Slack to the Future

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that is so shockingly good, that is everything you hoped it would be and more, that it redefines your expectations for not only the creative team behind it (I’m talking actors, directors, cinematographers, etc), but the genre itself.  They become an experience you don’t want to have too often so as not to lessen their impact.  Like how hearing a joke too often makes it not as funny, you want to savor it, mete it out in small doses, make sure to stave off the effects of diminishing returns as long as possible.  I’m talking about Safety Not Guaranteed and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, movies that deeply affect my views on film and what the medium can do, while putting a smile (and sometimes salty eye water droplets) on your face.

Relax, I’m From the Future (available to stream on Prime) is not one of those movies.  I really hoped it would be the next Safety Not Guaranteed, but while I did enjoy it, it wasn’t quite at that level.  What it is, however, is an incredibly sweet and charming time travel film about the importance of trying.  But I’ll get to that later.  If you’re unfamiliar, Relax is a 2022 film by writer/director Luke Higginson, a feature length adaptation of his 2013 short of the same name, starring Rhys Darby (whom you may know from Flight of the Conchords, the main NPC in the new Jumanji films, or as gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet in Our Flag Means Death) and Gabrielle Graham (who is in the new Netflix miniseries The Madness).  Darby plays Casper, a well-meaning and fairly unprepared time traveler who comes to present day Ontario to gather more information about the past and experience it for himself.  When reaching the 21st century, he realizes that he has just about no money, no way to feed or clothe himself in anything but the bodysuit he traveled in, and proceeds to write notes on scraps of trash with a borrowed pen from a convenience store clerk.  He heads to the local library to start the process, but is kicked out after the librarian finds him asleep in the stacks.

Graham plays Holly, a jaded, aimless young woman drifting through life, fed up with the world.  She crosses paths with Casper when she takes pity on him and gives him the nachos she didn’t like and then invites him to a show that she’s working for the band on her t-shirt, which he recognizes.  From there, the two of them bond over booze, cigarettes, and cocaine (a recipe for fast friendship, if I’ve ever heard one), and he tells her that he’s from the future and that he has a plan.  They talk about the concept of time travel, to which Holly mentions that as a Black lesbian, most of history is a nightmare for her, and the idea of going back in time is just not appealing.  Of course, as any sane person would, she doesn’t believe him when he tells her he’s a time traveler, so after a trip to a diner to prove it, they talk very briefly about the mechanics of time travel.

This is where the movie really pivots from a lot of time travel films; the mechanics aren’t important.  Casper very briefly explains how it works; it’s a one way trip through a sort of wormhole to the past, a portal, if you will.  She asks about changing the future and creating a multiverse through the butterfly effect, but Casper very quickly shoots that down.  It’s a mushy blob, time is; it adapts to the changes and as long as no big ones are made, everything basically works out okay.  And that’s it.  No scientific justification, no pseudoscientific pontificating, just a quick conversation and they get on with the narrative.  I really appreciate that, because it’s easy to get stuck on the science of something that’s completely theoretical.  It’s just not worth the runtime to me to get a science lesson on something that doesn’t exist.  Getting stuck in the weeds just isn’t the best use of time, in my opinion and I’m glad the movie doesn’t spin its wheels here and bloat the 94 minute runtime with a bunch of fake science.

As they discuss the world, Holly talks about how she doesn’t care about anything anymore.  It’s too hard to care.  Every time she does, she finds out the people behind it are Nazis, rapists, or both.  “Everything is a trap…nothing is just good,” she says.  And boy do I feel this hard.  This speaks directly to the millennial experience of the world.  I remember being younger and believing in things, only to be let down time and time again.  I can’t sit down and discuss The Usual Suspects, a brilliant film I love, without having to address the Kevin Spacey of it all, for example.  And how many people grew up on Harry Potter only to now be conflicted by their feelings for a story that affected them emotionally because its creator is a raging transphobe who has decided that her entire existence is going to be dedicated to harming people who are just trying go through their lives the best way they know how?  Joss Whedon, too, as much as I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  And now the horrible, monstrous details of Neil Gaiman are coming to light; I’m still processing that, as many people are.  How many times does it take, how many times can you be burned by caring about something before you decide to just wall yourself off and let your heart go cold because the world is full of awful people who try to convince you they’re not awful, only to have the truth exposed?   They use you, they use your desire to care, your desire to make the world a better place and belong in it, and then all of a sudden you realize, like Wile E. Coyote looking down after he’s run off a cliff, that there’s just a dust cloud and a drop beneath your feet. And that makes it hard to care about—and hope for—anything in the world.  It’s okay, though.  Casper has a plan.

