Week Of December 11th 2015 In Review #Supergirl #ScreamQueens #XMenApocalypse #NewYearCountdown

Week Of December 11th 2015 In Review #Supergirl #ScreamQueens #XMenApocalypse #NewYearCountdown

All Supergirl pictures courtesy of CBS unless otherwise noted.

With my little mini-vacation over for the next week and a half before my big year-end finale vacation which goes from the 21st or 22nd until MLK day in the New Year, I've been biding my time soaking up all the latest news and events going on in the world of entertainment. And even though it's two weeks after Thanksgiving--the time when normally the TV wasteland kicks in--and Star Wars is the movie that will clearly dominate this holiday season, there is still plenty else to talk about on all levels. We'll begin with Supergirl (#Supergirl).

Monday's Supergirl on CBS, while not the winter finale, supplied more than enough wow, shock and awe for fans to light up the internet and Twitterverse with mind-blown reactions. The funniest thing is that much of the episode was rather bland for the titular character. After overexerting herself fighting Red Tornado, Kara experienced her first short circuit, temporarily losing her powers. As she suffered through the throes of being Human For A Day (ha! That was the title of the episode. I snuck that in there. Huh? In hindsight I don't know why I thought that was clever. Moving on), National City suffered through an earthquake.

In her humanity, Kara bleeds for the first time, gets a cold or some other sneezy disease, breaks her arm and needs rescuing by James. Sadly, the one lesson she learns comes when she cannot save a man from dying on the street. Just as the comic book Superman learns, she can't save everyone.

She eventually regains her powers when she is told by the dork that likes her (again, not bothering to shoot an email, private message tweet or phone call her cousin's way) that she can regain her powers more rapidly by having a burst of Kyrptonian adrenaline. She gets this burst when she sees James in deathly trouble in an elevator shaft after having saved some people from the upper levels. Her powers back, she rescues him from falling to his death and the day is saved.

The biggest shock for the fans came in the form of gloriously over-the-top Black guy--that beautiful man of ridiculous looks, perfectly delivered one-liners and overly awkward protectiveness over Supergirl and her sister. While at the DEO headquarters (that's the Department of Extraterrestrial Operations) the earthquake accidentally knocks out the power temporarily while he and Kara's sister are in the middle of moving a villain to a different cell. With the power of mind control, the villain escapes to roam the halls before they can get back-up generators running.

Now in lock down, over-the-top Black guy orders his crew to stay in the one safe place they know he isn't while he and two others go hunting. The alien takes over the brain of the two other soldiers, making them kill each other. Kara's sister disobeys orders and runs after her boss, taking another soldier with her who also falls prey to the mind control. Having learned the previous week that her Black superior not only worked with her father but was around when he died, she distrusts him and handcuffs him to a shelf while she tries to go stop the alien alone.

Bullets not working, her anti-mind-control device about to stop, Black guy swoops in and saves the day, defeating the rock hard alien with his bare hands. Now, she has hella questions. How could he defeat the alien in a game of fisticuffs, and all sorts of craziness. He tells her the story of her father dying and the real original Black guy dying while in pursuit of a perceived hostile alien. The alien turned out to be friendly but in trying to capture him, somehow the two DEO agents died, but not before the alien tried saving the life of Kara's adoptive father played by Dean Cain. Cain told the alien to look after his daughters which Black guy has been doing ever since. The big reveal came at the end of the story when over-the-top Black guy revealed himself to be J'onn J'onzz AKA Martian Manhunter.

Didn't See That Coming 

For those that don't know, in the comics, Martian Manhunter is a big deal. While never the most popular on his own, he is most famous for two things: being the sole survivor of the once thriving Martian race and being one of the founding members of the Justice League. Yes, he routinely fights alongside Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern. Unlike the other aliens, he is not humanoid looking enough to blend in, but does have the power to shape-shift into anyone. 

KGBeast? Looks more like Martian Manhunter

Why is this a big deal? Recently, an article came out discussing the make-up of the film version of Martian Manhunter and if he would even be part of the Justice League. A few studio insiders said they didn't know if they'd include this iconic character because he may be too difficult to do on screen authentically. Well, if they needed a format, they just got one in a big way. This leads me to the rumor that Callan Mulvey pictured there, is actually going to be playing Martian Manhunter in the new Batman v Superman. I know that there was a very persistent rumor that he was actually going to be playing K.G. Beast, however, that was never fully confirmed and in the spirit of not packing the film with too many Justice Leaguers, it's no wonder why the producers would want to keep him under wraps, but to me he naturally looks like the alien and wouldn't have to have any kind of reveal save for saying his name in the movie since he is a shapeshifter.

