NTSF:SD:SUV:: - Season 1

NTSF:SD:SUV:: is a spin-off of Childrens' Hospital (in our universe, within the meta-fiction it's just another show in their nightmare world of silly, generic network TV shows taken to an extreme), and while it hasn't managed to become as good as that series yet, it's still a lot of fun and has enough promise to turn into a similar coming together of strong writing, a great cast, and a bunch of off-the-wall ideas. Paul Scheer stars as Trent Hauser, the lead agent of an anti-terrorism unit that protects San Diego from all manner of bizarre crimes. Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager plays his boss and two-time ex-wife with an eye patch, Martin Starr plays a computer expect who's not much of a character but still does a good job, and Rob Riggle plays the nutty President of the Navy. Peter Serafinowicz does the voice of the their robot assistant, and a couple people I don't really know play fellow agents, one who constantly makes reference to his native Alaska and another who ably fills every possible cliche of a female lead in a cop show.

Besides the main cast, there's plenty of great talent in the guest cast from week to week, like Jeff Goldblum as a high-stakes gambler who makes full use of jurisdiction laws and Adam Scott as a rival to Trent who's confined to a wheelchair. The cast frequently props up episodes even when their plots are a bit bare and reliant on a single wacky joke. Most of the stories are actually pretty familiar if you've spent any time watching shows like this, often with just a couple little tweaks that push them into the realm of the fully ridiculous. Once in a while they'll go for broke with an alternate universe episode or something, but a big part of the fun is how close the show really is to what it parodies at certain times. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what they can do now that they're more familiar with what they can get away with on Adult Swim.

The Punisher

I watched The Punisher knowing it didn't have a good reputation, but still hoping it would be a decent revenge movie. Unfortunately, the decent revenge stuff was hampered by a hard-to-like protagonist and one of the worst initial premises I've ever seen in a film. The original Punisher comic started with a normal guy named Frank Castle's family getting killed after they witness a gang execution, and him taking the law into his own hands. Not terribly brilliant, but it works. What happens in the movie does not work. Castle is an ex-soldier and undercover FBI agent, and after a gun deal he oversees goes south and a dumb criminal gets killed, his dad played by John Travolta (who's completely unconvincing as a ruthless gangster) decides to take it out Frank and his entire family. This obviously makes no sense since he was hardly responsible for what happened and killing a lawman and his extended family would result in a huge crackdown from the government, though fortunately for him it never happens for no reason and Frank Castle has to... yep, take the law into his own hands.

I could go on about how terrible this opening is, but there are other things I have to cover like how Frank's neighbors in his new slum apartment are annoying and add little to the story, how Frank's kind of a giant dick who pathologically lies to his son (before he dies) and gets a bit too sadistic with his actions when he claims to be only punishing criminals rather than getting revenge, and how inept everyone Travolta sends after our less-than-intrepid hero is. Hired assassins announce their intentions and show up at his heavily fortified apartment completely unarmed, packs of goons fail to make sure he's dead (which guarantees he'll survive) and search for him effectively, if you don't pay attention it might be a pretty enjoyable action movie, but once you do it falls apart like it was held together with chewing gum.

I did enjoy the eventual punishment for the most part, although it was hard to stomach what happens to Travolta's wife with Castle not being aware that she probably deserves it and essentially doing to the bad guys exactly what they did to him. I've been watching Hung and like Thomas Jane quite a bit on that, but he can't do a whole lot with what he has here. He was given a tough road to hoe with the material, and try as he might he just can't make Frank likable. Really, the cast isn't terrible at all, but nobody in the film comes off very well. You have to lay the blame on the director and writers. They changed the details of the origin for no reason and definitely for the worse, and fail to make anybody sympathetic on top of that. It wasn't awful, but it really didn't do anything well enough to make it worth seeing.