Is There Another Flight I Can Catch? No? You Sure? #LAtoVegas #3weekroundup #recap #review #FOX

Is There Another Flight I Can Catch? No? You Sure? #LAtoVegas #3weekroundup #recap #review #FOX

All pictures courtesy of FOX 

Boy, I guess my brain is just taking its dear, sweet time with getting back into the groove of things after such a long layoff. There are literally only, like, four or five new mid-season shows I’ll be reviewing and this is the second, yet it feels like the 20^th. I’m already tired of watching new stuff, though that may be because I haven’t found a diamond in the rough yet. Still, my sluggish start to 2018 does not bode well for my upcoming projects this year, including season two of Extraordinary and the release of my mystery novel The Man On The Roof—look for those soon on Amazon Kindle. Anyway, we’re back with another new show (almost all the new shows are on FOX. Hmm? Interesting...) on FOX. Will this new half-hour comedy make a smooth landing into your heart or will it pull a Sully and have to crash-land in the Hudson before slowly sinking into the deep fridgid waters? Let’s find out together!

FOX’s LA to Vegas is an airplane workplace comedy about the pseudo-famous weekly flight from LA to Vegas. For those not in the know, there really are groups of people that hop onto a plane every weekend in LA and fly to Vegas, returning Sunday night. A respite for some, business for others. I guess an East Coast equivalent would be those yuppies and hipsters that drive from Manhattan to the Hamptons every weekend during the summer—hey, Bravo’s Summer House, you equally trashy Guido-less version of Jersey Shore. Because it’s a constant flight that happens every weekend and it’s very cheap and easier than driving, you get a lot of the same people on the flight every single week, so we will have both crew and passengers as regulars on the show. This is a fictionalized depiction of the drama that could happen amongst them all!

First, let me start by saying that ye should be not fooled ye weary viewer. Though the always classy and talented Dylan McDermott is put front and center in most of the advertising for this show, he is not exactly the star of the show. It doesn’t center around him, but rather the lead stewardess Ronnie, played by former soap star Kim Matula. I’ll talk more about this discrepancy later, just know that I had to get used to it. We open episode one with Ronnie fumbling out of an Uber while leaving a message for a DELTA HR person about a recently vacated flight attendant position on their LA to JFK flight, all while she sprints through the airport getting dressed into her current stewardess uniform. (Note: This is a single-cam, no laugh track, no studio audience kinda comedy for those who didn’t know). She manages to get fully dressed, get on the plane and start welcoming passengers while explaining to her co-worker her dreams of grand travels around the world. LA to JFK can eventually lead to JFK to London which can eventually lead to London to somewhere Asian, and before you know it she’ll have trotted more globe than those B-ball players from Harlem. If she can just get that Delta job and ditch this rinky-dink unnamed airline she works for now.

Ronnie at left, Bernard at right 

Her coworker is Bernard, played by Nathan Lee Graham. He is the fiery, sassy black gay dude that embodies the thick card-stock 90s-version of a gay man. He’s supposed to be funny and we all know it, but somehow the shtick feels dated. Again, I’ll address this more later but just know there’s something off about him. Anyway, he both commiserates with her while also giving her a “girl, bye,” about her seriously thinking she’s going to get her grubby paws on that Delta job—not that he wants it for himself, but no way she’s on the radar.

They break from their coworker powwow so that we can meet our first main-player passengers beginning with Artem. Played by the familiar character actor Peter Stormare (Armageddon, Bad Boys 2, Minority Report), Artem is supposed to be some West European (maybe Russian) sleazy gambler who will take a bet on anything and is superstitious like all gamblers. His gripe: some grown baby-man is sitting in his lucky seat on the plane. The baby-man is sitting with his fiance as they are flying to elope in order to piss off her parents (Artem won that bet. It was either piss off parents or she’s knocked-up). Ronnie gets them to move by offering free beer to someone else who will give up their seat and at first a pregnant woman stands up and it’s supposed to be super funny but... Eh!

Nichole

Through the pregnant woman and the couple we meet another one of our main-player passengers in Nichole (with a damn H!). Nichole is a scripper. She scrips. For a living. That’s some southern accent humor for you. If you don't get it, fine! Anyway, she works at the strip club Grapefroots where she earns a helluva lot of money over the weekends making it bounce and wobble from dem dollas. The pregnant girl works with her, though she doesn’t become a series regular. Nichole (with a damn H!) tells the bride-to-be that she can also make it drop and wiggle for green stacks because a girl that looks like her is built for the pole... or the lap, whichever. Nichole also makes a commission off of each girl she brings in, kinda like a stripper-recruitment pyramid scheme.

Before Ronnie completed her quest to get the couple to move to new seats in order to satisfy Artem (the couple doesn’t care where they sit, so long as they stay together—awww! Young love is so sweet and stupid), she also ran into our third main-player passenger, the very British Colin. Colin is played by actor Ed Weeks who I guess may be new to the US market. I’m sure he’s been being British in other things but I haven’t seen him in anything I can remember, and I’ve clearly seen a lot of crap. Colin is both irritatingly proper and charmingly sarcastic, making it a very odd but mildly satisfying love interest for our long-suffering Ronnie to get internationally dirty on a domestic flight with. Ronnie and Bernard at first stand at front and wonder about who he is and why he’s traveling back and forth to Vegas every weekend because he doesn’t seem like the gambling or stripping type. His fictional, fantasized options: a failing spy, somebody in WITSEC or something else. In reality, he’s a professor at some college, but that still doesn’t explain why he’s flying back and forth which is later revealed.

Moving on, we finally round out the main cast with our cockpit heroes (Boom! Just gave you a perfect name for another comedy show and/or movie. You’re welcome, Hollywood) Alan, the co-pilot played by Amir Talai, and Captain Dave played by McDermott, finally! Alan is given little to nothing to do on the first couple of episodes and may never be given more than 10 lines on each episode. He exists almost solely to sit next to Captain Dave, look like a doofus, act like a dingus, and play beta-male to Captain Dave’s clear alpha sensibilities. He and Captain Dave have been going number one and two together for some time now, as evidenced by his lack of laughter at Dave’s overplayed joke about the flight from LA to Lost Wages! Yeah, it’s that bad. The stick belongs to Dave. The yoke belongs to Dave. Alan does not get to touch either and that is how it will always be.

