TV on Blu-ray Review: The Outsider - Season 1 (2020)

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Watching the great Ben Mendelsohn play a police detective still grieving the loss of his son to cancer in the HBO series The Outsider just weeks after he made me cry buckets of tears as a father trying to stay strong for the impending death of his daughter in the powerful Australian film Babyteeth got me thinking. Ben Mendelsohn's agent really needs to send him a script for a comedy. Still, for fans of brilliant character actors (like yours truly), Mendelsohn's misery is our gain. From anguish to skepticism to rage, whether it's in Animal Kingdom (2010) or Mississippi Grind or beyond, Ben Mendelsohn puts so much conflicting emotion into his performances that he completely pulls us into the mindset of his character, which we see play out over the course of ten riveting episodes in this HBO miniseries adaptation of the eponymous 2018 novel from Stephen King.

Assigned to solve the heinous slaying of a local eleven-year-old boy, Mendelsohn's Georgia detective Ralph Anderson is shocked when a plethora of evidence including eyewitness testimony, security camera footage, and DNA all points at his son's former Little League coach, Terry Maitland (a terrifically understated Jason Bateman). A well-respected high school English teacher and married father, the seeming betrayal of this veritable picture of clean-cut, white picket fence domesticity inspires fury in Anderson, who sends his colleagues out to make a very public arrest of Maitland in front of the entire community.

 
Requesting his lawyer (the always outstanding Bill Camp) and pleading his innocence, Maitland informs the detective that he wasn't even in town when the murder committed but at a teacher's conference roughly seventy miles away instead. Checking the security footage at the hotel and finding him there, Anderson finds himself completely baffled by how the man could be in two totally different places at once, which sends him on an odyssey towards the horrifically supernatural. Soon working alongside intuitive private investigator Holly Gibney (brought marvelously to life by Cynthia Erivo), the series evolves from a grim but gripping police procedural into something that could only come from the mind of Stephen King.

Adapted from King's work by series showrunner Richard Price, a novelist and screenwriter who penned such '80s classics as The Color of Money and Sea of Love before he wrote for TV's The Wire, The Night Of, and The Deuce, among others, the reason this show works as well as it does is because it's so firmly rooted in reality. We all know a Terry Maitland and a Ralph Anderson, as well as their supportive but equally complex wives (well played here by Julianne Nicholson and Mare Winningham) and the series never loses its grip on everyday contemporary life even when it heads into dicey, unexplainable supernatural territory. Though technically a work of science fiction, The Outsider ranks among the best King adaptations in its decision to endear us to its fully realized characters and let them be our guide into this new world before it drops us straight into the unknown. 

 
While the sudden, slightly abrupt ending doesn't entirely pay off on the incredibly thrilling series-long build-up involving the question of an evil spirit somehow inhabiting or attaching itself to a person, the rest of The Outsider is so insanely compelling — as is the staggeringly gifted cast — that it's well worth the watch. Addicting enough that I devoured all ten installments of The Outsider over the course of two days (quarantine, baby!), the opening pair of episodes directed by Jason Bateman are two of the strongest I've seen from HBO since the days of The Night Of.

Predictably, however, it does use the same grimy palette of saturated colors so indicative of prestige TV series that it's inspired articles all over the web and is also a main feature of Bateman's Netflix series Ozark. A definite bone of contention — given that it's now become a stylistic cliché for prestige offerings — when it comes to The Outsider, however, I am definitely fine with a Stephen King universe devoid of bright primary colors or high key lighting, especially considering the morose, haunting subject matter. 

 
Yet, despite this, far too frequently in the series — and especially in those middle episodes once it ventures beyond procedural territory — The Outsider's recurring lack of light makes it nearly impossible to see what is going on, no matter how many curtains you draw or the color settings you select for your television screen. While the brightest high power setting of "vivid" is undoubtedly the last way the craftsmen behind The Outsider would want viewers to watch this show, it was the only way I could even begin to make out what was happening in a few scenes, which is a major letdown from an aesthetic standpoint overall.

Still highly recommended nonetheless, the new box set of the HBO series — which, rumor has it, may return with another installment featuring Erivo's Gibney — arrives complete with short special features boasting interviews with King, Price, Mendelsohn (who also produced the series), Bateman, and the rest of the cast. Additionally providing a digital code so that you can stream the entire series in addition to playing the included Blu-rays, with the frequently aggrieved but superb Ben Mendelsohn as our guide, the show gives us a hair-raising opportunity to see where the wild things are outside while staying safely indoors (or so we think). 

 
Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

TV on DVD Review: Veronica Mars (2019) - Season 1 (aka Season 4)

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(FTC Notice: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.)

Returning to the small screen once again after releasing a fan-funded feature film of the cult favorite series back in 2014 (along with two spin-off novels), upon first glance, the 2019 incarnation of Veronica Mars looks a lot like the original CW series which ran for three seasons in the early aughts. But the further we get into creator Rob Thomas' new eight episode trip to Mars on Hulu, the more we realize that although Veronica might be set once again in the perpetually sunny fictional southern California town of Neptune, the tone of this update is leaner, meaner, and certainly far more noir than it ever was before.

