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Reviews
The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar (2015)
Trying a bit too hard to be The Lion King
This is less a sequel to The Lion King and more a rehashing. While the plot itself is unique enough and the Lion Guard doesn't feel out of place in the setting- even if it wasn't in any way hinted at before this, nearly everything else feels copied directly from the original. They even directly reference Hakunah Matata before the song it inspired. Kion's friend Bunga is not only a blatant Timon and Pumba analogue, he's their nephew (despite being a honey badger, which is questioned but not explained). Homaging a beloved precursor doesn't have to be bad- it's one of my favorite parts of Jurassic World- but this feels completely paint-by-numbers. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they had a literal checklist of Lion King elements they had to hit while writing. The one thing it should have taken from the movie but didn't was the emotional depth. Kion is around the same age Simba was at the beginning of the movie, and this only covers one day instead of a lifetime, so they don't have time for the same sort of resonance, but some of the elements presented- original or otherwise- should have had some sort of impact on the characters. That's what separates a kids movie from a family movie, and Lion Guard doesn't have much to offer adults. That said, this is the pilot for a Lion Guard series, and it does what a pilot should do. It sets up the premise and the characters, while coming across as more than exposition.
Castle: When the Bough Breaks (2009)
A good episode, but the ending ruins it.
The episode is pretty good. The banter between the characters is great, and the twists are mostly interesting. It's slightly annoying the way they keep referring to the "certain British secret agent," especially since later episodes come out and say James Bond, but I'm sure there was a legal reason involved.
What really bothers me is the ending. First off, they don't give any reason Eliska suspected her son was switched at birth. It makes her come off as really conceited ("I could not possibly give birth to a sick child. MY real son would be perfect.") while the episode is trying to frame her as some sort of saint for pursuing this conviction. Throw me a bone here. A throw-away line about his eyes being an improbable color, or her having medical knowledge to know the odds of having a child born with the disease. Not just "This isn't my son. I want a new, healthy, living son."
Second off, that they don't return Zane to his rightful father. Yes, I know his- let's say "adopted"- mother wasn't aware of the situation, but he was KIDNAPPED. There was nothing legal about the proceedings, so she has no right to keep him. Especially since his biological father is implied to be part of his life. If he were being deported (as he is in the country on an expired visa), that would be one thing, but the show implies he isn't. And I know there's an argument to be made about not disrupting him at a delicate age, but the man he believed was his father is going to jail for murdering his biological mother. He's already being disrupted.
Castle: The Double Down (2009)
A flimsy premise for flimsy plot
What could have been an interesting episode- Ryan and Esposito getting a chance to work on their own case, outside Beckett's command- was utterly spoiled when it turns out the cases are connected. From that point it becomes clear that it's a Strangers on a Train plot, and Castle name-checking the movie doesn't excuse them for using it.
Also, the cases are linked because of diatoms found on both bodies unique to one body of salt water. That body of water winds up being a lake. I'd think a heck of a lot of people would be walking around with the lake diatoms on their bodies, making that connection incredibly flimsy. I understand New York is a big city, but it's like saying "Either both victims, both killers, or some combination of the two both passed by the same commonly accessible spot in some time prior to the murders. That can't be a coincidence!" It would've been better if they'd managed to find some other way to connect the cases, because that ruins it for me. A flimsy premise for a flimsy plot.
The 'full moon' scene at the opening feels incredibly out of place, because we never just watch them sit around the squad room. Maybe it's more common in other crime shows, but we don't get anything remotely close to this pandemonium in a typical episode, so it already feels like we've been transported to another precinct.
Castle: Murder Most Fowl (2010)
A good episode with one distracting omission
I don't claim to be an expert in procedure or jurisdiction or anything like that, but I do pay attention to a show's continuity, and they established in a season 1 episode that kidnappings are FBI territory, causing Beckett to question why she's being called in on one. When this case turns into a kidnapping investigation, the FBI is never even mentioned. I kept expecting a liaison to come in, or at least a mention that they'd been called and were being kept up to speed, but no. No one even bothers to mention that the NYPD homicide division is working a kidnapping case.
