Category Archives: Just Watching….

The Walking Dead – Season 4 First Half Review

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walking-dead-season-4-episode-7AMC’s ratings monster THE WALKING DEAD just aired its midseason finale last night (to an incredible 12.1 million viewers).  I have been plenty critical of the past season and a half, but this episode proves that there is still plenty of bite hidden somewhere deep within in its bark.

Allow me to give praise where praise is due: last night’s episode was incredible.  It proved my theory that the showrunners were desperately trying to turn their ship around and I am happy to say that most of the scenes mirrored the comic book near-perfectly.  In fact, I propose a “director’s cut” of the show to excise the second half of the third season and splice bits and pieces of season 4, plugging the entire 8th episode as the season 3 finale.

Unfortunately, the eighth episode was preceded by a whole ton of weird/unnecessary fluff.  Head inside for more! Continue reading →

Well, Sons of Anarchy Blew My Freaking Mind

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clay 3I was going to write something up on this last night, but how could I when I was barely able to move, let alone form a cogent obscenity to hurl at the television just quietly enough to not disturb my sleeping children??  While my predictions for the season so far have been disturbingly accurate, I never thought in a million years that they would pull something like they did last night especially with a whole other full season left.

I refuse to spoil it for those of you who haven’t caught up yet, head inside for full spoilers… Continue reading →

A Note on Thor 2

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thor2As far as their main properties go, Marvel/Disney is hitting with a pretty good batting average for the past 5 years.  In fact, I couldn’t name one bad movie made from their ‘Phase 1′ AVENGERS-culminated batch of films (can you?).  If you were one of the people that thought IRON MAN 3 was bad, you are extremely mistaken.

Now that AVENGERS has come-and-gone, Marvel is shifting their focus to the next large multi film formula, the product of which will be AVENGERS 2/GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, the latter of which has decidedly less of a built in fan base than the big names.  And to sort-of tie it all together, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. continues to improve week over week.  With the newfound focus comes a whole new set of issues.  Can Marvel duplicate its prior success and maintain quality films without everybody getting superhero burnout?  Can they start to introduce new properties like GUARDIANS to wide acclaim like the AVENGERS?  Can Fox, Sony and Marvel/Disney finally make nice so Spiderman and Wolverine can come out and play?

If THOR 2 is any indication, the next five years will be good to us superhero fans.  It was absolutely bigger and better in the action front than the original.  And while it didn’t quite have the level of finesse that I think KENNETH BRANAGH brought to part one, it had a unique feel to it and brought much more humor which seemed to fit well.

There was one exception, and that would be MIDWEST MIKE’S favorite actress of all time, KAT DENNINGS.  Let me go on record and say that KAT DENNINGS is an idiot.  Her scenes were neither good nor funny, and I was very hopeful that Thor himself would Mjolnir her right in the face before the credits rolled.  But that didn’t happen, so I have an uneasy feeling she will be back for part 3.  KAT DENNINGS aside, the rest of the movie was superb.  PS, IDRIS ELBA is an absolute beast.

Be sure to stay post-credits for a humongous nerd-out moment that seemingly prefaces everything to come with GUARDIANS and AVENGERS 2.  No spoilers, but let’s just say that the famous actor plays the part very, very well.  And be sure to stay after the after-credits scene for another one at the very, very end.

THOR 2 is solid A-grade material and judging by the preview of CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 (which looks like a whole bunch of amazing), April cannot come fast enough.

NBC’s Dracula – Pilot Review

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jonathan-rhys-meyers-dracula-nbc-2013October is by far my favorite time of year.  The weather gets cooler, the leaves start falling and television makes a shift into Halloween themed shows.  While some of us here at MWTVG take Halloween specials for granted, I live for them.  In the past few years we have been getting more and more full-blown series out of the deal with varying degrees of success.

This year, NBC presents us with their take on the Dracula mythology with their show of the same name starring JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS as the main man Drac.  I was extremely worried with some of the initial marketing that it was going to be a pure disaster (like many of NBC’s other new Fall series so far), but I could’t have been more wrong with this one.  It’s actually quite good.  JONATHAN RHYS MEYERS plays a great Dracula as he arrives in early-20th century London posing as an American businessman.

The gang’s all here from the original novel, like Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Renfield and Van Helsing and the story starts off by closely following the standard formulaic Dracula story of finding his long lost love until it starts to strike off in its own direction with a society of vampire hunters tracking down Dracula and Van Helsing being in cahoots with Dracula himself.

While the pilot was especially heavy on developing the narrative, it was not shy with the blood and horror elements that I thought it would severely lack.  Even the fight scene between Dracula and one of the vampire hunters was done extremely well, something that is often difficult to pull off on these kind of shows.  As a period-piece, it looks and feels sharper than most.  The subject matter is extremely dark, but well presented.

It will be interesting to see where they take it from here, but judging from the abnormally high ratings, we might actually see the whole season.  With 5.3 million viewers, it handily won the night in the 18-49 demographic.

It’s an A- in my book and a surprisingly solid addition to my Friday night viewing.