Casper wants to use his future knowledge to make some money, that’s Phase 1.  All low impact stuff, nothing that would get you famous, nothing that would raise too many eyebrows, nothing that would affect the mushy blob we call time.  Phase 2 is save the world.  He’s much more vague about the how, but it seems that Phase 2 hinges pretty strongly on a waiter who draws in his off time, apparently, and this leads to a fair bit of dark comedy that Rhys Darby plays off very well.  Holly, of course, is in.  She’s tired of struggling, tired of working for other people to barely get by, to go through the parade of the unfulfilled and unfulfilling that she calls her life.  Easy money, little work, and staying off the radar are hugely appealing to her, as I think it would be to a lot of people.  Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to make your living off placing bets on sure things?  I’m not talking Biff Tannen, change the world rich; but being completely comfortable for the rest of your life without any of the trappings that come with fame and fortune?  Who wouldn’t jump at that opportunity?  I know I would.  We don’t get a lot of time here, yet so many of us toil endlessly in jobs we don’t like while our blue sphere spins around a big yellow sphere in a big, empty black sky.  Of course this is an attractive offer.  While Holly does this, which bankrolls Casper because she’s a real person with a credit card and a Social Insurance Number (Canada’s equivalent to the SSN), Casper goes about with his goal.  Learning about the past, the real lives of the people here, and preserving artifacts for the future.  It’s all very sweet, really.  He befriends the elderly, people he can be honest with because the time they have left isn’t enough to affect the timeline.  He’s very kind with them, lending them an ear and genuinely caring about their well-being.  It could have come off as exploitative, but Darby plays it with earnest and it works.  Of course, there are complications along the way and a good amount of fish-out-of-water comedy that is aided by Darby’s New Zealand accent and his excellent comedic timing, which allows him to pull off even the darker moments with aplomb.  Rhys Darby really is an underrated comic actor.  Casper gathers information for months, Holly lives comfortably, and all seems well for the time being.  If you’ve seen a movie before, you’ll know it probably doesn’t stay that way.

Humanity seems to always be hurtling towards its destruction, for as long as I can remember, anyway.  Every 80 years or so, we seem to be on the precipice of a cataclysm; it seems as long as there’s been recorded history, there have been people calling it the end times.  So it’s always been this sort of nebulous feeling of impending doom, people don’t really know how they’d act when faced with the concrete.  Holding up a sign that says “the end is nigh” probably wouldn’t cut it and rocking back and forth with your arms around your knees and crying probably seems logical, but it’s not the most useful course of action.  But as the movie draws to its third act and the future comes into plain view, Holly is forced to look at herself in a different light.  Casper keeps assuring her that everything works out okay and he’s got a plan.  But when it comes right down to it, the question remains: everything works out, but for who?  Who is left when the dust of the future settles?  Who is okay after the existential dread we feel, that we keep locked in a cage in the back of our minds, comes to a head in a very real way?  What does okay even mean after that?

And this is where the movie really shines as a narrative and it’s what makes Relax, I’m From the Future such a pleasant movie to watch, despite its flaws.  The plot is fairly simple, the plan is fairly simple, Casper is fairly simple.  But the message—the feeling that despite the futility, despite the slow march of progress, despite being burned more times than you can count—that you should still care, that you should still try to make the world better, that the cataclysm, the apocalypse is not written in stone, is not an inevitability, could not be more needed.  If you try, you fail.  If you fail, you try again.  And if you fail again, you dust yourself off and get back to it.  It takes more than the names that are written in history books to change the world.  It takes everyday people, waking up, going to jobs they hate, caring about things, and doing something, no matter how little, about them.  It’s a big, heavy world out there, but there are twice as many shoulders as there are people to carry the weight.  As long as people continue to step up and put their shoulders side by side with other people’s shoulders, our fate is not sealed.  Our future isn’t written, not just yet.  And that’s why Relax is a movie I won’t savor, not one I’ll only trot for special occasions, and is one I’ll watch over and over again, because I need that reminder sometimes.

Child’s Play: Kid-Friendly Streaming Round Up

With only two weeks left of Skeleton Crew, you may be wondering what other great kid-friendly shows won’t bore you out of your mind while you watch with the core audience.  I thought I’d weigh in with a few family shows that you will actually enjoy watching.