Alan at left, Captain Dave at right

Captain Dave is a four-time divorced non-ladies-man ladies’ man that all the women want to be with simply so that they get experience in knowing the type of guy that they don’t want to be with. Almost every one of his ex-wives cheated on him, seemingly because he couldn’t get them to climactic heights on a frequent enough occasion, or because his ego was too big and other things not big enough. Still, does that stop him? Well, yeah, it probably stops him from doing a lot of things, but not from flying the pond-hopper that is LA to Vegas on a weekend-ly basis. Granted, he has to have a few drinks to fly or to do just about anything in his life, but he’s always good to go and always sorta-professional. A bevy of bad jokes, filled to the brim with alcohol, and a sweat of jubilant desperation always filming his body, Captain Dave is everybody’s bad uncle but in a plane captain’s uniform.

The flight filled with potential syphilis carriers finally takes off toward Vegas. It isn’t long into the flight before Ronnie learns that a fellow stewardess—some Asian chick—has already landed the Delta job behind her back. With her dreams crushed, Ronnie quits mid-flight and goes to sit down in the seat next to the professor who not only heard her and Bernard’s theorizing about who he is and what he does, but also logically explains how he thinks she made a terrible mistake because now she will have to pay for her flight back to LA and is in no better possession for a national flight than before. His logic infuriates her. So much so that they hurriedly scamper to the bathroom to make things super awkward and get a little strange and wet, which they do in a PG-13 sorta way. After there mile-high make out, they de-board never to see each other again... until the return flight on Sunday night. It’s only then revealed why he goes back and forth from LA to Vegas: he is married and has a young son. And Ronnie feels like an absolute peach about the situation.

While Ronnie is losing her shiznit on the Brit, Captain Dave is trying to find a bit of weekend glory as his life has dive-bombed in a most miserable way. He had hoped to flaunt his captain-of-the-air power by officiating an on-board wedding for that eloping couple in the same way a boat captain can marry off anyone at sea, but Ronnie informs him he has no such power. Then, on the return flight he manages to leg-lock that very same young, dumb baby-man when the guy comes back complaining about the flight and the passengers on it who convinced his girl that she wasn’t actually in love with him anymore—Nichole (with a damn H!) totally got that pyramid-scheme bonus. Captain Dave sneaks up from behind and subdues the kid who has threatened to do something really mean to the plane. Ronnie un-quits her job (never made it official) and commits to suffering in hopes of that one day. One day! And the Brit confesses that he has been separated from his wife because they went through a quickie Vegas wedding after a few Hangover-esque nights of wild times that accidentally produced a baby. He is in no way in love with that woman. Ronnie feels a little better about their in-air slobfest.

Episode two is about Captain Dave being chosen as one of the top 10 pilots to watch out for by some flyboy magazine, which he hopes really sticks it to his rival. But as the time draws near for him to do the photo shoot for the zine, he comes down with a severe case of the yips and, assumingly like in all of his past four failed marriages, can’t quite perform. The plane is up in the air and cruising on autopilot but no way in hell is he gonna be able to land this bird.

Meanwhile, Ronnie and Bernard are suffering through their own crisis. After handing out a coupon for Grapefroots to her seatmate, Nichole discovers that the old man has died on her shoulder. Per airline and FAA rules and regulations, a person cannot be legally pronounced dead until on the ground. Ronnie and Bernard don’t want to freak-out the passengers, so they (Nichole helps) try to pretend the man is just sleeping until doofus Alan comes out from the cockpit and mistakes the old white dead guy for another old white alive guy and announces that there is a dead guy onboard. And who wants to ride around with a dead guy? So Nichole has to enlist the help of British bloke Colin to help her carry the body to the front for no apparent reason other than to set up the pratfall of Alan when he is summoned to the front to land the plan. Alan trips over the dead guy and smacks into the cockpit door, knocking himself out. So Ronnie has to go into the cockpit and convince Captain Dave that he can land the plane, and simultaneously she has to explain why she failed to show up for a date with Colin after their misunderstanding got understood. Her explanation: She just couldn’t because he scared her with all of his overbearing, polite Britishness. But carrying a dead body together changed things and once the captain does land the plane, she is totally ready for a real relationship. And now Colin agrees with her that they shouldn’t be in a relationship, and she’s lost her chance. It’s DELTA’s LA to JFK all over again!

Episode three finally introduces us to Captain Dave’s nemesis. Upon coming into work with an injured wrist that he claimed he hurt while trying to lift an armoire off of someone, Dave suffers through Bernard calling it into the airline. They quickly send a replacement in Captain Steve, a man who flies international (LA to Canada) and who is married to a model (a catalogue model an internet catalogue model). Dave hates him because he finished at the top of their flight school and beat him out for multiple routes in their time as professional pilots. So the last thing he wants to see is this man take another win by doing a better job than he ever could. At first the crew are enamored by him. Ronnie thinks he’s a hunk of a man, ditto Bernard and even Alan thinks he’s cool. In fact, they could get used to flying with him, and Steve brags about maybe taking over LA to Vegas for an easier workload. They’d at least never have to check Dave’s hair for grays anymore or baby him about his terrible jokes and drinking. But when Steve cracks the whip and insists that they are terrible at their jobs.

Bernard and Ronnie then unite with Dave in operation: Get Steve Off LA to Vegas. Riding as a passenger, Dave tells Steve to ease up on his crew but Steve ain’t hearin’ it and says that he’ll have them fired if he takes over. Dave then turns on the plan when he learns that he can take over Steve’s international flights if Steve takes his LA to Vegas. Still, Ronnie and Bernard are like family, so he sticks up for them again only for Steve to reveal that he was never serious about taking over LA to Vegas. Hell, the dude flies international. International! So, all is saved as far as flights go.

