Sons of Anarchy - Season 4

It's a shame last night's final episode of this season of Sons of Anarchy was so disappointing, because up until it aired, they were putting together a very successful and at times amazing season that could have ended up as something really special. Coming off a year when a lot of people were questioning the show, to come this close to bringing it all back in grand style and then failing at the last second is just kind of a tragedy. It's not even a bad episode of television in a vacuum - it's well acted and shot as Sons always is, with some powerful scenes and good humor sprinkled throughout. The problem is what the episode represents as far as the rest of the season is concerned - that is, it reveals that the dramatic moments they've been building toward have all been a lie, and the huge stakes they put up never really existed. This seemed like a season that could really be a game changer for the show, and while a few things happen that will definitely have consequences next year, perhaps significant ones, they really don't come close to matching what the show has been hinting at all along.

It sort of felt like this was a back to basics season, after the much delayed and drawn out visit to Ireland (which I enjoyed) last year caused some people to question the show. It's just the sons in Charming again, trying to stay afloat while making some deals, avoiding trouble with other gangs, and trying not to get caught by the cops. Over the course of fourteen episodes, more and more conflicts pile on, small and large, that threaten to cause the club to collapse under its own weight and take everyone connected down with it. They use the technique very effectively, to the point where you worry that there's actually too many conflicts and they won't be able to satisfyingly resolve them all. And that ends up being the case. In the end, I doubt in the long run this will ever end up being seen as much more than a filler season, and you never want an entire year of effort you put into something to end up feeling like that. I can sort of see what Kurt Sutter and his team were going for in doing this, but in the end they teased some inevitable story beats that they weren't quite prepared to deliver on yet, and the result was a letdown.

The main cast was great as always, and their supporting cast was perhaps better than ever, with lots of recognizable faces joining both sides of the law. The show definitely gets a bit over the top with the sex and violence now and again, with a couple issues this season being firefights that are just too big for me to believe the cops wouldn't get wind of them in time and the very casual way the club members seem to regard violence against women. But the show wouldn't be the same without its edge, and I'd rather they lean too far toward over the top than too far in the other direction, and you can't really say there's another show on TV that pulls off action scenes better. And while they shied away from some big moments, the ones that they did have were pretty darn special. I'm definitely watching next year, because the season was mostly very good and I'm really invested in most of the characters and I know they can do better than this and there are plenty of things I know the show will eventually do that I still want to see. But it's definitely hard to shake that feeling of disappointment.

Futurama - Season 6-B

Futurama continues to have the messiest mishmash of seasons and non-seasons I've ever seen. Although they aired in a chunk last year, culminating in what Comedy Central called a season finale and being released together on a DVD set, the 13 episodes from 2010 are apparently only the first half of what is officially "season 6". The second half just finished airing. They're doing thee same thing again, with the show getting renewed for 26 more episodes of a season which will air in two parts in 2012 and 2013. They can do whatever they want, I guess, it's just kind of weird.

Anyway, these episodes were about on the same level as the ones from last year, just a bit less up and down. Nothing ever got as bad as the eyephone episode, but nothing was as consistently funny as the robot evolution one either. The thing that bothered me the most was that they attempted several times, as in last year's "The Late Philip J. Fry", to capture the touching side of the show that used to come out of nowhere and really tug on the heartstrings. Episodes like "The Luck of the Fryish" and "Jurassic Bark" were easily among the show's best, both because they were really funny and because they came around to end up hitting on some really emotionally resonant moments. This year, episodes like "Cold Warriors" and "Overclockwise" attempted the same, but those moments felt less earned, less integral to the story, and more like the show was just trying to capture some magic they lost in the years the show was dead. I don't want to be overly dramatic, but in 26 episodes, I've enjoyed most of what they've done, but I've come to believe they will never quite find the same groove they had when the writers were all peaking together.

Not that there wasn't good stuff. I didn't think I needed to know how Dr. Farnsworth and Dr. Zoidberg met, but the episode that explored that was surprisingly one of the best. I miss the concept of the original anthology episodes, but this year's out-of-continuity three-parter, "Reincarnation", was possibly their best ever, changing up the show's visual style without compromising the fun of the comedy. I continue to be disappointed by the way they still haven't figured out where to go with Fry and Leela's relationship, but when they actually do get back to it, it tends to work well. I just remembered something else that bothered me - I always liked Hermes partly because he avoided a lot of really easy Jamaican jokes, but since they've moved to Comedy Central and gotten used to looser standards, he's turned into a regular old pothead. I'm trying to talk about why I still like the show and I keep remembering how it bothers me. It's just to be expected when one of your favorite shows ever goes away for a while and isn't quite the same when it returns. I still think it's worth watching though, the writing is just less consistently brilliant, and they might be running short on great ways to play with old sci-fi tropes. I'll definitely keep watching through the next production season, at least.

