So we seem to have had some technical difficulties. The version of this morning’s post that was sent around was not the finished draft. The entirety of the Monofocus section was missing, and tweaks, corrections and fine-tuning that had been made to everything else was also not implemented. Give that there’s no real way to tell when or if the Substack interface is saving the work, it’s impossible to tell that this is happening—until the boned-up post goes out, and you’re horrified at the result.
There’s not really any point in me going back in and cleaning up the earlier portions of the entry. But I’m going to go ahead and attempt to recreate the Monofocus section below, because I put a decent amount of work into it yesterday, and so you should get to hear my stupid thoughts on a bunch of movies and TV shows.
Monofocus
This has been a relatively hefty week for me, media-wise.
To start with, I began watching the Chinese drama series RESET, which follows a college student and a game designer who find themselves reliving the same events over after over. Only by preventing the explosion of the bus they are traveling on and saving all of the passengers can they break the cycle. It reminds me somewhat of RUSSIAN DOLL, though not tonally—it’s far less New York and way more Chinese in its style. There are 15 episodes in total, and I’m not quite certain how they’re going to be able to keep the story going long enough to fill al of that time. But I’ll be following along to find out. As is often the case with shows that I like, RESET also has a very hypnotic title sequence, which you can see here.
Ever since I cannonballed my way through the four seasons of THE GENIUS (which is tremendous, and I heartily recommend) I’ve been a fan of Korean survival-style game shows. The latest entry in this genre is THE BLACK SHEEP GAME, and it’s pretty wonderful. The premise is very simple: eight players are each assigned a series of secret attributes that describe them and their lives. But two of the players are “black sheep”, united by a common attribute that isn’t shared by the others. Over the course of four days and three nights, the cast play mini-games to gain clues as to the identity of the two black sheep among them, and there are a series of trials and eliminations along the way. In the end, if either black sheep makes it to the end of the game, the black sheep split the prize money. Otherwise, the surviving white sheep do. What makes this all interesting is that the production only reveals the identity of one black sheep among the players to the audience—and he doesn’t know the identity of the other any more than the others do. So it’s a psychological experiment played out in real time, and it’s got a lot to say about prejudice, groupthink and social dynamics, while also carrying a compelling narrative through-line. The episodes are long, 90 minutes each, but there are only four of them, which makes the buy-in manageable.
Closer to home but sticking with the theme of Asian media, I finally caught EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, which was pretty terrific. Michelle Yeoh was outstanding as the underachieving Evelyn who turns out the be the last hope to prevent the multiverse from being compressed into a cosmic “everything bagel.” What I liked most about the picture was the fact that it refused to follow a typical Hollywood structure, instead changing emphasis and direction in unexpected ways. You can tell this wasn’t a product of the American studio system, where just about every movie follows the “save the cat” act structure. As a result, I found it more unpredictable and thus more enjoyable—which is something that I appreciate, given that I’m typically a step or two ahead of many of the shows and films that I watch.
Because everybody seemed to be chattering about it in animation circles, I also took in CHIP & DALE RESCUE RANGERS despite having no particular nostalgia for the television series on which it was based. And it was fine, but not outstanding, and stood in sharp contrast to EVERYTHING. Every move, every beat of the plot was entirely predictable, and the fun really came out of recognizing the amazing bevy of cameos of animation characters, gags and moments from throughout history, many of them unaffiliated with Disney at all. It’s one of those self-referential films—the premise being that Chip and Dale are actors who used to be on a show together in the 1980s, thus letting the production spoof Hollywood and its cliches while at the same time nestling snugly into the same familiar groove. It wants to be a spiritual successor to WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, but it doesn’t quite have the same heart or the same degree of cleverness to it. It’s entirely forgettable, and it seems likely that I won’t think about it again once I finish this sentence (unless Substack eats this paragraph again!)
Finally, I tuned in for the first episode of the new season of Seth MacFarlane’s STAR TREK fan fiction series THE ORVILLE at its new home on Hulu, and it definitely benefitted from the change of venue—the episode looked like they had spent twice as much money on it than ever before. Unfortunately, the big thing that’s changed since the last time THE ORVILLE was a going concern is that now there are a bevy of new genuine STAR TREK, covering a wide variety of subjects and style, with one or another doing everything that THE ORVILLE does well better—because it’s the genuine article. It’s like being given a Hydrox cookie when you really want an Oreo—and there’s a big package of Oreos already in your cupboard. The show is still fun, a dopey STAR TREK, a GALAXY QUEST played straighter. And the initial episode of this new season was fine, skewing a bit darker than expected and holding to its storytelling bluffs longer than anticipated. But the show is going to need to find more of a way to distinguish itself if they want to survive to a fourth season. Being a placebo STAR TREK series isn’t going to do it any longer.
I’m not going to bother to try to recreate the original sign-off. Sorry for the technical problems. Hopefully, we’ll be back to regular operations again by next week.
Tom B
Hey Tom... been enjoying the newsletter so far (and the price is right). Two related questions for you in your next round of Q&A.
1. What goes into the decision making related to a permanent status quo change for characters? So much seems caught up in the illusion of change and eventual reversion to the status quo that I would imagine true permanent change seems like a rare editorial decision made with a lot of care.
2. Which major Big Two changes feel permanent to you and which seem like a careful creative person could eventually undo or retcon? It feels to me the big changes that are unlikely to be undone are Dick Grayson becoming Nightwing and Carol Danvers becoming Captain Marvel, maybe there are others you would also think have been accepted as additive and not helpful to undo down the road?