Sons of Anarchy – Season 6 Prediction Update

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urlHello everybody, my name is MIDWEST MARK.  Nice to see you all here, and I hope you enjoy your stay.  MIDWEST MO emailed me in what I could only imagine was a full-on panic earlier to make sure I was ok, and I would like to assure everybody that even though I have been busy and sleep deprived, I haven’t gone anywhere.  And yes, I am still alive.  This is depressing news to MIDWEST MIKE who was about to stake a claim to my portion of the site proceeds.  Alright, “proceeds” might be overstating things a bit, it’s more like “proceed” in the singular form.

Even though I find myself headlong into ‘pulling the Hopkins’ on BREAKING BAD (4 seasons in 3 weeks isn’t all that bad), I still make special time to squeak in one of my perennial favorites.

You might as well start referring to me as MIDWEST MARKSTRADAMUS, because my “Bold Predictions” for the 6th season of SONS OF ANARCHY has been phenomenally accurate.  This can only mean one of two things.  Either I’m a bona fide genius or KURT SUTTER *finally* hung up that 2014 MWTVG swimsuit calendar I sent him over the summer.  MIDWEST MO is Mr. February, and I think the photographer really accentuated his ab.  Have you ever shaved chest hair with hedge trimmers?  Me neither.  Although I was in charge of the back-wax… at least I didn’t need to look him in the face while doing so.

Head inside for the full breakdown: Continue reading →

Bad Lip Reading – Game of Thrones

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On the ‘funny scale’ of 1-10, Bad Lip Reading videos would be about a 99.  They have taken on pretty much everything from television to movies to sports to politics and it’s all lip-reading gone wrong.  The best part is that it’s so well done and accurate as hell, sometimes you totally forget that it’s being overdubbed.

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Take one good thing and mash it up with another, and you get “Medieval Land Fun-Time World”, a faux movie trailer made from GAME OF THRONES clips.  Just posted today, it’s already rounding a million views.  Trust me, just watch it.

The Walking Dead – Season 4 Premiere Review

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twds4top-710x400I have come to realize over the past several years that THE WALKING DEAD is a show of moments.  What I mean by this is when the show is good, it’s fantastic.  But when the ‘good’ wears thin, its merely a tick or two above mediocre.  For instance, the first half of the first season was outstanding.  Then they got to the CDC and everything slowed down to a crawl.  Similarly, season two started strong, halted at the farm for a good long while, and ended as near-classic television.  Season three then started extremely strong and ended up wandering around slower than the zombies in the show.

Given the prior season’s irregularities, I can’t say that I was super-hyped about the fourth season premiere tonight but I was still excited.  We can officially thank THE WALKING DEAD for much of the current state of television with the resurgence of horror in pretty much every form.  Its continued success only solidifies this viewpoint so we see edgier and more supernatural-themed shows popping up everywhere.  Because of that, it’s still worth watching if not just to catch those fleeting moments mentioned above.

I think I screwed myself over when I picked up the source material comic books and read most of them in a very short amount of time.  I merely wanted to compare the two and get perspective on the show, but what I found was a much tighter package than what the television series had evolved into.  I can only imagine that the showrunners wanted to keep the everything universally appealing to a broad audience, but they made a major mistake by not bringing the super-violent and horrific elements that would have made the entire season incredible.  And I am still appalled as to how badly they botched the Governor’s character.  The point I made several times while last season continued to drag on is that your show is already written… simply follow the existing material and you can’t possibly go wrong.

But they didn’t listen to me, so here we are.  Last season ended on a Little House on the Prairie note, and I half-expected to see little Carl frolicking in the tall grass with a little white dog and zombies in the background.  The happiness of the whole thing made me sick as that is nowhere near what the show should have been.  Seriously, read the comic book to find out.

But first, jump inside to find out more about the premiere!  Spoilers to follow… Continue reading →

Arrow – Season 2 Premiere Review

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City of HeroesIf it looks like a turd, smells like a turd, feels like a turd and tastes like a turd, what does that make it?  It makes it the first season of ARROW.  It was hotly anticipated by me as well as a ton of DC fanboys but fell faster than Ironside on an escalator.  Was that an insensitive joke?  Fine, it fell faster than Oscar Pistorius forgetting to tie his calf-laces.  Wait, that’s the same kind of joke?  Well put up with it, because I got nothing else.

DC never really seemed to have ‘gotten it’ with their comic-to-film translations.  SMALLVILLE might have been their best go and even that got overbearing after a few seasons.  It wasn’t until CHRIS NOLAN gave the BATMAN franchise a mainline shot of adrenaline that they started coming into their own.  In DC’s eyes, comic book movies don’t need to be silly, they can be dark and violent and still be worldwide phenomenons.  This, being in stark contrast (pun intended) to Marvel’s more family-friendly fare.  Not a bad thing by any means, but vastly different.

