Daredevil Reborn: overall, good finale. I'm not shipping anyone on this show (or its predecessor), but I was amused, given that Luke Cage managed to make "coffee" a synonym for sex back in the Netflix day for all the Marvel shows, that Frank expressed the wish for coffee with both Matt and Karen. (Not at the same time.) On a more serious note, the finale evidently went for an Empire Strikes Back vibe in that ( spoilery stuff happens )

Wheel of Time S3 finale: speaking of Empire Strikes Back vibes... Though in this case just in one plot line. Okay, two, technically. (The second one being Team Elayne, Matt, Min and Nyneave not gaining what they wanted to, but what Nynayve did get was so important that I hesitate to equate this with the goings on at the White Tower.) This, too, is based on a book series written many years ago, and was shot way back when yours truly hoped the world would be less insane in 2025 than it actually is, but can't help but feel extremely on point with its ( spoiilery stuff )

Doctor Who ?.02: amusingly weird, technically impressive, everyone looks gorgeous in their costumes. But Fourth Wall Breaking stories are not really my thing, and so I can't say I loved it.

Suzanne Collins: Sunrise on the Reaping.

Personal background: Unlike, I imagine, a great many of Hunger Games readers/viewers, I actually wasn't yearning for a Haymitch prequel. Now of course I had loved Haymitch in the original novels - I mean, who didn't? - , but part of what I loved was that in contrast to our young heroine and the majority of characters, he was middle aged, broken, cynical yet, as it turned out, still able to fight, plan, and win against the tyranny. As for Haymitch as a young man, I thought the glimpse we got when Peeta and Katniss find the recording of "his" games and his few remarks were all we needed to know. If anything, I would have wanted to read about how Haymitch later connected and bonded with the other Victors, something quintessential to the plots of both Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

However, I had been pleasantly surprised by Songbird and Snakes, aka the young Coriolanus Snow prequel (ironically more the film than the book - I thought the book was good but did not quite achieve what (at least I assume) it wanted to do, whereas the movie did -, and also Suzanne Collins, like the rest of us, is living in a world where propaganda, spectacle and autocracies are flourishing more than ever, and thus I was curious whether this would be reflected in the novel. Which I've now read.

( Here are my mostly positive spoilery thoughts. )

Daredevil 4.05 + 4.06: ( Spoiler cut just in case. )

Wheel of Time 3.05: Interesting as all the history last episode was, I'm glad we're catching up with everyone else here. ( Some spoilers ensue. )

Daredevil Reborn .03: continues to be captivating. It also ad me muse on how Netflix wildly varied with its presentation of the fictional NYPD. ( Spoilery musings ensue. )


Wheel of Time 3.01 - 3.03: Still haven't read the books, still am very entertained and pleased by the show. BTW, Elayne being called Elayne didn't register with me as Arthurian last season, but the last episode giving her brothers Gwaine and Galahand and a mother Morgause, just spelled a bit differently but certainly sounding like these names, had me snort. And hellow, awesome actress from The Expanse as Elaida! Now I'm listening to a spoilerfree for newbies (like me) commentary podcast which I like but which briefly took me out of my enjoyment when the host said there were only two fictional characters he hated, and one cwas a character introduced in this episode, and the other was Gaeta from Battlestar Galactica. Why would anyone hate Gaeta? #JusticeforGaeta !

Lastly: there is now a German version of Ghosts. (Thanks to kathyh, I'm familiar with the British original but not the US version.) I's a pretty successful adaptation, and like the reviewer below, I'm amused and impressed at some of the choices specific to these version that took into account you can't literally do the same thing in a German context. (For example, making the military ghost NOT a 20th century German colonel, either WWI or WWII, for all the obvious reasons but a Roman soldier instead, and making the Pat the male boyscout character instead a female very early 1980s earnest idealist type. I fully expect Svenja to have been on all the anti nuclear power demonstrations and at Wackersdorf.) See also this review:

Doctor Who:


Atrament: this is something for Big Finish listeners, as it features the audio team of Hex (Thomas Hector Schofield), Ace and the Seventh Doctor. Incredibly creepy, and yet in its solution also deeply humane.

The contents of Theseus‘ toolbox: lovely multi Doctor, multi Companion ensemble story, covering all of them from the First to the Thirteenth Doctor.

MCU:
Someone who knows your name: in which post Spider-man: No Way Home, Matt Murdoch encounters both Spider-man and Peter Parker and quickly concludes who needs his help more.

Lord of the Rings:
The Farewell Feast: affectionate snarking between Galadriel and Gandalf at the Aragorn/Arwen wedding festivities, just lovely to read.

