You know, the thing that gets me about NCIS is that I still think the pilot holds up. It’s quirky, it’s interesting, and the characters are plausible underdogs doing a difficult thing with a clever solution. Gibbs (Mark Harmon) comes off as a guy who loves his job so much he’ll express nothing but patience with people who don’t get it, and Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) is younger, more defensive and prickly, desperate for Gibbs’s approval, but ultimately hardworking. The show is inherently propaganda for the US military (George W Bush is a character, and one of the first scenes is a marine proud to meet him), but it’s not like that ever got in the way of entertainment.
I clearly remember turning on the show. I was sixteen, so it must have been some way through season four, when it occurred to me how often the characters did blatantly illegal things to uphold the law – the most common being that they hack into databases to get information, but once that thought wormed its way into my brain, I started to realise how often they lied about warrants, harassed suspects who hadn’t, from their perspective, actually done anything, and generally acted above the law.
From there it clicked for me how unlikeable the characters were. They had a weird habit of bullying people who had done literally nothing to them; McGee was their favourite punching bag, and I couldn’t understand why they were making his job more difficult (the appeal of hazing has always been lost on me). Tony keeps harassing women and gets weirdly petulant about it; Gibbs is a complete dickhead who comes off, at points, as sociopathically indifferent.
(Though I admit to having come around on his habit of destroying and replacing phones with a cavalier regularity, as well as writing in notepads)
The thing that really made me turn on the show was coming to recognise that, no matter their faults, the characters would never be wrong, never make a huge mistake, never be misled by their gut. It struck me as simultaneously blatant authoritarian propaganda – don’t question the system, don’t question the police – and poor, tedious writing.
[I]f he is a god or if he is, you know, an utterly fantastic creature, then the situation is of no challenge, and the resolution is never in doubt, and somehow, it’s, I dunno, it becomes a sort of bizarre religious ritual or something.
John McTiernan
The older I got, the more this show began to radiate evil to me. I know that sounds ridiculous – like I’m a fundamentalist Christian railing against the evils of pop culture, and in a way I guess I am. The smugness, the laziness, the lack of any real thought or interest in other people; I have to physically leave the room when I see this show is on now. Copaganda doesn’t necessarily turn me off; I can happily watch Law & Order and then still criticise it. This, on the other hand, is rank to me.
Even the little things about this show bother me; there’s a bizarre habit it indulges in where characters rigidly alternate between expositing about the plot and talking about whatever dumb shit is happening in their personal lives. Even aside from the facts that no human being talks like that and that it’s infuriating rather than cute (especially after the first five hundred times), it just draws attention to how superfluous the plot is.
One of the most infamous scenes from the show is two of the characters using the same keyboard to fight a hacking attempt (before Gibbs manfully solves the problem by unplugging the monitor), and this is just a particularly visual expression of how problems are both caused and solved by a sluice of bullshit. One can compare it to the nonsense on Law & Order or Criminal Minds; those shows are equally bullshit, but there’s a sense of the writers having worked out their bullshit so it makes internal.
These are the images that are coming at you – this is what the collective, anonymous body wants to see.
Werner Herzog
NCIS doesn’t even have that. I’ve heard rumours – mostly related to that keyboard scene – that the writers have contests to see who can generate the most absurd bullshit, and this is the kind of thing that doesn’t even need to be true because it successfully conveys the meaninglessness of it. Part of the reason NCIS radiates evil to me is because it’s often content for the sake of content; this combination of authoritarian politics and verbal diarrhea is a disturbing one.
It being the most popular TV show of all time is particularly disturbing. I don’t generally care or think about the obscurity of my taste; I must admit to being self-absorbed enough to believe that a show only needs to entertain me, and the rest of you can watch whatever you want. But knowing that this is what the people want to see – the authoritarian archetypes delivering gibberish to save us all – it’s hard not to worry about what that society would do to a person.
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
"Obi-Wan never told you about your father."
"I love you." / "I know."
