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Lightning Round-up: What I Watched The Week Of August 7th – 13th

Something new from me today, a compilation of bite-sized reviews for films and TV shows I watched in the past week that I probably wouldn’t be able to review otherwise. I can’t assure that I’ll have one of these posts going up every week, but I wanted to test out the format after considering for a long time how I could review a wider variety of titles without feeling the pressure to write a specific amount of words about each one, or get bogged down simply trying to find images. So without further ado, here’s my “Lightning Round-up” for the week of August 7th to 13th, 2023.

*  – A title I’ve previously watched

(left to right) Yeom Hye-ran, Jo Byeong-kyu, Yoo Jun-sang, and Kim Sejeong in The Uncanny Counter, all wearing black suits, standing in an alleyway filled with blue mist at night.
(left to right) Yeom Hye-ran, Jo Byeong-kyu, Yoo Jun-sang, and Kim Sejeong in The Uncanny Counter | pueblerino.info

The Uncanny Counter (Netflix). The premise: an unconventional family of grim reapers in the business of rescuing souls from evil spirits and leading them to the afterlife lose a member in battle and recruit a teen boy to help take on their greatest threat – a powerful demon being maneuvered by political forces. The sixteen-episode first season is a perfect blend of heartwrenching drama, endearing humor, compelling intrigue, and low-budget special effects, anchored by emotional performances from all the main cast, Yeom Hye-ran in particular. The second season (airing weekly on Korean television and on Netflix, with five episodes released thus far) is tonally inconsistent with the first, and devotes entirely too much screentime to new characters that range from uninteresting to downright grating, but Kang Ki-young and Kim Hieora are genuinely brilliant additions as the season’s primary antagonists, bringing an effortless ferocity to their action sequences, which are longer and more intricately choreographed this season thanks to a higher budget (at the cost of a few episodes). This is probably some of the most fun I’ve had watching a television series this year.

Lee Si-Young carrying Park Na-rae on her shoulders in Zombieverse as they run through a parking lot at night pursued by zombies.
Lee Si-young and Park Na-rae in Zombieverse | undeadwalking.com

Zombieverse (Netflix). The premise: contestants must work together to survive a zombie apocalypse on the streets of Seoul, South Korea. I’ve only watched the first two episodes so far, but I could tell you from the trailer alone that this is the kind of show designed and destined to become a viral sensation (EDIT: I wrote this paragraph earlier in the week; checking back in, it seems that Zombieverse has indeed acquired a large and loyal fanbase, though many viewers are casting doubts on its claims of being “unscripted”, so I was partially right). My anxiety spiked when, at the end of the first episode, a stunt double playing a zombie was seemingly run over by a car and “killed”, along with a passenger in the vehicle. I’m assuming there’s safety measures in place to prevent anyone being seriously injured in the gory chaos? I’m rooting for contestant Lee Si-young, who kept her wits about her in a crisis while most of the others panicked and fled.

Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Sophie Okonedo as Siuan in The Wheel Of Time, lying together in a wooden bed wearing red nightgowns. Moiraine is sitting up slightly. while Siuan is gazing up at her. They are in a low wooden hut with fishing-nets hanging from the ceiling.
Rosamund Pike as Moiraine and Sophie Okonedo as Siuan in The Wheel Of Time | pt.jugomobile.com

The Wheel Of Time Season 1, Episode 6* (Amazon Prime Video). The premise: Moiraine Damodred fights against time to free herself and her five young traveling companions from the intricate political machinations of the Aes Sedai before her plan to pit the Dragon Reborn against the Dark One is exposed in an episode written and filmed almost exclusively from her perspective. I stand by much of what I wrote regarding this episode in my initial review, though I would add that in retrospect, while it’s still one of my favorite episodes in the first season (purely due to Rosamund Pike and Sophie Okonedo’s phenomenal performances, which should have landed them both Emmy nominations), the writing is inconsistent – and noticeably weakest when it comes to fleshing out antagonist Liandrin Guirale, though if she lacks nuance, at least she’s never boring with Kate Fleetwood in the role, rocking her distinctive crimson get-up. And on that note, costume designer Isis Mussenden finally struck gold with her designs for this episode; Moiraine’s blue satin gown and diadem is iconic as far as I’m concerned.