Because the Marvel shows - Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher and The Defenders - are leaving Netflix as of the end of this month, I dipped into some of them to rewatch some favourite scenes or episodes and found that several years later, my basic opinions on their virtues and flaws haven't changed. This includes: Luke Cage, s2 and Jessica Jones, s2 and 3 went too much into the dark direction, while Daredevil by virtue of an excellent third season (complete with "bringing the team back together again" arc) managed to make up for a mixed second season and avoided going out on a grimdark note; Danny Fisk works best for me as a guest star on other people's shows - he's a breath of fresh air in s2 of Luke Cage and before that, his scenes with Luke in Defenders were great fun -, and not so much in what I've seen of his own show; Frank Castle's show surprisingly (or not, if you consider how he starts out) manages to avoid the "hero gets alienated from their loved ones" trope plagueing DD, LC and JJ in their sophomore seasons and instead has Frank bonding with his recurring cast in both seasons (this includes displaying good household repair skills), and unlike Luke and Jessica ending his shows better off than where he was when he started, but my main problem with The Punisher is the shameless anti weapons regulation propaganda (complete with strawman liberal weakling senator whose arguments are ridiculously unlike anything real activists against the US gun cult use) which I can't get over because of the rl implications; I'll always regret we didn't get the Daughters of the Dragon show with Colleen and Misty; Jeri Hogarth, not Trinity, is my definite Carrie Ann Moss role; and while The Defenders is objectively not a good miniseries, I still love it. The Matt & Jessica as well as the Luke & Danny interactions were golden, Matt/Electra are my "they are bad for each other with the canon freely acknowledges but also, they are irresistable to me together" doomed pairing and all the Electra scenes mid season do fo rme what "but I knew him" does for Steve/Bucky shippers, and the Jessica and Luke scenes are a way more hopeful note for both characters to go out on (not just in terms of their relationship with each other) than the canon of their solo shows.

Now, given that Spoilery Thing Which Happened in Spider-man: No Way Home and the other spoilery thing that happened in Hawkeye, of course I have a wish list for more spoilerly things in future MCU movies and the Disney shows.

( Spoiler cuts have had a rough day )

I also checked the fanfiction situation, and here are some I liked:

aka Every Color but Purple: Jessica and Matt on a case.

Fear and Hope: Jessica and Danny on a case

Not far from the tree: Sister Maggie and Matt, after.

Not having watched Iron Fist yet, I have no feelings one way or the other about its cancellation. Luke Cage getting cancelled, otoh, had me torn; it was an intriguing series, but I felt for all reasons except its central character, whom I took to far more in shows not his own (i.e. Jessica Jones and Defenders). After all, it’s easy to read the two LC seasons as the Godfather-style tragedy of the Stokes clan (with Maria Dillard, Cottonmouth and Shades as the central characters), or, alternatively, as the hero origin story of Misty Knight – those were the narratives that gave the series most of its emotional power in my eyes. And those stories were more or less completed. („Less“ meaning in Misty’s case there are plenty of stories to tell about her, and yes, I so hope for „Daughters of the Dragon“, but the origin part of her tale is over.)

Meanwhile, Daredevil is as of the writing of this post not yet cancelled, but I wouldn’t be surprised if those news came as well, not least because its three main characters end the third season at a really good point, and obligatory tag scene about one of the supporting villains feels mostly perfunctiory. Whether or not that will be the case, I thought the third season, flaws and nitpicks not withstanding, played to the show’s strengths. (And spared us more ninja scenes.)

( More spoilery comments follow )

Dear Brits, I would say you have my sympathy for the Orange Menace landing on your shores in a few days, except that you actually just had his spiritual twin resigning, whereas in our current political grotesque the German equivalent of Johnson in selfishness and destroying-the-country-for-career-purposes resigned from his resignation and wasn’t fired from the cabinet to much of Germany’s regret, either. Also, World Cup. So really, go you! But do make every second of the Orange Menace’s stay as hellish for him as possible.

Fictional apocalyptic scenarios are so much easier to deal with than much of the globe being on a self-destruct as well as others-destruct course, of course, so to the safety of fiction I go and bring more recs:

Jessica Jones
(And also Daredevil and Avengers):

Hurt my knuckles punching the machines: what the tv Marvel crowd did after Infinity War happened, Jessica and Matt centric, but with roles for everyone. No Luke Cage s2 spoilers, since the story, which has just finished, was begun before LC s2 dropped.


So in my recent MCU ramblings I wished, among other things, for stories featuring Nick Fury and one or several of the Avengers that took into consideration how he actually interacts with them, and lo, here‘s this beauty of a vignette featuring Nick and Tony post Civil War:

Let the earth leave you for an hour

Buffy:

Better than being a hero Buffy and Dawn, in an achingly beautiful take on the relationship between the sisters.