"I'm terribly sorry - no no, please don't get up--"
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Master Gardener
Not my favourite of Schrader’s “God’s Lonely Man” archetype – that’s still Bringing Out The Dead – but this is definitely the best of Schrader’s takes on redemption specifically. Having the lead be a former white supremecist ends up with this fascinating combination of grounding the present, where people have specific and clear reasons for hating him, and allowing the past to be even more abstract, and in fact falling straight into genre tropes.
Schrader is an odd guy, but the older he gets, the better he becomes at conveying what people are like without ever being realistic. This is what people do most of the time – they filter the world through their jobs, and they run away from their sins. They don’t usually do so quite so beautifully, of course. What’s funny is that, on the other hand, Narville is both aggressively weird and someone I can relate to, outside the white supremacy. He’s obsessively nerdy about his chosen topic and endows it with as much meaning as he can, he’s fairly closed off to people despite talking a lot, and even the way Edgerton carries himself looks familiar.
(Admittedly, Schrader is less effective at writing female characters, though he doesn’t push past his abilities with Maya and he has the sense to cast Weaver as the ludicrous fantasy figure)
I was also thinking about Schrader’s craft. He does weird things with weird music that I don’t think anyone else does; ominous feeling under seemingly comfortable situations. I enjoy the specific feeling Schrader films have – when I pause and get up to get things, I feel as if I move as elegantly and precisely as he does. His movies are distant and philosophical but have an intense driving feeling underneath that sneaks up on you.
Amusingly this movie passes the Bechdel Test, which speaks to both Schrader’s weirdness (he sees people as human even when they’re archetypes or redemptive figures) and the slippery quality of the test. Saw some critiques of the depiction of redemption for a white supremacist when it seems to fit Voltaire’s idea of “tending your own garden” and the actual neo-Nazis and former Trumpers I’ve read about who’ve reformed and put in the work of (in Norvel’s case) literally growing and nurturing life as opposed to destroying and despising it. The music FYI is by the great Dev Hynes AKA Blood Orange.
To Be or Not to Be (1983) – The remake of Lubistch’s classic is a mixed bag. Since this is a Mel Brooks vehicle – he starred, produced, wrote a couple of songs, and I suspect had a hand in his character’s dialogue – it tries to be more of an outright comedy than the original. But a lot of the gags land awkwardly, and it doesn’t help that it’s gotten harder to laugh at goofball Nazis. Plus the comedy runs into some serious drama, especially regarding the fate of Anne Bancroft’s gay dresser and a host of Jews who the theater company is hiding. But enough of the gags land, the drama is effective (even if we know beforehand everyone manages to escape), and the cast is great. Brooks is not a great actor but he holds his own and has great chemistry with the love of his life. The cast is a mix of TV stalwarts like Jack Riley and George Gaynes with such bigger names as Jose Ferrer and Charles Durning. Gaynes is especially good as an actor who is especially good playing a Nazi. Which movie is better? The original edges this out mainly because Lubistch was just that good, but the remake was able to actually say the Nazis came after Jews and queers, so I am not declaring a big win for the Lubitsch touch.
M*A*S*H – “Alcoholics Unanimous”/”There Is Nothing Like a Nurse”/”Adam’s Rib” – A triple header as the friend who got my wife to rewatch the show is visiting. The first has Frank, in charge again, declare the camp dry. Some good gags, especially with a drunk and nervous Mulcahy trying to speak about the evils of booze, but not a strong episode. And viewed differently if know that was why played for jokes here would be the subject of a Very Serious half hour where Hawkeye goes on the wagon. The middle one sees the nurses sent away because G-2 thinks the camp is about to be bombed. This one is very slight, with the single highlight of seeing Frank’s wedding film. It also has the first hint of tension between Margaret and the nurses. (Enough with the singing, Loudon Wainwright III!). The last is much funnier and details an obsessed Hawkeye’s efforts to get ribs shipped from Chicago to end the monotony of liver and fish for dinner every single night.