Moving on, FOX's Scream Queens (#ScreamQueens) had its season finale this week and boy was it... long. For those that remember my initial three week roundup review on this (click #ScreamQueens up top to read it), I initially gave this a fairly low grade as it was a little too ridiculous. While it toned down some, I did skip three or four episodes at a time only to binge them when I got the chance, as wasting an hour each week on this wasn't to my liking. I almost didn't watch it at all during November and binged at least four episodes on Thanksgiving night, but I digress.

All pictures of Scream Queen courtesy of FOX unless otherwise noted.

Ending the shortened season with a two-hour episode, the first hour moved along nicely with Grace's psuedo-boyfriend confessing to being the 4th killer who joined only after non-gay gay Boone caught him snooping around and was about to kill him. Oh yeah, side note Boone (played by Nick Jonas) was one of the killers just in case you didn't know. Back to the boyfriend, he said he believed in what Boone was trying to do by wiping out the KKT sorority house and only joined because of that, but then he killed Boone and crazy Gigi (the loon that raised Boone and his twin sister in a mental asylum) in order to stop all the killing, but the third killer, Boone's twin sister, remained.

After sending the missive of all missives (which I thought was technically done very well with the writing being on the wall) The Chanel or Chanel #1 or Chanel Oberlin (played by Emma Roberts) became the most hated person in the world when it accidentally went out to everyone on campus. Gag! This whole set-up really did nothing but waste time to me and was a poor lead-in into a ridiculous scene that had my mouth gaping and asking, "did these fools just try to fit in an after-school special message on suicide?" Yes. Yes, they did. Quite possibly the most disingenuous show where everything was a gag, satire, or spoof on the horror genre, and had almost no real emotion explored on any level suddenly stopped about 25 minutes in to give us a PSA on "Suicide is never the answer. You shouldn't even joke about that." Look, I've dealt with the issue in my works before too, but never did it not fit the tone of what I was doing. This whole scene from the missive to the idiotic death attempt to Zayday trying to make a point that young people shouldn't kill themselves all could have been cut without anyone noticing or caring.

In fact, I felt this way about half of the episode which had me questioning why it was two hours long. Listen, outside of the real King (that guy Stephen King. Maybe you've heard of him), I am the king of long-windedness. I just finished writing a book during NaNoWriMo that is 118,000 words long unedited and will probably increase by 2000 words before the final draft. However, I try to make every scene relevant in some way that thrusts along either the character development or the action. On this last episode, there was more exposition and flashback than anything. Little action, little killing and scenes that went on and on.

The big reveal came at the beginning of the second hour which preceded a full half hour accuse-fest to finger each of the remaining Chanels as the killer (don't shake your head at me. I'll ignore it if you will). After the first hour of Zayday and Grace going through the school records of each of the remaining girls--a feat made possible by a sex scene betwixt Jamie Lee Curtis and Oliver "Dad-bod" Hudson--they came back to reveal that Chanel number six AKA neck brace girl played by Lea Michele was the killer. The only reason she was believed not to be the killer was because she had a stiletto heel stuck in her eye supposedly put there by Chanel number five played by Abigail Breslin.

The first half hour became so ridiculous that it was revealed that Chanel five's parents wanted to disown her and took this opportunity to throw her under the bus. But apparently Breslin wasn't alone as Chanel number three played by Billie Lourd (surprise, she's Princess Leia's real life daughter; didn't know it until I saw this picture.) helped her. The most ludicrous and convoluted story of them all, she supposedly had split personality disorder and had been taking killing advice from her father Charles Manson. Her other dark half would use the advice to kill her fellow sisters which she would be completely unaware that she did.

This might have been enough if the show didn't spend another seven minutes putting The Chanel in a similar scenario, fingering her as the mastermind behind it all. Why did she do it? Kind of because she could. All three of them arrested by major sleuthing all-star Chief of police Denise Hemphill (played by Niecy Nash who was literally the best part of this show for me), all was solved and fair.

And then the real killer continued revealing her plan. Yes, the real killer was Lea Michelle's Chanel number six, the "brainy" twin of Boone who, not only jabbed the heel into her own eye making sure not to puncture the actual eye, but methodically planned her entry into the inner-sanctuary of KKT all to get revenge for her dead bathtub-birthing mama. After growing up in the asylum, she was only allowed in because she posed as a handicapped student and Dean Mensch needed more diversity, unlike her brother Boone who just pretended to be a Dickie Dollar scholar while never enrolling in the school in the first place. My god, if you think this review is long you should have watched the episode.