Left to Right: Captain Dave, Ronnie, Colin

On the ground, Colin struggles to throw his son a really cool Vegas birthday party but is thwarted when the place he booked was previously used by an anti-vaccine parent and now has a super-virus or something. Ronnie hooks him up with Artem who knows people in Vegas. Artem takes him to a nice indoor playhouse of sorts only for the budget to balloon to a few thousand dollars. So Colin and Artem end up at Grapefroots where Nichole (with a damn H!) welcomes them to throw the party on Sunday because it is a dead day anyway. The kids have fun sliding down the pole, have condom-balloon animals and even get to pet a man dressed as a dog who is the slave to his dominatrix mistress. It’s the best b-day party ever!

What’s my score? I give this a C. This show is dumb, OK? Like, seriously dumb. It reminds me of a defunct show from about ten or 15 years ago called The Loop where the comedy elicits more head shakes and “this is stupid” comments than actual laughs, yet I liked The Loop. This? Eh! Take it or leave it. I don’t think it’s as smart as Brooklyn-9-9 but I don’t watch that either. And it’s definitely no New Girl. The funny thing is that every situation, so far, has been pretty realistic. Can I believe that a pilot would get the yips, a guy would die in flight, an eloping couple would break up and the girl would run off to be a stripper? Yes. It’s all happened before. Yet, there is something so very inauthentic/unfunny about the show. I think that it fails to properly balance or even have some kind of emotional weight to any of the episodes. One of the reasons why most comedies in the past were successful was because they had at least one “aww” moment either per episode or per every two episodes. That moment when the audience stops, the plot slows and a real connection is made between the characters and the viewers, either exploring some kind of meaningful topic or hitting on something revealing about the characters. But with most single-cam shows of the last decade, they fail to do this unless they are strictly about families. Even then it’s difficult. With the exception of Seinfeld which never had to have an aww moment, many of today’s comedies go strictly for the laughs without establishing any personal connection. Such is the problem with this show.

Have you ever been watching a comedy or any kind of movie and thought, “Wow! This seems like it should be good and I should be more into it but I’m just not.” The jokes could even be funny or the action pretty good but you just don’t feel a thing? That’s sorta this show. And it’s really no more epitomized than by the character of Bernard. It’s rare that after spending a few weeks/episodes with a show (or a movie) that I can’t figure out what it is that either I or some other viewers won’t/don’t like about something, yet here I am with Bernard. I can’t figure out if I don’t like the actor, don’t like the way he’s playing the character, don’t like the way the character is written or just don’t like the dialogue for the character but something is painfully off about him to me. This is not a Seth MacFarlane/Orville problem where if you get rid of him the entire show becomes exponentially better, but Bernard currently doesn’t feel like he fits with the rest of the cast. Don’t get me wrong, some of the lines they’ve written for him are quite funny if not new, but they don’t make me want to laugh. It’s almost as if every line he says he knows is funny, but he doesn’t want you to laugh because he’ll then feel laughed at. I don’t know, it just feels strange. It doesn’t fit with everyone else.

Speaking of casting, I have to say that I was a little disappointed when I realized that McDermott really wasn’t the full-on lead. Again, you can usually tell who the star of a show is by who they open up on and whose private life is explored more. Ronnie gets both the opening shot and gets all the questions about her private life explored on a continual loop for the first three episodes. You have all the answers to her major questions by the end of episode four (yes, I watched four eps instead of just three but only covered three per my usual): she’s single, she wants to travel the world, she’s socially open to dating but kinda has a crush on British guy which is really complicated, she is nosy and thinks she’s a do-gooder, she once had an affair with a married man and et cetera. McDermott you hardly know anything about except that he is a lush with ex-wives who thinks he’s better than he is. Does he have kids? Why did he move to LA? What does he do when in Vegas? Who knows. Again, not hating because the woman who plays Ronnie is quite charming and good, but for those tuning in solely for McDermott (me at first), temper your expectations. You get him, but he’s more of a co-lead. Funny enough, this is a real tricky way to get women to top-line network shows. I digress.

Should you be watching? Eh! Probably not. It’s certainly not a family comedy and chances are good that if you’re single, you’re probably too busy with work or other shows that you feel a lot more comfortable with on Tuesday nights—a night with a glut of comedy already, with NBC’s reality game shows and ABC’s two-hour laugh block. It’s ultimately a forgettable show that tries but doesn’t try hard enough to exploit its novel idea. I’ve called many a show and movie forgettable before and some have turned out to be good or stick around longer than I hypothesized they would, but I would say that this one does not supply you with any joke or comedic setup that you’ll be talking about the next day at work or tweeting about with your buddies that aren’t currently already watching the show. Sorry, but I’d expect a lot more from producers Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. Oh, did I bury the lede there? Oh well! LA to Vegas airs on FOX Tuesdays at 9:00pm, right before The Mick. You can catch up with the first four episodes on FOXonDemand or at FOX.com now.

What do you think? Have you heard of LA to Vegas? If not, do you think you’ll tune in for an episode or two now? If you have heard of it, have you seen it? Do you like it? Was I too harsh on it? Is it your new favorite show? And what crazy shenanigans do you want to see happen to the crew and passengers of the flights? And when will Colin and Ronnie hook up again? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking. If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. 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, “Do you fly often?”

'No, I... don't have wings.'

P.S. That's a little Airplane humor for you. See, the sneaky part about it is that it's not an actual quote from the Airplane films. Sure, I could've used the most quoted quote from the overly quotable film, but I didn't. So... yeah. I'll think of a better sign-off next time.

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Not Gonna Be No Clay Wheels And Patrick Swayze #Ghosted #FOX #3weekroundup #review #recap

Not Gonna Be No Clay Wheels And Patrick Swayze #Ghosted #FOX #3weekroundup #review #recap

All pictures courtesy of FOX

So a lot of the TV season premieres have been a little staggered this year, which I actually hate because then something new is always coming on every single month. I’m not gonna go on a rant here, but I think that things get canceled so quickly and nothing is ever given the chance to stick and stay or build up a fanbase because of both this culture to binge-watch everything, and because of this releasing of shows at any old time across all platforms and networks. I think a great many networks would really be able to see what they had if they released all of their fall shows at once, then let them run for three weeks before making any snap judgments, because you know that some of this stuff is just going to get switched around by date and time, and the worst thing to do is to switch its day or time after a few weeks of existence. Dang it! I said I wasn’t gonna go on a rant. Why didn’t you stop me, reader? Anyway, for today’s review we have Ghosted. Does it scare up a good TV-watching time or is this show as good as gone? Let’s find out together.