Frasier, “Flour Child”/”Duke’s, We Hardly Knew Ye” – In the former, the Cranes help deliver a baby in a cab, and Niles ponders if he’s ready to be a father by trudging a bag of flour with him for a week. The silliness is balanced by some legitimate heart in asking what turns out to be a tough question for Niles (not that he asks Maris about it). In the latter, an investment Niles and Frasier makes leads to the closing of Martin’s favorite bar. This time around, the tension between father and son is well balanced, and the show tries to reckon with how someone like Frasier spend so many years at Cheers. Also, the intertitles include “Where Nobody Knows Your Name” and “Sleepless in Seattle (you knew we would do this one sooner or latter)”. I like the intertitles but rarely think about them unless they manage to be witty.
Dogfight
For a movie group discussion that wound up getting delayed (and a good thing for me, too, since I spent a huge chunk of Sunday on chat with tech support). This has the feel of “Before Sunrise, but if I actually cared more about it,” but the problem there is that I still don’t care too much here, either; this is an interesting, well-crafted film that occupied my attention enough but never fully engaged my emotions. I think part of the problem for me is that Lili Taylor’s Rose, while believably young and full of intense feelings, is just a little too perfect: she feels like a shy Madonna who serves Eddie’s growth (both by forcing him to face who he is and, paradoxically, by accepting him in all his roughness) but never needs or gets much growth of her own. Because ultimately, she’s fine–all she needs is confidence, and time will inevitably give her that off-screen. There’s a great scene where she brings Eddie to her bedroom and tells him about all the singers whose pictures bedeck her walls, and she’s passionate and well-informed, and you can tell that Eddie has never cared or thought this much about anything and is sort of rocked back by being with someone who has actual interests guiding her life, and it’s fantastic, but I want to see what she gets from him in return, and outside of the initial excitement, I don’t, really.
That said, there’s a thing a lot of stories about toxic cultures do where one (1) character is elected as the “he wouldn’t really be like that, it’s just because of his environment!” outlier who gets to experience something new and therefore receive our empathy while the rest of the social circle is unilaterally condemned and denied any signs of depth, and I really appreciate that Dogfight doesn’t do that. The Four Bees are mostly shallow and immature, but one of them at least gets to have insight into that and mount a kind of defense of it, and the post-Vietnam reveal of sole survivor Eddie having acquired all four tattoos is quietly gutting and one of the film’s most effective emotional moments for me.
My Bloody Valentine
‘Tis the season to watch this 1981 blue-collar slasher set in and around a coal mine. Outside of top-tier examples like Halloween or Black Christmas, where the tension is genuinely masterful, slashers can succeed on specificity alone: what is the setting/context, and how well and thoroughly does the film use it? My Bloody Valentine goes all in on that front, creating some genuine atmosphere and a genuine sense of place and getting some iconic moments out of just leaning into the coal mine and its accoutrements. There’s a likable grubbiness to it, and all in all, it resides comfortably beside other second-rank favorites like Intruder or The Burning.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – I hadn’t seen this since childhood so I figured it was due another go before checking out the Blank Check episode. It was never one of the films that my family latched onto, I remember seeing it a few times but there were so many others that entered regular rotation* (especially with my sisters, who were bigger rewatchers than me, probably because I spent considerably more time with videogames) and this one did not. As an adult, I admire how low-key, strange and melancholy it feels for a movie that broke box-office records but it still taps out at “very good” for me. The “escape from the hospital” bit is wonderful but otherwise it pales in comparison to some of the other big Spielberg movies for me, especially the first and third Indiana Jones movies. I still enjoyed seeing it again but not sure I’ll have much reason to revisit it again. Cool thing though: it was released in the US on the day I was born.
* one of which was the solidly ET-indebted Flight of the Navigator, which I’m sure is a lesser movie but I’m not sure I could resist ranking higher on a Kid Meets An Alien list
The Simpsons – watched “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet” on Disney+ when I had 20 minutes to fill and then randomly caught “Sideshow Bob Roberts” and “Bart’s Girlfriend” on TV another day. These are all very good episodes.