Reflected in the new cover of the theme song, "We Used to Be Friends," sung this time around not by The Dandy Warhols but rather Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, the tune we used to know is achier, harder, darker, and lonelier than the tongue-in-cheek original. And played once again by the one and only Kristen Bell, those are all words you could use to describe her titular character Veronica Mars this season as well. At one point asked in earnest if she had been mad after losing her best friend Lilly Kane to murder as a teen, Veronica matter-of-factly replies that she is still mad in a way that says more about her outlook on life than an entire season could.

Most at home in the apartment she shares with Logan (Jason Dorhing), when the Naval intelligence officer isn't off saving the world that is, Veronica's second happy place is the office she shares with her beloved father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni). A sardonic twenty-first century So-Cal noir version of Nancy and Carson Drew, Veronica might have earned a law degree after high school but she pushed that off to the side to instead pick up a license to work alongside her dad at Mars Investigations as a private eye.

Done moonlighting as a detective the way she did when she was back in high school on the UPN turned CW series, now ten years later, she's made it legal as well as official. And it turns out it's just in time for more chaos as —  early into what she calls the month long bacchanalia that is Spring Break in Neptune — a mad bomber has decided to join in the fun while taking out four people at the spectacularly busy Sea Sprite motel in the process.

With Daniel Maloof (Mido Hamada), an up-and-coming congressman hiring Veronica and Keith Mars to figure out who's behind the bombings that maimed his younger brother and murdered his fiance, Veronica finds herself at the center of an incredibly complex case which encompasses all eight episodes of the new season.

Not the only person trying to ID the perpetrator, it seems that bombing survivor and true crime obsessive pizza deliveryman Penn Epner (outstandingly played by Patton Oswalt) is trying to do the exact same thing, as are two hitmen from a Mexican cartel (Clifton Collins Jr. and Frank Gallegos) who've come to take out the person who murdered the nephew of their boss' ex-wife.

Taking a cue from True Grit, complete with a precocious protagonist who shares the same name as the young western heroine from the novel and subsequent film adaptations, as well as her tragic origin story that sets her on her dangerous quest, we meet Matty Ross (nicely brought to life by Izabela Vidovic). Having lost her father in the Sea Sprite bombing, the teenager teams up with Penn — whose online true crime group of "Murderheads" see conspiracy everywhere — along with Veronica and Keith.

A clever way to payoff on the original conceit of the series back in its 2004 launch as a whipsmart teen who — having faced overwhelming misfortune — tries to take control of her life and right some wrongs, Matty's character reminds us of teenage Veronica's strength as a rape survivor longing to find her best friend's killer. As such, the introduction of Matty would itself make for a cool cyclical callback if this was indeed the final season of the series. However, with the advent of so much male dominated TV noir in the 2010s, I cannot stress how refreshing it is to have the feminist Mars back and I certainly hope that it continues.

Rounding out the series' emphasis on badass heroines, small screen MVP Kirby Howell-Baptiste of Killing Eve and Barry, among others, reunites with her co-star from The Good Place, Kristen Bell in a triumphant turn as Nicole, the owner of popular spring bar and/or meat market Comrade Quacks, who befriends Veronica while trying to stave off the push to gentrify Neptune.

Leading the fight on the opposing side is the father of Logan's best friend, Big Dick Casablancas (David Starzyk), who has returned home from jail with a new right hand man in Clyde (the always phenomenal J.K. Simmons) and a mission to buy up properties from struggling Neptune business owners in order to make a future killing.

With no shortage of new characters to investigate, many of our original favorites — including most of the male supporting players, such as Percy Daggs III's Wallace Fennel — find themselves shortchanged by comparison. Yet, although this season is primarily concerned with the plights of both father and daughter Mars, even those two protagonists take a backseat to the main mystery which connects them all and leads Veronica down a twisty, unpredictable path of red herrings and potential leads, including some with links to people from her past.

While humorous bit players like Ken Marino's Vinnie Van Lowe make appearances, the series also welcomes back two of my favorite charismatic supporting characters in the form of PCH biker gang member Eli "Weevil" Navarro (played by Francis Capra) as well as Veronica's former love interest Leo D'Amato (Max Greenfield), who's now working for the FBI.

The new season might begin slowly by reveling too much in the hedonism of spring break but thankfully, by the time we reach the far more noirish second episode, Veronica Mars completely sucks us in. At its best when it devotes itself to the increasingly complicated mystery rather than the comically idiotic beach scene, Thomas struggles to combine the dueling approaches early on. And this narrative unease definitely shows as we weave our way from predatory guys at Comrade Quacks to various groups of spring breakers at the Sea Sprite before the bomb goes off in depictions that feel less suited to a late twenty-something Veronica Mars mystery and more befitting of the character in her high school years.