FOX’s Ghosted (#Ghosted) stars Craig Robinson as Leroy Wright and Adam Scott as Max Jennifer—an unlikely, totally odd couple drawn together to stop crazy paranormal, supernatural and just plain ol’ bizarre happenings. Basically, this is the half-hour comedy version of FOX’s defunct Sleepy Hollow mixed with a little X-Files. OK, so we start with Scott’s character Max Jennifer in a book store talking to a random customer-lady. He reveals to her that he used to be this quasi-famous big-shot science professor at an Ivy League tech school (MIT) on the East coast. It should be pointed out that this show is supposed to be happening in California (LA, I think. Don’t quote me on that). He reveals this because he tries to get the customer-woman to believe that he is not crazy after he said that he was going through a rough time in his marriage not because his wife left but because she was abducted by aliens. Yeah, he’s, essentially, that crazy-haired, big-noggin’d dude on the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens show. Or any teacher/scholar off of that show, really. And out of nowhere, he receives a bop on the head and is kidnapped.

We cut to Robinson’s character Leroy Wright who is working as a security guard in a local mall. In some quick character building, we learn that he is actually an ex-LAPD Missing Persons detective who was recently fired. His former partner is dead, but his partner’s family—a wife and son—are still around and Leroy, being the good guy he is, tries to help out and be a friend to the boy, sticking to the cop’s code of family. He has to go to a janitor’s closet in the mall and is also bonked on the head.

Wait, So... What?

The two of them awake in the same room, sitting on chairs with a stern white woman in front of them. Ava Lufrey (played by Ally Walker) has ordered their kidnapping because she needs their help. She is in charge of a secret government agency called the Bureau Underground, which is pretty much like the MIB, save for paranormal and supernatural stuff... And aliens. From what I’ve seen, the agency basically covers everything under the sun, yet is so unbelievably small that it almost qualifies as being quaint. One of Ava’s top field agents just went missing and he left a cryptic message before he was disappeared. The message: get Dr. Max Jennifer (yeah, dude’s a doctor-professor) and Detective Leroy Walker. Have they ever met the guy? Nope. But Ava cuts crap smooth and quick and offers them restoration of their respective careers and positions if they help the Bureau figure out what happened to their agent. With a little bit of massaging, Leroy is convinced by Max and the adventure begins.

Also working for the Bureau and seeking to help them in this pursuit are scientist Barry Shaw (played by Adeel Akhtar) and tech-girl/resident ass-kicker Annie (played by Amber Stevens West of The Carmichael Show). As you can guess, the scientist, while brilliant in the things he produces for Leroy and Max to use on their little adventures, is also a bit of a dimwit and is yet another character played for comic relief on the show. Annie seems to have more of a straight-man role which could (read: definitely will) morph into a love-interest role for one of the two guys.

Not but a few blocks into this trip do we see how this show will play out. Leroy does not want to be paired with Max in any way, which is sad for him because they had to come as a packaged deal for the mission or else no perksies. He tries to kick Max out of the car so that he can be left to do his detective work alone, but Max pleads with him in a heartfelt little speech about how this is all he has after his wife was abducted and how after being called crazy for believing what he did, this is the first chance ever for him to be proven right about something.

They continue their detective-ing through the city to get to the disappeared-agent’s storage unit. In it, they don’t find much of anything but they do find a copy of Max’s book. See, not only is our good friend Max a doctor, but he wrote the book on Multiverse theory and how there are multiple -verses as opposed to one and how each one has its own replicas of the same people and oh my god, why am I explaining this? If you’ve seen a comic book TV show or read them or just about any sci-fi, then you know the principle.

The team uses some clues to discover that the agent was working undercover at a nuclear power plant but the Bureau has no idea why. As it turns out, someone or something in the plant is diverting power to another tower in some sorta sender-receiver coil hookup. Well, before they can figure out where the power is going and why, they encounter some goblin-eyed skinhead who looks like WWE’s The Big Show. They manage to escape but only by their teeth’s skin. Back in the lab, the team figures out where the power is going, then go to what looks like an abandoned building. But because Leroy doesn’t trust Max, he handcuffs him to the car’s steering wheel while he goes and investigates. But suddenly some sorta purple/fuchsia/pink tractor beam grabs the entire car and starts to abduct him.

Leroy returns to the car and doesn’t see the beam but does let Max out. Only now does he confess that the reason he was fired from the force is because he made the judgment call to raid some room/building without backup, his partner followed and was then shot. He feels guilty for getting his partner killed and actually wanted to protect Max by leaving him in the car. Together, they breach the building only to find the missing agent dude in a room on what looks like a surgical table or morgue table. And guess who’s there? That same The Big Show-lookin’ son of a gun. Well, big and bald does somethin’ crazy: he plucks his head off like a Lego-man’s head and sets it on the surgical-tools table. This is the first paranormal/abnormal/WTF thing that Leroy sees with his own eyes and now believes a little somethin’, somethin’. But what, not even he fully knows.

They try to get the agent to safety but end up running from the headless big man. They play keep-away with his head for a little while before he finds them and yanks his head back. A very quick mover, the big man somehow gets the unconscious agent up onto the roof before Max and Leroy can regroup. Max gets to the roof slightly earlier than Leroy and sees a spaceship tractor-beam the agent inside, then zip off. It also returned the green-eyed Big Show goblin to a normal human and Max is tripping. Leroy is still ready to dismiss the alien story, though.

They get back to the Bureau and sit with the boss lady to tell her what happened. She gives them the old, “well, you’ve tried your best,” and thanks them. She’s gonna try to do what she can about her promise, even though they didn’t actually rescue the agent. But then Max and Leroy stand for what they believe and each commit to joining the Bureau and fighting for what is right. They want to see this mission all the way through and if they can somehow get the agent back, then they will. Ava tells them that she can’t wait and even says that they can talk to the other people with abduction stories similar to what Max reports happened to the agent. And what do ya know, Max sees the different people that have come in and realizes that one of them is his wife.

