x02: I-Yensch, You-Yensch

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Here be SPOILERS for Star Trek Discovery series 3 episode 2!

Last week we had what I felt was a TNG mixed with ST: Beyond episode. It was brilliant, and since I’ve watched it again I still like everything that went down. Now we get to the follow-up - last week was all Michael and what she was up to; this week is the crew of the Discovery’s turn.

We pick up where we left off; they made it through the wormhole but in a Farscape moment they’ve lost control and end up ploughing headlong through a couple of miniature moon-type bodies. Eventually they meet the planet below much faster and rougher than they’d like, and to all intents and purposes are dead in the water. They need tech stuff they don’t have to get their comms and pretty much everything back up and running - so here we go, let’s take an away team out to the nearby settlement and barter for what we need.

Saru is awesome the whole episode. He’s a real brick in this and I think a much better Captain than he ever thought possible. He’s commanding, confident, and downright fantastic. I’d vote for him.

Poor Detmer is somewhat shell-shocked. Or is it something deeper? She brought the ship in, she guided them down and her piloting skills are celebrated. But she’s not feeling it - or much of anything, it seems, apart from maybe horror at seeing how many people are currently in sickbay and either dead or nearly there due to what she must assume is a result of her flying.

Saru and Tilly’s bartering aside (some fantastic aliens new to me and Ensign Tilly being a good choice as a member of the First Contact team), shit hits the fan in a Farscape way when all you want is to do a trade so you can get the hell out of there. Again Saru is brilliant as a leader of people, and the locals on the planet realise he is the Starfleet that they thought extinct. Again we hear that “we knew you’d come back” - it seems since The Burn at least 120 years before, some people have harboured hope that the Federation wasn’t completely destroyed. Paul and Hugh seem to be working things out, and although Georgiou is aggressively attempting to get everything she needs personally and screw everyone else bar maybe Michael, at the moment her needs are aligning with that of the rest of the crew. Jett Reno is still a favourite with me due to her wit and deadpan delivery, even when she is giving people a pep talk that cuts through the grease. Even poor Ensign Gene HAZMAT who was left to shovel up what was left of Leland made me smile.

Slowly but surely, Saru and Tilly realise how far ahead some of the tech is around them, and the barter situation that was going so well turns into a newcomers-at-gunpoint situation. It seems our friend Book from episode 1 is not a typical courier at all (maybe he was pretending to be a courier at the Mercantile to cover his species-rescuing ways), as every other one we’ve met so far including this new Zareh is a complete arsehole. He’s also a smart one, who figures out they’ve travelled in time and are also basically helpless. Zareh proves just how much of a dick he is, and it looks like everything is about to go incredibly Pete Tong.

In other news, it seems the Tellerites are thriving as they control an exchange, which means along with the Orions and Andorians, we have an uneasy balance of power. And then Zareh calls Saru something interesting - a “V’draysh” Captain. Apparently this was the same word used in Short Treks (“Calypso”) - a word shortened from its original for ease, like “going to” ending up “gonna”. In this case it’s short for “Federation”.

Enter Georgiou with typical intent to throw a spanner in the works, and you have your action and adventure that ends up freeing the V’draysh types and emancipating the locals. All that remains is to get their newly fixed tech back to the ship before its eaten by the planet’s ravenous parasitic ice - and be totally shocked as they finally meet up with Michael.

I enjoyed this episode - a lot. It was a massive crew effort and it’s set up such possibilities that I can’t wait to see what’s coming next. We have new worlds, capacity for new or evolved alien races, new situations and what is beginning to feel like a sprawling universe of adventures to fall into.

At times it felt like a good old-fashioned Farscape episode, and that’s a complete surprise to me as Farscape was always the anti-Star Trek. However it works well here, and with a true Star Trek ending we know we’re in good hands.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print, I think.

Soopytwist, everyone.

ST: DIS 3x01: The more things change, the more they stay the same

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Here be SPOILERS for Star Trek Discovery series 3 episode 1!

I sat down the other night and rewatched the two-parter of Star Trek Discovery that ended season two, just so I would remember where we were all up to.