Despite that, the episode is really good. I like most of the twists and clues they follow. I wouldn't have much to criticize if they'd at least bothered to mention the FBI.
Though there is a silly scene at the end where Castle sticks his phone under the crack in a door and gets a perfect picture of the room. Even on shows with magic forensic technology, that's stretching it. I don't know what a mass spectrometer can do, but I know exactly what an iPhone camera can do, and it really took me out of the story for a few seconds.
Castle: Secret's Safe with Me (2012)
Good episode, but based around a weak cliché.
This may seem nit-picky, but they brought it upon themselves.
I've never seen a case where a victim leaving some sort of clue to their murderer made sense. How did they know? What if they're wrong? Why didn't the killer wait until they were dead to leave? How do you know that's even supposed to be a clue? They really had the presence of mind to do that? How much blood has this person lost already? Etc.
So as I'm watching the episode, all I can think about are better clues she could have left. Why "317"? Why not "locker" or "doll" or her brother's name?
And why write it so big? You're BLEEDING TO DEATH! Ration that stuff! She had to crawl, repeatedly, to write out the most cryptic clue she could find in huge letters. Wouldn't it make more sense to stay in one spot and write a longer clue in smaller lettering. If she hadn't wasted so much time and blood, she could have written something that actually made sense. "Locker 317." "Gemini doll." "My brother tracked down the man who killed our parents, so if you look inside the Gemini doll inside storage locker 317 you'll be able to solve four murders."
Who the heck is she writing to anyway? At least when a victim leaves a clue to the murder's identity, it's clear they're leaving it for the police. She really expected writing "317" to help the police? Why would she possibly think they'd have any idea what that meant? Again, at least write "locker 317" so they have some idea where to look. Yeah, maybe they'll waste some time looking at a train station or gym or something, but that still narrows it down much more than just a three-digit number does.
And the most infuriating part is that it didn't have to be a cryptic message written in blood. It could have been a note in her pocket, or jotted down on her arm if they wanted to go for something a little weirder. And in that case, it makes more sense, because it would mean it's a note she wrote to herself. It doesn't have to be specific or useful to the investigation. It just needs to be helpful to her.
The rest of the episode is great, but it's based around one of my least favorite crime tropes, and that spoils the whole thing for me.
Castle: That '70s Show (2014)
Fun, but kind of annoying
Castle's always been a gimmicky show, but for Pete's sake, this is stretching it for me. "The only way to catch the killer is to pretend it's 1970! It's foolproof!" Are you kidding me?
Granted I don't watch this show for one hundred percent accuracy, but still. The story has to take enormous leaps to make the gimmick work. At least in The Blue Butterfly, the period-themed sections were framed as a flashback. I would've been okay with something like that, but I just could not get lost in this story.
That said, it's still an enjoyable episode. The cast is certainly having fun, and despite the gimmick, the rest of the plot flows nicely and the witness (who you'd think would be 'whacky' since he's the one who facilitated the time warp) is a surprisingly deep character who would work in other episodes. And I made a false assumption about him, which is refreshing, because usually the twists are fairly predictable.
Castle: Disciple (2013)
A solid episode
One of the things I look for in shows is continuity. You don't necessarily need one goal or a specific arc or anything like that, but I like to know that episodes don't exist in a void.
The continuity in this episode is great. The references to past episodes don't feel forced from either side. I didn't groan when they were brought up here, and I didn't look back and say "Oh, that's why that happened." It's not exactly retconning or foreshadowing. Just a few convenient circumstances.
The only real negative point I have... might be fixed with some more continuity. The ending is sort of ambiguous, and that isn't always a bad thing, but in this case it feels like ambiguity for ambiguity's sake, not because it benefits the story. I'm not entirely convinced they know what they're doing with the foreshadowing in the final scene, and (unlike continuity), you should definitely know what you're doing with foreshadowing. Maybe they do, and in a future episode I'll have my "That's why that happened" moment and it'll be completely satisfying in every way, but I've been burned by this sort of thing before so I'm not naturally optimistic.