Young Jedi Adventures (Disney+)

If you’ve been enjoying Skeleton Crew and you’re looking for more Star Wars to watch, Young Jedi Adventures would be a good first stop.  Set 300 years before the original trilogy, this adorable cartoon centers on three Jedi younglings who are sent to a Jedi Temple on an outer rim planet called Tenoo (finally, it’s not about a familiar desert planet or a facsimile thereof, though Tatooine does make an appearance at one point) for training and gaining a deeper understanding of the galaxy.  While it’s no Hilda on the storytelling level, one of the big things I look for in a kids’ show is whether it’s just mindless entertainment and bright colors or if it actually surreptitiously teaches kids lessons about the world.  And we’ve come a long way from the PSAs at the end of GI Joe and Inspector Gadget.  The show follows the headstrong and heroically named Kai Brightstar, animal lover Lys Solay, and a small blue teddy bear creature called Nubs, who is almost too cute and loves plants, as they go on low stakes missions throughout the galaxy. 

One of the most notable things about it is how much it stresses compassion, not only for others, but for yourself as well.  The younglings are praised for asking for help when they need it, they go out of their way to help anyone in need, even antagonists, and they approach every problem with an openness that adult-focused media often doesn’t have.  Yes, there’s swashbuckling adventure, but unlike Clone Wars and even Rebels, which toned down the violence considerably, it’s a completely bloodless affair, even when the lightsabers come out.  And the villains aren’t so evil most of the time, with the kids choosing to try to reason with them (with mixed results) before other options are considered.  One of the main antagonists of the show is a helmeted child pirate called Taborr (who is revealed to have a complicated backstory himself) and there have been many times where he and Kai not only go head to head, but have to cooperate in order to make it through shared adversity.  I know, in a world of pirates and warrior monks with mystical powers, a focus on children may seem off, but if we can suspend the disbelief enough to let Pokemon inhabit a world where 10 year olds wandering the wilderness on their own with magic animals are best suited to be heroes, then I think we can give Young Jedi Adventures a pass for putting its protagonists in peril.  I mean, if you’ve been paying attention, you already knew the Jedi had no problem using child soldiers.  But unlike much of Star Wars media, this takes place during a time of peace, where pirates and profiteers are the biggest nuisances, allowing these kids to be kids first—going out on adventures with their friends, exploring the galaxy the way kids on the boring planet we live on would explore their backyards or neighborhoods. 

One other thing that’s really remarkable about the show is how effortlessly diverse it is.  Their friend and local pilot (also a kid, named Nash Durango), has two moms, one of the younglings uses they/them pronouns, and the cast is full of different races and genders (as well as species), and it’s never a point of contention nor is it ever pointed out.  It’s just the way things are and it’s accepted and normal, which, frankly, is how it should be.  It’s a very sweet show that has some genuinely interesting storylines and some good things to say about the world.  This is one you can feel good about letting your kids watch and enjoy watching it with them as well.

Dragons: Race to the Edge (Netflix)

If you’re already familiar with the How to Train Your Dragon series, this one should be an easy sell.  Picking up the story between the first and second movies, Hiccup finds a device that is full of information about different dragon species, using specific triggers to allow him to see it.  It’s a very Uncharted style device that Hiccup calls the Dragon’s Eye.  This kickstarts a new quest to discover dragons, leading him and the other riders of Berk to find a suitable island to establish a forward operating base they call Dragon’s Edge.  This sets off a series of adventures and misadventures, with the dragon riders muddling their way through complicated issues without having the immediate safety net of Stoick and Gobber.  It also expands the lore and the world of the series in delightful and compelling ways. 

They come across new breeds, new allies, villains new and old, and Hiccup and company have to deal with them pretty much on their own.  It’s almost like the kids are off to college and have to be adults for the first time, only coming home on break to do some laundry and get a little advice now and then.  Much like the movies, which were a hit with children and adults alike, the show maintains the same level of depth of writing that will allow adults to properly enjoy the show with plenty of sight gags and goofs for the kids to be kept more than happy.  All the familiar characters are there with some substitute voice actors (Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse return, Kristen Wiig does not, sadly TJ Miller does, and Zack Pearlman seamlessly steps in as Snotlout), however none of the new voices are ever distracting.  The series ran for six seasons and much like Avatar: The Last Airbender, the show grows in depth and seriousness as it progresses, allowing its younger viewers to grow up with it and adult viewers to appreciate it even more.

