The Book of Rannells: Girls5eva: Season 1, Episode 2 – “D’wasg” (2021)

Picking up another Andrew Rannells project that’s eluded me: I got a free promotional subscription for Peacock, so I’m checking out Girls5eva. As with Central Park, enough intrigues me about the show that I’m planning to watch the whole season, not just the episodes Rannells guest stars in. So far, I’m not convinced, but it has potential.

20 years ago, Girls5eva was a brief girl-group pop sensation. Since then, they’ve all gone their separate ways, but when a rapper samples one of their old songs in his new single, public interest in the group starts to rekindle. Having decided they want to capitalize on the moment and get back together, the four surviving members of the group plan their next move. Additionally, deflated diva Wickie has moved in with sensible/quasi-pushover Dawn and her family, where there are definite roommate growing pains.

I really like the premise of the show, which plays around with millennial nostalgia within the context of an original story and characters. And the main cast definitely caught my eye. Sara Bareilles does a nice job as Dawn, playing a solid straight man to the other three, who are all a lot of fun. Renée Elise Goldsberry (Angelica!!) is over-the-top diva Wickie, Busy Philipps is shallow but insecure Summer, and Paula Pell is divorced, no-longer-closeted dentist Gloria. (Their late fifth member—Ashley, played by Ashley Park—appears in cutaways to old footage of the group.)

But despite all those things drawing me in, the show itself isn’t quite firing on all cylinders yet. Some of the jokes are sharp and funny, while others feel too forced. A lot of the writing feels underlined, like the script really wants to make sure you get the joke, which can make the humor feel labored. Case in point: the song they use to try and stage their comeback, “Dream Girlfriend,” which is so full of Cool Girl stereotypes it starts to feel like a checklist rather than a satire.

I’m not ready to write it off, though. Episode 2 is supremely-early days for a sitcom, and there are some good bits here. I really enjoy Wickie’s oblivious takeover of Dawn’s apartment and her disdain for the family’s non-glamorous possessions. “Is that a hat from Boost Mobile?” she icily asks Dawn’s husband. I also laughed at Gloria’s admission during their strategizing session that she hasn’t written down any ideas, instead explaining, “I thought it might help me think if I wrote ‘THINK, ASSHOLE’ in really big letters.” Hopefully, the writing catches up to the cast as the season goes on.

Rannells plays Kev Hamlin, Summer’s husband. We learn in the pilot that theirs was a marriage of pop royalty back in the day, a union of Summer’s girl group and Kev’s boyband. These days, they’re living in different states, with Kev working as an entertainment reporter in Tampa. We haven’t seen much of him yet, but I’m assuming the “joke” here is that Kev is gay and Summer doesn’t have a clue. She recognizes that his affections are distant, in more than just the geographical sense, and overcompensates in front of the others because of it. “She bought a Cameo from her husband to make us think he’s FaceTiming?” Wickie observes. “Good lord.”

Like I said, not much from Rannells/Kev so far. In this episode, we just get the aforementioned Cameo and a quick cutaway of him filming for an entertainment story, so everything we’ve seen from him is Kev when he’s “on.” Not sure yet what he’s like when he’s off-camera. As usual, Rannells has good comic timing and I’m looking forward to seeing more of him, even if the material is a little lacking. Side note: why does Kev still have the exact same ludicrously-floppy hairstyle that he had 20 years ago? I completely buy him being vain and banking on the fame of his former glory days, but it seems like he’d have the 2021 equivalent of that haircut, not an outdated carbon copy.

First thoughts:

Recommend?

In General – Not yet. Rannells’s guest appearances are spread throughout the season, so by the time I get to the last one, I’ll hopefully have a better sense of whether it starts to gel more.

Andrew Rannells – Too early to say. He’s had maybe four lines so far.

Warnings

Language, sexual references, drinking, and thematic elements (including references to sexual harassment.)

Character Highlight: Ajak (Eternals)

*Spoilers.*

It’s impressive that, more than fourth months since Eternals came out, I still haven’t gotten through the full ensemble. Granted, I haven’t posted about an Eternal every Marvelous Wednesday, and that’s been intentional, but it’s still a little wild to think about. Even though some of these characters get more dimension/screentime than others, they’re still distinct enough that I can write about all ten major characters in this two-and-a-half-hour movie. I watched all three Hobbit movies, and by the end, I couldn’t have matched the names of all thirteen dwarves to save my life.

Today, we’re looking at Ajak. She’s the leader of the Eternals, although you wouldn’t necessarily guess that from her relative screentime. A large part of that is the pure fact that she’s not really in any of the modern-day scenes. When the Deviants reappear, the first move Sersi, Sprite, and Ikaris take is to go to Ajak in her remote home in rural South Dakota, where they discover she’s already been killed by Deviants. The ensuing mission to reunite the Eternals is fueled partly by her death.

So she ultimately becomes more of a plot device, but who is Ajak before all of that? Like her fellow Eternals, she doesn’t age, and in their early millennia together, her healing powers restore the others from any injuries they suffer fighting the Deviants. The others follow her orders, but she’s not just a commanding officer. In a way, she’s like the mother of the group, and nearly all of the flashbacks with Ajak show her caring for her fellow Eternals in one way or another. Whether it’s checking in on Phastos during a devastating moment in history or nudging Sprite to visit Sersi so the two of them will have each other to lean on, she offers maternal love, understanding, and guidance.

