Task and Ye Shall Receive

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

The summer is halfway over, the World Cup has ended (big congratulations to Spain, well deserved) and sports are illegal until the Premier League starts up again.  So what to do with the rest of your summer?  As long as I can remember, I’ve loved puzzles.  Not jigsaws, mind you, I feel like the payoff of buying a box with a picture on it and then spending hours reassembling the picture from a bunch of interlocking pieces just seemed like a waste of time to me and still does.  The win state was the picture on the box, there’s no surprise there.  But being given a problem to solve?  That’s more like it.  When I was a kid, most of my neighborhood friends went to sleep away camp for the majority, so I was left with a lot of free time in the middle of summers.  And I would have loved to have silly, needlessly complicated tasks to complete.  I love solving problems.  I think it’s why I enjoyed math as a kid (I’m sure this comes as a huge surprise, I was a nerd).  I would have loved a series of complex and, at times, absurd tasks to complete to while away the boring summer months that my friends were away.  Let’s get into Taskmaster and Junior Taskmaster.

Taskmaster is the marriage of a British panel show like 8 out of 10 Cats or Would I Lie To You? and a reality competition show, where five comedians (usually, but not always) are pitted against each other in a series of complicated and absurd tasks.  Which is exactly what I was talking about in the last paragraph, so I’ve gotten lucky with the topic this week.  In the main version of the show, there are three kinds of tasks.  Each episode starts with a prize task, where contestants have to bring in an object from home that fits a specific brief given to them and then the winner of the episode gets to keep all five objects.  These prizes are all over the map and often quite silly; the briefs can range from the most useless expensive thing you own (such as a worm trumpet or a model of a streaker being chased by the police meant to go with model trains) to the thing that makes you look the most tough (with one contestant revealing a surprise Mohawk in stark contrast to his buttoned down appearance).  Then you have three of your regular tasks, which are pre-recorded and edited tasks either solo or in a team, done at a number of locations, but most at the Taskmaster House, a place you’ll get to know very well if you watch the series even a tenth as much as I have.  I’ve watched so much Taskmaster that I’m fairly confident I could walk through the entire Taskmaster House blindfolded and barely bump into anything (in 2025, I was a top 1% viewer of Taskmaster’s YouTube channel). 

Which would be useful, because a number of tasks involve blindfolding the contestants.  These are often layered tasks with clever solutions that can be found if the contestant is patient enough to find it, but the real comedy here comes from how people react to them.  More on that later.  The final task of each episode is a live task, done in the studio in front of the audience.  This is where I’ve seen the most growth in the show, as they continually refine the live tasks to make them more engaging to watch.  The live tasks aren’t foolproof, as nothing done live in front of an audience ever is, but over the years they’ve worked on them.  Some of the live tasks end up finishing much faster than they expected, some end in anti-climaxes.  But every season, these get better.  What’s even more impressive is that in all the episodes I’ve seen, which is all of them and over 200 now, there hasn’t been a single repeat task.  There are some that are variations or refinements on one another, but they’ve never repeated a task; not prize, regular, or live.

The mind behind this is the Taskmaster’s Assistant, Alex Horne.  Horne is a comedian and musician (he has a group called The Horne Section) and he’s also the creator and designer of most, if not all the tasks.  I don’t truly know how hands on with task creation he is these days, but I get the distinct impression that he’s pretty deeply involved with each task.  In the fiction of the show, though, it’s Greg Davies who is in charge, the Taskmaster himself.  Davies, a former teacher and a comedian and actor in such lad comedies as Man Down and actually surprisingly good shows like The Cleaner (which is something I plan to cover in the future, but as it’s a series about an irritable crime scene cleaner with a begrudgingly good heart, it doesn’t fit the light summer fun theme), plays the role of the strict Taskmaster, who hands out the points and the punishments with delight and glee.  Over the years, his demeanor has softened, which I think has made the comedy of it even stronger when he is harsh to Alex (whom everyone eventually comes to resent, as these tasks test them time and time again).  I think the softening on the Taskmaster character has really improved the show a lot, lending it some more of that Bake-Off good-natured vibe.

It’s at this point that I’d like to describe a few of these tasks for you so you can get a concrete idea of what these contestants face.  The first one isn’t the most complicated, but it is one of the most genuinely exciting to watch moments of reality television I’ve ever seen.  The brief is fairly simple.  Stood at one end of a train yard on a raised bridge is Alex Horne with a bullhorn.  On the other is the contestant, also on a bridge.  The goal is to reach Alex without being spotted.  And every ten seconds, he will sound the alarm on his bullhorn and hide, then pop up for ten seconds, rinse and repeat.  This is one of the more straightforward tasks in the series, but it is so fun and actually harrowing to watch as you root for these celebrities to find their way through a maze of a railway.  It’s almost like watching a sporting event, but where one of the athletes is a 50 year old quiz show pro (a chaser on the UK version of The Chase) in a bathrobe trying to navigate railway detritus shortly after recovering from shoulder surgery.  Okay, so it’s not exactly the World Cup, but it feels like a grown-up school playground game and I love it.  I was later informed in the YouTube comments section of the episode that it was actually a variation of a playground game played in the 1980s in England called “Berlin Wall”.  Boy kids games can be morose sometimes, can’t they?  Let’s hold hands in a circle and sing about the plague, this a perfect thing for kids.   