Greg Hsu in Marry My Dead Body, wearing a white suit, sitting alongside a similarly-dressed mannequin beneath a red canopy in a darkly-lit room.
Greg Hsu in Marry My Dead Body | digitalspy.com

Marry My Dead Body (Netflix). The premise: in Taiwan, the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, a fervently homophobic police officer accidentally marries the ghost of a young gay man killed in a hit-and-run, and together they investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his untimely death in this zany, oftentimes heartwarming, LGBTQ+ buddy comedy. “Gayer than I expected, straighter than I would have liked” is probably how I would sum up Marry My Dead Body, which plays a cruel bait-and-switch on its viewers regarding the main character’s sexuality in just the first few minutes. And while it teases the idea of its male leads developing a romantic connection (almost having them kiss at a gay nightclub in a scene played not for laughs, but with surprising earnestness and intensity), this subplot trails off towards the end, leaving the exact nature of their relationship up to interpretation. I mean, I ship it regardless, but it’s a bit of a shame the film doesn’t fully commit to the bit, because Greg Hsu has excellent chemistry with costar Austin Lin that ought to have been utilized to the fullest. Still, Marry My Dead Body is a lot of fun and I enjoyed it immensely, particularly for how unabashedly raunchy it is in comparison to a lot of queer comedies that deliberately “sanitize” their characters and depiction of queerness for the sake of straight audience-members.

(left to right) Kato Ago Missile, Shin Dong-yup, Sung Si-kyung, and Cerestia Grown in Risque Business: Japan, standing on a street corner in Tokyo.
(left to right) Kato Ago Missile, Shin Dong-yup, Sung Si-kyung, and Cerestia Grown | netflix.com

Risqué Business: Japan (Netflix). The premise: across six episodes, comedian Shin Dong-yup and singer Sung Si-kyung aim to initiate more open and casual conversations amongst their predominantly Korean audiences about sex and sexual expression by exploring the vivid adult entertainment industry in neighboring Japan. I have so far found the series fairly enjoyable and occasionally illuminating, if somewhat limited in its scope and noticeably lacking perspectives from queer people in Japan (approximately 1 in 10 people in Japan identify as LGBTQ+, according to a 2019 survey). The second season, set in progressive Taiwan, premiering later this month, will hopefully help to make up for this deficiency and boost Korea’s own LGBTQ+ rights movement, which has made only slow progress in recent years. But the series has also received warranted backlash for talking extensively about the AV (adult video) industry without ever touching on the abuse and exploitation of AV stars, so there’s definitely still a lot of refinement to be done with this concept.

Han Ji-min in Behind Your Touch, wearing a white veterinarian's coat and looking down at her hands with a slight smile on her face.
Han Ji-min in Behind Your Touch | m.gohitv.com

Behind Your Touch (Netflix). The premise: a veterinarian in a small town is struck by a meteor that gives her the psychic ability to read the memories of animals when she touches them, unintentionally putting her into conflict with a recently demoted detective bored by life in the countryside. With only two episodes on Netflix so far, the new series starring Han Ji-min has already popped into the platform’s Top Ten, and for good reason; it’s fun, fresh, abundantly quirky, and clever, with charming characters. I’m excited to keep up with this one.

Pretty sure that’s everything. Have you watched any of the titles on this list, or do you plan to? Tell me what sounds most intriguing in the comments below!

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“Tales Of The City” SPOILER Review!

I feel absurdly late to this party – the first Tales of the City series came out in 1993, and even this 2019 modernized reboot debuted weeks ago: but because it’s still Pride Month and I only just got around to watching the show, I’m going to trust my instincts, just as Anna Madrigal would say, and try to live by the “better late than never” mantra.

Obviously, SPOILERS AHEAD! If, like me, you haven’t watched Tales of the City yet (stop judging me), then beware! Back away! Avert your eyes!

And for those of you who finished the series ages ago, come on in! Let’s take a leisurely stroll up to 28 Barbary Lane and discuss what happened in a season full of twists, turns, surprises and shocking secrets. And, near the end of our little conversation here, allow me to explain why I think there should be a sequel.