X-Men:

Westchester, Redux

Erik and Charles post X-Men: Apocalypse, Erik‘s pov.

Defenders: all spoilery, hence a ( protective cut )

Doctor Who:

Impossible Mercy: set during early s9, in which the Doctor post The Witch's Familiar goes back to Skaro for Missy, and Clara hates it, but never is one to stay passive about something. Good voices for all three characters, and I appreciate that Clara gets to react to what Missy did to her in the above named episode AND to have lingering Danny- and Cybermen related issues from the previous season.


Wynona Earp:

The Treasure in your Eyes: aka one of the rare Wynona/Doc stories without s2 spoilers yours truly, who only watched the first season so far, has found, and a very plausible Wynona voice it has, too.

Reader, I marathoned it. It being shorter than any previous Marvel Netflix series, this didn’t take that long. (No filler episodes.) Above cut judgment: overall plot meh, worth watching for the character interaction, with my particular highlights being Jessica & Matt, Luke & Jessica, Luke & Danny (I haven’t watched Iron Fist, nor do I intend to watch it now, but the scenes with Luke were the occasions when Danny shook off blandness and became an entertaining character), and all four spending an entire episode stuck in a Chinese Restaurant. Also Matt & Spoilery character, Alexandra (Sigourney Weaver’s character) & Madame Gao, Alexandra & Spoilery character.

( heavy spoilers beneath the cut )

Okay, firstly, as far as Once upon a Time is concerned, this week's episode settles it: we're in Heroes season 3 territory, and I'm out of here. Regretfully, since I really loved the show and the characters, but it's always been my policy not to stick around once you derive more anger than enjoyment from a fictional source, and not to spoil things for the rest of fandom by endlessly complaining when you can rather watch something else you actually do enjoy. This announcement also isn't an invitation to bash OuaT in the comments; as I said, until relatively recently, I enjoyed the show. I'll simply regard the end of season 3 as the perfect ending (minus the tag scene); in many ways, it brought the main characters full circle since the pilot and concluded several main characters' arcs in a good way.

Secondly, I marathoned Daredevil. Which is definitely well made, by two Jossverse veterans, Drew Goddard and Steven DeKnight, with a growing into iconic persona arc for both the hero and the main antagonist, conveying a great sense of atmosphere and place (Hell's Kitchen in New York definitely becomes a character in its own right), establishing an ensemble of interesting characters. This being said, it's also heavier on the male character side (which doesn't mean there aren't interesting women around, and one of them, Karen Page, has a great arc of her own). And yes, the pilot uses "bad guys get introduced as bad by attacking women" shorthand, though the rest of the show does equal opportunity menacing on the villains' side, and Karen being put through hell in the pilot (not via rape, I hasten to add, that's one cliché avoided throughout the season) motivates her relentless quest for the truth and to bring down the network which menaced her through the rest of the season - not in a "revenge" way, but in a "I must ensure this doesn't continue to happen to other people!" way. Let's see, what else on the negative side: while the New York depicted here is far more ethnically diverse than the one in Agent Carter, there's just one black main character - reporter Ben Urich (who btw is white in the comics, but as with Nick Fury, the MCU changed this) - and ( spoilery observation applies )

Violence: I was very amused to read Steven DeKnight in this interview profess amazement that people describe the show as very violent before ruefully admitting that working on Spartacus has maybe changed his standards for this. I'd say, so, yes. Sure, compared with Spartacus, where they lovingly slice people open in every episode, with lingering close-ups, Daredevil isn't that violent. But that's like saying Henry VIII. was a faithful husband and lover compared with Giacomo Casanova, i.e. beside the point. I'd say the violence level is comparable to shows like The Wire, which incidentally DeKnight names as the type of show he's going for (while admitting this is going for an incredibly high goal but better to be ambitious and failing than etc.).

