Shadow and Bone (2021-Present)

I came into this series not knowing much of anything about the series it’s based on – I think I’d heard the names of maybe a few of the books, and that was it. But the trailer and images looked really cool, not to mention different from a lot of the more usual fantasy aesthetic, and I was incredibly attracted to the thought of a fantasy series where half the main characters were BIPOC (not to mention, the info that accompanied those first looks included the fact that there was at least one LGBTQ character in the main cast, another plus.) I decided to give it a look, and I’m very glad I did (premise spoilers.)

The country of Ravka is split in two, in more ways than one. Society is divided between ordinary humans and Grisha, an elite class of people who possess different varieties of innate magical abilities. What’s more, the land itself is divided down the middle by the Fold, a shadowy miasma populated by deadly monsters, which was created hundreds of years ago by an especially rare type of Grisha called a Shadow Summoner. Alina Starkhov, war orphan and military mapmaker, avoided being tested for Grisha powers as a child, but an instinctual release of magic against an attack during a perilous journey through the Fold reveals that she may be the Grisha the country has long been waiting for: the Sun Summoner, the only one with the the power to destroy the Fold and reunite Ravka.

While I still love the sort of fantasy worlds that typify what a lot of people think of when we think of fantasy – Middle-earth, Westeros, etc. – one thing I really enjoy about Ravka is that it takes its influences from a different locale and era. Much of the style and details of Ravka are inspired by tsarist Russia, giving the world of this series a very different look and feel that’s wonderfully realized by the incredible costumes and production design. I adore the look of the color-coded Grisha uniforms, it’s fun to see a society that mixes magic, monsters, and guns, and the world as a whole feels interesting and well-built.

The main plot isn’t nearly as inventive. I don’t particularly mind it, but there are some really familiar beats here. Alina is 100% a prototypical Reluctant Young Savior who’s been low-key running from her destiny and doesn’t want to be the super-special Promised One who will save us all. I do enjoy the added wrinkle of Alina being half-Ravkan, half-Shu – Ravka has long been at war with Shu Han, and Alina’s mixed status has always made her a target of racism and suspicion, giving her extra incentive to not want to stand out. This aspect of her character was apparently added for the TV series, and I’m a definite fan of it. Meanwhile, the love triangle between Alina, her childhood best friend Mal, and the dark but alluring Grisha General Kirigan, shakes out along pretty predictable lines, along an enemies-to-lovers dynamic between two supporting characters. The Crows, an engaging band of low-level crooks who stand to throw a potential wrench into all the elevated Prophesied Savior stuff, are certainly a type that we’ve seen before, but they still entertain through a strong execution that adds a lot of action, humor, and unpredictability to the proceedings.

Some fine acting on display here. Leading the pack is Ben Barnes (oh Caspian, my Caspian!) as General Kirigan, imbuing a shadowy character with dimension and complexity in a way that doesn’t woobify or excuse any of his actions, and the always-reliable Zoë Wanamaker is very good as Grisha trainer Baghra. All three of the Crows are awesome, and even though I haven’t read the books, I come away with the feeling that they’re all perfectly cast because I understand their characters so well. We’ve got Freddy Carter as Kaz, Amita Suman (who played the young Umbreen in Doctor Who’s “Demons of the Punjab”) as Inej, and my favorite, Kit Young (I recognized him from the fantastic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream aired by National Theatre Live, where he played Lysander) as Jesper. For my money, Jessie Mei Li and Archie Renaux as Alina and Mal don’t pop quite as much, but they’re also the characters saddled with the blandest tropes; when they’re given something more interesting to play, both acquit themselves well.

Warnings

Violence, light sexual content, smoking, language, and thematic elements (including racism and references to sexual abuse.)

Other Doctor Lives: The Leftovers: Episode 7 – “Solace for Tired Feet” (2014)

Not my favorite episode. While I forgave last week’s skimping on Christopher Eccleston due to the interesting character and world development, this week repeats the Eccleston-liteness but doesn’t have much other stuff to recommend it.

