Some TV and Anime

I haven't had a chance to watch any movies this week.  I've been trying to catch up on some of my TV shows.

  I finally finished watching Trigun.  It's not bad but it didn't blow me away, either.  If you want a space Western anime, watch Cowboy Bebop.

Two insurance agents attempt to track down a gunman named Vash the Stampede as he travels from town to town and end up getting caught in his high-stakes world of good vs evil.

  I was sick with a cold a couple of weeks ago and binged season 1 of RuPaul's Drag Race.  It's officially amazing.  Fair warning:  I watched it through Kodi and the quality was shit so I don't know that it's ever been legitimately released on video or streaming.

  Tyler and I finally finished watching season two of Preacher.   Maybe because it took over four months to watch, I thought it lacked the momentum of the first season.  I'm going to have to buy it and rewatch it all at once to be sure though.

Jesse (Dominic Cooper), Tulip (Ruth Negga), and Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) are searching for God in every jazz bar in New Orleans.  Along the way, they meet gangsters, a cowboy who can't die (Graham McTavish), an angel who wants to (Tom Brooke), a corporation that extracts souls (really, don't they all?), operatives from the mysterious Grail Corporation, and an actual descendent of Jesus (Tyson Ritter).  Oh, and Eugene (Ian Colletti) meets and befriends Hitler (Noah Taylor) while unfairly imprisoned in Hell.

  I gave Marvel's Inhumans a chance, even with the overwhelmingly negative reviews and it turned out to be mostly watchable.  It helped that it was only eight episodes.  I think a full 22- or even 13-episode run would have been a disaster.  Serinda Swan was a series highlight for me.  I thought she was going to be awful but she was the glue that held the whole thing together.  In fact, all the ladies (except Isabelle Cornish, but I think that was more the character and not the actress.  She worked with what she had.) were kind of amazing.

The Inhumans have been living in a secret city on the moon ever since they were forced off Earth.  They have very limited resources and a strict caste system based on the powers received after terragenesis.  Maximus (Iwan Rheon), the younger brother of King Black Bolt (Anson Mount), has been scheming and plotting to overthrow his sibling and take control of the kingdom.  He stages a sneak attack and manages to destroy Queen Medusa's (Serinda Swan) psionically-controlled hair but her sister Crystal (Isabelle Cornish) rescues her and the other members of the inner circle with the help of her teleporting giant dog.  That is actually a thing.  They all end up on Oahu, separated because dogs aren't great with geography, and must manage to stay alive, find each other, and figure out how to get their throne back.  And maybe consider some social reforms.

  Tyler has really enjoyed The Orville.  It's definitely his favorite new show of the season.  I like it well enough on an episode by episode basis.  I don't know how it would work to try and watch all together though.  I don't think there's enough continuity for that.

Captain Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) leads the crew of the Union Federation space ship Orville through various missions and interactions with life forms of all kinds.  As always, the real drama is the interaction of the crew, which includes Ed's ex-wife and first officer (Adrianne Padalicki), an untried chief of security (Halston Sage), a goof-off pilot (Scott Grimes), an expressionless third officer (Peter Macon), and the steadily reassuring doctor (Penny Johnson Jerald).

  I tried to watch Ghosted but I'm done.  There's too many shows that I'm actually interested in to waste space on my DVR with this middling comedy.

Max (Adam Scott) and Leroy (Craig Robinson) are recruited into the Bureau Underground, a semi-official government agency that hunts monsters, aliens, and all the other weirdness of the world.  Like The X-Files or Men in Black if they were awful and dumb.

  The Gifted is a much better use of my time.  It's not as good as Legion but really, there was no way it could have been.  I'm not caught up to current but I've liked what I've seen so far.

After his children are revealed to be mutants, Reed Strucker (Stephen Moyer) reaches out to the Mutant Underground to get them to safety before Sentinel Services can lock them away or worse.

  I'm almost caught up to present on Riverdale season two.  A new episode dropped this week but otherwise I'm good.  I have to say, I'm not loving the serial killer plot line but this show is soapy and amazing in a fucked up teen drama way and I love it. So I'll stick with it to the end.  I'm just hoping a third season can turn this dive around.

  Speaking of garbage but fun, Blindspot is back for a third season of barely plausible intrigue.

In a jump of several years forward in time, Jane (Jamie Alexander) and Kurt (Sullivan Stapleton) are married but have been separated after a Sandstorm sympathizer put a $10M bounty on Jane's head.  Kurt has to track her down after the rest of their team -having scattered to the four winds- is kidnapped.  Jane and Kurt soon discover that Roman (Luke Mitchell) has again covered Jane in head-to-toe tattoos (this time they are blacklight activated) that intersect with her original set in order to force the team to decipher them and prevent a whole new set of catastrophes.

 And finally, we come to Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency season two.  I'm only a couple of episodes in, but I love love LOVE this show.

Dirk (Samuel Barnett), Todd (Elijah Wood), and Farah (Jade Eshete) are pulled into another case involving a missing boy, an alternate dimension, and real honest-to-God magic.  Todd is also trying to find his sister Amanda (Hannah Marks), who has been traveling with the fourth member of the Rowdy 3 (Osric Chau) and trying to understand the visions she's been seeing.  Meanwhile, the disintegrating Blackwing organization has called in its chief fixer, Mr. Priest (Alan Tudyk) to hunt down Dirk and all the other superpowered people.