Ajak’s other chief role is to liaise with the Celestials, who impart their instructions to her on a need-to-know basis, which she in turn gives to her fellow Eternals—again, need-to-know. This means that, as the others fight Deviants and steer human progress in ways that aren’t too interfering, Ajak knows the true purpose of their mission. Earth, like countless planets before it, is an incubator for a new Celestial, and once humanity reaches a sufficient population to sustain him, the planet will be ripped apart in his “birth.”

Naturally, when we learn this information, it doesn’t jive with what we know of Ajak. She certainly doesn’t seem like someone capable of rearing up humanity as lambs for slaughter, and she wrestles deeply with this knowledge. She tries to keep humans at a distance, instead lavishing her devotion on her fellow Eternals, and repeatedly reminds herself of her unwavering loyalty to the Celestials. But when the bonds between the Eternals start to break once they no longer have Deviants to fight, they go their separate ways, and Ajak finally gets to know humanity. For centuries, they tug at her heart as she travels among them, and when she sees how the Avengers rally against Thanos, she decides that humanity can’t be as disposable as the Celestials think.

So even though Ajak has spent nearly whole of her time on Earth preparing to sacrifice humanity, she recognizes the monstrosity of their mission in her final days and aims to stop it, to make things right. It’s a change of heart that gets her killed, but true to her compassionate nature, she expresses pity, not condemnation, toward her killer. In the end, realizing she won’t be able to lead her family down the right path, she uses her final moments to choose her successor well, knowing that Sersi’s gentleness and empathy will carry them through.

Other Doctor Lives: DuckTales: Season 1, Episode 11 – “The Missing Link of Moorshire!” (2018)

IMDb lists this as episode 12. I enjoy this one—fun and inventive, with some good humor and plenty of spot-on character interactions.

Scrooge and Glomgold face off on a storied Scottish golf course, eager to show one another up as usual. However, a ball hit deep in the rough leads them to the entrance of an ancient, mystical course, where a lot more than bragging rights are at stake.

Nothing like coming upon a stone circle in the middle of the woods, leading to a legendary course played with a magical ball! I like the mix of fantastical mythology with the more mundane golf game. There are magical high stakes involved (no one has ever completed the course alive,) including a highly-entertaining pair of kelpies brimming with laughably-transparent attempts to lure the characters to a watery grave. But among all that, we also have Huey and Launchpad trundling along in a golf cart to give commentary and Louie, serving as Glomgold’s caddie, insisting on getting a tip every few minutes.

This is a fun one. Just as the story combines the magical with the mundane, the humor ranges from absurd to deadpan, and all the kids are right within their respective wheelhouses. Louie is in it purely for the caddie cash—“It’s a sport where you try not to score points to make it end sooner,” he notes. “Hard pass.” Huey is after a coveted commentary merit badge, though his overly-precise observations are hampered by Launchpad’s complete ignorance of the game. Webby is thrilled at the supernatural turn of events, mortal peril included.

As for Dewey, his story is tied up with Scrooge’s. Scrooge has no worries about his ability to beat Glomgold, at one point drawling, “Ugh, we’ve got another ten minutes of gloating before he takes a shot.” So he instead focuses his energies on taking one of the kids under his wing and passing down his time-honored golfing wisdom. Unfortunately for him, Dewey is the one who takes him up on the offer, and of course Dewey is a complete natural, pulling off impossible shots while ignoring every scrap of Scrooge’s advice.

I’ve noticed that Scrooge seems to spend equal amounts of time either casually even-keeled or hopping mad. Here, he starts out with the former, strolling around the course with confidence and making bemused side comments to the kids about the ridiculous Glomgold. But Scrooge loves winning at least as much as he loves money, and he can’t stand Dewey being better than him, especially when Dewey isn’t going about it the “right” way. This is when David Tennant’s performance shifts from good-humored snark to ever-climbing infuriation. It’s amusingly intense, very immature, and exceedingly Scottish. I like the random exclamations, my favorite probably being, “Heavenly hollyhock!”

2022 Oscar Awards

By now, “slap” discourse is all over the internet, and I’m well aware no one needs my “take.” All I’ll say on that front is that I wish neither the joke nor the slap had happened, and I wish more time was being spent on the cool things that happened last night.

Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall shared the hosting duties between them, and overall, I think they did a pretty good job. Their bits were generally funny—the opening monologue was fun, and I got a kick out of Sykes dressed as Richard Williams—and rarely outstayed their welcome.

