Infamously, The X-Files did not deliver on the promise of Mythology. For those locked out of the loop, The X-Files was split between two kinds of episodes – Monster of the Week, in which our intrepid heroes would investigate a single paranormal case that would be over at the end of the episode, and Mythology, a serialized mystery story in which our intrepid heroes would uncover a conspiracy driving the country, and even the world. Fandom became split between who preferred what, but in the end, MOTW fans ended up the victor by a country mile; creator Chris Carter was very obviously making it up as he went along, had no idea what his endgame actually was, and kept subverting his own narrative for the sake of a sense of woo-woo mystery instead of resolving his own stories.
Now, I think parts of it actually did work – I deeply enjoy the way the conspiracy has basically collapsed by season six – but so much of American television in 2026 is driven by the failures of this show and people trying, over and over, to make its concept work. Much of the time, when people use the word ‘plot’, I find they tend to mean ‘lore’ – I think of plot in an Aristotelian sense, in that it describes the drive of cause-and-effect; Walter White selling his soul for power and money is the story of Breaking Bad, Walter White blackmailing his former student into buying an RV and making meth with him is the plot.
A lot of people – a lot of nerds particularly – think of ‘plot’ as the details of a fictional world and their slow revelation. I don’t share this attitude and indeed think of this as the least interesting part of storytelling, at least as an audience member, but I do have a basic respect for anything that makes people happy. Like, it’s incredibly frustrating when people are watching something like Twin Peaks that is so obviously intended as an intense emotional, cinematic experience and then see them keep trying to rationalize it, but I get the basic dopamine-driving pleasure of, like, finding out why he says ‘Hodor’.
What’s really interesting is that I think It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia best lays out a model for that kind of storytelling.
It’s a sentiment as funny as any in the show; this is a cheap sitcom about five vile idiots being dumb as they run a bar, there shouldn’t be a mythology to it, and yet they’ve not only carved out a bizarre little world over the course of two decades, they’ve even pulled off long-running mysteries. I particularly think of how, in season fifteen, they finally resolved the decades-long question of who Charlie’s father is, finishing off a plotline that had been set in motion at the end of season two. What particularly gets me is that they could never have answered it at all and I’d have been perfectly content – it was funny when they answered it, but it was also funny when they didn’t. That is to say, I was satisfied with whichever direction they went.
(I had to very carefully write that to not sound sexual)
There are other mysteries that have hung over the exact same way, if not with the exact same length; the three big ones are ‘What is Mac’s name?’ – which was answered partially in season four’s “The Gang Cracks The Liberty Bell” and fully in season seven’s “The High School Reunion” (and was funny as hell) – “Is Mac gay?”, which led to his coming out in season twelve’s “Hero or Hate Crime?” – and “Is Dennis actually a rapist?” which has been softly acknowledged (at least, softly by the standards of this show).
The buildup of all these implications was as funny as their actual reveal. It makes me think that if you want to do a mythology story and you don’t want it to be a niche work that appeals to a smaller audience (which I think is perfectly fine), you have to make it a comedy. I think of The Venture Bros, which is much more intellectual and serious (and therefore niche) but also always has a joke in every moment, even when it gets serious. I think of a moment in season two, where the writers tried conveying the madness and evil of the Monarch by showing him terrorizing a prostitute, and they conceded they failed at making him less sympathetic because he used the polar bear from LOST.
Meanwhile, Always Sunny also builds an absurd universe, with both the McPoyle and Ponderosa families, as well as the families of the Gang. This is the kind of thing you could actually do in an Aristotelian drama; The Shield has its various side characters, like Kern or Deena, and I think the Grand Theft Auto games can be seen in the same light as Always Sunny, having the same farcical plot structure and expansive universe of stereotypes and weirdos. This even ties into the ‘mystery’ concept in that we get ever expanding backstories for the Gang too; Charlie’s is the most fucked up and obvious, but I also particularly think of Dennis being ‘explained’ when we discover he was molested by a female teacher as a teenager.