Is that one too straightforward for you?  How about showing up at a deconsecrated church and convent to find that a soldier in a ghillie suit is hiding somewhere on the grounds, saying your name every five seconds, and you have to find him and throw paint on him.  The kicker?  You’re wearing a device that blocks all your vision save the camera feed from the back of your head.  Clues are scattered around the grounds, but you’ve got to find a well disguised man using nothing but your ears and the eyes in the back of your head.  I don’t need to tell you that it gets pretty hilarious, pretty fast.

When the contestants aren’t graceful, they are definitely hysterical.  And if you’ve ever struggled to feel normal in a world that demands you smooth out your quirks and deal with your issues quietly alone, there is something so validating about watching a hundred or so mostly comedians go through very silly tasks and sometimes have to address their own issues.  I never knew balloons caused such a problem for so many people.  Sometimes it’s blowing them up, sometimes it’s popping them that’s the issue.  I’ve never felt more normal about my own personal quirks.  I don’t think the show was intended to help people face their insecurities, but it does, at times have that effect.  It’s really quite sweet sometimes.  And then sometimes you also hear from lifelong friends of Greg and Alex and they have stories to tell.  There’s also a bit more food waste in the early seasons, but when criticized for it, they responded by cutting a lot of that back.  Which I’m really thankful for because not only does food waste on TV bother me, but also sometimes it’s just gross to watch.  The contestant roster is going to be a mix of names you know and don’t; probably more that you don’t if you don’t watch as much British TV as I do, but I’ll give you just a taste of the highlights.  James Acaster (whom I got to see live in January, doing the single greatest stand-up show I’ve ever seen), Nish Kumar (now the co-host of Pod Save the UK), legendary comic Bob Mortimer, Lee Mack (Not Going Out, Would I Lie to You?), Mae Martin, Charlotte Ritchie (Ghosts, You), Aisling Bea, Katy Wix (Ted Lasso, The Windsors), Armando Iannucci (creator of shows like Veep and Avenue 5, as well as the writer of The Death of Stalin), Emma Sidi (SNL UK), Ania Magliano (SNL UK), Nick Mohammed (Ted Lasso), and most recently, two American stars have made it over there: Jason Mantzoukas (Brooklyn 99, The Good Place) and Kumail Nanjiani (Only Murders in the Building, The Eternals), who left a few of the contestants a bit starstruck.

Taskmaster is just such a good time and I tell so many people about it in person that you’re getting the same treatment.  But it’s not exactly fun for the whole family.  As the series moved through different networks in the UK, there were varying levels of censorship.  But at the very least, if adult language isn’t something you’d want your kids to hear on a regular basis. Taskmaster isn’t for them to watch.  Enter Junior Taskmaster.

A new Taskmaster, Rose Matafeo, and a new Taskmaster’s assistant, Mike Wozniak, take the place of the originals, both former Taskmaster contestants, and they, well, do the show with kids.  Rose is a stand-up from New Zealand and Mike is a doctor turned comedian and actor.  And they have such a good rapport with the kids, it’s fantastic to watch.  You always worry a little with kids in television, but it really seems like they were supported, encouraged, and cheered on throughout the whole process.  The format changes, since you have rules about how much children can do things like film TV shows in a day, so it’s more done in group stages, but the core of the series stays the same.  A group of contestants have to do a bunch of absurd tasks and the best one wins.  But this time, the tasks are more geared towards the minds of kids, which is really, really fun to see.  Kids are less trapped by convention than we are and they often exhibit lots of out-of-the-box thinking.  I’m not going to pretend their ideas always work out because they are kids after all, and their brains are the size of a walnut (I don’t know a lot about kids; brains the size of a walnut and they always land on their feet…actually that might be cats I’m thinking of), but they always try things out so wholeheartedly, it’s truly endearing and uplifting to watch.  And since the whole show is geared towards kids, the series is itself is designed to be family friendly.  This goes back to what I was talking about in the intro.  As an adult, I’m far too buttoned up and self-conscious to ever do anything like Taskmaster, but when I was a kid, I was slightly less buttoned up and self-conscious and would have loved to be on something like Junior Taskmaster.  Like I said, I love problem solving and Junior Taskmaster, would have been a perfect outlet for that.  And who knows, maybe the series could inspire some family game nights?  Thus far there’s only been one season of Junior, but I hope that if enough of us keep watching it, they’ll bring it back.