And that’s why ARROW was such a let down.  It could have been very good.  The acting was awful, but not nearly as awful as the dialogue, the action, the storyline… I honestly could not find one redeeming value in the first half of the season.  I almost never give up on a show, but I sure as heck cut this one loose after the midseason break.  Somehow, it remained popular among the comic book crowd, although I’m still convinced that its core audience must read their comic books in braille because they are not watching the same show that I suffered through.

So then came season 2.  I tried to resist but had nothing else to watch last night and out of sheer complacency forgot to delete it from my DVR.  What the hell, I’d give it another shot.  Amazingly, astoundingly, confoundingly, and confusingly, it wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t good.  It was freaking awesome.

Burn the first season from your brain entirely.  Forget it ever happened.  Just pick this show up from the second season and don’t ask questions.  I never thought it would be possible, but a few things had to have happened over the spring/summer:  1) They sent STEPHEN AMELL to acting school and he brought back some tips for his friends on set.  2) they dropped a few bucks in the budget on writers above a third-grade ability level and a director that is actually capable of direction.  3)  They all sat down for movie night and watched THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY on repeat until they learned something.

The Batman influence runs deep, but they adapt it quite well for the character.  I’m shocked to say that I was downright entertained by STEPHEN AMELL’S performance, especially in the action scenes and flashbacks.  Where the flashbacks were the low point of a low show, they are not so obnoxious this time around and are very well done.  His idiot friend is dead from last season, so we are not forced to put up with his dumb brand of stupid.  Musically, they adapted the soundtrack straight from TDKR in its thunderous tone throughout the whole hour.

ARROW is a much more mature show this time around, and I might actually stick with it the whole way through.  Granted, this is only my opinion based on the premiere episode… but they got so much right that they should be hard pressed to screw it up this time.  By the way, who do you think Flash is going to be?  They are supposed to introduce him at some point this season

A-, only because I couldn’t completely flush the turdy taste out of my mouth from season 1.  But I’m very happy to see that they made such a dramatic leap forward.

Supernatural – Season 9 Premiere Review

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supernatural-season-9-promoTo open with a hypothetical question: what happens when you are given too much of a great thing?  To follow with a hypothetical answer: you get seasons 7, 8 and 9 of SUPERNATURAL.

Note the picture.  I feel a lot like Dean right now.

Allow me to be brief:  I’m disappointed.  Not just in a small nitpicky way, but in a major can’t-hardly-watch-it-anymore kind of way.  The massive polar shift that started at the onset of the sixth season burst in an awful seventh season and it hasn’t been the same since.  SUPERNATURAL was awesome because it was dark, gritty, scary and edgy.  Now it is bright, cheerful and douchy.  I can only blame this on the CW’s direction as all of their other shows (that I less-than-lovingly call “Douche Operas”) have adopted the same look and tone.  My beloved SUPERNATURAL has now become DOUCHERNATURAL.

As insult to injury, they must have lost their collection of Kansas albums, because they sure didn’t open with Carry On My Wayward Son for the ump-teenth time.  To quote the ever-eloquent Mutant Enemy, “Grr.  Argh.”

What is there left to say?  Sam is dying for the third or fourth time, “for realzies” as he tries to explain to Death but is saved yet again by Dean and a moron of a new angel.  This is all presented through a series of Telemundo quality flashback segments much like the entire throwaway first half of season 8.  Oh, and Bobby’s back!  Until Dean kills him in a dream.  So much for that.

That’s the other real low point happening here, the show has found the lowest common denominator of supporting actors and it stands out badly.  Remember the days when JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN and LAUREN COHAN and even MARK PELLEGRINO guest starred?  Yea, me too.  That’s what makes that useless sack of crap angel Dean dispatches near the start of this episode look like even a bigger sack of crap.  The best current non-Sam and Dean character (Crowley) was locked in Dean’s trunk the whole time so MARK SHEPPARD didn’t even have the opportunity to class things up a bit.

I hate to even speak these words, but SUPERNATURAL is at the point where it needs to poop or get off the pot.  Fool me once, yadda yadda yadda, fool me for three seasons and I think I need to cut you loose.

“D” for the premiere.  I love you, SUPERNATURAL.  It’s because I love you that I don’t want to be with you… these are very complex emotions we are talking about here.

In other news, I am extremely excited about AMERICAN HORROR STORY premiere tomorrow night!!!  Until then.

The Witches of East End – Premiere Review

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witches_coming_spot_HD_768x432-16x9This one is difficult to publicly admit, but I had to put my man card on temporary hiatus while watching my very first LIFETIME series tonight.  In full disclosure, I have been unwillingly associated with the family of Lifetime channels from time to time because my MIDWEST WIFE is quite fond of LMN.  But I’ve never actually watched one purposely.

LIFETIME is trying to jump on the horror genre bandwagon with a witch themed schmaltzy drama called THE WITCHES OF EAST END.  I’m still torn if its appropriate to call it by its actual title or to call it “CHARMED 2″.  ”CHARMED: The Next Generation”?  Or maybe “CHARMED -1″?  Let’s just say that it’s the same damn show.

More inside! Continue reading →