I also think Mac’s backstory is sneakily the funniest – it’s less absurd than the others but also the fact that it’s just kind of sad and pathetic makes his current day machismo (and the neediness hiding under it) even funnier.
An important element of this is the sense of gradual discovery. Always Sunny doesn’t actually have to fit together (although it does to some extent – the backstory episode “The Gang Buys A Roller Rink” falls down partly because the backstory makes no sense given what we know), and it certainly wasn’t made with the intention of slowly revealing a comprehensible world (Mac’s homosexuality in particular is something you see they figure out would be funny). It’s more like the comedy allowed them to go to a mythological place. But I think it’s definitely something a writer could replicate.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
Tristan J. Nankervis’s ProfileTags for this article
More articles by Tristan J. Nankervis
Year of the Month
What if the world was something to learn from?
Everything is weird, everything is broken, everyone is confusing.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Happy Endings, Season One, Episode Two, “Bo Fight”
Can confirm from what I’ve read from black gay guys that being black is harder than being gay.
“I can’t get married or into heaven.”
“You don’t wanna do either of those things.”
“Yeah, I hate relaxing in my sweet pad and having unprotected sex with my sweet girlfriend.”
“So there’s a bird in here. Alive.”
“I heard it in a book I heard.”
“What now?”
It’s insane how much better the Russos are at comedy than drama.
“Am I in trouble or something? You know, looking at someone’s search history isn’t the most reliable indicator of their web habits. I mean, small typo of the word ‘canal’, you’re on a whole different family of web sites.”
“I know, same thing happened to me when I searched for ‘black crocs’.”
“Sorry?”
“Sheets.”
“These are both fitted.”
“If we’re gonna raise this baby together, I’m not in love with the name ‘Mitchell’.”
I remember from Nath’s essay that Dave shifts from obnoxious, lecturing comic foil to the same thing, but that’s the joke, but I can already see the seeds for that, given his idea to beat up the wedding guy. Then again, as Dave points out, he’s basically Zach Braff, which is another way of saying he’s Ross Geller or Ted Mosby or any other soppy romantic male lead, and he’s essentially going to pull that out for maximum comedy as opposed to cutting it with drama. Like if Scrubs did commit entirely to comedy.
“You should not be driving.”
[cut to the gay dude played by Adam Pally wearing a beer hat]
Eliza Coupe has huge eyes and already she’s using that for the comedy really well. In my experience, I’ve found that really hot actors love playing clownish characters, presumably because they’re called upon to do it less, and that kind of vibe is all over the show.
“It’s a top two job and my third-favourite name!”
“In conclusion, she has a very healthy expression of her sexuality.”
“A car, a house, kids, maybe a robot if that’s an option.”
“Yeah, it does. Why are the two kids kissing in a graveyard?”
“I dunno! Maybe they’re two big Twilight fans!”
“If by Facebook, you mean his wedding, and by ‘friends’, you mean ‘no’, the opposite of that word, then yes!”
“You’re the only person I know who sneezes with their eyes open.”
Dave getting a sock-covered foot to the face was funny.
“You smell that? Racism.”
Futurama, Season, uh, the second Hulu Season
Forgot to mention I finished this a few weeks back. Billy West’s voice is, while still gravelly, back to its usual level of emotional expression. This is consistently fine-to-good with great one-liners, and I enjoy that they very much have Kiff and Amy’s kids as part of the action consistently as opposed to forgetting or downplaying them; part of Futurama’s basic strengths is allowing the situation to change, though I wish they’d just lean into the fact that Fry and Leela should be fifty-ish now (good gag when Fry tries to figure out what anniversary they should have and the Professor dismisses it given all the time loops and shit). If it has a flaw, it’s that everyone sounds so goddamned old – Billy West is in his seventies! Most of the cast are well into their sixties! – and it makes me feel the grim spectre of death.