And do you know what? It made me miss ST: DIS all over again. The way they played the long game - again - to bring us everything we needed for the actual finale was just as impressive this time around as it was the first time I watched it. Season one had its own long game - the story of Lorca that we didn’t know we needed. Season two gave us a new mystery and its resolution. I liked how it ended up and where it left everyone, because now everything can be new again. Let me explain:

One gripe I had about the concept of ST: DIS was that it was set before Kirk’s time. As with the other most recent series up to that point, Enterprise, we were looking back rather than looking forward. I wasn’t overly thrilled with this, as they would have to observe certain canon and established events. I would have been happier if it happened some time after Voyager and DS9 ended, as that would put us the furthest into the future. Also, looking back is not what Star Trek is about - it’s supposed to be about moving forward. Forward motion, after all, is all there really is at the end of the day.

Now here we are with season three, and it looks like my gripe has been addressed: we’re now in the year 3188, which I believe makes it the furthest Star Trek has ever gone forward.

In short? I liked this episode - liked it a lot. It felt like a TNG plot inside a Star Trek Beyond story. Again, let me explain:

We start off with a very Beyond scenario - Burnham and the crew have been successful, but now she is cut off from not just everyone she has ever known, but everything that was ever familiar. She is 930 years in the future where things must have changed (think for example about the difference between the the place now called the UK in 2020 and how it was in 1090). She’s trying to find her ship and her crew - she has no clue if they’re in her time, or if they even survived the wormhole that brought her 930 years into the future. She “meets” Book, and gives him a pretty good Captain James T Chris Pine Kirk speech about intention and needing help. She gradually finds herself and her determination, gets back to what makes her her, and so her adventure becomes trying to not only find herself and her ship, but the Federation itself.

Book, meanwhile, is having his own TNG episode. He appears to be a courier who is not at all fazed by having to “steal” cargo from other couriers. This random woman who falls out of a wormhole breaks his ship, forcing him to work with her to get what he needs to fix it. We find out he has a rather expensive, much sought after cargo, and yet he doesn’t want anyone calling it “cargo”, because it doesn’t belong to anyone. At this point anyone who’s ever seen a Star Trek episode knows that the cargo is probably alive, presumably sentient, and Book might not be what he appears. We are rewarded by seeing that he stole the cargo to deliver it to a different place entirely - in actuality he’s rescued a member of an endangered sentient species from becoming dinner, repatriating it to a sanctuary planet which seems to be a massive wildlife preserve bent on letting them just live free and unencumbered.

After a lot of shenanigans including drugs, fights, tech and some great set pieces, Burnham finds one Starfleet contact that she can ask for help in finding the Discovery. But all is not what it seems, and again she is left to try to cling to what she believes Starfleet and the Federation are, in the face of everyone and everything telling her that there is nothing left to cling to.

She finds people to reach out to, she finds solace in the familiar, comfort in knowing there are others who believe as she does, and to borrow a line from Beyond, she finds she still believes in “strength in unity”.

Big fan of this episode. Book is set up to be an interesting mystery, and the possibilities for his story are endless. Burnham is alone but she’s more determined than ever, and we’ve already seen a new side of her during this episode. Shout out to Aditya Sahil, who was the quiet, resolute figure of a Starfleet officer - without actually being a Starfleet officer. Interesting to note that Twitter has already decided he’s the cinnamon roll in all this and must be protected at all costs. I cannot disagree.

The editing was fantastic, especially when Burnham is drugged, and the cinematography (is that Iceland?) was stark, beautiful, peaceful - and very well shot. The FX shots were not lacking, and the scenes in the Mercantile reminded me of a bazaar you might find in Farscape. We had a return to interesting Star Trek races - Andorians, Orions - even a Lurian who looked like Morn! Cosmo, the other courier, used a language that reminded me of Danny Pudi’s character from Beyond. It would be interesting to find out if in fact it was the same language.

All in all, this was a brilliant start that filled me with the same love for Star Trek as many other episodes - it had the optimism, the drive, the characters, the tech. - all the parts I love in a good Star Trek episode. I for one really hope it continues in the same vein. I want to see more of this 32nd century and how everyone in it is surviving, what The Burn is all about and how Burnham can (hopefully) do something about it. I also think we need the ship back, but I'm sure (mostly because I've seen the trailers) that everything will get sorted in the end. You know what? I’m more than happy to watch that unfold week by week.

Peach and lube, everyone. Peach and frelling lube.

HK dramedies for the win

As we’re still in a semi-lockdown where I am, I’ve left the flat once in three weeks, and I think it was… twice in the six weeks before that. Oh hang on - I had to go into the office to pick up paperwork (paper? What is this, 2010?) once as well.

Only having to commute twelve feet to work every day has made such a huge change to my day. I can get up half an hour later. I have time to make a cooked breakfast every morning. I close my laptop at 5pm and have an extra 45 minutes to arse about in, where I used to have to contribute to the road traffic. This means I can catch up on a show or get Doom Eternal out on the PS4.