Both series are something truly special and the show does nothing but improve.  With 21 seasons of the main show under its belt (ranging from 6 to 10 1-hourish long episodes per season, with later ones being 10), the show just keeps refining itself and getting better.  And they’re striving for more diversity and to bring up more smaller comedians as well as mixing in more established celebrities.  It’s almost unbelievable how a show that started out as Alex Horne devising games for his comedian friends turned into this juggernaut of a comfort show and panel show and reality contest show all wrapped into one.  I can’t say that any series was weak, but you can definitely see how the first was still very rough around the edges.  You can pick it up and start anywhere, but I would recommend starting with Series 4, 5, 7, 12, 14, or 21.  But, if you want to start out with a true home run, I would start with Series 19, where Jason Mantzoukas becomes one of the first American contestant they’ve had and, like most Americans in Europe, leaves a wake of destruction wherever he goes.  It’s unbelievably hilarious to watch.  The entire series is available for streaming on YouTube here in the US, so it’s easily accessed, which is really nice.  The task is to give it a try.  Your time starts now (you’ll get it when you watch it).

A Time to Grill

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

As an avid hater of summer, there is still one aspect of the summertime that I really do enjoy.  The smell of food being cooked over an open flame.  That’s right, I love some grilling.  Whether you call it a barbecue or a cookout, if you’re grilling up some burgers, hot dogs, steaks, and/or chicken, I will brave the heat to come and eat it.  Toss some vegetables on, while you’re at it; I know you’re thinking corn on the cob, but may I offer grilled eggplant for consideration?  Bell peppers too.  And we all know that you can’t do a proper barbecue without propane and propane accessories.  Let’s get into the rebooted King of the Hill season 14.

It’s easy to get jaded about the number of reboots and their various levels of success.  I love Futurama, but the reboot of that has been hit or miss, for example.  Family Guy came back one too many times and now it just can’t be defeated.  Even the arguably perfect Arrested Development’s return was fraught with missteps.  So when I heard that my beloved King of the Hill was making a return, I was a bit skeptical.  In case you’re not familiar, King of the Hill originally ran for 13 seasons between 1997 and 2010.  The show centers around Hank Hill, a middle-aged seller of propane and propane accessories and his family, wife Peggy and son Bobby.  They live in the fictional Arlen, Texas and generally have a pretty nice life together.  Hank and Peggy traded Arlen for a job in Saudi at the end of the original show and now they’re returning.  They’re back at the old house, but Texas has changed.  And so have they.

Well, maybe not Peggy so much.

Most of the cast returns, other than those who are sadly no longer with us.  It took some time to get used to Toby Huss (Halt and Catch Fire, The Four Seasons) as Dale Gribble, but that means it frees up Ronny Chieng (M3gan, Reggie Dinkins), to fill his VA boots as Khan Souphanousinphone, which is nice.  I’m always happy to see more Ronny Chieng (or hear, in this case).  Creator Mike Judge returns as Hank, Kathy Najimy (Sister Act, Hocus Pocus) is back as Peggy, Pamela Adlon (Better Things, Californication) is back as Bobby.  The rest of the voices will feel familiar too.

While Hank and Peggy are struggling to adapt to a Texas (and a Texan society) that looks and feels very different from what it was when they left, Bobby is thriving.  Now 21 years old, Bobby is running his own restaurant in Dallas; a Japanese/Texan/German fusion restaurant that looks fantastic.  And I’m not talking in the way that cartoon food always looks delicious; I mean that if this restaurant actually existed, I would want to go to it.  After a successful night out, Bobby bumps into an old friend; Connie, next door neighbor and childhood sweetheart.  The two of them have grown apart, but there’s nothing to it.  They seem genuinely happy to see each other again and reconnect.  Bobby’s taken the now-unconventional route and decided to go straight into entrepreneurship instead of college and he’s more than happy with how it’s going.  The restaurant is a success and he’s content putting in the hard work and seeing the results; he even lives with his childhood best friend Joseph Gribble.  Honestly, I had no idea the emotional impact it would have seeing Bobby grown up and doing well.  Usually when we come back to a character after a long time, the story is about them having withdrawn to hermitage.  Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, Thor; the list goes on.  And while those are done with varying levels of success as well (Indiana Jones not so much, but it worked for Luke and Thor; a quick reminder that I love The Last Jedi), it’s nice to just see one of these characters I grew up watching be okay for once.  It’s not like everything’s perfect, but he’s doing well and has healthy boundaries in most aspects of his life.  It’s beyond refreshing.

