The Librarians: The Next Chapter is back for a 2nd season and so far, Andrea and I are very much enjoying this new slate of adventures.
The season starts with 19th century Librarian Vikram, newly appointed Librarians Lyssa and Connor with guardian Charlie working as a well-oiled machine against a swarm of mummies to recover a lost magical artifact.
A smiling Charlie charging at the mummy horde, ready to smite them to dust with her sword is so damn awesome.
But the team's effectiveness at dispatching mystical threats belies their personal struggles with doubt and fear, problems that rise to the forefront when the team investigates magical shenanigans at a high school experiencing explosions of hormonal rage.
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| From left to right: Bluey Robinson (Connor), Olivia Morris (Lysa), Callum McGowan (Vikram), Jessica Green (Charlie) |
The 2nd episode of season 2 is “And the Tethered Wish" which is about a freed genie living his best life and seeding chaos wherever he does, granting random wishes regardless of cost or consequences.
Such as when Vikram in a fit of pique with his less experienced teammates wishes he was bound to a more experienced Librarian.
And ZAP! It's guest Star Christian Kane as Jacob Stone from TOS Librarians.
Careful what you wish for. Vikram now has a Librarian partner he can't run away from.
Not for lack of trying. Which gives us a lot of classic physical comedy from Vikram and Jacob as the invisible tether between them keeps yanking them back together.
It never gets old.
The episode gives us... kind of/sort of... a team up between Librarians: TNC and Librarian: TOS. Jacob had been yoinked from a mission with the classic team involving a tribe of Amazons. Lyssa, Connor and Charlie fire up the magic door to sub in for Jacob to complete that mission.
Which we do not see.
After the ad break, Lyssa, Connor and Charlie come back through the magic door to report that Jacob's team is fine, a terrible magic artifact has been recovered and Cassandra no longer has to be Queen of the Amazons, much to her disappointment.
Also Ezekiel stole Connor's watch.
Hey, Dean Devlin, there better be at least some kind of tie in comic book or something to cover that Amazon adventure,OK?
Later this season, Lindy Booth will be back on screen as Cassandra. I'm squeeing like a fan boy for that one!
Speaking of guest stars, Jeremy Swift chews up the scenery as the rogue genie and hey, is that David Tennant's son Ty in an episode?
The TNC gang finds out that Peter Pan and Neverland is real.
And Charlie wears a dress.
Dominic Monaghan is on hand this season as a recurring big bad, Merlin. This Merlin is charming and manipulative, definitely NOT to be trusted.
Season 2 of The Librarians: The Next Chapter looks better than the paper thin low budget production that was season 1.
The world of the Librarians deserves to go on and I do hope TNT picks up The Librarians: The Next Chapter for a 3rd season.
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Season 2 of Batman: Caped Crusader dropped on Prime recently. While the creative minds from Batman: The Animated Series are behind this new series with an aesthetic that recalls the beloved B:TAS, storywise, Batman: Caped Crusader is very much it's own thing.
A film noir take set in the 1940's, B:CC is a more brutally violent, adult oriented version. Unlike B:TAS which had to mindful of a kid audience, B:CC has no such constraints. People can and do get killed and a bad guys call for the death of "that goddam Batman".
Batman's classic rogues gallery gets quite there makeover in this series. The Mad Hatter gets gender switched as Hattie Tetch, a gossip mongering propogandist who tries to sell the public that crime boss Rupert Thorne is an innocent victim of a so-called "justice" system out to to destroy a good and noble citizen of Gotham City.
Edward Nygma is no snivelling, giggling genius Riddler obsessed with puzzles; instead he is a hair trigger psychopathic punk cast in the mold of the mobster archetype James Cagney got famous for playing in the movies back in the early 20th century.
Then there is the Joker. It's hard to get too excited over an appearance by the much overused Clown Prince of Crime. But the B:CC version is something unique. There is the use of the classic Joker toxin that causes his targets to laugh themselves to death, leaving a corpse with a rigor mortis frozen grin. But the Joker himself is no cackling comedian of carnage. Not a lot of laughs or bad jokes, just a quiet, deliberate shadow of death pronouncing a grim judgement on his victims.
As for the man himself, Batman continues to be a stoic humorless vessel of vengeance as he fights an unyielding battle against those who would harm Gotham. There are some flickers of humanity around the edges but this is a Batman with little or no time for anything beyond his unrelenting mission.
Prime dropped all 10 episodes of season 2 at one time but Andrea and I are taking our time to go through these episode one at a time.
Batman: Caped Crusader in it's 2nd season continues to be a rather well made new interpretation of the classic Batman mythology.
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Next time on the Tuesday TV Touchbase:
- Celebrity Wheel of Fortune
- Lanterns
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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