Kevin learns that his dad, the former police chief, has left the mental health facility where he’s been living since an apparent breakdown several years ago. But his efforts to recover his dad lead him down a path he doesn’t want to reckon with: his dad’s insistence that both of them are prophets being called to do what’s necessary. Elsewhere, Kevin’s son Tom is still in hiding with Wayne’s acolyte/paramour Christine, and in a desperate moment, he gets a rude awakening about secrets Wayne has been keeping from him.

We’ll start with what I like best. Kevin’s teenage daughter Jill is interesting to me as a character who’s struggling to find any meaning in the world after everything that’s been happening. Some of the nihilistic partying she and her friends get up to falls flat for me, but I like what they get up to here. It hits the fatalistic button of quite a few of their trends while also incorporating an element of teenage ritual in a misguided tribute to a departed kid. I’ve also enjoyed Kevin and Nora getting to know one another over the last few episodes, and they have some good interactions in this one.

The Tom-Christine-Wayne stuff offers up some decent intrigue, but it also rests heavily on the fact that, pre-raid, Wayne’s compound was home to a bevy of nubile young Asian American women. Although I want to learn more about Christine and what she has going on, this episode goes in hard on that gross fetishization without doing much to counter it. There’s one particular moment, and with it one particular line of dialogue, that nearly turns my stomach with its dehumanization. In other words, not exactly enjoyable to watch.

The plot with Kevin and his dad isn’t a whole lot better. I get what they’re doing, and I’ll admit to having affection for my share of “society thinks they’re crazy, but they’re actually receiving vital messages/visions!” characters in genre works (Jennifer Goines from 12 Monkeys still has my heart.) But that character type has grown to have diminishing returns for me, and the beats of the trope feel pretty predictable in this case. I’m not all that invested in Kevin’s dad trying to convince Kevin that the time has come for him to take up the mantle, and while I’m sympathetic to Kevin’s fears that his mental health is starting to deteriorate too, I’m not excited about this am-I-going-crazy?/am-I-a-prophet?/let-me-resist-the-call-while-the-signs-grow-increasingly-adamant plot that appears to be setting up. At this point, I’ve seen it enough times and it’s both tropey and inherently-problematic enough that a show has to really do something different with it to capture my interest, and so far, The Leftovers isn’t managing that.

As I said, it’s another episode with far too little Christopher Eccleston. Matt is only in a few scenes, with most of his screentime spent wordlessly reacting a little outside the action and most of his dialogue occurring voice-only over the phone. (Side note: after two episodes in a row where I’ve mostly just heard his voice on the phone, there are definitely still a few rocky places in his accent. It’s not terrible or anything, but I can never fully relax into him playing an American – there are just these little tells that something’s not quite right.)

Character Highlight: Kelly Olsen (Supergirl)

Introducing a same-sex love interest for a beloved character is always a balancing act. Unless a show is set specifically within an LGBTQ social group, a lot of shows with queer characters, don’t typically start out with more than one in the main cast (although some start out a pair of queer characters who are already in an established relationship.) This means there’s not the usual opportunity for will-they-won’t-they stuff with the other regulars and any prospective love interest is a guest or recurring character brought on for that express purpose. If it works out, the character might get upgraded to a regular, and if it doesn’t, they’re written out, often never to be heard from again. From a meta standpoint, there’s an inevitable power differential, since we don’t know the newcomer like we know the beloved regular, and we’re instantly appraising them to decide if they’re “good enough” for the character we love.

In the case of Alex and Kelly, the situation is heightened. Alex wasn’t introduced to us as a gay character. That’s something she started to figure out for herself in season 2, and her coming-out storyline was intimately tied to her feelings for/relationship with Maggie, her first with a woman. In other words, it was a Willow Rosenberg scenario, and if Maggie was Alex’s Tara, Kelly is then positioned as her potential Kennedy: the “next girlfriend” after the foundational, emotionally-charged one whose love helped Alex come to understand herself and be proud of who she was. Alex/Maggie fans are fiercely devoted and Maggie’s exit from the show left a lot of dissatisfaction and outrage in its wake. Anyone new brought in for Alex was going to have an uphill battle in winning fans’ affections.