As you can imagine, there’s a little hesitation that comes with comedy reboots especially because comedy is one of those things doesn’t always translate across decades.  Look at how poorly Friends has aged.  Hank Hill was kind of out of touch in 1997, imagine how he is now.  Handled poorly, this could come across really, really offensive and unfunny; you know, the Rob Schneider effect.  There is a bit of “old man yells at cloud” about his complaints sometimes, but it’s not over the top.  At the core of it, as much as Hank is stuck in his ways and out of touch, Hank has a good heart and it shows.  He can get angry, but nothing about him or the standards to which he holds himself and the world is ever hateful or discriminatory and that’s been consistent through the entire series.  Hank may disapprove of “hippies”, but he never hates anyone because of who they are.  Through the original series, he’s grown so much and then here he grows even more, which is really awesome.  You can see the Bob’s Burgers influence here.  I’ve said before that Bob’s is like the marriage of the creative teams of King of the Hill and Adult Swim series Home Movies, so it stands to reason that all these years making Bob’s such a great series would influence how they return to Arlen, Texas.  It may take some poking and prodding and Hank can dig in sometimes due to culture shock; and it’s the most unexpected kind of culture shock, since Texas is his stomping grounds, but none of this gets in the way of Hank being a good man.  He’s supposed to have home field advantage here.  And yet it’s so different.  Even his beloved beer has changed, which he finds out when he and Bobby try to enter a home-brew competition in Dallas with an Alamo-alike (Alamo being Hank’s fictional favorite domestic beer, most likely based on Texas’s own Lone Star beer).  Which, I can’t fault him for liking the beer that he likes, but I also love when people get creative with beer.  I once had a beer at a home-brew festival that tasted like the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’ve ever had.  You’re not going to get that out of a can sold on the shelves of the Mega Lo Mart.  But like Bob Belcher, Hank Hill is open to changing and open to growing.  Eventually.  Most of the time.  I mean, his dad was Cotton Hill, a horrible misogynist and racist who demeaned him from the moment he was born.  Growth is a process, but Hank is in it; even if he doesn’t always realize it.  If every boomer were more like Hank Hill, the country would be a better place.

Hank used to think that boy ain’t right, but I think he’s starting to learn that he and Peggy did a great job raising Bobby

Hank has also entered a stage in life that’s really awkward for him: retirement.  Considering Hank is essentially an idealized version of so-called traditional American values, the idea of trying to fill your time with anything but work just feels wrong to him.  He tried brewing beer.  He tried soap operas.  He even tried reality TV shows.  But he finds himself other outlets as well, including a foray into the gig economy.  And he’s not the only one who’s trying to understand the world he finds himself in; Bobby is just 21, learning how to be an adult and on his own and navigate the minefield of adult life and relationships.  Things are going well, but he’s still finding his way through.  You’ve got a long road ahead of you, Bobby.  If I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know.  I know I’m supposed to be focusing on the lighter, more fun aspects of this show for the summertime, and yes, it’s laugh out loud funny on multiple occasions every episode, but it’s the newfound depth that really impresses me about King of the Hill.  They ratcheted up the Bob’s Burgers dial, it seems; delivering real stories in a world that feels real (in the case of King of the Hill, even more so, whereas Bob’s Seymour Bay setting feels like a surreal beach town version of Stars Hollow and Arlen feels more like a real world town), with emotional impact, smart writing, endearing characters, and lots of laughs along the way.

Texting is a nightmare, Bobby. How do we live in a world where punctuation makes you sound angry?

  King of the Hill has always touched upon deeper topics, but this season feels different; instead of having occasional moments where the show sits down and has a real conversation with you, it’s more seamlessly woven into the tapestry of the storytelling.  You can see it in the gig economy episode; Hank finds himself in situations that are awkward and funny because he’s so strange around normal human feelings, but it also speaks to a deeper trend in our society.  He runs into oversharer after oversharer and people who are looking for more than just the work he’s been tasked to do.  It’s such a smart and casual way to show how disconnected people have become and how much we’re starved for any kind of real connection that we’ll invite someone into our homes to do a simple job that we no longer have time to do ourselves and then share with them the intimate details of our life like they’re the person sat next to you at an airport bar.  If you’ve never chatted with someone at an airport bar (hotel bars work fairly similarly), there’s an incredible phenomenon there.  I remember being Bobby’s age, my first time traveling on my own, and sitting at the airport bar while an elderly man told me his entire life story.  Regrets, hopes for the future, a chance at a relationship with his grandkids and a renewed relationship with his adult son.  I remember these details intimately even nearly two decades later.  Human beings are complicated creatures who want to be a part of something and apart from everything at the same time.  People are simultaneously more open than ever before and more closed off.  We’re a mess; and King of the Hill embraces that mess in a funny and touching way.