Bob’s Burgers, Season One and some of Two
I showed my partner Futurama and now they’re showing me this. I saw the first, like, two episodes of this back when they first aired and thought they were pretty funny, and then just allowed it to go on in the background for the past fifteen years. Speaking of fine-to-good, this is incredibly consistent; the two real changes from the first season to the second is that Bob yells a lot more and the kids face consequences for their absurdity more often.
This captures the tone of The Simpsons more than any other; not its vast creativity – the animation style is deliberately bland and stolid – but the general wistful acceptance of the mundanity of life and the warm predictability that comes with suburban family. Bob essentially opens the show saying that he loves his family but they’re all terrible, which is basically its ethos
Its faults are very easy to lay out. First, that the sentimental aspect of the show is its worst part; it actually shares a lot of attitude with Family Guy, even though it’s much better in every single way, and the big aspect is that it sticks to a basic TV formula of building up to a ‘lesson’; this, I think, it takes from The Simpsons, but it lacks that show’s sincerity and sophistication (there is no equivalent to Lisa), so the emotions don’t hit nearly as hard. It’s just so much better at being funny than it is serious.
Secondly, Gene and Louise are redundant characters, and if I had to pick one to get rid of, it would be Gene. They have the exact same personality and motivations – glee in chaos, personal ego – with the sole difference being that Gene likes music (him using a toy guitar to punctuate his sentences in one episode made me laugh, especially when he had a serious expression), though I understand they start upping implications of gender fluidity in him later (another thing they took from The Simpsons).
On the other hand, there are also virtues. Bob is one of the greatest comic foils I’ve ever seen in comedy; one thing they do improve upon from The Simpsons is that everything that show tried to do comedically with Marge is done better with Bob. Part of it is H Jon Benjamin being a great comedy actor, but it’s also that Bob is a wet blanket 75% of the time, and goes along with the stupid jokes of his family the other 25% – sometimes because he also thinks it’s funny, but mostly because it’s the fastest way to get past whatever bit they’re stuck on, which is consistently incredibly funny. I think in particular in the second episode, where Tina believes Bob, stuck in the wall, is the voice of her dolphin poster, and Bob goes along with it immediately.
Which brings me to Tina. It is so funny to me that they make such a relentlessly horny character so anti-sexual in presentation; starting with the fact that she’s a prepubescent girl, obviously (though they do the same thing with adult characters occasionally, like Gail), but also through things like Dan Mintz’s performance (not quite flat but strongly suggesting it), and, in general, the fact that we care about her romantic success or failure the way a parent does; hoping for success for her but not being personally invested in it, and certainly not wanting to see it.
She also puts into perspective the duplication of the other kids; it’s incredibly funny to see her team up with them in a way it’s less funny to see them team up with each other. This is also part of the way the cast in general has good chemistry; you can pair up most of the characters in some way and get some good contrast (Linda’s sincerity vs Bob’s fastidiousness; Tina’s social phobias vs Bob’s conscientiousness; Gene or Louise’s happy-go-lucky attitude vs Bob’s fastidiousness).
I can also see how its predictability is a strength to those into that. I prefer a little more edge to my works (like, you know, The Simpsons), but I see the value of something that suggests edginess whilst never actually going there. The show has a Law & Order quality where you’re not really gonna be surprised or offended by how things turn out, but it is gonna find creativity within the limits it sets itself, and it’s gonna pretend, more often than not, that it’s more offensive than it is.
Hacks, Season Five, Episodes One and Two
How did I miss a second episode? Or was it two episodes on the premiere?
“I knew that social media detox would bite me in the ass!”
I decided against taking notes and just left the story waft over me. Anyway, these two together really get to the core of Deb, in that she’s someone who freaks out, then seizes any opportunity to fix her emotional problem, then starts thinking more rationally and long-term. I like how over these two episodes, she whittles down from a general freakout, to chasing an EGOT, to the much more achievable and realistic goal of performing in Madison Square Garden and selling it out. To riff on a Churchhill quote about Americans, Deb can always be trusted to do the rational thing once she’s exhausted all the other options.