Testing viewer patience while simultaneously introducing us to individuals who might become more important as the story moves on, while it doesn't do much to help in Rob Thomas' stated goal of moving the series away from its roots as a teen soap opera in order to become a full blown detective show, thankfully, Mars evolves into something closer to the latter as it moves on. Still not forgetting the human side, the series deftly balances out Veronica's inner struggle to put her anger and fear aside to perhaps marry the man she loves, while also worrying about her aging father who's begun to struggle with serious memory loss that he fears might put their lives on the line.

Anchored by strong performances by its cast — especially Bell whose Veronica seems to be even more hardened than she was before — 2019's Veronica Mars is a different and more contemplative spin on the original wisecracking teen detective series. Enhanced by its more cinematic approach, from a sexier reunion of Logan and Veronica (or "LoVe") as the two make love in the first episode followed by a tense, film-worthy shootout in the woods between Veronica and Keith versus the cartel several installments later, when Veronica leans into both its more mature handling as well as its terrain, we are eager as ever to follow.

Ending with an admitted deus ex machina for one character that — thanks to the devastating fate of another — is easier to forgive by comparison, Thomas and company's risky decisions go a long way in helping to propel Veronica Mars down a new path that you can foresee paying off in a potential new season.

Growing far more compelling as the season continues — while still indulging in gallows humor — this grittier incarnation of Mars underwhelmed me at first with its frat party atmosphere before soon becoming so engrossing that I found myself needing to binge watch the final three episodes back-to-back-to-back.

Though best known for its dialogue, Veronica Mars Season 4 (as it was originally billed and/or Season 1 as the DVD dubs it) has as much fun reintroducing us to old supporting players as it does setting the stage for epic action. From meeting our cartel hitman as they listen to Elvis and discuss philosophy as someone bangs for help in their trunk to a Pulp Fiction reminiscent sequence where one character reaches for and considers one weapon after another before opting for a final selection, it makes for one intensely nerve-wracking trip to Mars. With quite the knotty case to unravel over the course of eight hours, although it takes awhile to get going, Veronica Mars season 4 (or 1, depending upon your preference) marks an overall thrilling return to the small screen for one of my favorite television detectives.

As flawed as she is heroic, admittedly it's hard to see Veronica tune out Wallace or be turned on by some of Logan's most self-destructive characteristics in the first half of the new episodes when she's frustrated and/or preoccupied by a case. At the same time, however, it fits our protagonist to a T because of all the trauma that Veronica went through as a teen (and with that version of Logan before he channeled his hypermasculine behavior towards the military). Veronica gets her strength from everything she's endured, after all, which is what makes her the first in line to put everything on the line to seek out the truth and do what's right. And while this season adds a harrowing new tragedy to her life, which has predictably divided fans — including some of whom say they might not watch the series again — Thomas and his co-writers have to be applauded for their commitment to story over solely giving in to what's expected.

While I was initially unprepared for the shock to come until the seventh episode, when it started to telegraph the tragedy a little more openly, watching the season a second time in order to review it, I began to see just how smartly series writers began to drop clues as to where it was ultimately headed as early as the very first episode. Appreciating the way they foreshadowed the jaw-dropping turn of events while also pushing Veronica throughout the season to contemplate her role in Neptune as well as her overall future, it became easier to see what the writers had in store this time around and evaluate it from a narrative perspective . . . while still being heartbroken about "____," of course. Forcing her and us to consider whether or not she's just coasting and undervaluing her talents in Neptune as opposed to taking a cue from Logan and exploring the world beyond her surroundings, this season gives us a lot to think about.

Yet as daring as it might appear to be for Thomas to take such a massive risk, upon closer reflection, this move is completely on par with the shocks of Mars' first two stellar seasons. In spite of our easily nostalgic view of the series while looking back on it with rose colored glasses, Veronica Mars was never the TV equivalent of Gilmore Girls style comfort food. No, instead, just as it was in its 2004 debut, the recently relaunched Mars remains a tough series about an underdog heroine who's made stopping misogynistic rapists, killers, and villains her special mission for life. Rather than just punch them out with a sap glove a la Nicole or tase them as she does a mugger she winds up mugging in return, Veronica puts in the diligent, dangerous work so that eventually, the truth will out. As the song says, "a long time ago, we used to be friends," and it's so good to watch her continue this fight once again. Gifting longtime "marshmallows" with a compelling work of feminist small screen California noir, needless to say, with a season like this to springboard from, I look forward to seeing where in the world Mars will take Neptune's finest private eye next.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links.  Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review – The Following: The Third and Final Season

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One of the most disturbing programs to ever air on American broadcast TV, from the very beginning The Following has felt less like a network crime drama than a small screen horror movie of the week.
 
Frequently defaulting to gruesome torture as opposed to just coloring a little outside the lines of the macabre to build suspense, although the show's penchant for gore and depravity was established in the show's original pilot (as a fitting ode to its Edgar Allan Poe inspired Gothic horror origins), the use of shock for shock's sake only increased with time.