Extra awkwardness on the side, you said?

In the halls of reboots that feel like hollow nostalgia-bait, King of the Hill stands head and shoulders above any reboot that I can remember seeing (other than X-Men 97).  So many times, these ideas fall short and cheapen the memories you have of the original.  But that’s not the case here (nor in X-Men 97).  It’s an amazing continuation of the story that felt wrapped up back in 2010.  I never thought I’d see these characters on my screen again and I never thought that when I did, it would be such a comforting sight.  Season 14 was an absolute triumph and I’m so happy that it’s back.  In fact, it may be the best season of the entire series and I still don’t understand how they were able to pull that off when almost everyone else fails at trying to recapture old magic.  I didn’t know I needed it, but I did.  Season 15 hits Hulu and Disney+ on July 20th, this coming Monday at time of publication, and all 14 previous seasons are available for streaming there as well.  If you’re new to the show, I don’t see any reason why you can’t pick right up on 14, but if you want to go back to 1997 and watch the show from the start, well, you’re in for a good time.

And that’s it for this week’s post.  I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t take a moment to say goodbye to legendary actor Sam Neill.  News of his passing was sudden and shocking and once I’ve had enough time to process, I want to give him the attention he deserves.  I’m going to miss you, Dr. Grant.

I never thought I’d live to see Hank Hill do keepy-uppies

The Silence of the Dams

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

Summertime is the time of going outdoors, I know.  As much as I am a city boy, where the glass and concrete have become nature, even I recognize the power of being in actual nature.  It’s restorative.  The amount of time it takes to restore people can be different for sure; for me, an occasional foray to the land of green stuff is more than enough to keep my nature meter sated.  But for others, nature is much more important to their daily lives and can give a sense of peace and tranquility.  Mabel is one of those types.  She loves animals and nature and has pretty much devoted her entire life to protecting it, as futile as that may seem at times.  Let’s get into Pixar’s 2026 animated feature, Hoppers.

We start on Mabel Tanaka as a young child in school.  And she’s plotting a jailbreak.  Class pets are the main subject of her breakout; you see, Mabel really, really loves animals.  And she hates to see them caged up and kept away from their natural habitats.  But, like most jailbreaks plotted by 9-year-olds, it’s largely unsuccessful.  But in the aftermath, Mabel’s parents drop her off at her grandmother’s place to watch her and she takes Mabel to the glade.  Before I talk about how this affects Mabel, I want to take stock of how big a swing this is.  This is the beginning of the movie; yes, we had the thrilling elementary school prison break, but immediately after, we grind to a halt and sit in a forest clearing to take in nature with our characters.  This is paramount to the story.  Mabel, voiced by Piper Curda (The Morning Show, I Didn’t Do It), the sister of Twisted Metal’s Saylor Bell Curda, grows into a 19-year-old eco-activist, fighting Mayor Jerry at every turn.  And it’s this moment, where she quietly sits with her grandmother to take in the natural beauty around her that shapes her as a character.  Mabel is headstrong, overbearing, slightly obnoxious, highly pessimistic, and a misanthrope as well; if you didn’t get a chance to experience for yourself what and why she’s fighting so hard to protect, you wouldn’t like her (and test audiences didn’t until this scene found its home in the opening act of the film).  Sitting in that glade with her grandmother defines her.

Jumping forward to now, the glade sits empty and a new highway looms over it like the knowledge of impending death.  Mayor Jerry Generazzo, voiced by Jon Hamm (30 Rock, Grimsburg), is determined to run this new highway right through the glade, replacing it with the concrete and tarmac I usually hold so dear.  As you can imagine, to Mabel, this is perverse.  The destruction of nature for some slight convenience?  She can’t stand for it.  But she’s on a ticking clock and without any actual wildlife in the glade to protect, the glade’s been approved for destruction.  Mabel goes to her professor and mentor Dr. Sam, voiced by Kathy Najimy (King of the Hill, Sister Act), and discovers that she’s been working on a top secret project to transfer the human consciousness into a robot animal body for the purpose of study.  This allows them to communicate fluently with the animals and insinuate themselves into ecosystems unbeknownst to the animals that it’s really a human at the wheel.  Dr. Sam let it slip that the presence of just one beaver would be enough to restore life to the glade, thanks to all their hard work; building dams creates the ponds and streams and is necessary for wildlife to survive.  Can’t live without water, my doctor keeps telling me.  Red Bull is made of water, I keep telling her.  Normally, this is where I mention that our protagonist hatches a plan, but Mabel isn’t the planning type.  She acts almost purely on instinct, jumping into the machine and hopping into the body of a robot beaver so she can find a real one to repopulate the glade.  That’s what Dr. Sam calls it, hopping.  I guess that’s why this movie is about beavers (or one specific lizard, depending on your perspective) and not rabbits.  No matter, Pixar animation is sufficiently cute, regardless of the animal subject matter.  Do an otter movie, Pixar.  Please.  They’re so cute.