Episode two sees the two men starting on their first official day as part of the bureau. A fairly lax recruitment and field agent training, they go through not a lick of basic Bureau Underground protocol or training of any kind. They are just out on the job immediately. This episode delves deeper into Leroy’s personal life. While Max is told that his wife must be prepped to meet with him and it will take a little while longer before he sees her, Leroy asks for the night of Halloween off so that he can take his dead partner’s kid out trick-’r-treating. Ain’t that just like a black dude: get a job and on the first day ask if you can have the day off. Anyway, the kid tricked his mom and is hoping that it is alright if Leroy drops him off at some young girl’s haunted Halloween house party. At first Leroy is against it, but Max plays the cool non-uncle uncle and convinces him to let the boy live (we’re talking 12-year-olds here).

Before they can drop him off, they get a call about a “creature” with “fangs and glowing eyes.” Ava is all freaked and tells them to get over there now. Well, the “creature” turns out to be a cat, but something is strange about this cat. It bites the boy. The boy subsequently becomes like some sorta strange rabid zombie like in the move Quarantine (or Rec). He flees from the car and runs all the way to the house party. Dressed as a vampire, the young white girl at the door thinks that it’s cool and she’s into this cool funny black boy at her school. Then he gets on the floor, growls and bites the hell outta her.

By the time Leroy and Max show up to the house, every kid inside is infected with whatever this is. Back at HQ, they concoct a plan to create some kind of antivirus/cure but they will need to get the kids to stop trying to bite everyone in order to administer it. So, Leroy and Max go into the house with tranq guns and take out every kid inside, including his dead partner’s son after video-calling with his mom and showing the kid vamping on his back trying to bite his neck. She’s none the wiser. It does play slightly funny.

With the kids out, the day is saved until Leroy realizes that he’s been bitten and starts to bite Max who he had duct-taped to the passenger’s seat. Leroy is injected by Annie in the nick of time. Back at the Bureau, the kids receive the cure and the day is saved. And the kid awakes to thank his play uncle AKA Bee Mo (Beast Mode in babyspeak) and realizes that the guy is not trying to replace his dad but be there to support him.

Episode three sees the team dealing with a rash of strange deaths. Some guy was found in a resort hotel dead from no apparent cause. There are no puncture marks, no cuts, no bruises and tox report is clean. But the strangest thing, and what is surely the reason he’s dead: got no heart. How the heck does a human heart just disappear? Who knows, but while they’re trying to figure that out, Max is trying to dig deep into Leroy’s life. After learning that he will finally get to see his once alien-abducted wife, Max wants to know if Leroy had somebody. Leroy at first doesn’t reveal it but finally relents and says that his last girl he proposed to on the jumbotron at Dodgers’ stadium and she said no, and it was very hilarious. Sad for him, but hilariously awkward for everyone else. He’s been off relationships since.

Leroy and Max go to the hotel to follow the one suspect they have: a past doctor turned photographer who was caught on surveillance cameras at both heartless murders—oh yeah, there’s been others. Some of the firsts were in Florida and now they’re here. Undercover as a Bachelor Party weekend with just two guys (saddest party ever), they try questioning the photographer and circumventing the fine-ass lady detective working the death case. Things get complicated when the photographer dude dies in the same way as the other heartless fella.

Back at HQ we finally see Annie and Barry get something to do to develop their characters more. Ava gives them daughter duty: spy on her daughter and figure out who and what Doug-o’clock is—something she saw on her daughter’s social network page. As it turns out, her daughter figures out this plan and winds up in her mother’s office. She’s about to really complain when Annie stops her and tells her that she had a horrible mother who hardly ever noticed her while she was growing up. The little girl should be thankful for her overprotective mother. And we get a nice “Awwww” moment.

Back with Leroy and Max, as they keep detective-ing away, Max tries to set Leroy up with the black detective. He succeeds and is free to go do some of his own sleuthing while Leroy is trying to get his own middle-aged-man groove back. Max sneaks into the dark room of the photographer/once-doctor (he lost his medical license) only to find that the doctor was also Scooby-Dooing. He was at the sight of both murders not because he did them but because he was stalking the person who did them, trying to capture her. With an assist from Barry back at the office, Max learns that the real killer has tattoos on her arm and that she is a succubus who yanks out men’s hearts with a seductive love. Yes, it’s the cop.

There’s a fight between Max and Leroy about how Max is totally killing the vibe by interrupting his soon-to-be booty call and how he should get out. Max is proven right and kicks the crazy succubus out of the balcony window. She disappears and the day is half-saved.

They get back to HQ and find that Max’s wife is ready to meet. He visits her in some makeshift cell somewhere but she escapes, does that creepy MIB-style vertical blinking thing, and tells him not to look for her. And this is one of the many parts where you as a viewer and fan of weird stuff are totally wondering, “Hm? You know, why the hell isn’t there a live-action MIB show on TV? That woulda been way better than the last movie. Will Smith, you don’t have to star in it, but get to producing that show, man!”

What’s my grade? I give it a solid B+. This show is goofy comedy, so it isn’t going to challenge you in any meaningfully deep way, but it will entertain for a little while. Craig Robinson and Adam Scott seem totally in their element and comfortable with their roles. They have a very good chemistry, albeit not historically good (they’re no Abbott and Costello). But if you’re looking for something close to Parks and Recreation or The Office (their previous shows), then you might be out of luck. I will, however, say that this comedy, while slapstick, is very much-so more mature than FOX’s other big comedy/sci-fi add The Orville. This show might actually have some laughable moments whereas The Orville, in my opinion, really doesn’t.

There really isn’t much I can say about this show. It moves at a good pace as it assumes that you already know the concept so you should be able to slide right into this show. It also doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. It doesn’t straddle the line between comedy or drama. And it has at least two overarching mysteries for the entire season: what really happened to Max’s wife, and where the heck did that flying saucer take the agent guy. It’s a solid comedy addition to the sci-fi genre. Will it break any barriers or tread new ground? No.

Should you be watching? Yes. If you liked shows like The X-Files or Supernatural or Warehouse 13, then you should probably enjoy this if you also like a heavy dose of comedy with your “the truth is out there” adventures. Ghosted airs on FOX Sundays at 8:30pm EST. Check for it on demand to catch up.