Firstly, let’s talk in-depth about our main leads, specifically Shawna Hawkins (Elliot Page), Brian Hawkins (Paul Gross), Mary Ann Singleton (Laura Linney) and Michael Tolliver (Murray Bartlett). All of them had some great moments, and some genuinely cringeworthy ones, but only Brian and Mary Ann got to fill out a complete character arc, in my opinion, and that’s why they’re my favorites of the show’s leads – excluding Anna, we’ll get to her later. Brian was honestly my least-favorite after the first episode, where he proved himself to be a hypocritical and jealous lowlife who still held a grudge against his ex-wife Mary Ann, after she left San Francisco twenty years prior to start a business. I could even have understood his point of view, had he not been as aggressive as he was, and so over-zealously protective of his and Mary Ann’s daughter, Shawna. Mary Ann, on the other hand, was sympathetic but incredibly irritating; naive, exuberant, ever optimistic (even when the wheels snapped off her luggage carrier), and perpetually unable to sympathize or even understand anyone else’s opinions. The two characters have romantic tension, but their meeting leads to constant bickering and relentless melodrama – which is only exacerbated when Mary Ann discovers that Shawna doesn’t know she’s adopted. One thing leads to another, and before you know it Brian and Mary Ann are back together. That would have been lame and annoying had not the writers and actors done such a good job of portraying the changes in their characters: somehow, by the last few episodes, I found myself waiting for Brian to make jokes rather than start fights (and make jokes he did, providing some of the best comic relief).

Michael Tolliver, the more-than-slightly stereotypical “gay best friend”, takes up a lot of screentime but does basically nothing to move the plot forward, making his story something of a chore to get through. The episodes around the midpoint of the show try especially hard to focus on him for no reason whatsoever, probably only because the last part of the show barely even touches on his subplot. The series’ focus was far too wide in scope, as I mentioned in my non-spoiler review: with two main plots already going on, the subplots generally suffered from a lack of purpose. Tolliver was the most notable example since his story, unlike that of Jake and Margot (more on them later), didn’t even really touch on any of the show’s themes.

Then we come to Shawna. Shawna is undeniably meant to be the series’ heroine, its protagonist, our eyes into this new and beautiful world of LGBTQ+ culture – she doesn’t fit the bill, unfortunately. While Ellen Page is a good actress, her subdued, low-energy approach to the character only served to make Shawna unlikable and, frankly, boring. There were rare moments of levity, usually when Shawna had brief, frantic reunions with her mother, and the two would team up to do something bizarre and hilarious. And then Shawna would randomly turn on her mother, storm off, and descend into a brooding mope. This problem only became worse when Claire Duncan (Zosia Mamet) entered the picture and the two started dating – why these two actresses felt it was necessary to make what should have been the show’s central relationship into slow, angsty staring contests, I have no idea. Every time Shawna and Claire ran into each other, all semblance of energy and liveliness drained away from their already pretty lifeless characters: they would stare at each other, mumble, shuffle around with their hands in their pockets, and then Claire would say something that was clearly meant to be philosophical in an artsy way, but only came off as absurd.

Which is why Anna Madrigal (Olympia Dukakis) became very quickly the heroine of the show, at least for me. She starts off as the centerpiece of the entire story: the other characters might hate each other, but they all love her. The main leads all live at her apartment complex, 28 Barbary Lane. They all come together to celebrate her 90th birthday, which causes the chaos and confusion that follows. She’s not exactly an active character, but then none of the leads are, except in their own subplots – Anna seems even passive at first, when she is blackmailed into selling Barbary Lane: an action which has major ramifications on the plot, sending the others into a frenzy to find new housing. When we learn the truth of Anna’s past, and how she took money stolen from the LGBTQ+ community and used it to pay for surgery, a house, her entire existence – even there, she’s the passive character, as the money was all but forced on her by her distraught partner, Tommy. As a transgender woman in the 1960s, Anna survived only by isolating herself from the people who needed her most, refusing to speak up and take action against violence and oppression. Her entire story is built on her passivity – and she’s not proud of it. She is shamed and consumed with guilt: her arc is all about finding forgiveness, and she is finally allowed that peace when the LGBTQ+ community of San Francisco rallies to save Barbary Lane from demolition in the most heartwarming and powerful scene of the series. Anna passes away in her sleep not long after that: “Anna didn’t believe in coincidence,” Mary Ann says after her death, “so neither shall we.” The emotional sentiment is also used to explain how this diverse, dissimilar cast of characters all ended up under Anna’s protection.