I also like how the second episode dives seriously into her relationship with her fans – it comes out in favour of her personal relationships, but it does have space and grace for her fans and their relationship. It occurred to me that this show has a very Tim Robinson-like ability to find the right interesting faces you’ve never seen before, which it doubles down on for her fans every time (my favourite is the woman who plays Ava’s fake fan, because I was waiting for those crazy eyes to pay off), but it also makes them endearing; they come off crazy when they immediately latch onto the MSG idea (extraordinarily funny to have this immediately undermine the sweetness of Deb’s revelation) but it’s sweet in its own way.
I like this read on Bob’s Burgers as Law and Order — definitely not the highs of the Simpsons but much greater consistency. And agreed on how Benjamin is the glue here, Coach McGuirk and Sterling Archer may be funnier characters but they are also more unsettled (depressed/belligerent, arrogant/anxious) while Bob is generally more stable — he can take a lot of weirdness, which is its own strength. This makes him losing his shit very funny what it does happen.
Yeah, he basically functions in that role of everyman romantic-lead friend in a sitcom like this (and is not large enough to eat the other five), at least in the initial dynamic. So he’s kind of a straight man to the rest of the cast, mostly, but as they go they get a lot more mileage out of him thinking he’s a wise, cool guy when he’s sort of an obnoxious wannabe-California-bro type (in Chicago) who’s full of bad ideas. He thinks he’s Bodhi, but he’s not even Gary Busey.
That’s Max Broom! Crap, damn it, Blum! Why can’t I remember my own name?
Related, the show also really improves once they get a better handle on what to do with Alex’s character.
Boooooo. Er, I think they’re different enough. Gene is a performer; Louise is a mastermind. Gene wants world domination through the power of music; Louise wants world domination through the power of world domination. (There are other differences.)
Anyway, the show is actually firing at a pretty high level even early on, although (like, say, the Community pilot) it’s really not evident how well figured out these characters are at first. But that second episode with Linda’s parents is a hoot, and Bob moonlighting as a cabbie is one of my early favorites. “Art Crawl” is where a lot of people really clicked with the show, but I was there first, as always.
Anyway, something very funny about a long-running family sitcom in its first season having the 11-year-old recording his grandparents having sex, the dad bringing a bunch of trans sex workers to his daughter’s birthday party, the mom’s sister painting a bunch of assholes on animals, things of that nature.
Nope, premiere was the 9th and second episode was the 16th.
Re Gene: Yeah, I figure the show will evolve and reveal even more in the future, it’s just here in the early stages, it’s like I was given a burger, chips, an ice cream sundae, a Coke, and a Diet Coke, and it doesn’t ruin the meal at all but I’m like, why did you give me two soft drinks? I suppose it’s most helpful when they’re in different subplots.
I feel like they continue to differentiate Gene and Louise as the show goes on, in a way that’s actually (though not necessarily intentionally) similar to the way kids will start becoming less of a unit as they grow older. Gene and Louise are one of the places I really feel the Home Movies influence.
I got half an hour into the new documentary about NBA icon Jerry West and bounced. This should have been a smal dunk, just by having interviews with West filmed not long before his death, but Kenya Barris – making his first documentary – overproduced the whole thing with too many bells and whistles and also too much of himself. Maybe someday I go back to this, but probably not. In the age of Jon Bois eschewing high production values and noisy extras in favor of the narrative and of college students making YouTube videos about the NBA that get to the point in half the time, maybe we don’t need bells and whistles anyway.
Elementary, “The Leviathan” – The title refers to an apparently impenetrable safe that has broken into twice, so Holmes is hired by the manufacturer to figure out how. Several odd but not entirely satisfying twists and turns, though the fun is seeing Holmes obsess. And he gets to say his famous “once you have eliminated the impossible” line. Twice, plus it’s quoted back at him by Watson. Meanwhile, we meet Joan’s family, and her mom is the first to realize that maybe she likes being a detective.