What do you think? Have you heard of Ghosted? If you haven’t, do you think you’ll tune in for a peek? If you have heard of the show, have you seen it? Did you like it? Where do you think they can improve on the show? Which character is your favorite? Do you wish that they would give Annie something more to do like I do? Let me know in the comments below.

Check out my 5-star comedy novel, Yep, I'm Totally Stalking My Ex-Boyfriend. #AhStalking If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. 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, “The truth is... wait a minute, we’ve looked everywhere for the truth but one place.”

‘Where?’

“Inside ourselves.”

‘Say whaaaaa!’ (mind blown!)

P.S. Come up, now that’s definitely a good sign-off. Heck, it can even be a good all-around sign-off for the first time finally, like... ever. I could put that at the end of every post because it’s so Kantian and deep and philosophical and—what? You don’t like that? It’s nothing like the writings of the great philosopher I. Kant? Fine. But just let the record show that I thought it was pretty good. I’ll think of a better sign-off next time. 

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Being Different Isn’t Always Bad #Gifted #FOX #3weekroundup #recap #review

Being Different Isn’t Always Bad #TheGifted #FOX #3weekroundup #recap #review

All pictures courtesy of FOX and Marvel 

And the reviews for this season’s new shows just keep comin’. Today we are looking at FOX’s new comic book superhero show The Gifted. So, will this comic book drama send-up make us all feel blessed to be in its presents, or should this gift have come with a receipt for easy return? Let’s find out together.

FOX’s The Gifted is one of their first expansions of the X-men brand into the television realm. With last year’s Legion on FX a quasi-success, the execs over at FOX decided they needed to keep expanding their ever-growing X-men universe. But while Marvel Studios properties like Agents of SHIELD, Inhumans and the Defenders spin-offs are all definitely concretely connected to the more expansive cinematic universe and in very defined and deliberate ways (even if the fandom wants more connectivity), The Gifted waffles on where it wants to fit into the X-men film universe. And with the jumbling of the X-men timeline in the films and Hugh Jackman no longer playing Wolverine, maybe it’s a good thing that this show only timidly references the X-men and what happened to them. However, before I start this review in earnest, I would venture to say that the show takes place in some years before the events in the film Logan, meaning that it is not part of the official timeline of the other past X-men films, including the most recent Apocalypse. I know other articles and critics have stated what timeline the studio has implied it is or what they think, but I’m gonna go with the one in Logan. Note: I have not seen Logan but read plenty about it. OK?

Lorna

The Gifted follows one family that meets up with a band of mutant renegades, for lack of a better word. We begin by showing the renegades. A lizard-eyed woman played by Jamie Chung, Blink is fleeing from a detention center where we can only assume that they kept mutants. As she tries escaping from a brigade of police down an alley, we see her powers of transportation. She jumps into a portal and jumps out across the city where the renegades are actively looking for her. Blink has never met these three before yet they know that she is a mutant and want to help her. The group consists of Eclipse the leader—he is a being of pure hot-white light with the skin-cloak of a human; John Proudstar who seems to have some sort of electric power and/or a tracking power that allows him to sense when other mutants are in the vicinity; and Lorna Dane who has a metallic power similar to Magneto’s where she can bend, push and manipulate any metals in her area (Note: After researching the show further, I learned that Lorna is supposed to be Magneto’s daughter). Lorna and Eclipse are dating and it is revealed early on that Lorna is pregnant with his light-goo baby, but this is only after she is captured. See, while trying to rescue Blink, the cops come and surround the place. The group manages to escape out the back but a cop shoots Eclipse to show all of his light about to pour out. Lorna goes all “don’tchu be messin’ wit my man” and tries to kill the cop and his backup. And in a devastating case of when keeping it real goes wrong, she is captured while the others are forced to get away.

Then, we finally catch up with the family. We learn from the offset that in this family of four, the son is being bullied at school. The bullying is so bad that his parents have had to get involved. His father Reed Strucker (played by Stephen Moyer of True Blood fame) is some high-powered attorney who has been dealing intimately with mutant cases for a few years now. Apparently, as we are to understand, something huge and destructive happened with the X-men. They are gone and there was some sort of mutant war that eradicated most of the mutants and killed tons of innocent people. Again, this could be referring to the fight between Magneto’s side and Professor X’s side in X-men: The Last Stand from the first trilogy or something to happen in a future movie, or something in the Days of Future Past timeline, but I’m going with the pre-Logan timeline. Anyway, now people are all rather freaked about mutants and there are a lot more stringent laws and protocols that dictate how mutants are supposed to be dealt with. He’s part of that enforcement but is hardly the bad guy that the trailers and commercials for this show make him out to be. Don’t be fooled!

Eclipse and Reed Strucker

Anyway, Reed is married to Kate Strucker who, for all intents and purposes, is not shown to be much of anything. Even though it is revealed in the second episode that she is a nurse she plays very much like a housewife, and a characterless one at that. The only interaction or dialogue she ever has is concerning the children. She’s, essentially, a Care-bot 5000 who would cease to exist upon her children’s deaths. I would have liked it if we got to see and hear more about how she feels about mutants as a whole. Just the concept of mutants. But maybe this show is too focused to round out the characters as she isn’t the only one who plays a little flat.

Reed threatens the head school guy with a lawsuit if they don’t try doing something about the bullying, but quickly eases back into the caring, goofy dad—the model for what we all want as a father or the man we want to grow to be if we are already into adulthood. He’s stern but kind and tries to be fair. Yet he, like his wife, is fiercely protective of his brood. Such are Mr. and Mrs. Strucker.

Then we have the daughter who, I’m guessing, is the eldest though I’m very unsure about that as they look and play the exact same age to me (about 15). That’s neither here nor there. The daughter is Lauren Strucker who is shown as the assumed All-American girl-next-door type who has a modicum of popularity (people know her but she’s probably not this year’s prom queen) and a boyfriend which gives her added social capital. I’d like to tell you more about how she plays into the normal teen dynamic but they only spend about ten minutes of showtime (if that) in high school. Both she and her brother are thrust out of that world and into the full adult world before the end of the episode. Lauren is a mutant who has had her powers for at least three years (preteens, maybe longer) and never bothered to tell her parents. In the first episode, I’m not even sure she had told her brother before his incident. Her power has something to do with pushing and/or perception. I still couldn’t tell as she can make things move with her mind but she can also leave this weird bubble-glass looking anomaly in front of people so that they can’t walk forward any further. It’s very undefined.