E.T. was in heavy rotation in my house – I still remember the day my parents brought home the video, an actual storebought VHS tape with the real cover on it and everything, not a copied tape with a magic markered label on the side, the cultural force around the movie must have been astoundingly strong to compel them to pull it off the shelf and walk it to the front of K-Mart. I’ve only revisited it once, maybe twice in adulthood, and definitely only once with kids, where the first half played a lot differently. I now think it’s the more interesting half, a movie about kids who don’t quite understand their adult suddenly becoming the adults to a being who doesn’t quite understand them. Once they start riding their bikes away from the cops, it could be any one of a number of family fantasy movies because that was the part that got imitated the most. But I’m trying to think of the last film I saw that had a subtle character moment like the mother sitting alone in her Halloween costume, trying and failing to snuff out a candle with her wand.
Yeah it has some really nice, subtle slice-of-life stuff in it, which I appreciate. But maybe it should have a wise-cracking robot? I think the jury is still out
Interesting to bring this up in the context of the Indys – your faves and Temple as well are not short on gnarly images, but as a kid watching all of these no melting faces or ripped-out hearts were anywhere near as upsetting as drained white ET. Because he of course is a kid and Spielberg is lingering over his corpse. And that melancholy vibe, the loss of divorce that pre-dates the story we see, sets this up to hit much harder than the standard third act death/resurrection.
Oh yeah I absolutely remember being traumatised by the drained ET, and how rubbery and real he seems when getting treated – really scary stuff.
SNL 50 – visiting my mom, who wanted to watch what would surely be a bunch of classic bits. Denied! There are some great old clips but this was largely terrible and utterly interminable sketches, only Black Jeopardy really hit. And the sketches themselves mostly used aughts and 10s performers, new people mostly ignored (no great loss from what I could see) but a deep bench untapped. Fred Armisen had multiple sketches! Atrocious! But worse were the chickenshit nods to controversy that have been sanded down into lore. Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard performed Nothing Compares 2 U, not acknowledging how the show hung O’Connor out to dry. Just part of history, the dead turned into flat icons for the purpose of the living. Will Ferrell showed up as Robert Goulet but his earlier Goulet didn’t make the montage of “we’re so bad/offensive” moments, although Adrian Brody did at least. That montage closed with the great Pryor/Chase word association sketch and of course Chase’s last word was bleeped. Own your shit! Perhaps the old myth is anatomically off, and instead of removing one’s ribs it is being gutless that allows for easier self-fellation. At least we saw a clip of Happy Fun Ball.
“largely terrible and utterly interminable sketches” So a fitting tribute! It doesn’t surprise me they would actively ignore or fail to reckon with their worst historical moments – remember when they had a hand in getting Trump elected in 2016? They don’t need to trot out their dirty laundry on their birthday, but to purposefully nod to controversy anyway and then fail to look it in the eye is indeed chickenshit. Another old man’s empire that refuses to die. Should have been an all-Toonces retrospective.
Zero Trump mentions, from what I could tell. There was a new gag of ICE agents dragging away (Canadian) Martin Short, which was not very funny last night and I suspect will only become less funny with time. Also zero Toonces, why were we even here.
And I have a very clear memory of an earlier anniversary show — maybe the 25th? — having the Beastie Boys start a song but wait, what’s this, it’s Elvis Costello and now they’re playing “Radio Radio!” Just like he did that one time, pissing people off! Same neutered vibe, who needs tragedy becoming farce when you can have comedy becoming pageant.
Rather than actually watch the special (I did watch “Black Jeopardy” though), last night I just ended up watching a bunch of the classic commercial parodies, which are all available on YouTube (even though, sadly, some of the original music is not the same).
EDIT: I should have specified: All the ones I watched are available on YouTube. Not all the classic commercials are, especially from the olden years. (No “Swill” or “Floor Wax / Dessert Topping”, for example.)
My first experience with SNL was the 1991 special Saturday Night Live Goes Commercial, so those bits have a special place in my heart and they are also generally good to great, tons of all-timers in there. So of course the special used ten-second clips (if that) in a commercial montage, a lot of them didn’t even make sense unless you knew the original. Sigh.
Rolling Stone put out a list of the top 50 commercial parodies a day or two ago and had YouTube links for most of them. They didn’t have all of my favorites, but they had enough of them (and #1 was correct). I put together a playlist of some of the best ones (i.e. my favorites from the era I watched SNL + a few other older or newer ones that were too good to leave out).