Television Update 7: Holiday Specials

There seemed to be an unusual amount of special episodes of shows I watch around the Holiday season this year, so I thought I'd go over them. To get here, the episode didn't have to be Christmas themed, but it did have to be separate from the standard season airing schedule for the show.

Doctor Who - "A Christmas Carol"

Hey, an episode of Doctor Who actually aired in America on the same day as in England! It's a Christmas miracle! While Russell T. Davies' Who Christmas specials tended to at least acknowledge the existence of the Holiday, they also tended to be about everything except it. Now that Steven Moffat's in charge of the show, he's put the Christmas back in Christmas Special with one of his better episodes, and definitely the most holiday-themed Who I've seen. The episode is obviously a take on a story that's been retold countless times, but Moffat and the cast make it work surprisingly well. Michael Gambon plays a man in control of a planet's dangerous cloud layer who takes family members for collateral on loans, and is very much a future version of Scrooge. Needing his help to save a ship full of people including Amy and Roy, the Doctor takes the role of the various Christmas ghosts and creatively uses the TARDIS to try to change his mind. The time travel twists on the classic story freshen it up quite a bit, and there's a lot here to justify Moffat's conception of the show as fairy tale more than science fiction. A very fun, very British hour of television.

Futurama - "The Futurama Holiday Spectacular"


This special is a lot like the Anthology of Interest episodes from the past, showing three silly short films within the Futurama framework, although this time there's nothing to frame the different stories and everyone dies at the end of all three, making them decidedly out of continuity. They're all based on a different holiday and also have sneaky environmental themes attached, providing a Christmas story about seed contamination, a Robanukah story about the depleting Petroleum reserves, and a Kwanzaa story about honey bees disappearing. It's far from one of the best episodes the show has done, with many of the jokes falling flat and yet another Al Gore appearance feeling a bit redundant at this point, but I'll give it a pass because each segment made me laugh out loud at least once. A bit scattershot, but they were probably constrained by the short running time for each bit, needing to hit multiple themes in each one, and finding a way to kill off the cast at the end each time, so the end result is respectable if not outstanding. A decent hold over until the next season starts.

Robot Chicken - "Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III"


There was actually a proper Christmas episode that aired before this, but it appears to be part of the regular fifth season which is starting up soon, while this is definitely a special. While the Family Guy Star Wars tributes have a clear purpose to go on for three episodes, retelling the story of the original trilogy, the Robot Chicken Star Wars episodes have been all over the place with all six movies, making a third seem less necessary. And at an hour long it could have easily dragged. Luckily the writers saved it with a real concept this time, going forward chronologically through the whole series, following Emperor Palpatine's ascent to the throne. It's still just an excuse for a lot of random gags and jokes, but the general progression makes it more interesting than it could have been. Their take on Palpatine is still pretty funny, and a lot of the sketches are among the best and most elaborate they've ever done. It's still definitely just more Robot Chicken in places, but I liked the episode more than I expected.

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! - "Chrimbus Special"


The Awesome Show's apparent ending earlier this year was a surprise heartbreak, though they've changed that sentiment in the last couple months with a new tour (that I missed getting to go to), a new hour long episode, and an announcement of a coming movie as well as the possibility of more seasons if they feel like it. That's all great news, and the holiday "Chrimbus" episode was hilarious as expected. Chrimbus is a warped version of Christmas much more focused on the receiving aspect of the holiday than the giving side, and it's an opportunity for more awkward audience reactions, mildly disturbing song and dance numbers, and one off sketches. The episode works as an excuse to bring back all of the old favorite guests, from known celebrities like Zach Galifianakis to fan favorite oddities like Ben Hur. There's a couple more ridiculous Cinco products to throw on the gigantic pile, and a multi-part arc with Carol and Mr. Henderson that wasn't exactly necessary but still pretty outstanding. More fun for Tim and Eric fans, and if it had ended up as the last thing they did, it would have been a nice send off.