The diverse supporting cast are, without a doubt, the highlight of the entire show. The most relevant are Jake (Garcia) and Margot Park (May Hong), a young couple who live at Barbary Lane and deal with serious issues when the show begins – Jake was a lesbian woman who transitioned into a man, and is now realizing he is gay: Margot was Jake’s girlfriend before he transitioned but is still a lesbian, and doesn’t love Jake in his new body. Eventually, even though both Jake and Margot get forgotten for a good long while in the middle of the show, their storyline is sorted out: they break up peacefully, Margot finds a new girlfriend in DeDe Day (Barbara Garrick), and Jake decides to hold off on being in a relationship. The friendship between these two characters after they split is much more powerful than their romantic bond ever was, and it gives me hope that they’ll both be all right. Other highlights are Mateo (Dickie Hearts), DeDe’s exasperated butler; Ida (Caldwell Tidicue), the nightclub owner who shows up to help save Barbary Lane in the final episode; transgender actresses Jen Richards and Daniela Vega as a young Anna Madrigal and her nemesis Ysela, respectively; and Michelle Buteau as Brian’s sports-loving best friend Wrenita. These diverse characters have to work overtime to sell the premise and theme of the entire show, and each of them does it and, in the aforementioned instances, bring a little extra to the table too.

The show does have an issue with its plot, specifically towards the end when all the family-drama about Shawna’s parents and Michael’s relationship suddenly just goes away, allowing us to finally focus on the real story about Anna’s past and the person currently blackmailing and manipulating her: what started as a feel-good story about coming home to San Francisco takes an abrupt turn when Mary Ann and Shawna have to don disguises to follow a suspicious man, who turns out to be completely harmless and in fact helps the family on their hunt to find the real culprit: suspicion falls on Ysela, who’s still around and helping the homeless, but she proves innocent as well. Only after a bunch of misdirects involving a lot of random art do we finally reach the shocking conclusion that Claire Duncan, Shawna’s boring girlfriend, is actually the one behind all this. The grand finale, when Claire is wrestled into some pink feather-boa handcuffs after trying to demolish Barbary Lane and capture the event on film for her documentary about hypocrisy is…conflicting, to be sure. On the one hand, it’s a lot of fun, especially when Claire makes the mistake of telling the LGBTQ+ protesters that she’ll just edit them out of the footage, which provokes a chant of “We will not be erased!”. On the other hand, she’s like, what, a twenty-something year old living on the streets, and she somehow managed to convince an entire construction crew to help her demolish a building – and her motivation is…what, exactly? I also have to admit that, even though I loathed her character, I didn’t like the fact that she had to go back to her parents in the end, since they pretty obviously despised her with a passion. It’ll only lead to more trouble, is my guess.

Which leads us to our final topic: is there anything in the future for Tales of the City? Well, at the moment, no – with Anna Madrigal gone, the show has lost its most important character, and Barbary Lane has lost the one thing that really held all its occupants together. Without her, there’s not really a story to be told about Barbary Lane: but that doesn’t exclude other topics from being explored. Jake’s unresolved story, Michael and Ben’s on-and-off relationship, Shawna’s adventures beyond San Francisco, Claire’s future, DeDe’s butler, Twintertainment – there’s some stuff there that could be used to craft some pretty interesting stories, or even just a comedic miniseries or two. Garcia has already said he’d up for a spinoff about Jake and Margot.

What do you think? Would you like to see more Tales of the City, or do you think this is the definitive final chapter? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

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“Tales Of The City” Review!

As Pride Month draws to a close, you have just enough time still to binge-watch Netflix’s modernized reboot of the 1993 soap opera Tales of the City, which is in turn based off the 1978 novel by Armistead Maupin. But even if you don’t know the original series (I didn’t), this show somehow manages to perfectly convey the feeling of coming home – to the house on the hill at 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco. That’s especially due to cast, social commentary and atmosphere, all of which intertwine in an almost intoxicating blend of nostalgia.

