News Satire Roundup: June 25th

Since time get away from me yesterday, I put up Thursday's post earlier today and am adding the News Satire Roundup now.

Sunday, June 25 – Naturally, John opened on the news that the show’s being sued by a coal CEO he took to task last week.  He also broke down Trump’s staggering justification of why he implied he had tapes of his conversations with Comey when he didn’t and cautioned against the “on life support” quips being made about the Senate healthcare bill, since the president is proof that overconfidence in the outcome of a vote doesn’t always pan out.  The main story was on vaccines.  John examined the persisting theories/fears about vaccines, especially the myth that they cause autism, and highlighted the risks that parents put their kids through when they skip or delay vaccines.  More than anything, he talked about the near-impossibility of combating those myths when no amount of scientific evidence will convince some people.  (Apropos of nothing, he also went off on a glorious rant about how stupid fish are – it was fantastic.)

The Daily Show was off this week (and will be next week, too.)  After Trevor’s excellent coverage of the recent Philando Castile verdict, I want to commend the show on the way it addresses police shootings.  Since he took over the show, Trevor has had occasion to do so many of these stories.  In fact, I remember when the shooting of Castile happened last summer, Trevor had to talk about both that and the Alton Sterling shooting in the same story as they’d happened in such close conjunction.  This is a pervasive problem that is occurring around the country, and The Daily Show doesn’t let up in its acknowledgment of how often it tears through another community, devastates another family.

Every time the show has discussed one of these shootings, Trevor has risen to the occasion masterfully.  It’s clear how genuine his grief is for these Black bodies deemed expendable, how acute his consternation is at seeing this injustice play out time and time again across America.  These deaths take a psychic toll on the Black community, and Trevor repeatedly allows his audience to look at the toll it takes on him.  He freely admits his hurt and anger, his honest confusion at how a country can watch tragedies like this occur again and again and still insist that there’s no systemic problem, that it isn’t about race.

I appreciate how much care Trevor takes in bringing new insights to each of these stories.  From out of those feelings of loss, he constantly probes and interrogates these shootings, making new points and examining different angles each time.  The stories on the Castile verdict, the latest in this long line, condemned the NRA for not speaking out against the shooting of a legal gun owner, highlighted the indignity of Castile’s girlfriend still having to call the officer “sir” after he killed her boyfriend (in an attempt to protect her and her daughter’s lives,) and mourned another Black dad forcibly removed from his family in the most brutally-permanent way.  But he’s covered so many other aspects of this issue:  what happens to someone’s perceptions when they only see Black people in the context of crime, a cop responding in kind to “shots fired” (even though it turns out the shots were fired by a fellow officer, not the suspect,) the blithe willingness to dismiss video evidence, the problem of Americans not batting an eye at the phrase “all-Black high school,” and many others.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010, PG)

This was the only film in the Narnia series that I didn’t catch the first time around – just never got around to it.  Seeing it now, I’d say I liked it for the most part.  While The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian have sort of complementary pros and cons, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader might fall somewhere in between both for me.  This is a series that, in my opinion, doesn’t have any real clear delineations of rank; each film has its own strengths and stumbles.

Stuck in the country with their insufferable cousin Eustace, Edmund and Lucy are thrilled to find themselves transported to Narnia once more (less thrilled to do so with Eustace in tow.)  There, they meet up again with Caspian, now king of Narnia and leading a sailing expedition to seek out a number of lords who’d been forced to flee during Caspian’s uncle’s usurpation.  Along the way, they have a number of strange and fantastical adventures, and they also discover a malevolent force that seems to have infected many of the islands to which they travel.