Now re: my own familiarity with comics canon, I've encountered comics!Matt Murdock/Daredevil mostly in other people's comics books - he's Jessica Jones' lawyer, seems to have an on/off thing with Black Widow, and an Elizabethan version of him is a main character in Neil Gaiman's 1602 - oh, and as for the main villain onf season 1, him I encountered in The Runaways, of all the comics - , but I absorbed enough via general pop culture osmosis to recognize the joke on decades of continuity when in the pilot Matt's best friend/partner Foggy Nelson sighs: "If there's a stunning woman of questionable character in the room, Matt Murdock is going to find her, and Foggy Nelson is going to suffer." However, in the actual on screen show Matt/ Morally Ambuiguos Women aren't yet a thing. (Though Foggy mentions "that Greek girl you liked" in college, which I take it is a reference to Elektra.) The one brief romantic connection he forms on screen during the first season is with an unquestionably heroic woman who wisely breaks it off. Instead, the main romance of the season belongs to the main villain, Wilson Fisk, the future Kingpin. (The woman in question, btw, Vanessa, is another of the interesting female characters, and she's neither a deluded innocent nor an eye-liner heavy sex goddess, which love interests of villains more often than not tend to be. Instead, she's an age-appropriate smart art gallery owner who goes into the relationship open eyed.) Who certainly qualifies as most detailed and layered of all MCU antagonists. Granted, the villains of the MCU so far haven't been that great (in the sense of being three dimensional), and the only one who became popular was Loki, but still, this version of Fisk, placed by Vincent D'Onofrio, is an impressive creation, and you can see the Wire influence here - he has various varied relationships (not just the romance), both a close friendship with his main sidekick and rivalry-ridden antagonistic ones with his business partners/competition, we see him in his surroundings just as we see Matt Murdock in his, and like our hero, he has childhood backstory trauma and an "I must save my city" obsession, the difference being that Fisk's idea of saving comes with a lot of death first. But throughout the first season, he's definitely regarding himself as the misunderstood hero working for the greater good. ( Spoilers happen. ) "Who am I and how do I achieve what I want?" being a question of protagonist and antagonist get asked throughout.

On the relationship front, there's certainly OT3 potential with Karen, Foggy and Matt. The set up reminds me a bit of early Angel with Cordelia, Doyle and Angel, though Matt has yet to heroically jump into the wrong car. Also, Karen's the one with the hinted at mystery in her backstory, not Foggy, who has what's today called a bromance going with Matt that should make the slashers weep with joy, especially in the episode with the flashbacks to how they met in college. (Which comes late in the season for plot reasons.) ( More spoilery observations re: Karen follow. ) There's equally OT3 potential between Fisk, Vanessa and Fisk's Faithful Lieutenant Wesley (!), until ( spoilers happen ). Then there's the mentor/protegé type of relationship Karen and Ben Urich form. Matt also confides into a priest (one of the few things I knew about comics Daredevil was that he's a Catholic, so that didn't surprise me) and into Rosario Dawson's character for plot reasons, while Fisk has his two most entertaining relationships when it comes to fellow crime bosses with Madame Gao (heads the drug trade, old lady on the outside, but do not cross her) and the endlessly bitching Leland Owlsie (not sure about the spelling) who handles and transfers everyone's money.

Looks: definitely revels in the dark and the New York neon lights. Since Matt doesn't aquire his iconic red costume until the end of the season, and until then dresses in black for his illegal outings, this can make some of the fight scenes tricky to watch. I'm also not convinced of the brief attempts the show makes to visualize Matt's post-blinding sight, but other than that, no complaints. Also everyone, more or female, dresses professionally, i.e. like what their respective profession would make you believe they can afford and/or what's comfortable given what their job is.

Hang on, I know that actor: Rosario Dawson, obviously Vincent D'Onofrio; I thought Matt's father in the flashbacks looked like a slightly heavier Jason Dohring (Logan Echols in Veronica Mars), but the credits tell me it wasn't him, while Fisk's father in the flashbacks was none other than Herc from The Wire. Fisk's mother in the flashbacks looked a lot like the actress who played Amanda in Caprica and Katniss' mother in The Hunger Games, but I haven't checked yet whether it's the same woman. (I mean, I know Amanda and Katniss' mother are the same, just not whether she's also Fisk's mother Marlene.)

MCU continuity: Ben Urich has a couple of old articles hanging on the wall of his office, including one about the battle of New York (i.e. what happened in The Avengers) and one about the Hulk devastating Harlem. (The Incredible Hulk.) When Claire (Rosario Dawson's character) first talks to Matt in his not-yet-Daredevil outfit, she asks him whether he's "one of those billionaire playboys I keep hearing about", and the gentrification of Hell's Kitchen is directly tied to all the damage New York suffered through the last few movies. No Stan Lee cameo that I could spot, though. At a guess, this is set post Captain America: Winter Soldier, since no one ever mentions SHIELD, nor do they show up during certain events. Anyway, all these are brief injokes; plot wise, nothing depends on previous MCU knowledge, and the characters in this show are all new, they haven't been anywhere else before. (Though I wouldn't be surprised if in the upcoming Jessica Jones series, Matt Murdock does show up as he does in the comics, not as Daredevil but as Jessica's lawyer.)

All in all: impressive. I didn't fall in love with it the way I did with the more rambling but more of my favourite itches scratching Agent Carter, but I'll certainly keep watching.

And the question remains: Steven DeKnight in the interview I linked mentioned loving Better Call Saul. I'd say that calls for a legal crossover, Steven, wouldn't you?