MASH, “Dear Sigmund” – Dr. Freedman, down in the dumps after a patient killed himself, hides at the 4077th for two weeks and tries to figure out how everyone there copes. Some interesting vignettes and seeing Sidney is always a treat. But a subplot involving a figbter pilot who manages to ignore the results of his bombing on the locals doesn’t quite work. I appreciate that Hawkeye wants to make a moral point about war, but it’s not like the pilot is going to go home and say “you know what, war is terrible and I quit.” I mean, yes, it would be great if everyone did that, but the guy will be back in his jet the next day, won’t he? Fun bit where Klinger feigned an injury to his head that causes him to speak only Arabic, fun because unlike all the other shows in the 70s with people who supposedly spoke Arabic, Jamie Farr really did.
Frasier, “Fraternal Schwinns” – Frasier and Niles are forced to confront how they never learned to ride bikes. This was hard to watch in part because of contact embarrassment for them as they try to learn, but mainly because I also never learned to ride a bike, and could not help but feel like I was being judged. (Apparently, only six percent of Americans can’t ride bikes. I really don’t know why I never did other than I couldn’t manage it without the training wheels – why can’t we have bikes with extra wheels there anyway? – and never felt like it was important.) There was a nice subplot involving Martin, Cora Winston, and Daphne’s mother actually apologizing for trying to break Martin and Cora up.
MLB, Orioles-Guardians – Two not very good teams, and the Guardians broadcasters are terrible and also homers.
Kenya Barris? Putting too much of himself into a project?! WHAT?!
I can’t ride either in part because of motor skills.
Did you grow up in the City? I know there are neighborhoods and the whole thing isn’t the Financial District, but my guess is there were places to learn.
The best way to learn how to ride a bike is to just get on and fall off until eventually you stop falling quite so much.
I lived across the street from a reasonably sized playground and had other options for places to bring a bike. And my brother was taught pretty easily. I have a vague memory that I was a terrible student who tried the patience of my mom and of the friend’s father who took his turn. The funny thing is that as a teen and adult, I was not afraid of skis, rollerblades, and ice skates. But I never though about getting on a bike again. (I was not a great rollerblader, was okay on skis, stunk on ice skates.)
Hacks, “Number One Fan”
I loved Ava’s fan turning out to have a secret agenda to All About Eve her and take her place in Deborah’s life. Once again, Jimmy’s lovely earnestness and kindness pays off, as he wins Renee O’Connor as a client by virtue of a sincere investment in her and her work. The episode’s exploration of parasocial relationships, and what they give to and ask of both sides, is, as Tristan noted above, done with a lot of nuance and humor.
Ava’s long-lost (and not that lamented) friend who’s brought to her birthday party is comedic gold, from the bit about their old teacher to her hooking up with Jesse McCartney (almost steals the funny side of the episode with that delivery of, “No”).
Slow Horses, “Identity Theft” and “A Stranger Comes to Town”
A suicide bomb at a shopping center + David Cartwright’s worsening dementia and collision with a mysterious assassin make for a hell of a start to the new series. Some especially fantastic Lamb in these two episodes, as he overplays his caustic callousness at identifying “River’s” body in the bathtub (getting some very funny lines in the process) and works to help River behind the scenes (while simultaneously denying that’s what he’s doing). It’s especially great that this forces him to interact with David, whom he still hates and resents: their mini-interrogation is probably my favorite scene of these two episodes. Also, we’ve got a new Head Dog, Emma Flyte, and a new First Desk,
Gaius BaltarClaude Whelan; Flyte’s at least as competent as Duffy, but Whelan is a dweeb afflicted, to his own distress, by the haunting awareness that he can’t actually do the job he’s been hired to do. Catherine’s still resigned from the Service—a status Lamb keeps deliberately neglecting to make official—but she’s the person River trusts, understandably enough, to look after David while he hares off to France to unravel the assassin plot; everyone’s universally bitter about her replacement, and Lamb takes time out from the main plot to set up a scheme there too.Jonathan Pryce has always been good, but he’s at his best here—watching his confused, terrified grief as he grapples with repeatedly thinking he accidentally killed his beloved grandson is some genuinely harrowing territory.