Testing our patience as well as our stomachs, the Kevin Williamson created work of Seven era David Fincher style Neo-Noir still had its moments in season two.

However, much like a superstitious villain on the verge of getting caught, shortly after a genuinely surprising opening sequence of nerve-wracking episodes, the thrillingly original series began relying too heavily on the same M.O. that had initially set The Following apart early on.

And long before its cast members engaged in a 2015 web video spoofing both the show's paranoia as well as its frequent use of double agents and triple crosses (via the twists that had once floored us), The Following's overreliance on fake outs had started to grow stale to savvy viewers both on social media and at home midway through its rollercoaster second season.

Having embraced its original status as a cult favorite much too literally by doubling or – depending on your math – tripling down on the idea of killer cults, the middle installment of the largely chaotic albeit still compelling serial thriller required its audience to suspend disbelief in a greater way than ever before.

Buoyed by The Following's top notch cast however, the series has rallied along with the lead character played by Kevin Bacon who’s in a much better place literally and figuratively as its final season kicks off.

Of course, we know the tranquility won’t last long but thankfully, when the show’s trademark horror suddenly begins, this time around the writing matches the intensity of its performers including breakout star Michael Ealy who rivals James Purefoy's diabolical mastermind Joe Carroll in terms of both spine tingling moments and evil supremacy as what Joss Whedon would call this season’s “big bad.”

Making the most of the natural chemistry of its characters and character actors – namely Kevin Bacon's (anti)hero Ryan Hardy and Purefoy's aforementioned villain – The Following revisits some of the alarming themes that it had been flirting with from the very first episode, which similar to the show's fake-outs and gore have only grown more apparent over the years.

Going deeper into the existential arena of whether Hardy needs Carroll to remain the "hero," the show also starts to explore the psychological overlap between the two men who had originally been friends.

Although fascinating, this arc is pushed much too far – paying off incredulously in a handful of episodes that threaten to "jump the shark" with regard to The Following as Ryan Hardy goes completely off the rails. Still, thankfully knowing they needed to wrap things up in time for the conclusion, Williamson and company right this ship before long.

Aspiring to deliver something structurally and stylistically commensurate to the incredibly complex, corkscrew-like twists and turns of the vastly superior, intellectually demanding first season, fortunately for viewers, the storyline is much more focused in this, the show’s final outing.

While it still falls prey to contrivances and repetition as the final fifteen episodes make their way to the finish line, to The Following's immense credit, season three wastes no time trying to recapture the same tangible electric shock that made the hairs on the backs of our necks stand up during its critically acclaimed premiere year.

While truncated seasons also mean that a few characters are shortchanged – similar to ABC’s suspenseful soap How to Get Away With Murder, The Following is proof that TV is largely better served with quality versus quantity network orders of ten to fifteen episodes where creativity reigns supreme and filler is left on the sidelines as it is on cable channels.

Much like 24 which had served as a main source of inspiration for Bacon’s dark hero, a few plot strands are left dangling in the end, perhaps in the hope of a last minute renewal or even a standalone feature-length follow-up on any number of channels or platforms that might continue Ryan Hardy's plight to take out the serial killers that walk among us.

Nonetheless, thanks to a return to taut, twisty character-driven storytelling (versus big picture cult-minded gimmickry) as well as a firmer grasp on the type of paradigms that serve the show best, the third season of The Following serves as a worthwhile final chapter to Fox's forty-five episode daring Gothic horror series.

Text ©2015, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on Blu-ray Review: The Big Bang Theory – The Complete Eighth Season

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Not cut out for a life riding the rails as a modern day hobo after he ran away from home, in the eighth season premiere of The Big Bang Theory we check back in with Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) only to find him uncharacteristically pantless and alone.

A clever reintroduction to the show's four-time Emmy winning MVP, the opening sequence serves offers the highly-verbal Jim Parsons a rare opportunity to give his mile-a-minute wit a rest and let his physical comedy skills shine through.

A success masqueraded as failure, not only does the first episode illustrate how far Sheldon Cooper has come since the very start of the show but – given his season-long journey from external to internal vulnerability, it also makes an intriguing bookend – foreshadowing where The Big Bang Theory will leave him in the most mature season of the CBS hit so far.

An instantly iconic image in a series that continually strives to top itself, the sight of a helpless Sheldon Cooper wandering around in his drawers is just the first in an endless parade of set-ups and plotlines for Parsons to navigate through in during its nine month span.

Still as entertaining as it is, once you laugh your way through another inventive twenty-four episode installment only to discover that one of actor Kunal Nayyar's biggest dilemmas of the entire season is when his character Raj accidentally breaks a drawer, it's hard to ignore the way that the show's dueling drawers serve as a study of comedic contrasts in more ways than one.

Saddled with the divorce of his bickering parents and a beautiful if downright creepy girlfriend (played by the talented Laura Spencer), once again Raj is largely left out of the main events, serving up reliable volleys of witty line reads from the sidelines in B and C subplots throughout the season as Big Bang's most underutilized performer.

