My Favorite Things This Week #113

🖐 The Friday High 5: Sterling K. Brown, Pirate Droids, and Penis Powers

Paradise

Hulu

Vibe: This Is Us meets Lost with a smidge of Silo.

Deets: My fav Sterling K. Brown stars in this 8-episode mystery/drama about the assassination of the President in an idyllic, small town America that is not what it seems. Paradise employs a time-hopping narrative that showrunner Dan Fogelman perfected on This Is Us. It’s beautifully done but comes at the expense of forward momentum. I’m at the halfway point, so can’t yet vouch for the results. But it’s a strange marriage of genre and form.

Case in point: Our hero’s quest to have an important question answered in episode 3 is repeatedly deterred by backwards-looking conversations until the very end of the episode. That these detours are fascinating is beside the point. Little frustrating.

Streaming on Hulu.

X-Men: Apocalypse

20th Century-Fox

Vibe: You have eyes—does this look like a good movie?

Deets: The third film of the X-Men: First Class saga/setup. This time around we get some actual mutants we know and care about, opposed to the interchangeable nobodies Professor X recruited the first time around. Apocalypse is not a great movie. It has its moments but overall is meh. It does include a gratuitous Wolverine cameo that is pretty satisfying.

In the wake of revisiting this, I started thinking about the line between the good X-Men movies and the bad. Every time, it’s when the movie loses sight of the characters in favor of all their fancy powers. Apocalypse—the film’s big bad—isn’t actually a character. He’s literally a grab bag of assorted powers he’s accumulated. It’s not who he is so much as what he can do. It’s so boring and uninteresting.

That he looks like the result of a White Walker / Blue Man Group orgy doesn’t help.

In case you doubted my description. Image: 20th Century-Fox

Skeleton Crew

Disney+

Vibe: Star Wars dips its toe in the Hook kiddie pool and finds the water just fine.

Deets: God bless Jude Law.

The kids are all pretty great—except Wim, not at all a fan—but Skeleton Crew noticeably goes up a notch when Law is on-screen. He totally works as a character of morally-ambiguous nature. And he elevates the performances of the kids. Put him in all the Star Wars!

Star Wars + Pirates is so obvious, it’s hard to believe we haven’t gotten there before. Skeleton Crew is worth watching if you like your Star Wars a little more heartwarming. Or if you’ve ever wanted to see a droid with a peg leg and pirate accent.

Streaming on Disney+.

Steve Jobs

Simon & Schuster

Vibe: Everything you’ve heard about Jobs is true.

Deets: The first quarter of this book leaves little doubt that Jobs was an enormous jerk. But even with its unsympathetic protagonist, Steve Jobs is a riveting read. Apart from the inside look at the formation of Apple, I’m finding the book challenges me to be more, or better.

Here’s Jobs talking about his purpose:

"We all have a short period of time on this earth. We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we're going to be here, nor do I, but my feeling is I've got to accomplish a lot of these things while I'm young."

The Boys: Season 3

Prime Video

Vibe: Captain America gets the Bucky Barnes treatment, plus gratuitous penises.

Deets: So many penises! There’s an exploding penis, and random background penises, and one dude whose power seems to be a ridiculously long, trunk-like penis (so gross). But apart from all the dicks, the story continues to develop along interesting paths. And not just in how the show’s Aquaman has a thing for sexing octopi.

I am getting more than a little tired of Hughie’s whole deal though. So much whining. If this season was going to have so many dicks, they could’ve at least slapped Hughie with one of them.

Really enjoying how much the show is leaning into the political subtext of our time. The satire would be funny if it wasn’t so damn real.

Streaming on Prime Video.

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Good Links

• The Ringer debates The Rise of the Sith: I love Van Lathan, but if you gotta keep referring back to ancillary books and lore, the movie is just not that good.

• Mental illness as a brand: great read about how empathy has been commoditized, told through the lens of a miniseries.

• The amount of work it takes to (not) sell a script in Hollywood: I enjoy living vicariously through Cole’s misadventures.

• Bernie offers hope as America crumbles: why was this guy never President?