As you may know if you’ve seen any other my posts, I do still like HK dramedies. Yes they’re simplistic and yes they’re trying to do big things on a Coronation Street level of shooting schedule and budget, but they also bring out the best of actors just trying to put their backs into it and make the most of everything. And if there was ever a time to record how life is and how it can be in HK, it’s right now.

I’ve just finished a cautionary tale about scams, from online dating to stocks to scalped concert tickets. On-Lie Game (a pun on lying whilst you’re online) ran for the typical 25 episodes from July to August 2020 on TVB, that bastion of superficial entertainment. The usual faces are all here: Matt Yeung (揚明), Samantha Ko Hoi-Ning (高海寧), Helen Ma, and David Chiang. (Is it me or do they keep matching up Matt Yeung and Samantha Ko in comedy dramas?) While it was a little dry, they did manage to shoe-horn in Public Service Announcements whenever they could, it had an ok conclusion. It didn’t really do much for drama and the comedy fell a little flat for me.

Then I went back to a series I dropped a few months ago whilst I was moving. Airport Strikers A.K.A Airport Security Unit is basically what airport security should be in HK right now. A convoluted tale of young police officers trying to pass the entry training to get into the ASU, it goes on to mix in ASU officers who have been there for years, others that have been there only a few, and of course who gets into the ASU and what happens to them. Love lives, tragedies, work conflicts, family problems - it’s all in there. To be honest it’s much of a muchness except for the pleasantly surprising on-screen chemistry between actors. Matt Yeung, oft used for straight by-the-book characters who are quite dull in their single-minded pursuit of a mission, is allowed here to be a happy-go-lucky harmless prankster, who is only really serious when he’s on duty. He sasses everyone at every opportunity, usually getting away with it, and certainly lives up to his nick-name ‘Easy’. When a friend gets into the ASU and becomes a first-year recruit the comedy and shenanigans ramp up. Owen Cheung (張振朗) is excellent as the cocky yet determined rookie ‘Hill’ Cheung who has his reasons to be the complete arsehole people take him for, but actually isn’t that at all. When you get Owen and Matt in the same scene playing people who grew up together you get witty comebacks, hilarious interactions and some brilliant chemistry that actually puts me in mind of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki from Supernatural. I can only hope that they get to do a lot more TVB productions together, as they really were the highlight of the series.

Another highlight was Sisley Choi (蔡思貝) as Sanjay. For a change, the smallest woman there wasn’t given any extra help or special attention just for being female; she was tougher than most of the men and just kept going no matter what. The actress was perfect for this (even though every time I see her I think she reminds me of Anita Mui Yim-Fong (梅艷芳) and there was never a time I didn’t want her character to be involved in something. I hear the actress was a bit upset at having her long hair chopped off for the fantastic pixie cut she sported for the series, but don’t worry love - it’ll grow back.

Most of the plots were ok although I felt they did rush through them, often resolving them over just two episodes instead of making something of them. To be honest though I would be happy to sit through a spin-off with just Owen Cheung and Matt Yeung’s characters and the shenanigans they get up to.

And that’s pretty much it for me. I’m going to continue doing next to nothing as at time of writing I’m not allowed to mix with other households and am not supposed to be using public transport or in fact going anywhere. Getting a little tired of this whole semi-lockdown bollocks, to be honest.

Anyway. Chin up, eh? I have entertainment and you’re never really disconnected from the world when you have a smartphone, right?

Take care, everyone.

Lockdown

Not, unfortunately, the stellar (sorry) Guy Pierce 2012 film Lockout, which is just a fantastic old-fashioned 1980s survival in a prison (a space prison) flick with guns, violence, snarky one-liners and brilliantly acted stereotypes all round. No, sadly not that Lockout.

Instead it’s now been seven weeks since I’ve worked from my actual work desk, and three weeks since I’ve left the house. And by that I mean I have not crossed the threshold of any doors to be away from the touch of indoor flooring.

Everyone keeps asking - “how are you holding up?”. And my reply is always the same: “has anything changed?”


I mean yes, obviously some things have changed. I don’t go to the pictures on Saturday and then meet up with mates afterwards to talk about it. I don’t go to the Chinese supermarket one Sunday a month to stock up on food. I don’t go to the archery range. I don’t drive to work. Other than that…? Nah, nothing’s changed.