The Chanels all disowned by their parents (Chanel number one's parents disowned her after the world-hating thing), all three of them tried representing themselves in court to which the Black judge determined they were crazy as they had slept through much of the trial. He sentenced them to life in the asylum where they each actually found happiness.

The dean and Grace's father engaged in a real relationship as she wrote a best-selling book on new new feminism which basically says the same as current feminism. While she figured out Lea Michele was the killer she didn't turn the girl in after having killed her husband and the deceptive minx knowing about it.

Now, Grace and Zayday with the help of Chanel six all turned around the KKT house to be inclusive. Those two were spared because they were nice to Chanel 6 on the first pledge day at the beginning of the year, not to mention Grace is her half sister by blood through their father. All was well, save for at the very end when the red devil killer snuck into the asylum as The Chanel slept and lorded over her with a knife. One last scream of horror for everyone and the end. Why the episodes felt so laborious, I don't know. As I said, I think they could have cut out entire scenes and it wouldn't have mattered. They could also have cut some scenes shorter like the goodbye between Denise and Chad which wasted four minutes of screen time on nothing. This honestly felt like they knew they had been commissioned for a certain amount of episodes and needed a ton of filler to make that goal.

Can't move on fast enough from that one. Maybe if they have another season next year as it was originally intended as an anthology like American Horror Story, it will be better but until then, I am left with a bland taste in my brain-mouth.

Finally, the week ended today on the release of the new X-Men Apocalypse trailer. Check it out below if you haven't seen it yet.

Quick caveat, I am not a huge X-Men fan and never was. While I enjoyed the exploits of Wolverine, the group as a whole was too varied, too angsty, too everything for me. Not that I hated any of the movies, books, or cartoons I just always thought, "oh, those are nice." With that said, I have to say I am very unimpressed with this trailer. Just as the music for the Batman v. Superman trailer disappointed me with it's one note-ness, so too did this with its lackluster ominous tone. If this is the end, why doesn't it seem like it? Maybe because we know it isn't from the Days of Future Past? I don't know.

Also, I have to say I never liked the choice of Oscar Isaacs as the villain. In stature, face, and voice, he never seemed foreboding enough to me. Forgetting his height as he can grow or shrink to infinite sizes as shown in the trailer, his voice doesn't instill terror and his face still looks silly to me like it did in the first images from the movie. Will this be good? Maybe, but from the first trailer, I am not impressed nor eager to even see it at this point.

What do you think? Were you watching any TV or film this week or were you too busy with holiday preparations? Did you see the big reveal on Supergirl? Are you excited to see Martian Manhunter? What about Scream Queens? Was this show even on your radar? How did you feel about the finale? And what of the new X-Men trailer? Did it get you excited to see the movie or are you apprehensive about the visuals? Let me know in the comments below (hint: click the no comments button if you see no comments).  

Check out my new 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking

If you’re looking for a scare, check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or  #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The full first season is out now NOW exclusively on Amazon. If you like fast action crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to and follow my blog with that Google+ button to the right.

Until next time, "he calls them the four horsemen."

'He got that one from the Bible.'

P.S. A quote from the trailer, but seriously what is up with all the God and religious references in comic book movies these days, especially when referring to the villain? Can we stop trying to make all religion evil? I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

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Am I Captivated by the Red Devils? Uh... well #ScreamQueens #3WeekRoundUp #PremiereWeek #FOX

Am I Captivated by the Red Devils? Uh... well #ScreamQueens #3WeekRoundUp #PremiereWeek #FOX

All pictures courtesy of FOX

Oh boy. Scream Queens. Fox’s Scream Queens (#ScreamQueens) is... quite the show. Honestly, I don’t really know where the heck to begin with this. There is so much right and wrong with this show that it’s hard to piece out the difference between either. It both appears as a complete mess at times while also knowing what it is doing. Its brand of satire of the horror genre can sometimes be right on while at other times drifts into a far too over-the-top melodrama that even Liberace or Lady Gaga or Bjork or any other outlandishly dressed musical artist would sit back and go, “whoa! Too much.” But before I begin deconstructing the show, let’s back track a little and breakdown what to expect in this review/recap.

As was stated in a previous post, this will be a three week round up post (the same goes for all new shows). Why? Because I believe in giving a show three episodes to prove itself and decide whether I’ll continue with it or not. Since Scream Queens as well as Heroes Reborn gave us a two-hour season premiere, they have already covered three episodes of the series come the end of this week. I’ll go more into depth on why I have this three week rule in a later post but for now just know that I don’t think most people can adequately judge something in just one episode, as a TV series (or my episodic novella series) is meant to change over time. With that in mind, writing a series off that you were initially interested in after just one episode can be foolish as plenty of things start slow.