After interrupting the natural order of things (as a reminder, the animal kingdom is a cruel place; it’s worse than having to listen to Snyder bros on Twitter), Mabel is brought to King George, a beaver.  George, as he likes to be called, is the cool king, and is voiced by Bobby Moynihan (The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins).  George has created a space for the animals being driven out of their natural habitats, cramped though it may be.  And he’s the one that Mabel has to convince to go back to the glade and repopulate it so it can be saved (repopulate by building a dam and creating a hospitable habitat, that is; this is a Pixar movie we’re talking about).  George is a bit of an odd duck, pardon the expression, with him being a beaver and all.  He’s fun.  Lighthearted. Trusting.  Kind.  But he still breaks it to Mabel that no one will ever move back to the glade because it’s too noisy.  Mabel figures out the issue and they all move back to the glade, filling it with life.  Job done, right?  Of course not, we’re barely halfway through the movie.

I’ll get the bad out of the way right now.  Hoppers is not an all-timer from Pixar.  This is not a movie that’s on the level of the Spider-Verse films or KPop Demon Hunters from Sony, nor can it match the masterpiece that is The Last Wish.  But it is a really good movie.  And that’s despite the fact that the third act is a complete mess.  The narrative holds together, but the rules of the world seem to no longer apply and the film starts genre hopping in a way I really didn’t expect.  I was happy to be taken for a ride and enjoyed Pixar’s foray into slightly darker humor, but I’m not sure it was the best idea.  However, these problems don’t get in the way of it being an enjoyable movie with a great message and it certainly won’t bother kids that some of the film’s internal logic seemingly got thrown out like litter on the side of the road.  But if you allow yourself to forget about all that and just enjoy the absolutely unhinged action-packed third act, you’re going to have a really good time.

Mabel grows a lot, which is nice because sometimes when there’s a character like Mabel who starts off in the right, it can be difficult for them to have meaningful growth in their character arc.  This is one of the places where the writing really shines.  Mabel is angry.  She hates Mayor Jerry.  And I don’t blame her.  This is a righteous anger that she feels, a righteous anger that fuels her, but never really pushes her over the line.  But when she falls victim to her own rage at the injustices being perpetrated against nature generally and the glade specifically, she sets the animals down a path that leads to darkness.  We all know that anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering (credit to the great philosopher Yoda) and there is plenty of suffering to go around.  But the second her righteous anger turns to hateful fear-mongering, Mabel snaps it back with George’s help.  Mabel may be right at the start of the movie, but that doesn’t mean that she’s perfect.  She has a lot of growing up to do; after all, she is only 19.  I remember what I was doing at 19, and it definitely wasn’t trying to save the environment or getting into shouting matches with the mayor (I did transfer my consciousness into a robot marmoset once, but that was nothing like this).  And through the course of this movie, she does quite a bit of growing up.

A lot of that is thanks to George.  George has a truly Shakespearean backstory and he’s happy to share it.  Everything he’s seen and been through, his first instinct is still to greet folks with openness and try to look for the good in them.  Even humans.  He’s even open to seeing the goodness in humans and as someone who is still active on Twitter, he does a much better job of finding it than I do.  George is instrumental in Mabel’s growth and their friendship is so beautiful to watch unfold.  And Bobby Moynihan’s voice acting is just fun to listen to.  I’m so happy that he’s getting roles like this because he delivers banger after banger in Reggie Dinkins and I’ve grown so much affection for him as a result.  But it’s through George, because of George that Mabel learns to see things from others’ perspectives.  And without this, without learning this specific kind of empathy, Mabel would never be able to accomplish what she sets out to do.  It’s not that Mabel isn’t empathetic; she has tons of it, of course.  But because she’s unable to put herself in the shoes of another human, it makes her ineffective as an activist.  Now I’m not saying that you need to open your mind to the point that you agree with those who are on the other side of your argument.  Rather, if you don’t try to understand where they’re coming from, you’re never going to be able to change their mind.  A decision doesn’t exist in a bubble, protected from change by magic; it sits atop a pedestal built on a pile of thousands of thoughts, experiences, emotions, personal values, and morals.  If you can’t understand those underpinnings, you can never hope to get into that pile and start changing things.  And if you can’t change the pile, you’ll have no chance at changing the pedestal or what’s on it; that decision you’re seeking to alter.