Lauren’s brother Andy is the one being bullied. Your typical wiry, mop-headed wallflower, Andy fields the barbs of three large jock bullies at high school. While he seems to want to be protective of his sister as the brother, she is more protective of him. Wow! It’s strange that I’m actually struggling to write his bio as I thought it would flow easy like his sister’s did, but outside of him having been bullied there’s nothing all that amazing or noteworthy about his character. We don’t know if he’s a nerd, a gamer, a computer geek, or just a loser with no discernible talent before getting his powers. We do know that he isn’t as popular as his sister and that’s about it. He sneaks out with his sister (his sister is out legitimately) to go to the school dance. There, he sees the bullies who take him into the locker room shower and spray him with ice-cold water.

And then he starts to scream.

His screams nearly bring down the entire gym just a few feet away. The screams bend the metal showerheads, burst the tiles and send the bullies flying back into the lockers. His sister intuitively knows that it’s her brother and runs to him to calm him down. They escape back home but with the bullies having not been knocked unconscious and left able to see the whole bizarre event, it doesn’t take long for the police to show up at the Strucker family house. Those special guidelines for mutants kick in and the kids must go with them. Mama Strucker refuses, they push her to the ground and the kids get pissed. Lauren reveals her powers to her mother and they barely escape after the police get held up by Lauren’s weird bubble-glass power. They have to call Papa Strucker to tell him that the kids are mutants and he’s all like, “Lady-dude, whaaaaaat!” Mind blown.

Meanwhile, before the whole school incident, Reed was in the prison where they are keeping Lorna. The standard hard plastic case just like with Magneto, he informs her of her pregnancy as even she didn’t know and she loses it. On the other end, Blink tells her new homies at the Mutants Underground HQ that she can’t teleport into Eclipse’s girl’s cell because if she tried to use her powers to go somewhere that she hadn’t previously seen, it could be disastrous and end up slicing her in half or something like that. And then Eclipse gets a call from Reed. On the run with his family, Reed is willing to leave the country to go somewhere with laxer mutant laws like Mexico but needs help in figuring out how to hide, duck and dodge the cops until they can make it to the border. He is willing to trade whatever favors he can with the Mutants Underground leader to help get the guy’s baby mama (oh yeah, Reed reveals it to Eclipse) out of prison before she pops.

So papa Strucker and Eclipse have an agreement. His family is going to go with the Underground Mutants network to get them to safety while he stays behind and works whatever magic he can to get Lorna out of prison. But before they can get to the hideout, they are ambushed by a bunch of cops led by Jace Turner. I’m not really sure if he’s a detective or what, but I do know that he works on the special services mutant containment team and deals with these “freaks” on a regular basis. He and his people corner the family and here, both I and the show will jump back to mention that Eclipse left the mutant HQ without telling his bro that he was leaving, and forcing Blink to keep his departure a secret. Only after Blink tells Proudstar do they leave and, serendipitously meet the family and Eclipse right when the cops have both sides of the street blocked. Where’d they come from? Don’t know. How do they expect to escape the cops on foot? Also a mystery. But we let it go in favor of a cool action scene.

Instead of hopping out of their cars and giving chase, the cops undo this strange briefcase thing. In it, it has the tentacle robots from The Matrix, and I was like, “Wow! How the hell did FOX get permission to use the tentacle robots from The Matrix trilogy on their show?” These things puff their tentacles out into a ball and roll across the floor to chase after the family and mutants. And you’re thinkin’ “This seems like a job for Blink’s teleportation port-hole powers.” So, she creates a portal but struggles to keep it open and we are cemented with the idea that she is very new to her powers, which begs the question of how old she is supposed to be as, up until now, we’ve really only seen the majority of mutants realizing they had these powers in their teens, not generally well into adulthood, but I digress.

Blink opens a portal, everyone but Reed jumps through. Andy does his weird yelling smash-power thing and stays just long enough in the building with his father to see Reed get shot in the lower back.

Episode two starts with the end of the portal jump again. Everyone is freaking out for their own reason. The family is going crazy because they just saw Reed go down with a bullet and don’t know if he survived as he is still in that abandoned warehouse where the police would be coming to get him shortly. But Eclipse and Proudstar are freaking because Blink passes out and convulses a little as she can’t handle what just happened. She had never done a jump that far before. She traveled miles and held the portal for everyone to go through. They have to get her back to the HQ where they find that something more ailing is wrong with her as she has lost consciousness and is randomly creating portals. She creates a portal in the middle of the road somewhere that sees a truck try to swerve to hit it and the entire rear of the pickup cut off in the portal and came sliding through to the mutants and family’s side, nearly running a few of them over. Now, not only is Blink so sick that she needs to go to the hospital (and we learn that Mama Strucker is supposedly a nurse though we’ve seen none of her nursing) but a few of the others are injured too, but they’ll be alright. The portal opens again but Lauren is able to close this one with her powers.

Meanwhile, their father, who was taken down by the sentinels, ends up in an interrogation room with Jace who wants to know where the kids went. He ain’t sayin’ nothin’. So they try to charge him with colluding with terrorists because he went against protocol and showed Lorna her health report that said she was preggers. Speaking of, Lorna who has an X name of Polaris, adapts to the prison where a shock collar is put on all of the “muties” to discourage their power use. Some mean bee-otch that has control over the other mutants inside but is all human tries to make her do her bidding. When she threatens to beat the unborn baby out of her, Lorna powers through the shock collar to throw a metal table at her. Congratulations, you’ve won a trip to solitary.