"Tales Of The City" Review! 1
heyuguys.com

The cast includes series regulars Laura Linney and Paul Gross, along with the show’s main attraction, Olympia Dukakis, reprising her groundbreaking role as Anna Madrigal, the beloved elderly transgender landlady of Barbary Lane – this time around, she comes loaded with a dark backstory and a few scandalous secrets, not unlike the diverse group of characters, young and old, who live in her apartment complex. There’s Shawna (Elliot Page), supposedly the show’s protagonist, but whose story tends to get lost among all the intersecting threads and character arcs – or maybe it’s just because every time Shawna shares the screen with her girlfriend Claire Duncan (Zosia Mamet), the energy and vitality of the show grinds to a halt, while the two stare blankly at each other and mumble. Paul Gross returns as Shawna’s adoptive father, Brian Hawkins, while Linney is once again the naive, wide-eyed Mary Ann Singleton – but unlike in other iterations of the show, Barbary Lane is only temporarily seen from Mary Ann’s POV. Instead, the focus has wisely been shifted on the real, down-to-earth residents of San Francisco: interracial gay couple Michael Tolliver (Murray Bartlett) and Ben Marshall (Charlie Barnett); Asian-American twins and Instagram influencers Ani and Jonathan Winter (Ashley Park and Christopher Larkin); Hispanic transgender/genderqueer nurse Jake Rodriguez (Garcia) and his lesbian girlfriend Margot Park (May Hong); and especially Black cross-dressing nightclub owner Ida Best (Caldwell Tidicue), who has one absolutely awesome scene in Episode 9, donning a silver wig and high heels while leading a troop of Rainbow Warriors into battle against injustice. It’s really not that surprising that Elliot Page gets swallowed up by this rich, diverse cast – his performance is good, but far too low-energy to make him stand out in the crowds of witty drag queens, nursing home troublemakers, and nasty dinner guests.

These people are the products of a brilliant, flamboyant, free-spirited society in the streets of San Francisco: not only its beautiful vistas, sunsets, parks, high-rises or even its oases like Barbary Lane, but also its darker, grittier side. This is made especially clear in Episode 8, an extended flashback to Anna Madrigal’s early life in the city soon after her transition: here, Madrigal attempts to navigate her dangerous new existence as a transgender woman in 1966, and finds herself having to do anything possible to survive. Her “house on the hill” wasn’t built by goodwill and fortune-cookie wisdom alone, as it turns out. The show has an interesting, thoughtful commentary on the history and progression of the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement, from Anna’s flashback to one intensely awkward conversation about the privileges of gay men who survived the AIDS crisis. Characters like Ysela (Daniela Vega) and the everyday struggles we see briefly through her eyes as she protects the city’s homeless, show us that no matter how far we’ve come, we have to keep going. And Anna, when she is interviewed, sums it up best when she explains that the city hasn’t changed very much at all since the 1960s – people still make mistakes, and they still have to deal with the consequences and try to make things better.

This commentary would make for one pretty grim show if it weren’t for the fact that Tales of the City actually has a really hard time balancing its two main narratives – the show tries as best as it can to give equal screentime to the family-drama and the LGBT crime thriller that make up its plot: considering that both of these stories literally operate out of the same house, this should have been much more seamless than it ended up being. But if I have one complaint about the show, it would be that – not only is the story lopsided, it can’t even figure out which way it wants to…lop (is lop a word? What is a lopside?) at any given time: one of the most bizarre examples is when a humorous but suspenseful car-chase abruptly turns into a mother/daughter quarrel. Throughout the middle of the show, there are interminable arguments about relationships, parenting, interactive art, etc, etc, and the show begins to get lost – along with many of its characters, who either randomly disappear around the midpoint, or just wander around in the background to give the illusion that they’re doing something relevant as the family-drama plot increasingly narrows in on Mary Ann, Brian and Shawna, while also trying to spare just enough time on Michael and Ben to still give a gay viewpoint on the story.

And then, in the last three episodes of the show, the family-drama stuff basically gets thrown out the window, in place of the crime story – which, honestly, is much more interesting. The finale neatly wraps up that storyline, in a weirdly cartoonish but still entertaining fashion – literally, in fact. Many of the storylines explored in the family-drama plot, however, are left open to interpretation.

Which brings me to a sentiment I expressed early today in an Instagram post, where I said that I need more Tales of the City content. There is ample opportunity for spinoffs and sequels about these characters: I think this show maybe bit off more than it could chew, but a smaller-scale, more intimate series about one of the show’s supporting cast could be very satisfying – for goodness sake, I’d be willing to watch an entire show about DeDe Day’s butler!

I don’t know if I’ll write a Spoiler Review for this show, but there is definitely a lot to talk about regarding the series – so leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Season Rating: 7.9/10