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (Disney+)

I don’t know if this show flew under the radar back when it came out in 2010, but I didn’t discover it until a few years later when it briefly streamed on Netflix, and with Marvel Rivals dominating my Twitch feed and game time, I’ve revisited this series myself.  Debuting as 20 micro-episodes on Disney XD, it was flying high on the popularity of 2008’s Iron Man and was way before MCU fatigue made everyone tired of Marvel movies.  Though the show takes inspiration from a lot of the original Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comics, it also integrates some later stories and even some MCU plot points and character designs.  What originally starts off with a very The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo premise, with a mass breakout from SHIELD’s supervillain prisons leading to the formation of the Avengers to catch them, it doesn’t adhere strictly to this formula and instead weaves in and out of more varied storylines.  But the writing is snappy, with some fun lines I quote to this day (to no one who recognizes them, because I’ve never met a single person who has seen the show), with good comedy and some serious stories as well.  The friction between Tony Stark and Hank Pym’s Ant-Man is palpable, with Pym being a staunch pacifist focused on villain rehabilitation and diplomatically ending conflict and Stark being an arrogant billionaire war profiteer turned arrogant superhero whose number one solution to every problem is to blast it with his repulsor beams. 

The heroes you know and love are here, but not always in the way you’d expect to see them if your main experience with Marvel characters is the MCU.  Hawkeye is on the run after Black Widow frames him as a Hydra agent.  Bruce Banner is hunted by General Ross and the Hulkbuster unit and haunted by The Hulk, wanting desperately to show himself not as a monster, but as a hero.  Captain America is struggling with the big thaw and doesn’t know whether he should trust SHIELD or not (as per usual, the answer with shadowy militarized government agencies is a resounding no).  It’s got a great deal of action as well, though the violence never gets turned up too high unless they’re going against robot enemies—at that point, all bets are off, and they hack, slash, smash, and blast with reckless abandon.  And since the licensing works out differently in this cartoon world than in the MCU films, characters like Spider-Man and Wolverine get to make an appearance as well and join in on the fun occasionally, which is nice.  I won’t go so far as to say Avengers: EMH is as good as Batman: The Animated Series, but it doesn’t lag too far behind, with an 8.3 IMDB rating compared to the (still underrated) 9.0 of Batman: TAS.  One area where it does fall behind though, is the opening sequence; the theme song is an ear worm, but after all these years, I’m still not sure if it’s in a good way or not, whereas the TAS opening is one of the best of all time.  Sadly, the show was cancelled after just two seasons, leaving some storylines unfinished, but what is there is well worth your time.

Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous/Chaos Theory (Netflix)

A few years ago, I wrote about how disappointing it was that one of the best blockbusters and indeed one of the best action/adventure movies of all time, Jurassic Park, never had a sequel that even came close to living up to its lofty standards.  In that post, I spoke briefly about Camp Cretaceous, the unlikely story of six young teens who were left behind in the events of Jurassic World, but since then, that story has concluded, in a way, and continued on in the form of Chaos Theory, a side story in the run up to Jurassic World: Dominion.  When Camp Cretaceous came out, the kinetic storytelling and cliffhanger endings of every episode kept you wanting more and Chaos Theory is no different.  Time jumping a few years ahead, the kids are older, now about college-aged, with the complications that come with that, as well as living in a world where they’re semi-famous for surviving the island (they’re known as the “Nublar Six”; and again, these are shows with great representation in media, which is always wonderful to see), oh, and also, there are dinosaurs roaming the Earth in the aftermath of Fallen Kingdom.  In addition to all that, it seems like someone is hunting them down one by one, which sucks, honestly.  I had a hard enough time making it to morning classes when I was in undergrad; add an assassination conspiracy to the mix and there’s no way in hell I’d have been sitting in Accounting 100 at 8AM three times a week. 