And when Kelly first appeared on the show, the anvils were falling left and right. She’s James Olson’s much-loved but heretofore-unspoken-of sister, so she’s immediately anchored to the show through him. She clashes with Alex early on, but it’s in a way that shows they’re both strong, passionate women who care about James and want to do what’s best for him in a crisis, and it’s not long before they come to an understanding of mutual respect. Before long, Kelly is helping Alex through an intense emotional situation and casually confirming her queerness through a reference to her deceased fiancée. It was inevitable that they were going to get together, and a chunk of their relationship storyline in season 5 feels at once oversauced and underwritten before settling into something more engaging.

But through all these ups and downs, I continued to like Kelly as a character, and I think she’s really coming into her own in season 6. A veteran who now works as a psychologist specializing in military trauma, Kelly isn’t initially a part of the world that Alex and the Super Friends know well. Her life has been touched by it – as James’s sister, she recalls the years he spent as Superman’s close friend, which placed James in the crosshairs of Lex Luthor multiple times – so it’s not like she’s a noob where these things are concerned, but her own combat experience was focused on nonpowered human threats, not aliens or metas. As such, accepting the invitation into Alex’s world puts Kelly in the path of a lot of things she’s never dealt with head on before.

I really like seeing how Kelly reacts to these threats, crises, and triggers. She knows that she doesn’t have the training or experience to deal with a lot of these baddies head-on, and she’s very aware that that puts her in a vulnerable position. As such, she doesn’t try to pull off badass moves she’s not equipped for, but she’s by no means a screaming damsel. Instead, she holds her own in the ways that she can, taking a defensive postion and keeping her head until she’s able to get the upper hand, get out, or find someone who’s better equipped to take on the threat. What’s more, being in a relationship with Alex and seeing the danger she regularly puts herself in can be triggering for Kelly, whose fiancée was killed in action, and she wrestles with how to let Alex be Alex while still honoring her own feelings of lingering trauma.

Even though, again, Kelly is a veteran who’s seen shit and is far from incapable in a fight, it’s nice to have a character in the mix who’s less combat-focused. She adds a different dynamic to the Super Friends, and with everything our heroes go through, goodness knows they can benefit from having a psychologist/trauma expert around. While Alex and the others kick ass and save the world, Kelly looks out for them: Alex especially, of course, but the others as well. I love her empathy, her emotional honesty, and the way she gives the heroes around her space to not be okay.

When we got the first handful of season 6 episodes earlier this year, it was so gratifying to see Kelly better integrated into the ensemble. She’s still Alex’s girlfriend, obviously, but she’s also just Kelly, compassionate friend and valuable team member whose insights should never be counted out. I’m looking forward to seeing where the rest of the final season will take her.

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Have I mentioned how psyched I am that Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s Hollywood debut is going to be in an MCU movie? There are the obvious reasons, the beautiful combination of an actor and a franchise that I really love, and how cool it is that a ton of people who don’t know who Leung is are going to see what he can do. But as Black Widow’s release draws ever closer, I'm reminded of all the trappings that can accompany a new MCU movie, and I’m excited to think about what that might entail for Leung. We’ve already got the action figure, but there are also gonna be featurettes on Disney+/the eventual DVD. A blooper reel? The press tour? At the moment, my mind can’t quite picture Leung doing a bunch of press in the U.S., and the fact that he lives on another continent and the pandemic isn’t over yet might give him an “out” from participating too much, but the thought of it is kind of wild. Like, is he gonna take part in the press junket? (Who would they pair him with? My first instinct would be Michelle Yeoh.) Make late-night appearances, in a group of his castmates if not on his own? Do those online-interview things like the Wired Autocomplete Interview videos? Is he gonna be on a Comic Con panel?!

I don’t want to get my hopes up too much for some of this stuff, since, again, the idea of Leung actually doing a lot of this doesn’t compute in my brain. But 1) never rule out the power of Marvel, 2) at least some of these things are for sure going to happen, and 3) even if Leung manages to avoid doing much press himself, I’m sure other Shang-Chi folks will, and some of them are bound to talk about how great he is, and that makes me happy.