Returning to the formula that fueled the show’s earliest seasons for a few of the biggest episodes of the year, while other cast members are similarly overlooked in favor of storylines surrounding the three original leads (including underrated, versatile pro Johnny Galecki and consistently charming Kaley Cuoco), season eight tries to share the wealth a bit more than before.

With Leonard (Galecki) and Penny (Cuoco) on stable ground at long last, Big Bang has ramped up its emphasis on the rollercoaster relationship between Sheldon and his long suffering gal pal, Amy Farrah Fowler, thereby necessitating scene-stealing actress Mayim Bialik to deservedly graduate to the show's fourth lead.

And after years of playing well off one another to augment their unique brand of chemistry, those behind Bang's scenes have made the refreshingly big decision to capitalize on the strong bond between Simon Helberg and Melissa Rauch as Howard and Bernadette Wolowitz, leading to some of the season eight’s most memorable scenes.

A nice change of pace from the relationship woes of Leonard and Penny which had usurped way too much time earlier in the series run as the millennial version of Friends' Ross and Rachel, giving Howard and Bernadette their share of the show's A-storylines fills the two with a newfound confidence and offers Sheldon, Leonard, Amy, Penny, and Raj the opportunity to explore new comedic terrain.

Mercifully backing off a bit on Bernadette’s clichéd yelling, Big Bang’s recalibrations help prepare us for the show’s increasingly dramatic tone, resulting in a number of surprisingly multifaceted episodes in the last half of the eighth season.

Although in the past, Big Bang occasionally overwhelmed the subplot concerning the dominance of Simon Helberg's Howard by the women in his life with "To the Moon, Alice!" Honeymooners style hostility that at its worst came off as misogynistic and mean, by now the series realizes it is tonally at its best when it goes for just the right blend of sour and sweet.

Delivering its fair share of teary laughs, in season eight Big Bang handled the unexpected heartbreak of Howard regarding the loss of his perpetually offscreen mother (to reflect the real life passing of actress Carol Ann Susi) with particular grace in a series of unexpectedly moving episodes that also hint at future storylines for the couple in the coming years.

Frequently compared to fellow Warner Brothers series Friends which appears to have helped lay the structural groundwork for the series in terms of juggling three to four subplots or conflicts per twenty minute episode, while Big Bang Theory does adhere to its predecessor's passion for holiday episodes, relationship twists, and season-ending cliffhangers, to its immense credit, Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady's series stays true to its own unique roots.

Ensuring that science will always play a fundamental role, one particularly compelling plot arc this time around focuses on a collaboration between Sheldon and Leonard which wins them both admiration and an internet troll.

But although The Big Bang Theory centers on a group of characters with extraordinarily high IQs, its most authentic material is still derived by the challenges they face in everyday life.

Thankfully understanding that one of the best friendships on the series is between Sheldon and Penny, season eight gives us one of the duo's sweetest endeavors in which they undertake an experiment to fall in love.

Moving beyond mere questions of romance, now that their characters are a little older and wiser, many begin to ask themselves the tough questions. In addition to the death of a loved one and the collapse of a business, the ensemble begins making plans for the future while taking stock of their lives, including Penny who goes from aspiring actress/halfhearted waitress to taking a stable job and begins working from nine to five.

While obviously its characters are more well-adjusted than they were when the series started thanks largely to the women in their lives (and in the underwritten Raj's case the long-overdue ability to talk to them without alcohol), The Big Bang Theory has certainly come a long way since it was originally dubbed "beauty and the geeks" and centered on Penny as its sole female voice.

This being said, it still gets plenty of mileage out of the group's devotion to a science fiction fanboy lifestyle by way of a hilarious run-in with security at Skywalker ranch, an epic ping pong battle for a replica TARDIS, and Sheldon and Amy's first boy-girl G-rated sleepover in a living room fort.

However after years of watching the Big Bang boys' adventures, some of this season’s most original plotlines focus on the adventures undertaken by the show's trio of far more courageous girls, whether they’re embarrassing themselves in Penny’s apartment or testing their limits in Vegas.

While its laugh track can feel a little canned at times, there's something wonderful about its dedication to situation comedies of the past. Refusing to follow current trends like everyday mockumentaries or thirty minute dramedies designed to represent faux reality TV, The Big Bang Theory remains one of the best classically structured contemporary comedies on network TV.

Proving that the best way to remain current is to continue building its characters while also switching up the A and B story leads, although it occasionally recycles plotlines from years' past given its demanding twenty-four episode run, there's far less filler here than we typically see on most rival network series.

Newly released on Blu-ray, Digital and DVD to coincide with the return of Fall TV, once again The Big Bang Theory reminds viewers why its number one in its category with a two-disc sharply executed season of high definition comedy that's largely top-drawer.

