Oh my God! So much TV, so little time!
I recently completed season 1 of Batman: Caped Crusader.
The last three episodes bring to a brutal conclusion the season long storyline for Harvey Dent, district attorney and candidate for mayor. Deciding for once to actually stand up to crime boss Rupert Thorne, Dent pays for this effrontery with a vial of acid to the face.
With half his face scarred, Dent descends into madness as a maniacal monster of murder as he seeks revenge against Thorne and his cronies.
Then Dent becomes the target of Thorne's retribution and Batman and Commissioner Gordon are working to keep him safe due to his knowledge of Thorne's criminal organization.
Interesting take on Harvey Dent: when he's being vicious and vindictive, he angles his still handsome side of his face to whoever he's talking to. When he reverts to being kind and concerned for the welfare of others, he presents his scarred face.
Bruce Wayne gets a lesson in human empathy when his efforts to draw Harvey out after his acid attack to pump him for information backfire horribly. Batman feels guilty that he may have pushed Harvey too far and created a threat to Gotham.
The season ends with Batman finally addressing his butler as "Alfred" instead of "Pennyworth".
All told, Batman: Caped Crusader hits all the right buttons and may well be among the best interpretations of Batman I've seen.
Last week, Andrea and I finished the 2nd season of Star Trek: Prodigy and if this is the last season, well, damn that'll suck because this show is very good.
In the words of Star Trek writer and blogger Keith R.A. DeCandido, "Prodigy is still the best of the new Trek shows."
I came to this series in the beginning with some degree of trepidation. This was a Star Trek series featuring a cast of kids made for a kid audience on Nickelodeon. This show was not made for me.
But over the course of 2 seasons and 40 half hour episodes, I'll be damned if Star Trek: Prodigy did not appeal to me and I can't help agree with DeCandido that about how good this show is.
Allow me to be lazy and let DeCandido do the heavy lifting for a moment.
"The best thing about this show is that it works at everything it attempts.
- As a Star Trek show, it’s magnificent, embodying the optimistic, compassionate future created by Gene Roddenberry and developed by so many over the past six decades.
- As an animated series, it takes full advantage, giving us some glorious aliens (the Loom, the Nazamon, the bodies created for non-corporeals) and some spectacular landscapes.
- As a kids’ show it never loses sight of the fact that these are young people trying to find their place in the galaxy, without ever once talking down to them."
Yeah, what he said.
The growth of Dal as a character is a testament to this show's strengths. A cocky teenage boy archetype, I absolutely could not stand Dal when he was first introduced 40 episodes ago. Over the course of those 40 episodes, Dal has struggled to find his place in the universe and he has evolved in that struggle. It's not always been easy or even perfectly linear but Dal ends the 2nd season a better person that we found him. That he defers to Gwyn to be the Captain of the new Protostar speaks to his growth and new found maturity.
Outside the main Prodigy cast, we get some really cool classic Trek guest stars. Wil Wheaton is back as Wesley Crusher in full Traveler mode, fast talking and perceiving space time beyond us mere mortals, Crusher is an ersatz Doctor Who type and is a lot of fun to follow.
If sadly this is the end of the journey for Star Trek: Prodigy it ends satisfactorily with the gang all together for a new journey of exploration on a new ship. But I do hope we get to see those adventures.
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I have wrapped up Umbrella Academy. I will write about that in a later Touchbase.
We're one week out from the series finale of Snowpiercer and I will likely cover that in that same later Touchbase.
Meanwhile, we are starting a bunch of NEW shows here at the Fortress of Ineptitude
Agatha All Along is funny, scary and pretty damn epic. More on that later.
High Potential is a new crime procedural about a high IQ woman who helps the police solve crimes even as her own dysfunctional life remains outside her control.
After seeing promos for it all during the summer Olympics, Andrea is interested in the new medical drama Brilliant Minds starring Zachary Quinto as a super smart doctor with face blindness.
Following up on the 2022 Matt Reeves film The Batman, Colin Farrell is back in The Penguin, a street level series about a crime boss in Gotham City.
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And that is that for this week's touchbase.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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