Sons of Anarchy - Season 3

Not everyone has seemed to like Sons' third season as much as the first two, but personally I enjoyed it a lot. It probably helped that I ended up watching most of it very quickly, only managing to catch the final two episodes on their original air dates, which helped smooth over any pacing issues. And I can understand where people's problems lie. The show isn't perfect, occasionally having to warp believable plotting or character decisions a bit to accomplish a necessary task in the story in a limited time. And with how rarely I actually enjoy tumultuous romantic relationships in television, I really didn't like how they shoehorned in some of that drama here because they apparently felt it was still necessary. But for the most part I really had fun with this season, and especially its willingness to change location for a while.

It probably takes them at least an episode or two too long to get there, but the most important thing to happen this season was the gang's excursion to Ireland, which has story effects both immediate and otherwise. Obviously they have an immediate reason to be there, but it also becomes clear that the thing that's been hanging over this entire series, what really happened to Jax's father, is heavily influenced by the gang's previous time in the country. The shift in setting for a bit brings a shift in style, including a really cool redone theme song over the opening credits, and I liked how the show spent a bit of time with the main characters out of their element and let us in on how some of the other criminals in its world live. The Irish side of things was interesting enough that I feel like it could even sustain its own show, although probably not one with quite the same audience as Sons of Anarchy.

Ireland is really just part of the season though, as of course there's plenty of other stuff going on constantly for the characters to worry about. It wouldn't be Sons if things weren't just one second away from blowing up in everyone's faces. It culminates in the finale when a ton of plot threads that have built up over most of the show's run come together in one of my favorite sequences on television this year, offering a moment of pure fun and surprise that most shows don't attempt. Season two ended on a major cliffhanger and season three felt like a continuation of it more than its own entity a lot of the time, so I liked that they closed off a lot of things here, while also providing a definite direction for the fourth. I expect them to jump forward in time at least a bit this time, but it's hard to really say with this show. How much time has actually passed? Maybe a year? Not that it really matters, but the characters probably need a few moments to breathe at this point.

Sons of Anarchy - Season 2

Sons of Anarchy's second season was a nice follow-up to the first. I sort of wish Jax' perceived split with the group at the end had more immediately impact on the story here, but his issues with the club's direction still manage to fester and grow while they boil under the surface, as there's a more immediate threat that the Sons have to deal with. The League of American Nationalists come to town when the President Ethan Zobelle opens a cigar shop on main street. They're a white supremacy group, and along with his second in command Weston played by Henry Rollins, Zobelle looks to use a lot of clout and underhanded tactics to supplant the Sons as the primary gun supplier in the area. He came at the right time with Jax and Clay constantly butting heads, and it's a struggle all season long for the club to deal with this new threat when they aren't united internally.

There's a lot of good character progression this season, as everyone in the club gets their chance to be sympathetic despite their criminal leanings. Some very bad things happen to a few of them, and the way they handle it while maintaining outward appearances is always compelling drama. Katey Sagal's performance is again key, and what she goes through while at the same time her relationship with Tara is evolving is pretty great stuff. It really is all about the characters, even in such a tightly plotted show like this, where five minutes rarely seem to pass without something significant happening. Because even though it would be enjoyable just for the crime drama plot and often impressively done spurts of action and violence, what makes the show awesome is that I honestly like and care about all of the characters. It doesn't matter if they're a grizzled, cantankerous veteran like Piney or a dimwitted but ballsy prospect like Half Sack, the show does a great job of making them into people instead of tools, no matter what evils they're committing to save themselves or just make some money. And by the last couple episodes it's just fantastic moments coming one after the other, with some genuinely thrilling and hard hitting scenes as good as anything from the great dramas that came in the last decade. I wasn't the biggest fan of the note things actually ended on, but if anything that just makes me more eager to catch up with the almost-finished third season.

Sons of Anarchy - Season 1

Sons was created by Kurt Sutter, one of the producers and more frequent writers on The Shield, which is one of the reasons I decided to make it my next show. I've heard that it started out anywhere from weak to only decent before blossoming as it went on, though to be honest I mostly enjoyed it from the beginning. The first season definitely improved as it built up its story and cast, but that germ of quality was always there. It's about a motorcycle club in Northern California that does illegal gun running to make money and pressures law enforcement to keep them out of trouble and businesses to avoid their home town of Charming to keep it small and away from federal attention. It could have been just another mob show on bikes, but they do enough to keep it unique, and the Hamlet-inspired story makes it a bit deeper than it might seem at first.