Taskmaster, “Leg up, Johnny!”
Light on quotes for this week’s episodes, but the tasks were incredibly strong, and there was some good, unquotable physical comedy.
“This is quite interesting about this show. You know, it makes you realize who you are as a person. And I’ve realized I’m really excited and fucking stupid.”
“I can’t think we’re ever going to see anything less ambitious than the time between you announcing you can do a handstand and the reality.”
“Most homoerotic thing I’ve seen all week.”
“My wife is not here with me, and when I heard her voice, I got teary-eyed, I really did.”
“God. It’s sickening.”
Task ownage: Armando’s diving across a fake mirror while looking like Ben Kingsley. (“That was you?”)
A study in contrasts: Kumail gets his wife to shout at him over the phone, and she goes with, “I can’t believe how much I love you!” Armando’s wife is annoyed he forgot to take the bins out this morning.
Lars and the Real Girl
For Movie Club. The color palette and overall tone establish this as a kind of offbeat magical realism where the magic you’re granting is an unusual degree of kindness and discretion, and the film then goes about its business being a very well-calibrated comfort movie. Its ambitions are discreet enough, and detached enough from reality, that it can’t achieve greatness for me personally, but it’s warm and endearing and well-executed, and it has some good jokes.
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
Nothing these motherfuckers do is private! Everyone in England seems to know everything about them! Gorgeous costuming and good core performances from Bette Davis and Errol Flynn (although Flynn had better chemistry with the Elizabeth I in The Sea Hawk), but the mercurial childishness on display here becomes intermittently exhausting. It’s only in the final stretch that the romantic duo achieve the kind of tragic passion that it feels like the film was striving for all along, as they both finally convince me, themselves, and each other that they care deeply for each other but care for their power and pride even more. (“What you really wanted, you have taken” is a banger of a line in that context.)
Davis does some especially good, restless physical acting here. And hot take, but this may be Flynn’s best hair.
The Adventures of Mark Twain
Saving it for Streaming Shuffle, but Claymation rules.
Haven’t seen Lars in a minute but Gosling’s performance felt right to me regarding trauma and a fear of contact/intimacy; I also like Paul Schneider as the brother who is first ashamed and embarrassed and slowly reveals a deeper level of guilt and pain.
Everyone’s good, but Schneider was really a highlight for me, partly because he got to engage more openly with the embarrassment of it all and follow that to some deeper places.
The Pitt S2 finale – This felt right for a season I was kind of mixed on, giving some characters short shrift while focusing too much on Robby’s mental health sometimes to an irritating extent; Wyle’s performance here is really moving, especially how he looks like he’s about to crumble every other scene, but I don’t know if these episodes give him enough of a dramatic arc or movement. (So many scenes of characters telling him very directly that he needs help.) This is often great television but sometimes the format gets in the way of the storytelling, as if the writers need to either force more of a story in a single shift or stick to the idea of a day in the life.
There’s also an interesting essay to be written about perceived sexism on Robby’s part with the female doctors and nurses, the Pitt fandom are obviously terrible at watching the show but they may have struck on something the writers have not noticed or wrote without thinking deeply about it. (Robby is correct nevertheless, per my friend, about many male paramedics getting scared of lawsuits and not getting under the tits for a proper heart check.)
Drive (1997)
What if we did Rush Hour a year earlier and it was better in every way, especially by replacing Christ Tucker with Kadeem Harrison, upgrading from Jackie Chan to a much better actor in Mark Dacascos and the director wasn’t (as far as I now) an absolute creep? Oh and Brittany Murphy shows up in one of the most deranged, horny performances I’ve seen in a while?
It’s just an absolute blast.
Dumb and Dumber
You know, neither of us had seen this? Gotta admit… not as funny as its reputation. I think Roger Ebert’s observation that the comic setpieces just sort of fizzle out instead of escalating or paying off is the most salient criticism here.
Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, Behind The Scenes
They actually recorded commentary with everyone (the cast, the producers / directors, and Anthony Norman) for every episode in addition to the bonus episodes we received. It’s funny to hear them reminisce and talk about all the things that nearly went wrong.
Andor, again
Well, it had been months so I decided to do my own rewatch a few weeks ago, and then my buddy wanted to finally get underway this weekend so I started again with him. He’s already through episode six.
I’d be curious about rewatching D&D again – the plot feels overly complicated when something even thinner would be funnier. I agree with Ebert too though that the parrot gag is one of the meanest/funniest in movie history.
The Andromeda Strain (1971) – I devoured the book when I was a kid, and there’s a way in which this film is very much style over substance. We’re halfway through before they actually start any analysis of the bug. But man, what style! I love the huge flat blocks of color, the retro technology (which of course wasn’t retro at the time), even the way Wise keeps it mostly staid and steady until some moment of crisis. (Wise would do the same thing to great effect several years later in Star Trek.) This allows you to somewhat forgive that they don’t actually do much science in this scientific thriller.
Eight Men Out – The movie really does a great job of managing empathy, because you feel for these guys even though they actually should have been punished much more severely than they were. Partly this is achieved by showing the trials they – in particular Straitharn’s Eddie Cicotte – deal with to play baseball. And partly it’s by making the instigators of the scheme, in Lloyd and Edson, be primarily comic figures. But Sayles doesn’t shy away from the ways it hurts the people who care about the team, John Mahoney as the manager, the kids, and also Eddie’s wife who goes out every third day to watch him get roughed up. The whiplash of the climax does not quite work; I think Sayles was trying to shoehorn the actual facts into a scene of dramatic irony, but it’s a little sudden. But it’s a good picture that manages the melancholy well. (Cusack also is good here in a role he doesn’t usually play.)
What did we play?
More Slay the Spire 2: I beat the game with the Regent and then pretty quickly got a handle on the next new character, the Necrobinder and her pet giant skeletal hand, Osty. (Thank God Osty revives every time he “dies,” or I would’ve been a nervous wreck at losing him. Let me take the damage for you, Osty. Don’t even worry about it.) I wonder if The Locked Tomb series influenced this character at all.
One of this sequel game’s strengths has been complicating the core mechanics and introducing those complications gradually: the Regent has to deal not only with energy counts but also with star counts (think of it as mana, I guess), and the Necrobinder partly outsources her blocking to her sidekick, so building up Osty’s health bar is also part of your defense system.
I beat Ender Lilies and then started on its sequel Ender Magnolia, which so far seems like a substantial improvement. I probably need to spend less time playing video games at some point, but right now they’re about the only thing in my life that consistently delivers on what I expect when I put my time and effort into them.
Mario Kart World (demo) on Nintendo Switch 2
Had to do some errands on the U.S. and I played a race in kiosk at a Target. The visual design is very strong, but the demo itself is a poor showcase for this game, I feel: the speed is set up too slow, the AI drivers just watches you go, the only track layout is almost a straight line and, the real bummer, the training mode (the antenna that doesn’t let you go off-track) is on by default and there’s no way to disable it, which blocks you from using rails, a new feature for this series. Not the best tease for this game except for the youngest of players. Obviously, I won, but that’s hardly an accomplishment.
“The buildup of all these implications” I see what you did there! And it seems like the key for Sunny is that the show has no goal other than to be funny, no story or mystery or unresolved question at its core. The X-Files boils down to “will Mulder and Scully find the truth?”, Lost to “will they figure out the whole deal with the island?” Twin Peaks to “who killed Laura Palmer?” etc. The expansion of the show’s world ultimately has to contract to that answer. Interestingly, The Venture Brothers seems to have figured this out (although I have not yet seen the ending) – that show starts as parody but becomes “Will these people grow up?” and that unresolved question has all sorts of ties to lore, particularly regarding Rusty, but it points forward instead of backward.
One of the smartest things that show did was slowly reveal the extent that Jonas Sr. was a monster without making it the main point; it just added to why Rusty and the other characters were so screwed up.