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW5T2ceTCkbOtKDTH9Vv4kUsjn3TVsiLI&si=asjdj5cU9SP4lvs1
Why did they even do this in February instead of, I don’t know, when the show actually turns 50?
The good news is that all the great old stuff lives on YouTube. I was able to find Aykroyd as Jimmy Carter talking down someone from a bad trip with ease when Carter died.
Not including Trump and Musk, two increasingly explicit white supremacist fascists who are now the president and effective president, in their retrospective of things that didn’t age well is pure cowardice.
Treating the job interview sketch as something that didn’t age well is even worse. Half the government is more explicitly racist than Chase now! And that tension can resolve into either guilt or fear, and Pryor was right to make chase afraid. That sketch is sharper than any political sketch they’ve done in the trump era.
And they did the domingo sketch this year! Twice!
Surprising that they have done the Domingo sketch twice in one year, seeing how based on last night’s performance it is several excruciating decades long.
And you are completely right about the job interview sketch. It is still incredibly potent today! And even beyond that, it is an extremely rare example of the show doing what its admirers say it always did, pushing the envelope in startling and funny ways. It is fine that the show would not go there in that specific way now, times change, but in a celebration and recognition of history it is cowardly to acknowledge your history.
I enjoyed some of it (mostly onYouTube) but it’s ironic how much this paled in comparison to the 40th anniversary special, which really had a lot of great bits.
Alien – The Ploughgirl wanted a movie night, so I chose this from the list of favorites I’ve been wanting to share. She’s been a little terrified to try, knowing just enough about it to be afraid from the moment the camera starts gliding down those beautiful industrial space corridors. Also a case in the imagination creating something ten times scarier than you’re ever going to encounter onscreen, especially this one where Scott sustains the suspense and is extremely chintzy with the actual deeds. The most terrifying moment for her was the Ash reveal because even if you’ve absorbed the fact that Aliens incubate their eggs in your chest so their young can burst out and smile at everyone, you have no idea that lifelike robots exist in this world, let alone one of them is on the crew and will run around with his robot head knocked off like a violent chicken. Also ramming a magazine down someone’s throat is, arguably, bizarre and scary in a visceral way that spontaneously birthing a gooey worm from your chest cavity is not. (And knowing the twist, Ian Holm gives a great performance as an unfeeling being with ulterior motives who is undistinguishable from a regular human jerk.)
Even mid-peril the pace is closer to 2001, which this borrows liberally from, than Star Wars, which this borrows liberally from, yet it’s an easy watch throughout. It’s a good half a movie before the Alien is on the ship in any form but it never feels artificially drawn out. Contains one of my all-time favorite shots that I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, as Ripley makes her way down a steam-filled corridor lit by strobing and warm amber lights, a symphonic climax of design.
Oh man, what a joy to see the Ash reveal through fresh eyes! Absolutely the scariest part of the movie.
Look, H.R. Giger made a great Alien design, but I feel like Ridley Scott was the only director who understood it was even scarier the less you saw of it. Just these horrible animal parts that don’t seem like they should fit together.
X-Men: The Animated Series “Old Soldiers” (s5e7) – Though this is in the lackluster fifth season (where there isn’t nearly enough Rogue) and lies in the back half where the animation style changed to something cheaper resulting in slightly different character designs this is still one of the best episodes in the series. For starters it’s written by Wolverine co-creator, no, not Rascally Roy Thomas, but Lively Len Wein. As Logan stands in a cemetery over the grave of a “traitor” we go into a flashback to WWII where we see a pre-Weapon X Logan as a black ops fixer who teams up with Captain America in Vichy France resulting in a lot of Nazis being punched. They need to rescue a captured French scientist who is held in the clutches of the Red Skull. There are some neat references and foreshadowing to who Logan would become, like him using ninja-like climbing claws as weapons, “Hey, I like these.” Nothing too deep compared to earlier episodes but I thought the twist at the end was quite touching, if a little quick in its wrap-up. Not as great or as complex as any of the Cable/Bishop time-travel episodes but still a lot of fun.