I don’t have kids, pets, or anything that distracts me. What I do have is Doom Eternal on PS4, along with other games I’m still battling through. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, I have Kodi and Hong Kong dramas (The Exorcist’s 2nd Meter is on - finally we have the sequel to The Exorcist’s Meter!). I have a Lethal Weapon fanfiction story that I’m halfway through posting, and I’ve embarked on a 21 day yoga shred class online. And did I forget to mention, I’m still working, just from the kitchen table. So yeah, I’m pretty busy and I don’t need to go out. My housemate is also still working, but their essential worker status means that they can stop off at a supermarket on the way home and pick up bits and pieces.

Also, I work in payroll (for the NHS, no less), so what with April being a perfect storm of all the statutory and contractual changes no-one in ops wants, it’s been a full-on, fifty-hour week for four weeks for pretty much the entire team. We’ve been given time off in lieu, so it’s not really a big deal for me, but for others with dependents it’s been “a nightmare”.

The only problem I’m going to have is going back to the office when we’re finally cleared by our bosses to do so (i.e. when our healthcare professionals have assessed it and made the requisite changes, not when Boris waffles his way through saying… whatever it was he was saying on Sunday 10th March). I know a lot of people will be glad of the return - to be in a place where they feel like a professional, like they’re away from all the home distractions, out of the ‘home’ environment and into a work headspace. I get it - in words. I don’t feel it, but I understand what they mean. And then there are those who don’t work in office jobs and will have been itching to get back to work for the last month anyway.

Everyone seems uptight and upset that they’re being told to stay home. Everyone else seems to be getting cabin fever. I’ve just woken up one day, been told to collect my kit from work and then go home until further notice, get on MS Teams when I’m working and that’s that. I just kind of went “so this is how it is now” and got on with it. There wasn’t any drama to be had - it just happened and we dealt with it like grown-ups. Others in the team had some IT hiccups and others have been trying to balance kids and dinner-time and all kinds of trials and tribulations. I don’t have those. I sit down, open up all the apps and emails and everything else, look at the list of stuff I didn’t finish yesterday, and get to work. I don’t see the difference between doing that at work and doing that at my kitchen table.

I’m happy that I don’t have to mix with humans, that I can get on and do my job without being interrupted by co-workers asking if I want to go for a brew, or having to put shoes on (I find it hard to sit on chairs ‘properly’ and often end up folding my legs under the table, which is hard to do with Doc Martens on).

Going back to an office environment is going to be very hard.

But then, what with major companies now wondering why they’re paying rent or a bank loan for sprawling offices in the real world when they could just let their office staff keep a laptop and stay away, I wonder what changes are coming.

Was it not Captain Jack Harkness who said that “the 21st century is when everything changes”? Is this what he meant? Where leaders of large, influential countries have gone off the rails (some would argue that they were never really on them in the first place) and caused nearly 80,000 deaths at this point? Where still others are trying to impose their brand of order on a territory handed back to them twenty-odd years ago, despite the entire population being against it and willing to stand in tear gas and water cannon to prove it? With this new pandemic hitting the globe and reminding everyone how everyone really is connected whether they like it or not, is this when everything finally starts to shift? Pollution from fossil-fuel traffic in a lot of cities has started to ease up - because of people not using those vehicles. One retired army captain (now a colonel) in the UK has raised more for NHS Charities in a few weeks than most people will ever raise in their lifetime - in a team. People are reaching out over social media, children are receiving tweets and replying by old-fashioned letter-writing. Others are holding street parties from behind their fences. Still more are coming out onto their doorsteps to celebrate the NHS on a Thursday night with songs, clapping, and banging pots and pans. Caremongering is becoming a thing - people helping others to get their grocery shopping, to post a letter, to connect and keep their sanity. All signs are pointing toward a feeling of unity, of wanting to help.

And yet.

And yet.

We have brainless, self-obsessed presidents telling the masses the most baseless, misinformed and dangerous things - and nearly half the country are still listening to him. We have others over-buying and stocking up on household items so that they can sell those items for a profit. People think they can get away with behaving like Nazis again. There are people deliberately scamming others using miracle cures and snake oil replacements for this virus. There are news outlets deliberately spreading lies and paranoia, to widen the gap between classes, between minorities, between neighbours, between humans. The top ten multi-billionaires just keep getting richer, earning more per day than they could spend in a month, and apparently happy to keep it that way despite the people all around them living on food stamps, foods banks, charity hand-outs and poverty.