Right off the bat, I’ll admit that, while I remember a lot of the individual adventure vignettes from the book (the golden statue, the Duffelpuds, the dragon, the edge of the world,) I don’t remember a thing about a green mist and it all tying together leading to a final climactic battle against this intangible evil power.  It’s been far too long since I’ve read the book to remember if that’s the driving plot of the story or if that’s something the movie came up with, but I’m leaning toward the latter.  I seem to recall no unifying thread between the different island stories, more a series of individual adventures in the vein of Gulliver’s Travels or The Odyssey, but I could be wrong.  I do know there’s other stuff that gets changed here in a big way, and as with Prince Caspian, I personally think most of it is change for the better.  Like the previous film, it also touches more on some interesting theme stuff that I don't believe was explored too much in the book.  Though I think Prince Caspian is still the richest in that regard, this film pulls out some neat character points – chiefly, it does a more thorough job of setting up Lucy’s sense of inferiority compared to Susan and gives her a small arc related to this, and it explores Edmund not quite knowing where he fits with Caspian and still feeling like he’s living in the shadow of Peter’s reign (side note:  both of the latter movies continue to examine, in small ways, the lingering effects of Edmund’s dealings with the White Witch in the first film, which I like.)

It’s a tricky film, because the individual vignettes are mostly all pretty fun and well-adapted but the unifying thread (whether it was invented by the screenwriters or came from the original book) is fairly weak, culminating in probably the most generic-feeling climax of the series.  And other than Edmund, Lucy, and the newly added Eustace, the only real major characters of note are Caspian and Reepicheep, both of whom I like, but on a boat filled with characters, most of them feel pretty nameless and faceless.  That said, the holdover cast members from the previous film(s) continue to do well – I’m impressed with both Georgie Henley and Skyler Keynes as the two Pevensies, and although Caspian’s inexplicably changed his accent since we last saw him, Ben Barnes still does a nice job with the character.  Will Poulter (who more recently played Gally in The Maze Runner) is a fine Eustace, thoroughly unpleasant and yet just redeemable enough, and I really enjoy Simon Pegg’s take on Reepicheep after Eddie Izzard’s portrayal in Prince Caspian.

Warnings

Disney violence, scary moments for kids, and brief thematic elements.

Relationship Spotlight: Alphonso Mackenzie & Elena Rodriguez a.k.a. Yo-Yo (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Gotta love Mack and Yo-Yo, seriously.  I love them separately, I love them together – even though Natalia Cordova-Buckley’s recurring status means that their relationship is kind of backburnered by necessity, I enjoy every second we get of them and eagerly wait for more (a few spoilers.)

Given the setup, it could’ve gone in a very different direction.  These two come into each other’s sphere when Mack is investigating a potential Inhuman criminal who turns out to be Yo-Yo.  But Yo-Yo’s not a villain.  She’s a fledgling vigilante trying to take down the gangs making her city unsafe.  Despite a tense first meeting with Yo-Yo tying up Mack and the two of them stumbling to communicate across language, both are ultimately able to get a glimpse of who the other really is.  Just like Yo-Yo’s not really a baddie, Mack isn’t, as he initially looks from her perspective, a shadowy agent on a government payroll looking to lock her up in a hole somewhere and leave her there.  In both cases, the circumstances are more complex than they first seem.

Can we take a second to admire how cool it is that Mack falls for an Inhuman?  Between his burgeoning romance with Yo-Yo and his partnership with Daisy, Mack is a poster boy about how people’s biases can change through actually getting to know someone that they’re programmed to mistrust.  With Daisy, it was a matter of Mack discovering that someone he already knew and valued as a friend was an Inhuman, whereas with Yo-Yo, Mack meets her already knowing what she can do, already thinking a certain way about her, but when he gets to know her, he’s able to see and love her for the person that she is.  With both, he needs a little time getting there, but that doesn’t lessen what he feels when he does.

Since then, Yo-Yo and Mack have been equal parts awesome/badass and cute.  I love they they both simultaneously work on learning more of the other’s language (since TV generally doesn’t like a ton of subtitles, we usually get Yo-Yo speaking English rather than Mack speaking Spanish these days, but the fact remains that both of them put in the work to learn.)  Mack worries about Yo-Yo’s safety and she tells him not worry, she tries to protect him when he’s in trouble, and both will go to great lengths for the other’s well-being.

