Marvel Live Action

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Recently got the season one Blu-Ray from Amazon. I want to give it a full re-watch before jumping into season two, so I may fall a bit behind.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Jessica Jones Season 2 is the worst Marvel Netflix show ever.

This is what I keep hearing.

Really hoping they don't botch up DD season 3. The Netflix shows are kind of sliding downhill.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Speaking of the Netflix shows in relation to the MCU, while the original plan was clearly to have these characters cross-over into the movies at some point, in retrospect it's good that they decided against that seeing as how over-stuffed the cast of Infinity War already is. That said, I must admit, part of me is disappointed in the fact that I'll never get to see a scene of The Punisher and Rocket Raccoon mowing down a bunch of Outriders together or Thanos using the Time Stone to erase Iron Fist season one from the MCU canon and the Reality Stone to recast Danny Rand with a better actor.

Oh, well, I suppose that's what fan-fiction exists for.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Got a newsletter from Warren Ellis explaining why Kingpin is so evil.

Thesis: Wilson Fisk is the greatest villain in the Marvel film/tv universe. He is more evil than Thanos and all those other bastards. Evidence:
https://youtu.be/u7EmsWIQeio

The omelette is an ancient French dish, one of that wonderful people's greatest gifts to the world. It's a three minute job at most, and less than two of those are in the pan. It is simple and should be pure. Don't put milk in it. You don't need butter.  Don't fucking flip it like it's eggs over easy. It's a fucking omelette. He does these things to destroy the omelette because he is evil.  Eeeeee villllll.  He only uses butter and milk so he can destroy more things while making breakfast.

Get a small non-stick pan on the hob, at three-quarters heat. Crack two eggs into a bowl and dash them with a fork for thirty seconds.  You don't need to whisk them. An omelette should not be a homogenous mass. You want ribbons of yolk and white tangled together.

When a tiny drop of water in the pan sizzles when it hits, pour the eggs in.

Leave alone for thirty seconds.  Just let it sit and work.

Take the pan and shake it, like you're doing figure-eights with your wrist. Most of the work here is with the pan handle.  If you're really good, you won't need a spatula at all. But this isn't a test.  Lift the edges of the forming omelette with the spatula.  After a minute, the whole thing will become free of the pan and slide around.  Keep shaking it.  You want the top to look like scrambled eggs, shiny and almost-set.

This is why you don't fiip it. An omelette is an exercise in textures. Firm to the bite on one side, soft and airy on the other.

If you want a filling, it goes in now, just for fifteen/twenty seconds to warm it up.

Then you flip the right hand side of the omelette into the middle. You will see that the underside has become firm and golden.

Slide the whole thing on to your plate so the left hand side folds underneath.

Now you season. I'm currently using black sea salt and smoked paprika.

I had some left over aromatic duck from a Chinese meal last night,so I just shredded a little bit of that. Experiment.  You can wilt baby spinach right on top of it for twenty seconds. Some people grate cheese in. Sometimes I chop up some red bell pepper and toss that in.

Perfect is the enemy of good.  As you will see below, today's is a little ragged and a touch too gold in places. But you're not making food for a photo book. You're making something that tastes good and surrounds the intent of the object.  It's just eggs, comrade.

If you're counting: without the filling, this omelette is around 150 calories and around 25g of protein. It's not classical, because it doesn't use butter, but in the days of good non-stick pans, I don't personally think it's vital. Your mileage may vary.  People will tell you to use water (for the steam effect, to aerate the omelette) or milk (for reasons beyond my understanding). (Actually, no: I suspect milk in particular is a chef's tool for banging out a reliable omelette for two hundred covers at breakfast.) I always prefer to experience the thing in itself, for itself. Don't be Wilson Fisk.

In the words of Madame Poularde: "I break some good eggs into a bowl, I beat them well, I put in a good piece of butter in the pan. I throw the eggs into it and I shake it constantly. I am happy, monsieur, if this recipe pleases you."

[gunswordfist]

Jessica Jones Season 2 is the worst Marvel Netflix show ever.

This is what I keep hearing.

Really hoping they don't botch up DD season 3. The Netflix shows are kind of sliding downhill.

I seriously doubt that'll be a problem. The shows have two separate teams...I think.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I watched the premiere of Cloak and Dagger. I like Tyrone's character and his issues toward that police officer, but Tandy was just a bitch. Like if someone watched Sarah from Orphan Black and took everything remotely likable away from her.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I was really into this season of Luke Cage up until the last episode.

Spoiler

Really? Luke becomes a crime boss after seeing how much of a monster Mariah was? If he really needed a firmer hand to protect Harlem, couldn't he just call Danny to help him out again? Use a literal Iron Fist than a figurative one? Because what the show tries to do by having Luke talk about making Harlem great again while DW calls him Trump? That allegory doesn't flow for me. Even with the prior hints like Luke almost killing Cockroach and getting mad at Claire, it was still hard to believe him turning heel.