Now, unlike Young Jedi Adventures, this is not a strictly bloodless affair, as the shows rack up a considerable body count.  However, there is little to no onscreen gore—the camera always cuts away at the last moment, but it often takes the time to show the faces of the kids, traumatized and terrified, as they watch a nature documentary run amok right in front of them.  For the level of violence here—and the lack of separation from our own reality (I understand dinosaurs are extinct, but the shows and the movies take place in our world, not a different galaxy), I would recommend it more for older kids than Young Jedi Adventures and perhaps even older than viewers of EMH.  I certainly wouldn’t want to be responsible for explaining what that snapping sound is when the dinosaur has its sharp teeth around a protagonist’s father’s head and why his son looks so horrified.  Despite the TV-Y7 rating, this might be better suited for kids that are slightly older than that, maybe closer to 10.  But then again, I saw Jurassic Park in the theaters when I was 7 and that had a man being eaten while on the toilet.  I turned out okay, right?  But, despite that caveat, these two series manage to be more compelling, more interesting, and more fun to watch than the Jurassic World films, as they prepare to disappoint Jurassic Park fans for the fourth time with Rebirth (I want to be wrong about this one, but I’m not hopeful I will be).

Fear and Punching in Reno

Last week, I did something I haven’t done in years and went to the movies.  I missed it, I really have.  I used to love going to the movies, it was my refuge; I would wait for a film to be out for a few weeks, then try to find a weekday to go and watch an early showing in what would usually end up being a mostly private theater (when I went to see Wonder Woman in 2017, I was in the theater with a single other person; we both liked it).  I saw Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but that’s not what I’m writing about today—but spoiler alert, I thought it was great.  Easily the best of the three Sonic movies, and I did like all three, even though the first one was a confusing fusion of a road trip movie and an Olive Garden commercial.  But I’m not here to talk about that; I left my notebook in the car and just enjoyed the film as a regular moviegoer.  What it did was remind me of the Paramount+ series Knuckles, so I rewatched it, pen in hand.

On the surface, Knuckles doesn’t really make any sense.  It’s a strange concept from the get-go.  Even discounting all the strange decisions in the Sonic movies, focusing a six episode series on Knuckles and Adam Pally’s character Wade Whipple was a decision a cut above in strangeness over the others.  I couldn’t really understand who the show was for—the music ran older, lots of 70s, 80s, and 90s music make up the soundtrack, the pivotal challenge for Wade is a bowling tournament, and for Knuckles, it’s boredom.  At least at first.

Knuckles is having trouble adjusting to life after his purpose has been fulfilled following the events of Sonic 2 and the mundanity of the suburbs is kind of driving him insane (I know how he feels; once I leave the concrete comforts of the city and the sirens begin to fade, I start to slowly lose my mind).  Who among us hasn’t wanted to turn their surrogate parents’ living room into a gladiator pit for the family pet to finally go mano-a-doggo with his greatest nemesis, the mailman?  Too much time in even the most idyllic of scenery can drive a person—or echidna—mad, I tell you.

After the incident with the mailman, Knuckles is grounded and in a state of meditation, has a vision of a tribal elder Chief Pachacamac (Christopher Lloyd voicing a character whom I will be referring to as Chief Doc Brown from here on) from beyond the grave.  Chief Doc Brown tells Knuckles that his new purpose is to train Wade Whipple to become a true warrior and win the Tournament of Champions, the aforementioned bowling competition.  When we cut to Wade, he is indeed bowling with his best friend Jack Sinclair (played by Julian Barratt, from Mindhorn and one of my favorite, too short-lived series, Truth Seekers), a writer and bounty hunter who talks like a Baldur’s Gate character, against a Girl Scout who proceeds to beat Wade when he chokes on the final frame.  Jack kicks Wade off the team in favor of little Susie and he is humiliated.  Knuckles attempts to train him and they embark on a journey to what is apparently the heart of the bowling world, Reno, Nevada.  Why road trips are such a staple in a series about a little hedgehog who is best known for running really fast, I have no idea, but I can’t say that I mind it.  But, as the pair leaves Green Hills, things start to come into focus.  Two rogue GUN agents, Willoughby and Mason, whom you might know as Sassy from Ted Lasso and Kid Cudi from Westworld and being Kid Cudi, respectively, track him for an arms dealer in order to capture Knuckles so he can use his energy to create more weapons.  Similar to Vulture in the MCU Spider-Man films, cleaning up after the superheroes’ wake of destruction, he has been using the quills left behind by Sonic and Knuckles to supercharge futuristic weaponry.  The dealer is played by the always imposing Game of Thrones alum Rory McCann and known only as “The Buyer”.