Now that that business is out of the way, back to Scream Queens. My initial excitement for this show was based on the fact that this came from the same creator of American Horror Story and Nip/Tuck and that it would be a comedy (for a recap of that click #PremiereWeek to go back to that article). Comedy it is. A little too silly? Definitely.

The story follows a brand new year at a university that still allows for Sororities and Fraternities. The best and most popular sorority on campus is the KKT (because the KKK would have been too obvious? Not likely for this show, but OK). The president of the KKT happens to be a young white girl by the name of Chanel played by Emma Roberts. So self-obsessed and cartoonish in her ego this girl is that she has no time or just lacks the brain cells to remember and call her fellow sisters by their proper names, instead naming them Chanel numbers 2-5 (as if that perfume needed any more free advertising). Far too into the worship culture of Chanel, the only thing missing from these other girls (one of which left before the season began) is the yellow Minion color and strange goggles. I’m surprised they can even speak English rather than having formulated their own language of Kissass-ese or some other gobblety-gook. Two of these girls are recognizable as Ariana Grande and Abigail Breslin (Chanel no. 5 and the first suspect due to her name alone). Ariana’s time as a TV star is short-lived as she tweets about her death in the first episode but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jamie Lee Curtis as the dean of the college, she concludes that KKT reflects poorly on college culture and the university as a whole. This comes after an accident last year when Chanel was a prime suspect in loading a spray tan machine with acid, which then sprayed down the president of KKT at that time. Now that Chanel has moseyed her way into such a position, the dean makes a decree that any and all people wanting to join KKT must be permitted to do so—this only after a meeting with a past sorority sister serving as the lawyer for that branch who is stuck in the 90s for whatever reason. That’s what’s going on all in episode one to set up the future shenanigans on the actual college side.

As for the would-be sisters, we have Grace—a legacy whose overprotective father actually comes to teach at the college after the murders start. Her mother apparently died a long while ago but her father regaled her with stories about how much the woman loved being a KKT sister and the celebration of womanhood and blah blah blah! Naturally, she wants to follow in her deceased mother’s footsteps. Her initial roommate, played by Keke Palmer (excuse me as some people I know by their character’s name and others just by their real name) is the only black girl to pledge and really doesn’t want to do it save for it looking good on a resume one day as she has lofty aspirations.

Filling out the trifecta of pledges that matter is Lea Michele’s character or neck brace girl named so because... well, it’s obvious. Outside of her over-creepy nerd knowledge about death, she calls Chanel mom in some strange idolatry fetishism that I’m partially convinced the show made up (apparently young girls without female figures in their lives call a girl near the same age that they admire and look up to their mom? What?). There’s a few other pledges—deaf Taylor Swift (she gets her head run over by a lawnmower toward the end of the second episode), other strange nerd girl and Asian lesbian chick but they’re really there just to fill out the cast and to raise the body count before getting rid of characters you really love. They all move into the house just as the murders start.

Surprisingly, the first real murder comes when Chanel dips their house maid’s (since when do sororities have maids? Don’t they make the pledges do all the gruntwork?), White Mamie (yeah, you read that right. And as the most awkward and cringe-laugh-inducing scenes in the opening minutes of the show tell you, she also don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies) into a deep fryer that was on in the sorority house kitchen (since when does a sorority have a deep fryer? Aren’t the girls always looking out for their weight? I’ve seen those recruitment videos online and not a single girl is over 150, tops). Instead of calling the police, all the girls go along with throwing her body into the freezer from where she subsequently disappears. This, in turn, bonds the girls in secret which also leads to Ariana Grande’s death as she tweets and a hazing situation where all the pledges are buried up to their heads in soil in the backyard and the red devil—the school mascot—runs over the deaf girl’s head on a riding mower. Ka-boom! We got a murder mystery on our hands.

So, outside of the fact that Chanel has a typical douche, jock, frathouse boyfriend with grades so bad he has

to sleep with the dean to stay in school—her choice, though he thinks he’s madly in love with her—the only

other suspect in the first episode is his gay best friend played by Nick Jonas. Yes, that Nick Jonas... from the Jonas Brothers and now with his own solo career. In a completely expected twist akin to Scream, it’s revealed at the end of the second episode that not only did Nick fake his death in his own frat but that he is most certainly one of the two killers stalking the campus. Yes, two killers because murder is only fun if you have a partner. It’s like Scattergory or sex. Side note: I predict with the ridiculousness of this show that there will end up actually being three to five killers.