The Substance – Fargeat has a great style and the acting is very good. But it’s so out there in style that there isn’t anything to root it in the real world or take seriously. It is very elevated and extreme that it can’t be taken as satire because there isn’t much beneath the visual style. The depth is just symbolism and metaphor and nothing is too spelled out. Which isn’t bad really because you can put a lot of different meanings on it. But I was just playing spot the reference/influence toward the end – Cronenberg’s The Fly, Kubrick’s red bathroom, Carpenter’s The Thing being the most obvious. It could have been trimmed twenty minutes or more. It became so grating and repetitive by the end. I do love a good arterial spray and this has one of the best in a long time, Python levels of ridiculousness.
A Brief History of Time – Still processing the notion that the universe simply always existed as Hawking indicates, let alone the documentary itself. The Ploughman’s review does miss one lens for analyzing Morris’ film, namely disability: like many people with physical impairments* and active minds, Hawking has learned how to perceive time differently and the film is partly about his life and his theories contrasting and comparing.
*one of his friends laughs remembering how he fell out of his wheelchair in a moment both heartless and kind of human
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024). At times, the video game logic of the story telling was a little bit much. I definitely thought to myself “I remember playing this level in Horizon zero dawn” once or twice. That said, I really liked it. The world building is fun; it’s post-apocalyptic for the viewer but primitive for the apes. The conflicting historical memories of Caesar are cool. The action sequences are good. The apes are incredibly expressive for cgi/mo-cap. Everytime you see lazy cgi/mo-cap the fact there are people who at a technical level are putting real craft into it is important to remember. I think they could have used some more real eagles though—somehow we’re at a point where it’s easier to mo-cap human emotions into an ape face than it is to make a cgi eagle.
how to train your dragon 3. The httyd series might be the best big 3d animated movies? They’re not really for adults, but, as with KotPotA above, there’s enough craft here that it can still be fun to watch. I still don’t think cgi animation will ever compete artistically with traditional, but the flight sequences here at least try.
The plot itself isn’t anything too special—an evil dragon hunter is amassing an armada to sack beto and kill the dragons. Toothless meets a female night fury and attempts to court. Hiccup learns to believe in himself again and respect the needs of those around him, etc., standard kid movie stuff.
One thing J did really notice is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie accurately reproduce the iridescent effect of scales, or, for that matter, pearls or feathers. Is it just because the screen is 2 dimensional? So even with the illusion of depth you can’t actually create layers? I feel like this is something that could be done.
Resident alien, first three episodes. Alan risky stars in this netflix show as an alien that has infiltrated a small mountain town after his ship crashed. It’s pretty solid. It’s a nice showpiece for tudyk, acting like an alien who is trying to act normal and failing. It does suffer from netflix pacing. Back in the day (even a mere 5 years ago) this would have been perfect on the CW, and would have tighter pacing. They even sometimes have the montage over slow music thing near the end, a hallmark of cw/upn/wb dramedies. The gag structure is sometimes perfect though, and when it hits it makes up for the weaknesses.
What did we play?
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
Started replaying this, then read an article that said open world games are the best for busting stress and quickly found this felt very true, so it’s become my main way of unwinding after work. It’s almost completely replaced doomscrolling, to my intense relief; I’m so much more satisfied using my time on that than I am on the morass of rage-inducing comments from people I disagree with.
One thing I enjoy about this game is that it rewards patient, conservative playing – there’s a drug-dealing minigame where you can buy and sell coke, weed, downers, etc, and every now and again you get either an extremely cheap deal or an extremely motivated buyer. I spent the early game only buying drugs when they were going for a very cheap deal with the intention of only selling them when a really motivated buyer came along, which usually left me broke and forced me to hustle a bit doing the side missions like taxi driving (which, dollar for time, was the best way to raise funds but still required lots of patience). On top of this is a small, slightly fiddly side mission that lets you get free drugs.