As Wade and Knuckles bond over their shared loss—in this case, Knuckle’s dead echidna tribe, leaving him the last of the echidnas, and Wade’s father abandoning him as a child in a TJ Maxx, leaving him in a state of arrested development, bumbling man-child.  Wade takes Knuckles to a bowling alley so he can show the little red guy his battleground.  Agents Sassy and Kid Cudi show up using specialized quill-powered weapons The Buyer gave them and they capture Knuckles, leaving Wade as his only hope.  Wade has to decide to step up or let his friend fend for himself.  As you can imagine, he decides to step up, become the warrior Knuckles says he can be, and go save his furry friend.

But that doesn’t mean things go smoothly.

If you’re thinking that this is all weird, you’re not alone.  Many times while watching this show, I thought to myself “What am I watching?”, but I never quite wanted to look away.  As the story unfolds, Knuckles and Wade’s collective journey only worked to endear them both more to me.  Now, I’m an odd one when it comes to these franchise characters, it seems.  When I was a kid, I always preferred to play as Luigi to Mario and as Tails to Sonic.  And when Sonic & Knuckles came out, I was thrilled to play as Knuckles and played as him as much as I could and I was very happy with Idris Elba’s portrayal in Sonic 2, so he had a leg up in the endearment category.  Elba’s deadpan delivery almost always works for laughs and never feels forced, overdone, or cheap.  I could not have been happier with Knuckles, in both Sonic 2 and the Knuckles series.  But pairing him with and centering the story on Adam Pally’s Wade Whipple, the incompetent sheriff’s deputy who was equal parts Barney Fife and Launchpad McQuack?  Actually, when I put it that way, I can see why the character works for me.  But I never thought he’d make the jump from funny side character to properly endearing co-lead and I’m glad he did.  Because while I tried to peg down the reason why I enjoyed Knuckles so much, I kept getting the feeling that they made the show kind of for me.  The whole Sonic movie franchise is aimed pretty well at 90s kids, even including a gag in the new movie where someone has to blow on a USB drive to get it to work, and this is no different.  This wild fever dream of a show just felt like something they plucked out of my mind when I was a kid and put it directly on a streaming service.  The choice of music reminds me of the songs I heard growing up.  Not always ones that I sought out and listened to myself, like Real Life’s “Send Me An Angel” which features heavily in an episode, but ones that I heard around.  On the radio, in TV shows and movies, when parents of other kids would play music, etc.  When Knuckles and Wade roll down the street on a motorcycle to “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta” by Geto Boys (censored, obviously), it took me back to the first time I heard it in Office Space and immediately went to Napster to find a copy to listen to in Winamp.  Now, if you don’t know what any of those words mean, I don’t blame you.  But you may not connect with this show the same way I did.

The series has many ups and downs, with characters being placed in peril and rescued in a game of hostage-taking musical chairs (in addition to Knuckles being pursued by the rogue GUN agents, a bounty is placed on Wade’s head, and you may remember that his friend who kicked him off the bowling team has a whiff of Boba Fett about him), which keeps it from getting stale episode to episode.  There are a lot of quick payoffs that keep the story moving; it’s not trying to be Twin Peaks where one central conflict drives the whole show and red herrings and dead ends act as barriers to resolving it.  It’s fluid, it’s dynamic, it jumps genres sometimes—in one episode Wade has a vision of Chief Doc Brown culminating in a full on, properly epic stage rock opera which tells Knuckles’s backstory with the help of Michael Bolton’s singing.  I may not have been a theater kid, but it was one of the most entertaining pieces of television I’ve seen all year.

But the show isn’t all silliness and nostalgia, there are some genuinely touching moments as well, like when Wade goes to ground at his mother’s house just in time for Shabbat dinner and Knuckles shares his story with her and she relates it to the story of Moses, with the two of them fighting side by side to keep the Shabbat candles lit.  Some of it is played for comedy effectively, but there’s a heart to the show that’s undeniable.  And to do something that can move you in the midst of such a preposterous story is, frankly, impressive.  Seeing Wade’s journey, seeing Knuckles find a new way through life, it mirrors what regular people struggle through when faced with everyday adversity and how they get through it.  It’s surprisingly relatable storytelling and I really commend that.  It could have been off the wall insanity constantly, Aqua Teen Hunger Force style, and that would have been fine, I probably would have enjoyed that too.  But that they went just that bit further and wrote in parts that could easily have been cheesy but are actually nice instead, well, that’s really great.  It’s, again, a kind-hearted, joyful show in a time when that’s needed.  It just clicked with me and I seriously doubt this will be the last time that I watch it.