Back with the group, Kate leaves with Eclipse to go steal some medicine for Blink. They use Kate’s supposed nurse’s rep to get the drugs. Eclipse reveals his taped-over gunshot wound from the first episode to get them into the back. The doctor patches him while Kate steals the drugs and they barely slip out the back to get back to the Underground HQ. They return to find Blink’s portal sickness has worsened to where portals are randomly generating all around the building and a SWAT team was trying to breach through the one where the truck came through. So Kate plays hero against all odds and runs in to give Blink the proper dose of meds. She has to jump through portals to get down to her as the stairs are gone and the building’s a mess. She gives her the meds and things immediately clear.

Back in the police station, Jace threatens Reed’s mother who he dragged in for questioning, too. Reed insists that he wants to make a deal in which he goes down for any and all crimes and his family are kept safe. But Jace wants the Mutant Underground as part of this deal. Reed must decide whether to give up the very people he just entrusted his family with or not, but he doesn’t take long to make that decision.

Episode three sees the family and the mutants at odds with how to best do things. Kate and the kids leave in the middle of the night to see if they can’t rescue Papa Strucker and use the system to get him free from wherever he is. The mutants are trying hard to train Blink and push her to learn how to use her powers so that she will be inclined to use them to help break into Lorna’s prison. But while Kate struggles with old friends not having any loyalty to let them stay at their houses for a while, another mutant named Dreamer (played by Elena Satine) proposes that they do a mind dive into Blink’s psyche to implant some dreams and memories that would spur her on to think that Lorna was her best friend. This way Blink would have someone and something to focus on when trying to control her powers.

Meanwhile, Reed gets rigged with some kind of high-tech bug that will help Jace track him back to the Mutants Underground. He goes to the same bar where he met Eclipse and gets the owner to take him toward the mutant safe house. But he isn’t the only one going. A mother and daughter are also going in search of a new life after the husband/father was taken by the special sentinel services police. The mother is able to take away the pain of Reed’s gunshot (an immobilization bullet, not a real one) and he changes his mind about doing this. He is thrown out of the transport and gets a talking from Jace.

Well, the rest of the Strucker family goes to Kate’s brother’s house and spends the night. But before they have breakfast in the morning a group of angry pitchforkers come to the house after seeing a picture of a trophy that Andy messed up real bad with his powers. They manage to get into the car but then they must escape. But to escape they need a portal, so Dreamer gives Blink a forced memory that makes her think she was once/still is in love with Proudstar. The memory is actually one of Dreamer’s real memories because she wants to jump Proudstar’s bones on the daily. Once again, the day is saved, but Proudstar is pissed and Kate learns that Reed is still alive and is determined to see him again.

What’s my grade? I give it a B. This series has the potential to be great but, like I’ve said so many times before about judging a show by one episode, the pilot for this show rather sucked. It seemed clunky, bounced along too quickly, gave minimal character development and never quite did the plot justice. Also, I’d say that the overplayed mutants and/or superheroes on the run has been done so many times before that it almost feels bland here. There’s nothing to distinguish this from pretty much every other X-men film ever in existence. Hell, in fact it goes so far as to be similar to the Man of Steel movie which was more of an X-Men/mutant film than a Superman film. When executing a motif, plot, storyline, cliché or whatever, you have to try to be inventive and innovative with making the idea feel new. This doesn’t make the idea feel new in any way. At least here, unlike on ABC Marvel’s Inhumans, you get to see cool powers getting used every episode. But they’re both on-the-run shows, which isn’t as drawing as the execs might think.

The acting is decent from all involved, though they haven’t really had to stretch themselves much. The series has been rather bland for the most part. Have they bothered to make the political stance of how people abnormally fear and hate that which is different? Yes, but not in any meaningful way that hasn’t been explored in all the other X-Men films. Wait... Now I know what it is about this show that bothers me: it’s essentially a watered-down version of an X-Men film, except without a wolverine and without a Professor X. I would give a strong nod to Andy and/or Lorna becoming the Magneto of the show (being just like her father. Damn that dude was laying a lot of magnetic pipe in his life, and he’s still mad as hell after getting all that free love. Sad). I also think the most likable character on the show is at a tie between Blink and Lauren. But outside of that, there’s almost no difference between this and one of the movies, save for the quality of the special effects and people not having costumes. The storyline isn’t exceptionally deep and hardly makes good commentary on refugees fleeing their own countries, but it’s a time-killer and it has the power to be something great. All the elements are there. Again, it’s just like every single X-Men movie ever made: the potential to be great but most don’t quite make it.

Should you be watching? If you like the X-Men films and what they’ve done for the last two decades, then chances are you will like this TV version even if it doesn’t have your favorite named characters. But if you were here looking for another Legion or something similar to the Marvel-Netflix shows, then look elsewhere. This is family fun with little substance, but does manage to keep your attention with a plethora of characters to like and identify with. The Gifted airs on FOX Mondays at 9pm EST. Catch up on FOX on Demand.

What do you think? Have you heard of The Gifted? If you haven’t, do you think you’ll check it out now? And if you have heard of it, have you seen it? Did you like it? What do you think they can improve? How do you think Blink’s new love interest in Proudstar will impact the team and the family? And will Andy finally lose it and kill someone at some point, causing his family to have to abandon him? Let me know in the comments below.

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

If you’re looking for a scare, check the YA novel #AFuriousWind, the NA novel #DARKER, #BrandNewHome or the bizarre horror #ThePowerOfTen. For those interested in something a little more dramatic and adult, check out #TheWriter. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 are out NOW, exclusively on Amazon. Stay connected here for updates on season 4 coming summer 2018. If you like fast action/crime check out #ADangerousLow. The sequel A New Low will be out in a few months. Look for the mysterious Sci-fi episodic novella series Extraordinary on Amazon. Season 2 of that coming real soon. And look for the mystery novels The Knowledge of Fear #KnowFear and The Man on the Roof #TMOTR coming this fall/winter. Twisty novels as good as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, you won’t want to miss them. 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, “We’re gonna go on the run. Only take the essentials.”

‘OK. Should we take our cats?’

“Yes to Mrs. Pettibone, but not Mr. Fluffykins. That cat’s been a real dick to me.’

P.S. That’s not even from a movie but I totally wish it was. Seriously, though, how many movies/shows are we going to see in which we have the X-men mutants trying to hide their powers or fight for equality? It’s getting tired and not adding anything new to the actual fight for equal rights and justice in this country or around the world.

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