Despite the movie’s flaws, Hoppers is a worthy entry into the Pixar catalogue.  Like most top tier kids’ movies, Hoppers isn’t just fun and funny; it also has a moral and a lesson to it and I think both of those are important.  Human beings, as much as we like to believe it, are just as much a part of nature as the rest of it.  And nature, filthy and dirty and covered in mud and bugs as it is, is not just worth protecting, it’s necessary, because harming nature is harming ourselves.  We can pretend we’re different, we can pretend we’re above nature, but we’re not.  And though I am a city boy, even I can’t deny the restorative power of being in the natural world.  Once every few years, I try to find a way to commune with nature and allow myself to feel like I’m connected to something much bigger than I am.  And that’s a huge part of what this movie is about.  It’s about making sure we don’t forget that we’re not islands.  Hoppers is a reminder that while we can have fun living life as a wave, we shouldn’t forget that we’re all just part of the ocean.  All of us connected, every living thing a part of something that humanity has spent its existence trying to understand on a scientific, philosophical, and moral level.  And as messy as the third act is, that doesn’t take away from how good this movie made me feel at the end of it.  It made me want to go out into nature; not just in the moment, but as a life change.  Instead of finding a place where grass grows once every few years, maybe I’ll do it once a year.  An annual trip to a place where trees don’t grow tied to stakes in the sidewalk.  Not a bad idea, really.  Hoppers is rated PG, runs 1 hour and 44 minutes, and streams on Disney+.  It’s great summer fun for the whole family with a message that people should hear.  I’ll be watching this one again.

Raid of Honor

Link to the audio version of this post is HERE

Summer camp.  A rite of passage for so many young kids.  I remember the times my parents thought that summer camp was the place for me.  The great outdoors, dirt, bugs, extreme heat, dehydration, being made to go swimming three times a day so your counselor can take a break and your hair always smells like chlorine.  And if there’s one thing that I remember most vividly, it’s how we were split up into six teams of four based on our jobs and were made to do extreme challenges on an island, known as the Island of Fire, for the honor of our profession.  Wait, I might be thinking of Siren: Survive the Island.  Let’s get into it.

I’ve never really covered reality TV before, other than a quarantine post about how it’s okay to enjoy trash TV like Tiger King when it’s comfort viewing for a world that feels like it’s falling apart.  But since the focus of this blog is storytelling and I’ve talked about storytelling in sports, why not some more reality TV?  Siren is unlike any reality competition I’ve seen before and while I was reluctant to watch any reality show, this one came with a strong recommendation so I tried it out.  It’s not like I don’t watch any reality competition shows, but they are generally centered around cooking (Top Chef, Bake-Off), so I’m nothing but open-minded.  The premise is simple.  Six teams of four, split by profession.  Soldiers, cops, firefighters, stunt performers, bodyguards, and national athletes.  No prize money on the line, only pride.  Right, this is where I tell you, if it’s not obvious by the fact there’s no prize money, that it’s not American.  Siren is a Korean reality show.  And all the contestants are women.

If there’s even a moment of fleeting doubt about the intensity of the show in your mind, banish it now.  Siren makes Survivor look like a high tea service with caviar and finger sandwiches by comparison.  In one challenge, the teams are told to go, but they don’t know where until a flare is shot into the sky.  The flare happened to be 1km away from them, setting off a race through a mudflat to get there.  If you’re not familiar with mudflats and you’ve never seen the Top Gear Botswana special, then allow me.  One kilometer running across mud that sucks your legs and pulls you down like quicksand in a cartoon. Once they reach their destination, they have to pick up their team’s flag and race back through the mudflat to get to the arena.  The catch, though, is that the flag comes with an 80kg (~175 pounds) flag pole that they have to transport as well.  Make no mistake.  All of these women are in peak physical shape and are incredibly strong.  And this challenge saw them reaching their limit, breaking down in the mudflat, collapsing under the literal weight of the flag pole and the extreme exertion of the challenge.  And this was the first challenge.

It was genuinely incredible to watch, seeing them fight through this ordeal that was perhaps more difficult than they thought it would be.  But here’s the one thing that immediately got me on board with this show.  When the first team arrives, they receive a phone call to give them the next instruction for the second phase of the challenge.  But the first team had someone lagging behind, near the back of the pack and the voice on the phone informs them that they can only receive the instructions once the whole team has arrived.  Rather than wait for their colleague, one of them immediately went back into the mudflat to go get her.  And when she sees her teammate fighting through the mud to return to her, the first words out her mouth are “I’m sorry” and her teammate responds that there’s nothing to be sorry about because they’re a team.  She was just glad that she was able to go back and help her.  And that’s a theme across the entire series.  These women are so supportive of each other.  When one falters, another is there to prop them up and help them get across the line.  What a noticeable difference from most American reality TV shows I’ve ever tried.  If cutthroat backstabbing and finger pointing is your thing, Siren isn’t where you’re going to get it.  It was truly inspiring to see these women building each other up instead of tearing each other down.  Their challenges truly require teamwork and they’re all there for each other through it.  My Marvel Rivals teammates could never.