This is what we are as a species. We are opposite ends of the spectrum, in all things. The only thing wrong with that is how far apart those ends actually are. It’s ok that everyone believes different things, it’s ok that everyone feels differently, acts differently, has a different perspective. This is essential for humans to survive. What’s not ok is how some seek to stop others from being allowed to be the difference. Some leaders need to be impeached (or just removed forcibly with a blunt object), some leaders need to realise the way their country has been run for the past few generations just isn’t going to work any more - times have changed and not changing with them is not how evolution or progress works. Some people need to get a heart, or at least hire someone who has one and then take their advice. I am the last person to say they know anything about empathy or feelings, but even I can stand back and work out what is beneficial and what isn’t to a society as a whole. When you work toward controlling a population instead of serving them, you’ve already lost the game.

Anyway.

Some good news to lighten the mood: NASA is going back to the Moon. To date, one person has definitely been cured of HIV, and while science is struggling to replicate the how, they’re getting closer every day. Volvo is looking to get into the Tesla bracket of electric cars - meaning the battle is now on (properly) for better, longer-ranging batteries and smaller price tags. And on that note, the production of energy from renewable sources is literally terawatts ahead of anything it’s ever been before. Wind farms alone are making an impact on the amount of energy we have to import, including Russian coal and Norwegian oil.

When all this covid thing is over, and everyone goes back to work in stages, it’s not the lockdown or the whinging or the team spirit I’m going to remember. It’s the good movies I’ve seen, the comic books I’ve read, the stories I’ve written and the courses I’ve done. I’ve let myself watch more on Netflix and it’s resulted in me seeing some very good series I wouldn’t normally have tried out. I’ve gone for that yoga course even though I don’t understand yoga (you can still go through the motions like you mean it, though). I’ve had a whale of a time in the rip and tear moments of Doom Eternal and I’ve got my highest scores ever on the arcade levels of Doom 2016.

I know all around me people have been losing their shit and things have been going off the rails, but for me life’s been pretty good. As an INTJ who really isn’t here for Human Drama, I have to say I’ve been enjoying this lockdown as a chance to stay away from people. If there was a way for it to continue, without the horrific deaths or riots or protests (against people trying to keep them alive? Fine. Let them die) then I’m all for it. We just need to beat this virus and make something new out of what comes next. And if a majority doesn’t get rid of the orange-faced buffoon spewing arse-gravy on the daily when next they vote, then we may just have to call on the SAS to do everyone a huge fucking favour.

You’ll be glad to know that that’s it for today, folks. Rant over - time for more good telly.

Soopytwist.

Final image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Nostalgia vs NOTstalgia part II: Oil Changes and Cappuccinos

A little while ago I mentioned that I had started watching the 1966 TV series The Green Hornet, after a chain of events I’ve already explained. At the end of said post, I promised I would back up part 1 (the homework) with part 2 - the actual commentary.

What happened to that? Well not a lot - due to a very lot of other stuff happening (holidays abroad, coronavirus, etc.) it kind of got put on the back burner. It wasn’t until I was watching a fresh episode just last night that I realised I hadn’t come up with the goods.

Here we are then - is the 1966 version of The Green Hornet anywhere near as good as people remember? Will it live up the its hype? Will I find it entertaining, or will it turn out to be one of those shows that doesn’t age well at all?

Let’s find out today, as we play Nostalgia vs NOTstalgia part 2 - the Green Hornet 1966 edition.

As with most of my reviews, I’ll keep this to three headings:

Limited

Clocking in at barely 26 minutes an episode (no doubt billed as 45 minutes so the networks it was syndicated to could shoe-horn in a tonne of commercials), the show makes the most of what it has. Gone are clunky expositions, long wind-ups that you need to remember later, overly elaborate build-ups and teasers. Instead we have action right from the outset - you know when you watch a show today, and you get plonked right in the middle of the action as a teaser? Then you get a title card or even intro music if they think people have the attention span? Straight after that you’re told something along the lines of ‘TWO DAYS EARLIER’ and they show you 10 minutes of lead-up? Yeah, none of that. This show drops you in the action, and the whole flashback to the explanation is jettisoned for a few throw-away lines between Britt and Kato, to the effect of ‘it’s a good job [main guest star’s character] gave us the right address’, ‘yeah, who knew after ten years of working for the mob he’d want to turn them all in to the police?’. Simple, easy - and most importantly, quick. It makes me appreciate just how much you can get done in a short space of time. The scriptwriters were no slouches here, folks, and while they were writing for an audience very different from me, I like the style. It’s all killer, no filler - they don’t waste a second of screen-time, so if they focus on Britt’s face for longer than necessary it’s to prove a point or show you something, not just for shiggles (or ratings. Let’s face it, Van Williams circa 1966 is a very attractive man). However, sometimes you do think an extra few lines or seconds of screen-time about the guest star of the week’s character would have been beneficial. But hey, it’s all seconds ticking away, and having someone speak for an extra 30 seconds means you have to cut that expensive shot of the Black Beauty taking out a fence with its rockets.

