Catching Up Again

So, here's some blurbs on things I've watched over the past, I don't know, while.

Will they make it?

I was afraid Fear The Walking Dead would turn into too much of an exploration of whys and hows of the zombie apocalypse, which is sort of contrary to the whole point of The Walking Dead. To my surprise, there was no real explanation of how this infection or whatever started. But we did start to see how civilization starts to break down and how fragile the bonds that keep us civil actually are to begin with. The minute survival is at stake and the shit hits the fan, it's a free for all. And no matter how much people try to hold on to social contracts, eventually, they will get pushed to a breaking point. How they come out of that breaking point will determine if they survive or not. I am excited to see this show continue since I have no idea where it will go next. Ruben Blades is the man, period. 

The Inbetweeners is a show from the UK about 4 boys in their late teens, dealing with being 4 boys in their late teens. It's funny as fuck and it's much more real than anything I've ever seen on the topic before. In a way it's a relative of Freaks and Geeks and Superbad, but British, which is somehow even better. Every episode makes me wish I wish a Brit more. They really do get the best cursing and turns of phrase. 

Brilliant.

I liked about 75% of Sons of Anarchy. I think it went too long and that finale was a fit of heavy handed, pretentious vomit. Still, there was enough interesting stuff in there that Kurt Sutter's next series seemed like it deserved a shot. But, The Bastard Executioner had me bored, angry and asleep within 30 minutes. It just comes across as the next in a long line of Not Game of Thrones shows. To be fair, Vikings, which I like a lot, is in that line. But Vikings got me with a historical perspective, interesting characters and, well, Lagertha, from the get go. Nothing like that in Bastard Executioner. No thanks.

Speaking of Sons of Anarchy, Hand of God on Amazon, starring Ron Perlman is a bizarre show about a judge who hears the voice of his brain dead son, giving him information about the people responsible for raping his daughter in law and thereby leading to said brain dead son to commit suicide. It's not very good, though. But I can't help but think that this is where Kurt Sutter would make this a good show. He'd find a way to take the over the top concept and situations and somehow make them so absurd they'd be more believable. There was potential here.