Text ©2015, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on DVD Review: Gotham – The Complete First Season (2014-2015)

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Rather than rebuild Gotham from the ground up for 2014's stylish small screen series of the same name, Mentalist mastermind Bruno Heller opted to dig deeper into the origin stories of some of D.C. Comics' most notorious heroes and villains.

Although he initially follows the Batman play-book to the letter in a pilot that is anchored by the shocking murder of Bruce Wayne's parents which leaves the boy orphaned and sets him on the path of becoming the Dark Knight, Heller makes a bold decision to deviate from tradition in a move that both helps and hinders Gotham in equal measure.

For instead of jumping ahead in time to center the series around the adult Bruce Wayne's double life as a wealthy playboy and the caped crusader as expected, Heller breathes much needed new life into the famous franchise for its latest incarnation by promoting Officer Jim Gordon (an excellent Ben McKenzie) to the show's lead.

Working alongside the equally captivating character actor Donal Logue as his cynical partner Harvey Bullock, McKenzie's young idealistic rookie defies the status quo of a historically corrupt police department, eagerly taking down a colorful rogue's gallery of B-villains as the next generation of future A-villains wait impatiently in the wings.

And through McKenzie and Logue's terrific dynamic, Heller establishes what will become a recurring motif in the series of multi-generational partnerships among those on both sides of the law. Fortunately, this technique works extremely well for two of the best and brightest members of the Gotham P.D.

However, the same magic cannot be duplicated in a few of the densely populated show's other unlikely pairings, which is particularly apparent in the first half of the season when we're inundated by so many unlikable characters and the overwhelmingly bleak tone that Gotham begins to wear on our patience.

Moreover with so many double-crosses and shifting alliances, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep everyone straight, especially when formerly vital players are suddenly dropped from Gotham’s storylines as if their scenes were edited out for time and left on the cutting room floor.

And although the behavior of some of Gotham’s secondary characters (including Jim's troubled fiancé Barbara) grows increasingly illogical, the structurally challenged series fortunately finds its footing once again in a gripping final quartet of episodes involving Milo Ventimiglia's horrific Ogre.

Better off developing complex multi-episodic arcs instead of following in the footsteps of an early X-Files "freak of the week" standalone paradigm that does little to advance the overall storyline, as the seeds are planted for the future, Gotham's exceedingly well-researched writing staff begin to exude confidence in the season's stronger second half.

Soon enough, new threats emerge from the shadows – some of whom rise to power while others fall from grace.

Carving out clever new backstories for fan favorite characters like Edward Nygma (a.k.a. The Riddler, played by Cory Michael Smith), Gotham is at its best when it employs foreshadowing so subtle that if we weren’t aware of the impressive minds working behind the scenes, we’d swear it was accidental.

Undoubtedly challenged by an overly padded twenty-two episode season that was extended after it had already begun, at times the tonally uneven Gotham swings like a pendulum from over-the-top gross-out violence to darkly comedic camp.

Caught between a variety of genres and audience brackets, while some of the coming-of-age arcs for the younger cast members lag in comparison the show’s grittier crime elements, the uniformly excellent and refreshingly diverse cast of all ages, races, and faces (including terrific newcomers like Robin Lord Taylor, Camren Bicondova, and David Mazouz) help keep us riveted.

Along with McKenzie and Logue, season one's MVPs also include the versatile Morena Baccarin as Jim Gordon's lady doctor love Leslie Thompkins, scene-stealer Jada Pinkett Smith as notorious villainess (and Penguin's former mentor turned nemesis) Fish Mooney, as well as a refreshingly bad ass version of butler Alfred Pennyworth played by Sean Pertwee.

An artistically sumptuous series, Heller's show is filled with texture and sparkle in its jaw-droppingly inventive costume and set design.

Set in an indeterminate period of time, while Gotham owes perhaps the biggest debt of gratitude to Tim Burton's two breakout Batman pictures based on Frank Miller's comics, it's also indicative of the best parts of other franchise favorites.

A TV series that’s cinematic in scope, from Graeme Revell’s thrilling score to the freewheeling creativity on display in the luminous cinematography bathed in the silvery, gunmetal gray moonlight of a dark night sky, Gotham follows through on the recipe of something old, something new, something borrowed,and something blue.

Along the way, the screen is filled with old world Italian gangsters that might as well have wandered off the Warner Brothers lot in the 1930s and '40s working alongside Hammer horror style villains sure to terrify young viewers.

And although the Gotham City Police Department resembles a more chaotic version of Grand Central Station, Logue and McKenzie's Serpico meets French Connection style '70s antihero antihero leads do their best to keep things moving in the right direction without a Bat-signal to save the day.

A character driven superhero spinoff that's steeped in richly extensive D.C. Comic mythology, only time will tell if viewers will tune in long enough to see Bruce Wayne take his place as Gotham’s dark night somewhere down the line.

Yet even though Heller didn't exactly reinvent the wheel, putting Batman on the back burner and ignoring the well-traveled terrain undertaken by the Batmobile in previous productions forced him to look beyond all of the caped crusader's wonderful toys and try something new.