The pace is a welcome change from shows I’ve seen recently, where it’s taken forever to build up to something (sometimes only to let you down). Oh, and you can watch about 5 or 6 episodes of this show in the same time it would taken to watch Interstellar, and I would consider those episodes time better spent, to be honest.

But if it’s over so quick, what can it have achieved?

Lego PS4 Games

Ok, so they don’t actually have Lego PlayStation games in The Green Hornet. But they do have something in common - playability. You have a long day at work, struggling with frustration at inoperative tech. or missing paperwork, and when you get home there’s Call of Duty or Batman Arkham Whatever waiting for you. But it’s all so much effort - you just want something relatively easy, something to help you unwind and be happy, not something that will twist your brain in (more) knots and frustrate you. So instead you go for that Lego game. Yes, it’s simplistic. Yes, there’s no real danger because when you die, you just respawn where you were and all is forgiven. No-one really dies (except the bad guys) and you can actually achieve the end without tearing your hair out or throwing things across the room.

That’s what this series is like. Yes, you can get into something like Altered Carbon or Black Mirror, but it may leave you unsettled or with questions that will bug you for the next week. The Green Hornet is eye-friendly, brain-friendly, and it wraps up all of its threads. There’s no ‘wait a minute - how did the bad guy know about the warehouse?’ or ‘how did they get there so fast when the other dude said no-one knew the location?’. And in every situation when they bust through a door with the Hornet Sting and the bad guy inevitably tries to jump them, Kato has them all floored without breaking a sweat, and the Hornet dives straight in and punches guys in the face left right and centre. Why people still try to take them down, one has to wonder.

However there are sometimes moments where it’s a little too easy - sometimes their plans just work, when you're expecting them not to. Sometimes the plan doesn't work, but then inadvertantly fixes something else with the plot. Although they did do a few two-parters during the only season, they did try to wrap things up pretty quickly, so a sudden swing in their direction was met with surprise but acceptance by the characters more than one. One thing though: no-one recognises the bad guy under a disguise no more amazing than the Green Hornet’s - but then, it has the same rules for everyone. People who know Britt Reid don’t recognise the Green Hornet’s voice or face when they’re in the same room with him, so that’s why Britt Reid doesn’t recognise the guest star of the week’s voice when they’re the bad guy all along. I like it; it’s continuity.

Stars

We have to talk about Britt Reid. He’s charming, well-spoken and although sometimes his eye is caught by a good-looking woman who knows her own mind, he doesn’t fall for any feminine wiles. He appears to run his late father’s newspaper and TV news empire with consideration and forethought - although we don’t see much of what he does, other than appearing on high impact news broadcasts and using the Daily Sentinel as a way through closed doors, his staff appear to appreciate what he does, and it’s mentioned a few times that the DS is a proper newspaper, not a ‘gossip sheet’ or ‘toady rag’. When he’s the Hornet, he’s mean and when he says things like ‘you don’t want to cut me out of this - it wouldn’t go well for you’, you think, uh… actually? Let’s not chance that, bad guys; just do as he says.

Also, he’s played by Van Williams. He had a superhero jaw before there were superhero jaws, a friendly face but also the ability to smack you upside yours without too much effort, and he certainly looked the part of a cunning strategist. And, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t have kicked him out. He could read me the phonebook and I’d enjoy it.

Which brings us to Kato. This show would arguably have been much bleaker in its one run of 26 episodes if Bruce Lee had not graced it with his much-restrained but effective flair. At the beginning of the series he barely gets a word in - he might get an ‘ok’ or a ‘right away’, but mostly he’s there to stand still, fold his arms menacingly, stand too close to a target so he bricks it and tells the Hornet everything, and sometimes nod. It must have been demoralising for Lee. However, Van Williams decided this wasn’t very fair and started to ask the showrunners - shouldn’t the ‘sidekick’ get more lines? Shouldn’t people see what he did between wearing the black chauffeur’s outfit? If we don’t know anything about Kato, why would we care? How do we even know if he’s loyal to Britt? Just because he doesn’t get the chance to speak?