Now, I can’t promise you that you’ll like it, I don’t think it’s for everyone.  It’s not like it’s a masterpiece like The Penguin or a perfectly crafted comedy-thriller like Bad Monkey, but it is a truly surprising delight that I enjoyed more than I ever thought I would.  If you enjoyed the Sonic movies, Knuckles is well worth your time, or even if your kids just like them and want to watch, you have pretty good reason to stick around and watch it with them.  Plus, cameos from Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer in a reference to Dodgeball, what more could you want?

As this is the last post of the year, I want to let you know that I won’t be doing a Game of the Year post this year because I basically only played Astro Bot, which I positively adored, older games like Forza Horizon 5, and games that infuriate me on the reg, like EA Sports FC 25 (or whatever it’s called, we all know it’s FIFA by any other name).  In addition to that little housekeeping, I would like to wish you all a truly Happy New Year and all the best once the calendar ticks over.  What happens between now and then isn’t on me, you’re on your own until the 1st.  Thank you all for being here, thank you all for coming back week after week, thank you for sharing this blog with your friends.  After a long unplanned hiatus, 2024 became far and away my biggest year since I first started this as a little car blog 12 years ago and relaunched with a media focus in 2019.  I have you all to thank for that and I really, truly, deeply do.  See you next year!

Pacific Northwestern Exposure

Maybe it’s impossible to catch lightning in a bottle—look at how hard it is to follow up great projects with sequels.  Look at how bad Iron Man 2 was compared to Iron Man.  But sometimes, the third time is the charm.  I mean, not Iron Man 3, but it was an improvement at least.

Okay, that’s enough of the idiomatic cliches, but I do want to talk to you about St. Denis Medical, the follow-up to the follow-up from Superstore creator Justin Spitzer.  After suffering through 2021’s American Autos, which felt like it was written in 2016, I thought that perhaps Superstore was a fluke.  I could tell American Autos was trying to recapture the magic of Superstore, even drafting in Jon Barinholtz (brother of the reliably hilarious Ike), who probably had the highest joke hit rate in the show, for a bigger role.  But it didn’t work and while it managed a second season, I still don’t understand how.  It left me skeptical when I saw commercials for Spitzer’s new show.

But St. Denis Medical rights the ship with aplomb.  It’s not about the doctor’s office in Red Dead Redemption 2 where Arthur helps a doctor amputate an injured man’s limb, but rather a struggling, underfunded hospital outside of Portland, Oregon, even though I can’t stop myself from giving it a French pronunciation like the town from that game.  But it’s not St. Denis, it’s “Saint Dennis”.  That’s fine, I can live with that.

Going back to the mockumentary well for a feel good comedy may seem like a tired mechanic now, after shows like The Office, Modern Family, Parks & Rec, and Abbott Elementary, and the show does borrow heavily from the Parks & Rec playbook, but it’s all the better for it.  The talking heads don’t take anything away from the flow of the show and it allows for layered jokes and it never detracts from the episodes’ stories.  Ensemble comedies like this can often hinge on casting and St. Denis’s cast is well chosen.  Wendi McLendon-Covey of Reno 911! and The Goldbergs plays the head of the hospital, doctor turned administrator, a real Leslie Knope-type; well-meaning and overbearing, she wants her hospital to be seen on the same level as big city hospitals, but she genuinely cares about her staff and the patients.  I’m talking about the complete opposite of Dr. Kelso from Scrubs, it’s genuinely refreshing to see.  Josh Lawson returns from his too short stint as Tate in Superstore (and Kano in 2021’s underrated Mortal Kombat, where he offered most of the comic relief) and, while he plays a version of Tate here, surgeon rather than pharmacist, he shines in every scene.  I love his comedic timing and delivery, he serves up laughs every time he’s on screen.  Veteran comic actor David Alan Grier also features heavily and the cast is really stabilized by his presence.  He plays the jaded old doctor who is just past it, but in a charming, funny, Ed-Asner-at-the-end-of-Up kind of way.  Alison Tolman’s Alex is the star of the show and she continues to delight in every role I’ve seen her.  Her stint in the first season of the Fargo series was a standout performance, her recurring role in Brooklyn Nine-Nine showed she had the chops for a full on comedy, and in St. Denis she keeps up the record of strong performances.  Rounding out the cast is a number of somewhat familiar faces, like Kaliko Kauahi (Sandra from Superstore), Mekki Leeper (from Jury Duty), and Kahyun Kim (from Cocaine Bear).  Some great one-off appearances too, like Erinn Hayes, who has done the comedy doctor thing before in Childrens Hospital and its criminally underrated and too short-lived spin-off Medical Police and Nico Santos from Crazy Rich Asians, another Superstore vet.