Things have been moving gradually between them, particularly since Yo-Yo is someone S.H.I.E.L.D. calls in when they need her rather than a full-time member of the team, and at first, both of them are too aloof to admit they want to see each other just for the sake of it, instead couching it all in a work relationship.  But they’re making progress, and more than just the physical side.  Yo-Yo learning about Hope this past season was huge – even though that reveal starts with a fight, after Mack has been keeping secrets and Yo-Yo’s been feeling distrustful, things are taken to a new level when Mack is able to be that open with her.  A lot of their relationship might have been inching along in the background, but there’s been enough movement that, by the end of the season, I can fully believe how much Yo-Yo is willing to risk on Mack’s behalf.

Favorite Characters: “Lenny Busker” (Legion)

Full and complete spoilage ahead:  here we go.

I was amused by Lenny, David’s sarcastic best friend in the hospital, during the pilot and was disappointed when she was killed (and in such a horrific way, too.)  I was intrigued when she showed up again in David’s psyche, even more so when it became apparent that she was acting as something of a devil on his shoulder, both berating him personally and encouraging him to distrust his new friends.  Then doubts are placed on David’s memories, with people from his past indicating that he was never friends with a woman named Lenny at all, but rather a man named Benny.  Clearly, something was up.

And how.  The deeper into the season we go, the more we realize that David’s psychological damage is more than just trauma from his misunderstood experiences with his powers.  No – a malevolent force has curled up inside his head and been feeding on his power, editing David’s memories to suit its purposes.  It takes numerous forms.  The yellowed-eyed demon is the most blatantly up-to-no-good-looking, with the World’s Angriest Little Boy in the World a close second.  There’s also King, the childhood dog David doesn’t realize he never had; King isn’t inherently creepy until you realize he’s a demonstration of just how long this thing has been getting under David’s skin.

But Lenny – Lenny is its voice.  As the folks at Summerland dig deeper and David retreats further and further into his head, it takes on greater agency, convincing David to let it (temporarily?  ha!) get in the driver’s seat of his body/powers to help him rescue his sister from Division 3.  It plays the tempter as it shows David some of the potential of his powers; the astral-plane “white room” is huge for David and Syd, who can’t touch in the physical world, but it’s also a dangerous door to open, as David wouldn’t be the first telepath to get lost in an astral world of his own creation.

I used “Lenny” to avoid spoilers in the title of the post, but it’s high time we used its real name:  Shadow King.  The Shadow King is creepy as all hell, both in the way it dementedly lays waste to anyone who opposes it and in the seductively-inviting way it gets David to poison his own thoughts against himself.  It builds prisons, it creates worlds, it rips bodies in half, and it takes a perverse joy in all of it.  The Shadow King is half fugitive, hiding out inside David until it’s strong enough to tear the world apart, and half junkie, living off the rush David’s power gives it.  So insanely freaky and so, so watchable.

Aubrey Plaza is just stunning in the role – can’t take my eyes off her.  She’s deadpan, sinister, sultry, vulgar, dangerous, manic, collected, swaggering, and darkly comic as fits the bill, and she’s just perfect every time.  One of the best portrayals I’ve seen of a non-human character that doesn’t involve prosthetics or makeup; everything about her says, “Something’s not right here.”  I really appreciate showrunner Noah Hawley for seeing her and realizing what she could bring to the role.  Evidently, “Lenny” was originally written to be played by a man, and when Plaza was cast, all that changed was the pertinent pronouns, with the rest of her dialogue staying as-is.  The result is a character who feels really uniqe, and Plaza just tears it up from start to finish.

Doctor Who: Series 10, Episode 11 – “World Enough and Time” (2017)

As tends to happen with new Who penultimate episodes, I can’t fully decide how I feel about this one until I see how it shakes out next week.  I also can’t say too much without major spoilers – I’ve generally been a little more willing to include some spoilers in my write-ups this season, especially with the “Monk” arc, but since this is the lead-up to the finale we’re talking about here, I’ll try and keep it clean.  Then, once the season ends, I’ll circle back to this episode and the next one with my more spoilery thoughts (my only big spoiler here is several episodes old, dealing with the contents of the vault.)