Knowing that there’s much more to an origin story than a mere prologue, even though it falls short from time to time, Gotham proves that there's more than one way to reboot a series – using present day Batman mythology as the jumping off point to delve deeper into the past.

Text ©2015, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on Blu-ray Review: The Casual Vacancy (2015)

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A contemporary Dickensian tragicomic tale of two communities and thirty-four characters, 2012's The Casual Vacancy may not have been part of J.K. Rowling's phenomenally popular Harry Potter series but that didn't stop the BBC and HBO from securing the rights to develop the U.K.'s fastest-selling novel in three years.

No stranger to weaving socioeconomic and political themes into Potter's fantastical coming-of-age storylines, as a book targeted to adults instead of children Vacancy offered Rowling the opportunity to do more than just shed a little light on the issues about which she was passionate.

Digging deeper into the topic of class warfare including its main byproduct of prejudice, in the novel Rowling likened the situation to a sort of suburban apartheid set in a west country town (likely modeled on her birthplace of Yate, Gloucestershire).

Yet determined not to lose herself in political theory, she took a cue from Potter and instead focused on her brilliantly conceived characters. Delving into the difference a small election could make in the lives and futures of the well-to-do Pagford community that's largely populated by those that wish to permanently separate from the poor residents living in the neighboring council estate dubbed The Fields, Rowling explores this from all sides to bring her concerns vibrantly to life.

Rather than voting to make The Fields part of the nearby city once and for all, the miniseries enhances the dramatic impact by paring the issue down even further so that the future a vital local community center becomes the focal point of the Pagford Parrish Council election.

Offering not just a safe haven for the children in both communities (especially those in the impoverished, drug dominated Fields) but also an all-important methadone and health clinic that's much easier for recovering addicts to visit than the one only accessible by unreliable bus service in the city, the aptly named Sweetlove House serves as a important humanistic symbol throughout the work.

And after the death of the beloved council member Barry Fairbrother (well played by Rory Kinnear), who was raised in The Fields but – thanks to the opportunities available with social welfare programs and places like Sweetlove House – went on to become a respected champion for civil rights in Pagford, the community center becomes a permanent reminder of Barry for the rest of the miniseries.

With his seat newly up for grabs and the Council suddenly missing their voice of reason, Pagford descends into chaos, especially after an unknown hacker calling themselves "The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother" begins posting the town's dirty secrets on the Council's website to expose the hypocrisy of those trying to claim his seat for the upcoming election.

Hoping to close the community center and instead build a tourist destination spa in its place (despite the fact that most of its neighboring locals wouldn't be able to afford it), the wealthiest and most powerful Pagford residents try to scheme their way to a victory, oblivious to the fact that everyone has something to hide and Barry's ghosts are watching.

Given Rowling's love of the classics, it's only fitting that veteran BBC miniseries scripter Sarah Phelps (known for the channel's recent critically acclaimed presentation of Great Expectations) was tapped to adapt Rowling's ambitious tome.

Staying true to Rowling's character-driven roots, although The Casual Vacancy is anchored by a large ensemble cast including the phenomenal Abigail Lawrie whose deceptively tough, battle-scarred sixteen-year-old Fields resident Krystal Weedon is the heart of the miniseries, Phelps tactfully cuts out the novel's excess.

Merging some characters into one while removing others completely, perhaps most impressively the screenwriter reconfigured key players in order to ensure everything harks back to the most important issues that Rowling longed to get across.

Although the jump from satirical SNL sketch worthy supporting roles to achingly real portraits of those who could easily be your friends and neighbors feels a bit jarring, Casual is at its best when it abandons the Potter-like players and delivers fly-on-the-wall docudrama.

Understanding that, Phelps sharpens her take on book even more, letting Rowling's stunningly crafted, flawed yet fascinating characters lead the way to terrific, often heartbreaking effect.

While some of the film's plot points are a tad too predictable and after the first episode far too much time is spent on unlikable characters that fail to move the plot forward, all in all, it's an intelligently crafted work which (like Animal Farm or The Wizard of Oz) takes an inventive approach to political allegory.

And this production is timelier than ever – not only for Americans gearing up for the exhausting mudslinging that goes along with a presidential election – but also relatable on a global scale for the clever way that Rowling's small town war can be applied to any number of settings and situations.

However, just like certain aspects of the satire fail to translate from the page, Phelps made an incredibly smart decision to rewrite the devastatingly heavy-handed, Thomas Hardy style ending that may have come off as far too hopeless on the screen.

Understanding that the viewer needs to be able to see the ways in which ignorance, apathy, bureaucracy, fear, and prejudice have failed its characters in order to fully appreciate not only what went wrong but also what went right (and how it could've stayed that way), Phelps's more affecting bittersweet coda reminds us of the basic good in people.