Some of this probably came out of the offscreen friendship they appeared to share. Some of this probably came out of Williams not being a complete narcissistic arsehole. Whatever the real reason, he did mither The Powers That Be until Lee began to get more and more words per episode. He went from a silent nod at the wheel of the Black Beauty to lines like ‘Are you sure? You know this is a trap, right?’ Getting a word in is one thing, but to get lines that make the main character think, to question what he’s doing - that’s a big step up, scriptwise. This continued until we even got an episode based in Chinatown, where Kato ends up settling a personal vendetta against a thug who got one over on him earlier in the episode. When he says to Britt ‘When we get there, the dude is mine’, Britt’s only response is the very correct ‘you’re on’. Friends indeed.

Let’s not forget the guest stars. From Mako to Star Trek’s own Jeffrey Hunter, people today may not recognise any of the stars who trot across the screen, but back then it was a veritable cavalcade of Who’s Who of the character actor’s world. From growing up watching things like Remington Steele, I recognise a few of the faces, albeit much younger than they were by the time I saw them in the 80s, but that also gave me a feeling of already being part of the series. Whether or not that’s the goal of getting in guest stars in the first place, it certainly adds to things when you’re messaging your sisters with ‘Captain Pike is alive and well, living in America running a construction site close to the Green Hornet’s backyard’. Good times.

And so to the conclusion; what do we make of all this? Does it hold your attention? Is the acting good enough? How has it aged?

For me personally: it’s ace. I could watch seasons and seasons of this stuff. It’s accessible, it adds up, and while it’s not at all any kind of challenge, it’s very welcome after a long day at work. The stars are fun (and nice to look at), the cases are different enough that you don’t get episodes confused, and all in all it’s a fun little show that runs so short, you don’t have time to look at your phone or get bored. By contrast, I tried rewatching season 1 of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but it was long, a little padded, and not so much fun at all. (Granted, season 2 was when there was much more Illya Kuryakin, but that’s a post for another day.)

How does the series match up against the 2011 film?

While the movie dumbed-down Britt to give Lenore Case (the ‘secretary’) a pivotal role, it also provided Kato with an actual back story and a relatively huge role. It also felt like a double episode of the show, with more budget and more time to flesh things out. It was also an origin movie, obviously with people in charge hoping it would spawn a few sequels but it never did. Sometimes I wonder what a sequel would have been like, and if they could still do one. And then sometimes I think they should instead use it as a springboard for a Netflix show instead, with someone like Jensen Ackles as Britt Reid / the Green Hornet and Jay Chou (again) or Daniel Wu as Kato. They could go Gotham ‘fun’ or Daredevil dark - it would be up to them. Maybe even - and this would be interesting if they could pull it off - Gotham fun when it’s Britt and his gadgets whizz and Daredevil dark when it’s the Hornet and Kato. Flip from Technicolor to washed out contrast, from humour to intimidating / grimdark.

I digress.

Yes, the series is still good to watch and still more fun that some other modern series are now. Yes, the movie is also fun, with some welcome modern tweaking to certain characters. For me personally the only drawback to the movie was Seth Rogen; he’s funny and he fits this version, but I don’t think there’s anything to explore for a sequel.

In conclusion? On balance it hasn’t aged badly. There are a few moments where it’s implied the women are only ‘women’ and can’t be expected to do much, but then Lenore Case thinks ahead and takes a tracker with her, then when she’s kidnapped (which wasn’t really much of an outside chance considering the situation) she has it in her bag the whole time, furiously pressing on it for help. Hitting two dudes with a tall lamp, making her getaway and stealing their car to do it was nice to see - and this was 1966. Kudos to Wende Wagner for making it look so easy. What did make me laugh was the Hornet climbing up the conveyor belt she was roped to (about to get her head chopped off at the top) and panicking because he can’t get her ropes undone. And there’s Kato at the bottom, just pressing the ‘stop’ button. It’s the simple things that make me chuckle.

So there we have it. 1966 series: good times. 2011 movie: good times. Neither of these productions is supposed to set the world on fire or change the way we look at entertainment. But both of them are just plain fun without too many strings, and for that they both land in the ‘rewatchable’ category for me. (Maybe the series a little more.)

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print. While the world is losing its collective shit over this COVID-19 debacle, I’ll now return to staying home and watching more media. Heavy is the burden of being me.

