Reviews
I finished Trigger (2025), a Korean cop/crime/action series that was pretty good. The most interesting aspect was the entire premise that is “what if guns flooded into South Korea?” So it basically becomes a gun epidemic that the police are fighting which is obviously a stark contrast to the United States. It’s simple, yet becomes a modern day form of fiction that is unfathomable to Americans.
American Primeva (2025)l, a Netflix series, is an American Western limited run of six episodes, and has an air of authenticity that is really well done. The series follows a few characters over a time and they are all related to varying degrees. Basically a few degrees of separation or their paths cross from time to time. Kim Coates portrays Brigham Young, a character you may recognize in name and history, but not in appearance. If you don’t recognize the actor’s name, watch this series first before Googling, it may surprise you!
Paradise (2025), even without hearing the hype, I found it compelling after the first episode. This show has very good story-telling even before the story really kicks off, due to great casting, production, and directing. Even if you know “there are a lot of twists“, wow, yes! The twists start in episode two and I think most will find them difficult to see coming. It keeps the show engaging and clever. Even better, the twists happen to the tune of one or two per episode which will keep you hooked. One downside is that while looking up actors after I finished, I noticed episode 2×01 was just announced. That tells me this show could have been yet another that had an unresolved ending, and if canceled, we would be left with few answers.
Madame Web (2024) – I was not even halfway through and I already understood the criticism I had heard. The way the movie starts and slow plays it tells me that Marvel clearly thinks their viewers are mouth-breathing idiots. A third to a half the movie is just trying to explain her powers through exhaustive repetition makes us want to scream “Hey, we get it! She can see the future! But it means limited little glimpses. Yeah, we still get it. Why doesn’t she?” It gives us way too many examples where she should really get it much sooner. Because guess what? Superheroes should be a bit smarter than the audience. They’re living it and have a supposed real-world connection to everything. By the end of the movie, it’s the same thing. So generic, so pedantic, and the action scenes are pedestrian at best. Skip this trash.
General Thoughts
The TV and movie industry want to tell us about how much it cost to make those films or TV shows, which we know are already artificially inflated by the entire industry itself. By hour, even the cast are making much more than almost any other industry professionals and obviously hourly workers are making less yet still compensated well. For a show that goes nine seasons and by the eighth have lost two of their big names, yet still continue to include them in the credits? That should be the easiest thing in the world to adjust to include names of the new people that tried to replace them. Yeah, you cannot try to thrust that on to the fans. You can’t do a “woe is me, look how expensive this is” while getting paid ridiculous amounts of money and failing to do the most basic of things. Minor nitpick I know, but one of many things that are wrong with the industry as they continue to give us pedestrian, formulaic shows and movies that also are not worthy of those big salaries. Do better.
SWAT, a modern TV show demonstrates how absurd “family” TV has become. The show tries to balance family and belonging with killing the bad guys. Every so often a bad guy is doing it for the family and they get a half-pass. The kid who stole a ring from a corrupt pawn broker gets to return it, hug his mom (!), then go to jail. The pawn broker? They get a pass on this episode for some reason. The show is also your standard formulaic series that is an insult to the viewer. They assume you cannot remember the most basic parts of the plot between commercials, using redundant dialog to remind us of something we watched literally two minutes before. Then compare that to SEAL Team, a series that frequently uses acronyms that were explained once in prior seasons and not again. SWAT tries to be about the feels, while insulting us, where as SEAL Team gives us quality drama, with intelligence and accuracy.
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