Reassuring us that it's never too late to try and fight for what's right (even if you're outnumbered and going it alone), the superbly crafted film helmed by Jonny Campbell plays better as a three hour feature than a three part miniseries.

Bolstered by top notch production values, Vacancy's strong cast and crew meets the screenplay halfway, abridging Rowling's epic with clever costuming, production design, and cinematography that aids in our understanding of this tale of two communities and way too many subplots through visual storytelling.

An extremely polished yet meandering miniseries that mirrors the state of Pagford after the death of Fairbrother by temporarily losing its way after the exceptionally crafted first installment, despite a few missteps, Vacancy finds its footing again and again.

Text ©2015, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on Blu-ray Review: Killing Kennedy (2013)

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A succinct greatest hits album like compilation of the biggest moments from JFK’s presidency, this made for National Geographic Channel cable movie is based on the eponymous best-selling nonfiction work by Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and author Martin Dugard.

Using an interesting crisscross timeline device, Killing Kennedy compares and contrasts the final years of the life of both John F. Kennedy (Rob Lowe) and Lee Harvey Oswald (Will Rothhaar), the man who would bring it to an untimely end on November 22, 1963.

But even though it opens with that fateful event, it leaves the conspiracy theories and post-assassination investigative aftermath to others, quickly cutting back four years earlier in time when Oswald traveled to an American embassy in Moscow to renounce his citizenship and defect to the Soviet Union as a Marxist.

An outsider wherever he goes, Oswald is accused of being an American spy in the Minsk radio factory where he works and a Soviet Spy back in the states after the former U.S. Marine gave in and returned home to Dallas, tired of both the cold weather and chilly reception from his Russian coworkers.

However his dedication to the communist cause and Cuba in particular grew stronger than ever as depicted in the film from director Nelson McCormick, which chronicles Oswald’s increasing dissatisfaction with society and alienation from family and friends, including his long-suffering Russian wife Marina (beautifully played by scene-stealer Michelle Trachtenberg).

While Oswald’s storyline is filled with details audiences may not have been as familiar with including a few facts involving how he was caught by police that caught me completely by surprise, needless to say everything in the Kennedy storyline was predictable, given the number of times that JFK’s presidency has been captured on film.

And by now following the fiftieth anniversary of his assassination, JFK has become one of the most documented American presidents in the history of the medium. While his movie star good looks and untimely end are certainly part of his mystique, he was also our first “onscreen president."

From the announcement of his candidacy to when he handily beat Nixon in the televised debates, talked directly to Americans during the U-2 scare and after the assassination when Americans sat glued to their TV sets to watch their beloved leader be laid to rest in a funeral procession worthy of a king, JFK’s most important landmarks were all captured in front of a camera.

Thus while as viewers our over-familiarity with everything from the Bay of Pigs storyline to his final day in Dallas (as evidenced, for example in the much more thorough Thirteen Days and JFK respectively) isn’t the fault of screenwriter Kelly Masterson or anyone involved since they’re working from facts, it’s still hard to do JFK justice in Killing Kennedy’s 87 minute running time.And given the time constraints, this cable movie speeds through the important events like a mix tape on fast forward.

While you only wish that instead of a few new revelatory morsels in this film or that miniseries (from The Kennedys to Parkland etc.), some of these filmmakers would’ve worked together to have crafted one true epic JFK picture instead of multiple mediocre ones, Killing Kennedy’s strength lies in emphasizing what we do not know, as depicted in the plotline of his killer Lee Harvey Oswald.

And even though it’s downright disturbing to follow the events through his eyes, another thing occurred to me while watching this production which is that the Jack Ruby angle has always been one of the most unexplored and overlooked aspects of the case.

Of course Ruby’s involvement has raised all sorts of questions about the likelihood of two “lone gunmen” or if anyone else had put him up to it. And while perhaps the answer is waiting in yet another TV movie or film, Killing Kennedy did score a few extra points for ingenuity by centering a few scenes on and from the point-of-view of Ruby in order to give us a different vantage point in addition to the ones we've always seen time and time again.

Needless to say, there’s no replacing the source material of the book or some of the far more superior biopics that have been made about the Kennedy presidency. Yet while this polished Ridley Scott production may speed by a bit too quickly at times to leave enough of an impact, it’s still above average made-for-basic-cable filmmaking that’s been beautifully transferred to this Fox Blu-ray release, complete with making of featurettes and an Ultraviolet digital copy.

While it definitely made me eager to explore the book to see what other details were unearthed in the authors’ research (despite my distaste for O’Reilly), the film’s homage to Kennedy’s love of the musical Camelot did get me thinking.Perhaps next time, instead of another straightforward docudrama, someone should update and retell Camelot with JFK and Jackie standing in for King Arthur and Lady Guinevere.

And given actress Ginnifer Goodwin’s excellent command as both Jackie in Kennedy and Snow White in Once Upon a Time, Guinevere seems like a natural progression for the talented star, not to mention one less role for the production’s talent agent to cast. Now that’s a Kennedy movie I’d definitely like to see!

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.