Tag: TV

Harley Quinn Season 5, (2025, Max)

Harley Quinn Season 5Even though I’m not a huge fan of Harley Quinn -overall-, there are certain takes on the character that have held my interest. The Max series is one of them. I enjoy the voice actors, and that I am reviewing it the week that episode 10’s finale dropped speaks to how much I like it.

It’s a strange alt-DC where you can have the Joker hanging out with Bruce Wayne and Bane is weirdly passive.  The main plot of the season wasn’t that great, but that’s mainly an excuse to get some interesting B & C stories going with the fairly large cast of characters.

The show hasn’t yet been renewed for a sixth season, and it ends in a satisfying way if this is it for this iteration.  If you’ve never seen it, and you can handle the dialogue that is very much NSFW (or kids) it’s a fun and fast watch with each episode less than a half-hour.

The Penguin (2024, Max)

The PenguinThis was a really slow starter for me.  I enjoyed The Batman but I wasn’t sure how I’d connect with a show about Oz’ rise as a crime lord.  Matt Reeves has created a decent ficton for his Gotham and Batman, but did I really want to spend time caring about “Oz Cobb”? I’d probably still say that Burgess Meredith is “my” Penguin, and that’s almost a completely different character.

That said, the addition of “Vic” to humanize Cobb, and several scenes where Cristin Milioti really chews up the scenery helped to make it interesting.  Even though this is another tale where we get Yet Another Origin Story {YAOS(tm)} there is an especially slow burn on revealing aspects of Oz’ character.  I knew his mother wasn’t a throwaway character but it takes until the end of the show to really show case Deirdre O’Connell’s acting.  And I suppose I really need to mention Colin Farrell’s literal transformation into Oz Cobb/the Penguin. The prosthetics are amazing, but so is Farrell’s accent, use of his eyes, and hand gestures.

It’s hard to care about a villain, but what is interesting is that this world is now a little harder for me to discard for the DCU in its coming phase. I hope there is enough room to see how -this- Gotham plays out.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (Disney+, 2024)

Skeleton CrewThis one took me a while to go through its eight episodes, which says something right away about it.

Right after it premiered I heard it reduced to “Star Wars Goonies” and while that’s probably a fair tagline, the story has to fit into a wider universe and timeline that was NOT a constraint for the 1985 film. An adult will recognize the various tropes here, but I’m not sure how well a kid will get these characters as they aren’t shown with a lot of depth.

My biggest dislike of this story, though is Jude Law’s character. SPOILER ALERT!

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He’s the VILLAIN!  You think he might have redeeming qualities, but, nope. Those little bits of good he did with the kids were just a jerk’s feint. The show’s ending doesn’t even hint at remorse for him.  This just felt entirely out of place for this show’s two functions as Star Wars (Villains are Villains, well, except for Darth Vader/Anakin at the end–which we at least get to experience) and as kid’s show (Good vs. Evil ends up being clear-cut).  I doubt anything more will happen in this corner of the SW universe, so we’ll file this under “At least I got something out of my Disney+ subscription this month”.