Because the murder happened solely on KKT property the dean declares that they need to have extra protection, ending them up with Niecy Nash as the security guard in her Reno 9-1-1 callback days. She is hilarious for what she brings and as the Deputy Dewey of the show she gets an old friend killed and manages to accuse the only other black character of being the murderer as only good cops would do, right? Right (Eyeroll, sigh, double sigh!)?

To top it all off there’s a secondary mystery about the death of a sorority sister from twenty years earlier who died during a house party in which she gave birth in an upstairs bathroom and supposedly bled to death. Though her sisters knew of this birth, she died anyway because they had to go dance to TLC’s Waterfalls, which, to be fair that was also my Jimmy-jam back in the day. Hey, sometimes we all need to just listen to the rivers and the lakes like we used to. Not to move to fast away from this second mystery, the girls, along with the help of White Mamie (damn, she was working for them way back then too?) and the dean (not the dean at the time) covered it up somehow and made the young girl disappear. The mystery remains.

Coffee Shop Creeper/Reporter

Because of this continuing question mark, Grace and her new non-boyfriend boyfriend who stalked Chanel the previous year (they probably had a thing before she became uber-popular) is investigating this along with the murders as he considers himself a future journalist/current school newspaper editor... and part-time mascot. Whaaaaaa..! That’s right, he has a red devils costume, but is he the killer?

In my estimation, no. In fact, along with Nick Jonas, I think the person most likely to be the killer is Grace’s overprotective father, played by Oliver Hudson who had a steady gig on Nashville last year and a little father drama of his own over the summer. Why? Because I think either the dead girl from 20 years ago or the second girl who took the dead girl’s baby has something to do with him: Grace’s mother (making the baby grace), a good friend of his, or maybe his sister, etc. I also think Nick Jonas’ character is somehow related to Grace (maybe older brother) and is doing the killings for the hell of it/father-son bonding. Crazy, but right up this show’s alley.

So, my diagnosis of this show? Meh! I rate it around a C or C+ at the moment. While it hits its mark on many things including the actual mystery, well-defined characters and plenty of blood-lust, I think the exaggerated slapstick-ish humor of the show can wear on the viewer over the season. Even for an audience much younger than, say, the AHS crowd, this seems like it could get old fast (probably why this is only a short run 13-episode season). Emma is great at playing the “B” as she has been for the past few years (I’d like to see her stretch and play a nice girl again even in just one thing), Niecy Nash is Niecy Nash,

Keke Palmer has a little too much sister-girl going on (a hyper-attitude that some young girls give off reminiscent of the movie BAPS and falls into the stereotypical black sidekick role), Abigail Breslin and the others haven’t had their proper time to shine yet (it’s only the third episode) and Jamie Lee Curtis feels partially wasted here. Honestly, I would have preferred she do a role on AHS first, maybe fill in the vacancy left by Jessica Lange as the horror godmother of sorts, but I understand how she seems to only want to do comedy nowadays. Will I keep watching? Probably, but this might be a DVR spacer—a show I leave on the DVR for a really long time until I get enough free time to binge nearly the entire season and then be done with it. Should you watch if you haven’t been doing so already? Not if you want real horror or don’t find teenage and young adult drama/comedy funny. If, however, you enjoy things similar to Evil Dead 2 and Dale and Tucker vs. Evil, and can stand a lot of humor in your horror. This is right up your alley.

What do you think? Am I being too harsh on this show? Is it only average or do you drop everything to watch it because it’s your jam, jelly, and secret sauce? Or are you patiently waiting for American Horror Story to come back October 7^th? And what about the mystery for those that do enjoy it? Who do you think the killers are? Let me know what you think in the comments below. Scream Queens airs Tuesdays at 9pm eastern only on FOX.

As always, check out my books on Amazon (if you’re looking for Halloween scares check #AFuriousWind, #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or #ThePowerOfTen). For those interested in something a little more dramatic, check out #TheWriter. The final episode of season one of The Writer is OUT NOW. Ahh! That’s right, all 15 episodes are out now available exclusively on Amazon. And coming in just one week, check for my new comedy book “Yep, I’m Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend” (#AhStalking). Join us on Goodreads to talk about books and TV, and subscribe to my blog.

Until next time, “This is not a cheerocracy. This is a cheer-tatorship.”

P.S. Look, if this show doesn’t remind you of Bring It On at least a little, then I don’t even know who you are. I probably don’t know you anyway, but you know... whatever. I'll keep thinking of something else as a sign-off.

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