Peach and lube, people. Peach and lube.

Nostalgia vs NOTstalgia part I: the Homework

Recently I was talking about Jay Chou 周杰倫 with a colleague at work - basically saying he’s the best classical-music-Chinese-traditional-new-wave-rapper she’s never heard of. Unsurprising really, as he records in Mandarin for the Taiwan market (however, he’s also kind of a big deal around southeast Asia and parts of the US).

On the back of this it made me miss the 2011 big-screen remake of The Green Hornet as he stars as Kato. I pulled this out and watched it again and, all over again, enjoyed it for the fun and frolics and basic Charlie’s-Angel’s-2000-with-Boys feel to it. I know lots of people hated it or derided it for the way it dumbed-down the character of Britt Reid - and it was never going to have Bruce Lee in it. While it did make Reid out to be a major dumbass who actually needs the Hornet Gun, it also expanded on Lenore Case’s role so that she wasn’t just coming into the office to tell Reid some plot is going down. On balance, not a bad thing. It also showed what Kato actually did - yes, he made a coffee machine, but now he was also a gadgets whizz who could sketch schematics and make them himself, reworking polycarbonate (the stuff they make shark tanks out of) into car windshields, turning everything bullet-proof and adding proper Ben Hur tyre rippers to the nice custom wheels. He had lines, a role, a real life - even a back story. From the streets of Shanghai to the fabulous mansion of one James Reid newspaper mogul, Kato was now a modern American success story.

To be honest, I had never seen any Bruce Lee TV work as it’s so hard to get hold of, so part of me wondered what the original 60s version had been like. The way people were whaling on the 2011 movie, you’d think it was shitting on Desilu Studios’ Star Trek. So what was all the fuss about? Had the original really been that good? It was time to find a copy of the original 1966 Green Hornet and find out.

First of all - some context. Imagine it’s 1966. Well I know you can’t do that - I can’t do that as I was born in the 70s. So let’s instead imagine your choice of TV that night. The British series Doctor Who had already been on the BBC in England for three years (in black and white), however it would be another six before it would be shown on US television. The high-camp, high-colour crowd-pleaser Batman had exploded on the scene and was doing pretty ok. Bonanza and The Andy Griffith Show were going strong, Lucille Ball was at it again with the very successful The Lucy Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show was still winning Emmys, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was still charming audiences, and more and more US TV watchers had colour television sets and wanted more Technicolor content.

Where did the Green Hornet fit in? To begin with, this wasn’t his first disco. He was originally a radio drama that started in 1936, after George W. Trendle wanted to add another proper fun, righteous radio serial to the airwaves alongside the successful The Lone Ranger (interesting fact: the Green Hornet was the grandnephew of the Lone Ranger, hence the similar eye-mask). Arriving full-fleshed out and with built-in audience awareness, the series wasn’t the massive hit the network wanted but it did well enough, being syndicated to all parts of the States and beyond - in the early 1970s it was playing in Hong Kong where the voracious TV audience referred to it as ‘The Kato Show’, for obvious reasons. However back at home in the US it ran for one season of twenty-six episodes before it was cancelled by its parent the ABC network.

In that time it had had a few crossovers with Batman (I remember seeing a rerun of this when I was about seven or eight - Batman and Robin are ‘climbing’ up the side of a building, as you do, and Kato and the Hornet open one of the windows and stick their heads out as they go past. I remember asking my Dad who the heads were, as I got the feeling I was supposed to know them and get some kind of joke. He said they were from ‘another famous TV show at the time - the name escapes me’) and although it continued to bring in viewers, the ratings declined and eventually the inevitable happened. Interesting to note is that Van Williams, the superhero-chinned, charming lead who played Britt Reid, was constantly pushing for Kato to have more airtime and more lines (sometimes he was lucky to get three lines an episode). The network refused - Kato was not white American, and besides, splitting airtime that only ran to twenty-eight minutes anyway would take focus off the star. If they had let Kato speak a bit more, and use more of his innate talent for beating the crap out of henchmen and villains, perhaps the show would have had a second season. But who knows, eh? The path not taken.

This brings us to the show itself; was it any good? Everyone looks back at things past with rose-tinted glasses - but I’d never seen it in the first place. What would I, who grew up on 80s TV, reruns of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., comics, superheroes and spy films, make of it in today’s climate?

In the best traditions of the old-fashioned serials (and today’s arc-for-a-season Netflix bingeing), you’ll have to wait until the next post to find out. Gotcha!

Soopytwist.