In one of his more ill-advised ideas (and that’s saying something!), the Doctor decides to take Missy out for a test drive, letting her “be him” in a crisis to see if she’s really “turning good” (added quotation marks to highlight the ill-advisedness of this idea.)  So, he sends her with Bill and Nardole onto a massive, 400-mile-long spaceship with one end of it stuck in a black hole.  Creepy circumstances separate Bill from the others, and while the Doctor and co. try to work out what’s going on with the ship aside from having one end of it stuck in a black hole, Bill gets a much more up-close-and-personal look into what’s happening.

I know I normally hate it when the show pulls a “Psych!  The Doctor knew what was going on the whole time, and this has all actually been part of his secret plan!  No worries!” on us, but I honestly wouldn’t mind if that’s what’s happening with this Missy stuff.  It’s just so stupid.  Yes, the Doctor is all about hope, even if Twelve doesn’t always act like it, but come on!  This can’t be genuine (or if it is, it really shouldn’t be, storytelling-wise,) and he should know that.  Letting her out and trusting her to help others, trusting her with Bill and Nardole’s lives – even with minor supervision via the Doctor monitoring her from inside the TARDIS – is a terrible, terrible idea.

Other than that, what can I say without getting into the meat of the episode?  I like the ship-partially-stuck-in-a-black-hole thing almost as much as I dislike the Doctor-trusts-Missy thing, and while it results in something of a retread of an Eleventh Doctor story, the way the show uses the concept is still neat.  There’s some unfortunate, overly-cranked-up drama of the Moffat variety, but there’s also, for my money, a well-done character reveal and some squee-worthy classic Who references.

Because this episode is largely set-up for the finale, it feels like our heroes themselves are mostly just spinning their wheels.  As such, no one gets anything super-cool to do, although Bill has some interesting material and the Doctor goes wild with the technobabble explanations – Nardole is kind of the odd man out here, not getting much of anything to work with.

At the very least, I’m definitely interested in what’s going to happen next week.  I know that season finales aren’t always the show’s strong suit, and that’s been especially true in recent years, but I’m prepared to see where they’re going with it.

Top Five Gags: The Rough House

June 25^th, 1917 – the day The Rough House was released.  In my estimation, one of the lesser of the Fatty Arbuckle shorts, and not just because Buster’s role is comparatively minor.  There’s more reliance on easy violence than well-crafted humor, which is a shame because there really are some gems in here; you just have to sit through a lot of rough ‘n’ tumble scrapping to get to them.  (Today’s Sunday Who Review is getting bumped until tomorrow.)

Putting Out the Fire

This is a wonderfully-built sequence, with Fatty accidentally setting his bed on fire and then trotting patiently between the bedroom and the kitchen in his attempts to put it out, one teacupful at a time.  The comedy comes from a nice blend of repetition and mixing it up, and Fatty’s nonchalance throughout is really funny.

Dancing Rolls

I can’t say if Fatty invented this gag, but since The Rough House came out eight years before The Gold Rush, we can say with certainty that Chaplin did not.  While this bit is here mostly because of the more famous riffs on it that came afterwards (in addition to The Gold Rush, Benny & Joon also has a dancing-rolls scene,) it’s fun in its own right as well.

Fatty the Chef

Some really clever gags sprinkled in here.  The crowning achievement, naturally, is the camera trickery that allows Fatty to open the tablecloth and “magically” unfold a complete table service with it, but I also get a kick out of Fatty using an electric fan to “slice” potatoes and serving soup with a sponge, wringing out the guests’ servings into their bowls.

Making an Enemy

My favorite Buster moment in this short.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  Buster, apropos of basically nothing, scissor-kicks a dude in the face!  This is a trick he must have picked up from his dad, who was also quite adept at face-kicking, but Buster gets bonus points for being shorter.  This moment kills me every time I see it.

Caught on the Fence

Here’s my other good Buster bit.  Buster and two other cops are running around, which Buster already makes even cooler for doing flips when he could just do falls, and after scaling a fence, Buster gets snagged and can’t get down.  It’s a very typical sort of gag, nothing you haven’t seen before, but Buster does it so well; that’s the best running-in-midair since Wile E. Coyote, and he was cartoon!