Aside from that, though, it's a great episode. It doesn't get as heavy as the teaser made me think it would.
Castle: Time Will Tell (2013)
A convoluted, unnecessary episode
Spoilers start here.
I'm going to come out and say it. According to this episode, time travel is canon in the Castle universe. The plot doesn't make sense otherwise. I'm aware that this show and others have a habit of providing a perfectly logical explanation and then throwing in a last second "but maybe..." twist, and in general I find them obnoxious.
The key piece of evidence in this episode only makes sense if Simon's time travel story is true. I don't necessarily have a problem with the show drifting into a more sci-fi vein, if they handle it right, but for them to pull something like this and pretend there's still a possibility he is just a crazy person is a cheap gag.
But even if I pretend the show ended by coming out and saying time travel was one hundred percent real and involved, the story is still convoluted. That pretty much comes with the territory in time travel stories, but I didn't tune in to see a time travel show. I'd watch Doctor Who for that. I tuned in to see a Castle episode, and despite a valiant effort, it didn't feel like a Castle episode. The dialogue was there and the cast stayed in character, but too often I just found myself being taken out of the story.
The most credit I can give to this episode is that the victim is a lesbian, and it isn't the point of the story. They don't dwell on it. It didn't get her killed and it doesn't garner any jokes or speeches from anyone. It's just one fact they uncover, and they follow it like any other lead. I appreciate that.
Rollerball (1975)
I liked this story better when it was called The Hunger Games
I can see what this movie was trying to accomplish, I really can, but it doesn't come through at all. All I knew going in was that Roller Ball is a violent game controlled by the government that is used as a means of exercising control over society, and it's technically true, but that's all there is, and it's barely there at all.
Despite watching three matches and a practice, no rules are laid out at all. We know a ball goes into a goal to score a point, and the game consists of three twenty-minute periods, and there are motorcycles on the track, but otherwise, we know nothing. Penalties are disallowed for the final two games, but we don't know what constitutes a penalty. Death is established as a risk in normal games, so where is the line drawn for penalties? In the last game, there's no time limit, yet the clock is still counting down. Are they literally just playing to the last man? Is that the only criterion for ending the game? No one seems interested in scoring, just slaughter, yet at one point New York's coach screams at Houston for their brutality.
We do get a few speeches about how society has changed and corporations are in control, but we never really see society. We only see Jonathan E. and his friends. He moans about being controlled, but the only sign of control is that the Energy corporation is firmly suggesting that he retire after 10 years as a star player. He thinks they stole his wife, but then we find out that she left on her own, so we have no proof that the corporation is evil except that evil music plays when we see the executives and they make evil facial expressions.
At one point, one of the executives spells out that Roller Ball is used to demonstrate that individual effort is fruitless, one man cannot succeed alone, and therefore one man cannot challenge the system and win. Jonathan E. is a threat because he's been successful for 10 years and he's surpassing his team in glory. The only symptom we see of this is that the fans chant his name instead of his team. There's no subversion. There's no discontent. We never see him as the face of a rebellion. There's never any indication that anyone in society is even thinking of rebelling, regardless of what Jonathan E. does.
And yet, despite being evil and threatened by Jonathan E., the corporation does nothing but politely insist that he retire and vaguely threaten him. When he time and again refuses, the executive just looks angry and acts as if his hands are tied. Removing the time limit seems to be the only card they have to play. They do say they don't want to kill him, for some unspecified reason, but that doesn't mean they have no other options. There are people he cares about: his ex-wife, his friend Moon Pie (yes, that's his name), his old trainer. They're expendable. Even when Moon Pie is injured, it isn't because of anything the corporation did, and they don't then tell Jonathan E. "You'll be next." It seems more incidental than anything.
There are good concepts in there- a corrupt government exercising control over its people through forced participation in a blood sport where death or glory are the only options, and even if you survive you're still their pawn for the rest of your life- but they weren't put to anything resembling good use in this movie. Suzanne Collins handled it better in The Hunger Games. Even as much as I disliked that series, it left me asking serious questions, not "What is in those magic future drug mints?" or "Why haven't they just killed this guy already?"