Hilariously, I kept getting good deals but no buyers for quite a bit, until it finally paid off and I ended up making a shitload of money very quickly, which was enormously satisfying., and it let me build up a stock of weapons for the main missions to simplify them considerably. Now that my basic living within the game is established, I’m having fun buying up property.
This does not resemble in any way how I actually live, of course.
Mad Max – picked this up very cheap in a sale a while ago but didn’t want to play it TOO soon after Indiana Jones as I didn’t want it to suffer in comparison. Nothing else I’ve been trying has really sucked me in though so I figured I’d give it a go and so far, so good. I’m only just out of the first area but the driving feels good and fast, the combat is satisfying and there’s plenty of weirdo war-boy lore. It’s pretty tough, too! Makes you think about situations before storming into them, fists blazing.
Started Grim Fandango a remastered version, and it’s fun to go back to the old LucasArts adventure game format, wandering around trying to figure out how to use bizarre and random objects to get through to new areas. The design is that crazy 90s CD-ROM aesthetic, how about we bring that back while we’re doing 16-bit imitations. Also a lot of Skip-Bo, a simple card game that goes well with somewhat stressful days.
Oh, yeah, I’ve had this one on tap for a while – I need to finally get to it.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on Nintendo Switch
Finished it. Unlocked the endgame and went after the final bosses, including none other than the ghost of King Darius. The final boss is the King’s secret son, who’s channelled ancient sacred power to become a god. They’re both wild fights and though they were both lacking the drama they were going for they were still very fun to beat. Not too difficult but there’s always the boss mode if I really want to retry them in a higher difficulty Excellent game overall, super solid Metroidvania with great platforming and a terrific moveset. And despite what I said before the ending actually lands, really made me want to know more about middle eastern myth.
And I wasn’t planning on getting every secret on the map but I realized I only had a handful left so I went for them. Worth it to get the full prophecy that ties back to myth and puts a different tone to the plot. I’ll definitely go for the rest of the DLC in the weeks to come too.
F-Zero 99 on Nintendo Switch
A few more rounds during the week, won two more races in Classic mode. That might be my jam at the moment, but I’m still getting good results in the normal modes.
Golden Axe – Sega Genesis Classics on Nintendo Switch/Sega Genesis on Nintendo Switch Online
Golden Axe II – Sega Genesis Classics on Nintendo Switch/Sega Genesis on Nintendo Switch Online
Golden Axe III – Sega Genesis Classics on Nintendo Switch
I’m not the kind to play a game if I’m listening to a podcast about it but Retronauts has been doing some episodes on this series and it got me to play through them finally. They’re not top of the line beat ’em ups/hack and slash games but they’re growing on me this time. The first one is sorta rudimentary but it’s the one I’ve made the most progress on. I’m using the woman in the bikini armor on that one because why not. I’m only a few levels away from beating.
For the second I’m using the dude with a loincloth and it’s already a much better game though still basically the same, I’ll probably go finish it right after the first and then move for the third, which after the first level already plays way better, has better presenation and has some wilder things in mind, like an early set piece involving a stampede of hybrid snails/velociraptors. Not to mention that I can use a black panther man and why the hell wouldn’t I?
Also, for the first two games I played them to Sega’s own collection but switched to the one on Nintendo Switch Online, which is a little more basic but seems friendlier and might actually run better. I’ll miss the cool borders but I’ll probably do better with the NSO version for the first two games, but the third is only on the Sega one so I’ll come back to that one eventually.
This is spot on. And as someone who’s watched more NCIS than I’ll ever be able to defend before God, I’ll add another sign of its almost malicious lack of interest in the reality of its own world: this show uses its guest stars terribly. It’s vanishingly rare for it to ever generate one-off or minor recurring characters who feel like they have enough substance and presence to carry stories of their own. You don’t even get a good number of guest characters who are funnier or more emotionally real than they “need” to be, either. It’s all stripped down to a level of sub-functionality, and these actors are just given nothing to work with. It feels symptomatic of the overall meaninglessness. (And yeah, you don’t have this problem with, say, Criminal Minds … which is also probably why it can attract better guest stars for said parts.)