It's funny seeing the timing between Sons of Anarchy beginning and Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned coming a bit later, because they must have been developed around the same time. They definitely remind me of each other despite taking place on opposite coasts (theoretically), and leads me to believe they're both fairly accurate depictions of these kind of gangs. I've read how the motorcycle clubs are fundamentally different from other kinds of organized crime in that most organizations use violence as a means to the end of profit, the clubs are violent because it's fun and just happen to make money while they're doing it. The cast of Sons is mostly made up of the various gang members, and they do a really good job of making the group likable while never compromising on them being very bad people. Obvious standouts are Ron Perlman as Clay the club president and Katey Sagal as his wife Gemma, who despite her increasing age still has a power over the men her husband commands. Protagonist Jax is her son and Clay's step kid, vice president of the club who begins to question the gang's methods and beliefs after his son his born and he finds a manifesto written by his long-dead father about how the club went bad. It's a slow burning storyline, but it builds pretty brilliantly over the 13 episodes until the finale, which should have pretty major ramifications that will be interesting to watch play out. Not perfect, but very fun to watch.

Futurama - Season 6

The hardest part of writing this was determining what number season to call it. Any number from 5 to 7 might have applied. Do I count the show's original run as four or five seasons, basing it on the production order or the televised order? Do the televised versions of the movies count as a season? Ultimately I went with this as the sixth, because I couldn't even be writing this at all right now if I went with production seasons since this current one is only half over, and counted the movies as a precursor rather than an official season.

Boy what a waste of words. Anyway, I was kind of worried about the show for a while. Like the movies, it was still entertaining, but had failed to yet reach any of the heights from the series' best episodes in its original run. Was I doomed to watch one of my favorite series ever gradually decline into unwatchable crap? But luckily, things started really picking up somewhere around halfway through this run. "Lethal Inspection" attempted sentiment but only ended up bothering me with some inconsistencies about Bender's origin (yes, I'm a giant dork, why do you ask?), but the next episode more or less got it right with Fry and Leela, and featured one of the series' best sequences ever. And then after a merely decent cat episode, it ran off several in a row that were as funny and inventive as the show has ever been, minus a couple of the true greats. It looks like they more or less righted the ship, and they're not even half done with the current production order.

So while I'm happy to see the show back and doing pretty well, part of me wishes it had stayed canceled. Now, I would never say I don't want there to be more of a show I love that's course hasn't fully run out. But when something has a perfect ending already, there's at least a nagging thought that it should stay ended. Futurama's first series finale was heartbreaking, but it also managed to send off the series brilliantly, with some of the best comedy in the whole show and a truly sweet ending. And it's getting to the point where that sort of emotionally perfect conclusion will get harder and harder to reach. There's only so many times the show can put Fry and Leela together and then split them apart again before I stop caring about the characters. The handling of their relationship was the most consistent issue I had with this season. They declared their love at the end of the fourth movie, but in half the episodes it seems like they're dating or at least considering it, and in the other half it's like nothing ever happened. It's inconsistent and lazy and annoying. It shouldn't be this hard to figure out what the situation is, right? Amy and Kif have been together for years with only a couple hiccups, and it's worked out fine. But whatever, it's a cartoon and I should worry that much, right? There's a new anthology episode in November and then thirteen more episodes next year, and that's all that really matters.

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder

Into the Wild Green Yonder is possibly the last Futurama we'll ever see, and when you look at it that way, it's hard to be disappointed. Like all the movies, it doesn't reach the height of brilliance in the series' best episodes, although few things do. It does have the best story of the four though, and has an ending similar to that of "The Devil's Hands Are Idle Playthings", able to serve as either a somewhat satisfying conclusion or a launching point for even more adventures, depending on what happens. It does recall previous happenings and jokes at a perhaps overly high rate, but it seemed like they were less of a crutch here, and it's at least nice to see the return, and perhaps conclusion of the Waterfall family.

There are some abandoned subplots and unexplained details that mar the beginning of the movie, but before long it settles into what is probably the most consistent story of the four movies. The first three were more obviously divided into four segments for easy splitting into individual televised episodes, and you can still sort of see that hear, just not as much. A frequent theme in the series is Fry's universal importance due to his strange brain wave patterns, and it's cool to finally see that idea come back, and this time without the Nibblonians, which are funny but we've seen before. It probably featured my favorite use of Bender in the movies, and it was nice that they finally did something else with Fry and Leela. Seeing Amy's dad turn from an insensitive rich guy into a Mr. Burns-esque super villain was a bit weird, although he served his purpose. Overall, if this is the last Futurama ever, I'll definitely be able to live with it.