[close]

[Avaitor]

From what I'm reading about season 2 of Iron Fist, it's a step-up from the first, primarily action-wise but still isn't perfect. I'll get to it eventually, but I'm already getting kind of tired of these shows. Although cutting the season down from 13 to 10 episodes sounds a little more enticing.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Same here. I am still legitimately interested in Daredevil season three since I'm a fan of that character, but while I initially enjoyed seasons one of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, I have since had no desire to re-watch them, and both of their second seasons, while not necessarily bad, felt like a huge slog for me to get through. The Defenders was also disappointingly lackluster, and after how much I fucking loved Infinity War, ot feels like such a shame that the Netflix shows can't even come close to capturing that same level of chemistry between their characters here. I may have mostly given up on the CW DC shows, but even those at least have way more fun crossovers. While I will still watch it, I am currently in no hurry to get around to Iron Fist's new season.

I genuinely enjoyed The Punisher, and if they ever make another season of that, I'll certainly give it a shot. Again, same with Daredevil, which is the only one of these shows that actually feels like it remembers that, among other things, it's a superhero show with actual super heroics involved, whereas the other shows seem to get way too up their own ass in delivering us an obvious and ham-fisted message rife with an over-abundance of social commentary. So, as for the other Defenders shows, I'm personally pretty much done with them at this point.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I didn't like Jessica Jones' second season at all, and mostly kept Defenders on as background noise, but I did enjoy Luke Cage's second season. As for Iron Fist, his second outing is an improvement so far. It doesn't feel as off as it was last year.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I liked parts of Luke Cage season two, but the slow pacing really hurt it for me. I feel like you could have cut it down by four or five episodes and it would've felt so much tighter. Mariah's character arc with her daughter was great, as was Bushmaster's complex motivations, but Shades's sub-plot was really hard for me to get into, and I wasn't really feeling Luke's arc of trying to repair his relationship with his father. It was more of a mixed bag for me, with good parts sprinkled in here and there, as opposed to season one where I distinctly love the first half but wasn't too big on everything after Diamondback took over.

[Avaitor]

I didn't even like Mariah's stuff or Bushmaster as much. You could easily make a drinking game of each time she mentions how her daughter is the only thing she has going for her, and he didn't really stick out for me. And I'm still not sold on Mike Colter as Luke. I don't think he has the acting chops to sell him as well as Charlie Cox or Krysten Ritter do their characters.

The season worked better for me than Jessica Jones' second, but I wasn't that into it.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I really liked Mariah's arc. How the events from the first season have broken her apart and took her to a course in villainy that even disturbed Shades, and her failed attempts at bonding with Nightshade. And Bushmaster starting off as this crazy superhuman who cuts off people's heads as intimidation tactics, but then we slowly realize he and Luke aren't so different.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I finally got around to Iron Fist Season 2 and it went from being hilariously bad to being boringly mundane. I mean, yeah, nothing in this season was nearly as outright atrocious as season one in terms of writing or acting (well, there were SOME bits that still came off really cheesy), but it also had no real highs either, so in a way it kind of feels worse than season one since I could at least laugh at the incompetence of that. The sad thing is that if done right, Iron Fist could have easily been my favorite of the Netflix Defenders shows. martial arts movies fantastical Asian mythology (which should have been the main inspiration for this show's tone) are so much up my alley that it should be the easiest thing to make me get into. And yet we have a show that takes itself far too seriously and has absolutely no fun with its concept. It basically tries too hard to be Daredevil but doesn't manage to do that show's concept nearly as well.

In all honesty, though, while they mostly started out strong, I've been getting really tired of the Netflix Marvel shows aside from Daredevil and The Punisher; though, on that note, I am genuinely excited for Daredevil season 3 since it's covering my favorite story arc from the comics. That said, does anyone else find issue with the release schedule for these shows. They released new seasons of each of the solo shows in such quick succession of each other that it kind of felt overwhelming and made this section of the Universe feel way too over-saturated. I mean, people complain about three MCU movies a year being too much, but damn does this make that release schedule look widely spread out. We got new seasons of Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Daredevil just over a month apart each, and Jessica Jones was just a few months before that. I'm not sure who's idea it was to release these new seasons like this, but it was a pretty terrible one as it just makes it that much harder to want to keep up with these anymore.

Say what you want about the movies, but at least the film division of Marvel knows how to make the properties that they adapt build off of each other and make the shared Universe concept all the more enticing. When it comes to the shows, for as much praise as we initially gave them, it's clear that they worked far better as stand-alone affairs. The shared Universe aspect doesn't feel properly implemented at all, and honestly becomes more cumbersome as these series' continue. It's just more "stuff" rather than interconnecting pieces that cleverly work together to make for something even grander on the whole.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, the release schedule is weird. I haven't even finished Iron Fist yet, and the new Daredevil season is coming next week. It's like if the Marvel movies came out every month instead of 3 a year.