And this is all even before we get to the heart of the actual competition.  Each day, there are two challenges.  The first occurs in the arena and that’s your sort of Survivor style challenge where the teams compete to gain an advantage in the other battle.  This is called an Arena Battle.  These are intense physical challenges that make the games I’ve seen in other reality shows seem like babytown frolics by comparison.

Then there’s the Base Battle, which also occurs everyday.  This is where the show gets its name.  Once a day, at a time unknown to the contestants, a loud siren rings across the island.  It could be any time, before or after an Arena Battle, the middle of the night, you name it.  And we’re not talking about a gently rising alarm clock either.  I’m talking about those old air raid sirens that they used to test occasionally right outside my elementary school.  I’m sure they had them in other places as well.  I doubt the firehouse near my school was the linchpin for America’s defense from Soviet invasion.  The goal of these base battles is to capture the flag of another team and occupy their base, thus kicking them off the island in the process.  This is where a lot of the strategy comes in play; teams have to choose their base and each one has a unique set of pros and cons.  One could be very conveniently located to the island’s resources, but that also means that it’s more easily targeted by the other teams.  One could be very defensible, but placed remotely, so you have to do more work to gather resources or even just go to the Arena Battles each day.  It’s not like they can take an Uber there, they’re hiking everywhere.  They also have varying degrees of protection from the elements.  But with four people on each team, you have to strategically decide how to approach each raid.  You could split up 2-2-2, which everyone knows is the ideal team composition, but everyone keeps either going triple heals or quad DPS and…sorry, I’m talking about Rivals again.  But you have to decide.  Can one person hold out against a team of two, three, or more?  Do you split your team evenly and hope that two people can overcome a defensible position?  Do you let the sharks eat each other and put all your resources into defense?  Do you trust your hiding skills, conceal the flag as sneakily as you can, and then go all out in attack?

Battle is the right word for this hourlong free-for-all.  The contestants aren’t allowed to really hit each other, but the definition of hit is pretty loose.  Each contestant wears a sort of vest with their own personal flag in the back.  Pull the flag out of a person’s vest and they’re done for the battle.  They can’t participate further until the battle has concluded.  This means that pushing, shoving, grappling, and even some light weaponry come into play.  These fights get intense.  They know that having your flag pulled means your team will be at a massive disadvantage for the rest of the hour and that could lead to elimination for your entire team if the tide turns against them.  And when you’re watching it, it feels like the stakes are very high.  These women don’t want to let each other down.  Remember, it’s not like it’s money they’re playing for.  It’s pride.  It’s each other.  And that is really kind of amazing to see in a reality competition show.  But make no mistake, they’re willing to fight tooth and nail for it.  Watching these battles as they teeter from tense to intense and feel as action-packed as a scripted show.  And knowing that these are all real, accomplished women in fields dominated by men who are giving it their all is inspiring.  It’s not as if I’m going to start going outside and doing tough mudder events, but I like to know that there’s a small part of me that wishes I could.  Even though it’s very small.  I don’t like the mud.  I don’t like getting wet or dirty and mud is wet dirt.  It’s not for me.

One of the things that I love about how this show is how it’s presented.  No overbearing, obnoxious, Seacrestian host to constantly reiterate what’s going on, no manufactured drama, no social manipulation.  The politicking is gone because it’s performance that justifies your spot on the island, not shaky alliances and calculated treachery.  Just a set of contestants playing the game.  It’s crazy to me how much better other countries do reality competition shows.  Sure, there’s The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show, but Korea seems to be doing this stuff really right.  Korea has better reality competition shows, they have better pop groups, their horror movies are really good, and they even have better demon hunters than we do.  I wouldn’t sleep on the fried chicken either.  But, in the meantime, Korea, please do a version of Ultimate Tag that doesn’t involve JJ Watt or any of his brothers.  That concept has so much potential!  Unfortunately, Siren: Survive the Island only got one season despite critical success, but that season is still available on Netflix.  Rated TV-14 for language (although it is in Korean, so that might not be a very big issue if you don’t speak Korean) and with 10 episodes averaging about 45 minutes, it’s easily one that you could watch with the family or keep all to yourself.  So if you want the summer camp experience to the extreme, it’s worth a shot.   

Just as a side note, if you’re celebrating the holiday here in the US, have a fun and safe weekend.  If you’re facing a heatwave like I and much of the country are, stay hydrated, don’t drink and drive, and remember that patriotism isn’t the same thing as blind devotion.  As for me, I’ll be locked in a dark, air conditioned room, looking for more light summer fun to bring you.