What the show was not was shorter. Despite all the hubbub about presenting eight of the awards prior to the start of the ceremony, there was still plenty of padding, such as tributes to films celebrating significant anniversaries (including The Godfather and Juno) and the “fan favorite” movie montages. The Academy doesn’t seem to grasp the idea that, if you remove parts of the ceremony but that add different stuff in, you’re not actually saving time. And on a personal level, while it was fun to see a nice chunk of the cast of Encanto performing together, I can’t sanction calling it “the first live performance of ‘We Don’t Talk about Bruno.’” What we got was the first verse of “We Don’t Talk about Bruno,” followed by a rap that isn’t Dolores’s and an Oscar-themed parody of the first verse again. Unless you do all the sections of the song and layer them over one another at the end, it doesn’t count as “We Don’t Talk about Bruno.” (This has been a public service announcement.)

But the extra stuff is always just that to me anyway, extraneous. What I’m most interested in are the awards themselves. I remain thoroughly happy that it was CODA’s night, taking home Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. I loved everything about Troy Kotsur’s speech as the first Deaf actor to win an Oscar, right down to his Popeye impression and presenter Yuh-jung Youn holding his award so he could sign with both hands! It might seem like an easy bit of sentiment, but I did get choked up seeing the crowd doing ASL applause for Kotsur and for the Best Picture win.

Best Leading Actress was the only acting award that felt up in the air to me, but I was pleased to see Jessica Chastain take home the trophy for The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Her speech was lovely, as was Ariana DeBose’s for Best Supporting Actress in West Side Story. DeBose joined Kotsur in the “historic first” club, as she’s the first Afrolatina and the first openly queer actor of color to win an award. Very happy for her, although I wish West Side Story had won more than one trophy. And even though I was rooting for Andrew Garfield, I understand why Will Smith won Best Leading Actor for King Richard.

As expected, The Power of the Dog won Best Director, with Jane Campion bringing the total of female Best Director winners to a whopping three, and Dune swept most of the technical categories, picking up the awards for cinematography, editing, sound, and visual effects, along with Best Production Design and Best Score. I was glad to see Belfast win Best Original Screenplay, thrilled (but not surprised) for Encanto to win Best Animated Feature, and disappointed that Lin-Manuel Miranda still doesn’t have his EGOT (I know that “We Don’t Talk about Bruno” was the breakout hit, but “Dos Oruguitas” is still a breathtaking song.) Drive My Car quite understandably won Best International Feature, and I most definitely need to make time for Best Documentary Feature winner Summer of Soul.

I wouldn’t really call it a surprising night, outside of that one particular moment, but I still enjoyed myself. I was happy with quite a few of the awards, especially the historic wins, and there were some beautiful speeches.

The Harder They Fall (2021, R)

When I was writing my personal Oscar nominations post yesterday, I realized I hadn’t had time to post a review of this movie before the nominations came out and it became All Oscars All the Time. I still haven’t gotten around to some of the other films that were in the Oscar conversation prior to the nominations, like The Last Duel and Passing, but this is one I did get a chance to see. Since I’ve finished my Oscar-movie reviews and have one available post left before I write about the ceremony, I figured I’d better seize my opportunity to talk about this excellent film.

Nat Love has an old score to settle with Rufus Buck. When he learns that his enemy is getting out of prison, Nat rallies his gang to challenge Buck’s crew and get his revenge. The two groups of outlaws wage war, and it remains to be seen who will be left standing when the bullets stop flying.

Ever since I learned the historical factoid that over a quarter of cowboys in the Old West were Black or Latino, I’ve had a near evangelical zeal to tell people about it and side-eye lily-white Westerns (looking at you, Power of the Dog!) As such, I love that this is a Western where all the major players—outlaws, saloon owners, and lawmen alike—are played by Black actors. These characters’ races aren’t merely incidental, and there are a number of Black cultural references peppered throughout the film, but it’s not a story about race. Rather, it’s a classic Western revenge tale, wherein Black characters are given the chance to inhabit the full range of Western archetypes and conventions. (Side note: while the story is fictional, all or most of the characters are based on real-life Black outlaws/marshals/etc., which is neat.)

Besides that, it’s just a fun, cool movie. Western isn’t a go-to genre for me, but I have enjoyed the different films I’ve taken the time to see, and The Harder They Fall fits in well with that. The story is pretty standard, featuring rival gangs of outlaws, shootouts, robberies, saloon fights, and more—everything you’d typically expect from a Western. Director/co-writer Jeymes Samuel lends a stylish eye to this bloody brawl, and the whole thing is just swathed in layer upon layer of cool. The costumes look great, the dialogue crackles, and the anachronistic music choices are interesting and add greatly to the vibe of the film.

The first time I saw the trailer for The Harder They Fall, I wondered if it was possible to have a crush on a movie. That was for the coolness and the aesthetic, yes, but also the cast. The glorious cast. At the center of the film are Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba as Nat Love and Rufus Buck, both of whom light up the screen. They’re backed up by the likes of Lakeith Stanfield, Regina King, Edi Gathegi, Zazie Beetz, and Damon Wayans Jr. I’m not familiar with Danielle Deadwyler, but she makes a big impression too as Cuffee from Nat’s crew. And we’re not even done yet! The film also features Deon Cole (Dave from Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts!) and Delroy Lindo, awesomely, as the one and only Bass Reeves. Everyone is completely on their game, tearing it up from start to finish.

Warnings

Tons of graphic violence, language, sexual content, drinking/smoking/drug use, and thematic elements.