Obviously this especially stands out since I’m rewatching The Shield, which generates more “I would happily watch a whole spinoff about this side character’s choices” scenes in an episode than NCIS does in its endless sprawl of seasons.
You know, a few years back I caught an episode on TV that guest starred David Rees Snell and was shot shortly after The Shield wrapped up, and I had a real ‘look at how they massacred my boy!’ reaction to his haircut and suit alone.
I shudder to even think about this!
“as someone who’s watched more NCIS than I’ll ever be able to defend before God”
Very amused at the idea of an omniscient deity being not just cool with but devotionally invested in Poison (pace Bogus Journey) but drawing a hard line at NCIS.
I agree with you, especially with its generally glib tone. (Though I admit I’ve only ever seen it second-hand, because my parents watch it all the time)
I’ve been going back and forth whether I think Blue Blood is more evil (another show my parents constantly have on), and I’m inclined to give it the title because it gives the illusion of challenging its own ideas before ultimately going “Nope, fascism is GREAT!” Though I could also see NCIS being better at spreading its rotten message because it goes down so easy.
You mean Glibb tone?
I haven’t seen more than a few scenes from Blue Bloods but, based on all accounts, I could easily be convinced it’s more evil.
“ The older I got, the more this show began to radiate evil to me. I know that sounds ridiculous – like I’m a fundamentalist Christian railing against the evils of pop culture, and in a way I guess I am. The smugness, the laziness, the lack of any real thought or interest in other people; I have to physically leave the room when I see this show is on now. ”
I am firmly in favor of progressives using language like “radiates evil.” We should embrace it. We should deliver apocalyptic jeremiads. No more “hmm, this is problematic” or “this didn’t age well.” More “this radiates evil” and “the person who wrote his movie is in hell now.”
I accuse Goody Jroberts of radiating evil!
In seriousness, I am with you. Call shit what it is.
Year of the Month update!
And March is going to be Silent Era Month, where you can join these writers in examining your favorite silent movies and anything else from the 1910s and ’20s!
Mar. 4th: Lauren James: The Most Dangerous Game
Mar. 26th: Sam Scott: Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
Mar. 27th: Lauren James: The Well of Loneliness
Mar. 31st: John Anderson: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
And there’s still time this month to sign up to write about anything from 2016, including these movies, albums, and books.
Feb. 18th: John Roberts: Silence
Feb. 20th: Bridgett Taylor: Rogue One
Feb. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Pete’s Dragon
Feb. 23rd: Ben Hohenstatt: My Woman
Feb. 27th: Cori Domschot: Hidden Figures
Feb. 27th: John Bruni: Jet Plane and Oxbow
Feb. 28th: Sam Scott: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
how do I send mine to you?
Hey, sorry I missed you (we can reschedule) but you’ll want to check the site discord (specifically the Ready to Go channel) for these kinds of questions:
https://discord.gg/8HTeRt2c
Were you able to get the link to work? If not, you can just send it to me and I’ll publish it next Monday. That should give us time to set up your own profile too.
For reasons I don’t remember, the other day I was reminded that NCIS is technically a spinoff of JAG, which itself ran for ten seasons! I imagine Donald P. Bellisario is extremely rich.
Not even technically! Harmon and a team of investigators showed up in one episode as a test run before launching the show itself, one of the second bananas on JAG show up in the first or second season, and the two leads showed up on one of the spinoffs. It’s not quite the MCU but there’s a definite universe here.
Weirdly, Mark Harmon got Bellisario kicked off the show a few years in due to ‘lack of professionalism’.
God, I know too much.
Yeah, I meant “technically” more in the “it itself has spawned a massive franchise that far eclipses its origins” sense.
Bellisario was a longtime TV writer on stuff like Magnum P.I. before becoming a show creator himself, so “lack of professionalism” surprises me. On the other hand, from his perspective it’s probably easier to just cash all those royalty checks as a creator / EP / with however the hell many NCIS-es there are.
I’m pulling from memory here, but it’s something like Harmon getting the number of production days down from a week to three, or something like that. There’s a nonzero chance – especially with stories of Harmon continuing to try and pull strings on the franchise from retirement – that Harmon simply has a big ego.