It’s a time-tested formula.  Understaffed, underfunded, with a new guy there to help the characters explain things to the audience, this time in the form of a wide-eyed young nurse who comes from an insulated religious community.  His upbringing lends itself to some great comedic moments, where his family, who doesn’t believe in medical science and disapproves of his career as a nurse, tells him to be more like his cousin—whom unfortunately died of strep throat.  The lack of staff and funding means there are always problems to deal with and it gives the characters something to work around; in a drama, it makes for conflict, in a comedy, it gives you plenty of awkward situation for comedic moments to grow.  St. Denis sits on the shoulders of giants, sure, but it does it really well.  Sharp writing and strong actors make it so it doesn’t seem like it’s just a copy trying to chase the feeling of another show, a trap Parks & Rec managed to avoid as well.  In this post-Ted Lasso world, one where you feel increasingly yelled at by everyone and everything, where everything is vying for your time and attention and wants your rage and anger to fuel it, I can’t get enough of watching good people trying to do good things and that’s what St. Denis is all about.  Even David Alan Grier’s lovable curmudgeon gives a damn about his patients and his fellow coworkers; the normal doctor v. nurse conflicts aren’t a focus of the storytelling, rather they approach the job as if they’re all in it together.  It’ll never not be refreshing to see; I am so glad the era of comedies about “friends” who just constantly snipe at each other and go for the jugular is over.  A friend isn’t supposed to just be someone who knows you well enough that they can hit at your insecurities and you’re supposed to shrug it off and, boy I have had lots of coworkers I couldn’t stand and some that I’ve become lifelong friends with, which makes a show like St. Denis Medical such a relatable, fun, and uplifting watch.

One thing that does make St. Denis unique is its focus on the nurses for the viewpoint of the show.  It’s not a show about heroic doctors—Lawson’s surgeon Bruce has a god complex, but he’s not the hero of the show, rather, he’s the butt of jokes.  Grier may be a jaded doctor who has seen it all, but he’s used most effectively as a foil for Tolman’s Alex, who is the heart and soul of the show, and most of the characters are viewed from the lens of her perspective.  She’s the one who interacts with admin the most, she manages the other nurses, and the doctors look to her first.  Leeper’s Matt may be the FNG, but he’s not the star like JD from Scrubs, he’s more of a bit player.  Tolman’s Alex is the one who makes this show what it is and while she sets very high standards for the character work, no one in the cast disappoints and most live up to those standards.  Lawson and McLendon-Covey especially, who was toned down very quickly into a believable, likable, and funny character.  She started with the needle pointing a little too far towards Michael Scott, but was deftly redirected towards Leslie Knope, much for the good of the show.  The pilot had some rough edges that needed to be smoothed out, but by the end of the second episode, I was hooked.  Again, taking a page from great comedies like Abbott Elementary, this focus on the on-the-ground characters gives a comedic look at the very real problems in backbone industries like healthcare and education.  They’re downstream, affected by decisions made miles above them, but while they take a moment to acknowledge them, the show isn’t about that.  Even COVID is given just a small mention, whereas Superstore made it a front and center issue.  St. Denis Medical is a show with something to say and, lucky for us, it says it in a really, really funny way.  It’s airing weekly on Tuesdays on NBC, streaming Wednesdays on Peacock, and frankly, it’s become one of the shows I look forward to every week.  With all six aired episodes on Peacock, there’s plenty of time to catch up over the holidays before it returns on January 14th.  And I definitely recommend you give it a try.

[As this post is going up on Tuesday, December 24th and not Monday as usual, I would like to take a moment to both apologize for the delay and wish everyone who is celebrating Christmas a merry one.  Have fun, have food, and make some memories—at the end of the day, they’re more important than presents anyway (but I do hope you get some good presents too).  In case you missed it and still need to pick a movie to watch with the family or you just want to get in the holiday spirit for any reason, you can check out my 2024 Christmas Special here.  Have a fun and safe holiday!  I’ll see you in a week.]