Futurama: Bender's Game

Bender's Game is the third of four new Futurama movies, and overall the weakest. It's still funny, but not as smart as the other movies and a bit strange structurally. In general, the movies haven't measured up to the quality of the series in its prime, but I saw a good point made recently, that mediocre Futurama is better than no Futurama at all, and I totally agree with that. I think it's a little late in the game for The Lord of the Rings references, but contrary to what they seemed to show in previews, that's only a portion of what goes on in this movie. The first couple movies seemed to do more new stuff with introducing characters and places, but this one mostly shows you stuff you've seen before, if tweaked a bit.

Honestly, the fantasy segment is probably the weakest part of Bender's Game. It starts out with two stories about Bender getting into Dungeons and Dragons with some kids and taking it too far and the crew trying to stop Mom's monopoly on dark matter fuel. There's some good stuff and a surprising amount of character development with Mom's sons, before the two plots converge as everyone gets sucked into an alternate fantasy-style dimension. It's at this point that the jokes get lazy and the story slows down for no particularly good reason at all. The specifics of the dimension shift don't really make sense either, as most people are completely integrated into the different setting and know what's going on but a couple of the main cast act like fish out of water and one even has the same clothes as before. Eventually they return to the original universe and things get resolved. Not a bad movie by any means, just a bit disappointing.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs

The second of four planned Futurama movies is different from the first in some interesting ways. Beast continues directly from the cliffhanger at the end of Bender's Big Score, and wraps up the big question it left hanging, but overall it's much less plot-based. You could tell Score was made to be easily broken into normal episodes, but it still felt like it had a continuous, interesting storyline. It kind of messed with the past a bit too much but the time travel was still entertaining. Beast has a story, but it is much more obvious about being a string of interlocking episodes than a real movie, just in terms of the overall arc. The cliffhanger doesn't even really come into it until deeper than I expected.

Despite the more disjointed narrative, I might have enjoyed it more than the first movie for a simple reason - it was funnier. The point of the show has always been humor with developing the interesting world as a secondary concern, and the movie delivers very well. It's not an official measure, but I definitely feel like I laughed out loud quite a few times more often than Score. Some of the jokes broke the normal mood a bit, but it was still pretty funny the whole way through. The cast did a good job again, including special guests such as David Cross, who's always funny. His character is interesting although the actual dialogue is a bit standard sounding, but Cross makes it all work humorously. To be honest, I'm a little tired of Bender always being an asshole who usually ruins things, but I'm curious what the next movie, which appears to focus on him, will bring since the title is a reference to Ender's Game. The movie looks great and the DVD has good special features as always, and is something every fan of the show should grab ahold of.

Futurama: Bender's Big Score

After a long absence that never really felt like it was because of DVD sets and reruns, Futurama finally returns with some new content. Bender's Big Score is the first of four full movies that will follow each other (At least the second appears to be a direct continuation of this one) and be shown on Comedy Central as a total of 16 episodes. Watching the movie, you can easily see where the breaks will be, as about every 22 minute block seems to have its own repeated ideas and climax. The movie is rarely as funny as the best episodes of the series, but it's still quite enjoyable throughout. Lots of old characters and gags return, and it's nice to see some of them, although I hope they got all of that out of their systems so the rest of the movies can be pure, original entertainment.

The plot of the movie is really quite intricate. They've generally avoided time travel in the past because of the problems it can cause, but they dive right into the topic this time around. It didn't take long to find some problems, because while they make it clear from certain things that Futurama allows travelers to the past to influence events, yet there are some inconsistencies with how Fry interacts with his family and what we've seen before. In general they handle it fairly well though, and it's quite a fun story. It's cool to just have the characters back and also see some new ones, like the first appearance of the Channukah Zombie, played by Mark Hamill. It was odd how the two musical numbers were crammed into the same quarter of the movie, but they were both pretty nice, and the animation and computer effects are as pretty as ever. The DVD also has some good special features, including the ever popular commentary by the creators and actors. If you're a fan, you have to get this, to ensure the show's continuation.