Whatcha Bleedin' Watchin'?

[Dr. Insomniac]

So I've been watching more of X-Files on and off over the past year. And having seen more of it, my opinion hasn't really changed overall. It's still the same "First few seasons are pretty good, but then the movie comes out and you can tell the steam is lowering, then Mulder leaves and the steam is fucking gone, and then that other movie and the revival seasons come out which reveal why Chris Carter hasn't had much success in the last two decades." And the passage of time reveals all of the show's more unimpressive production values, not to mention episode plots. There's one where a serial killer kills black people and steals their melanin, an arc where Joel McHale plays an Alex Jones knockoff and it's about as stupid as you'd expect, the Brady Bunch crossover, the COPS crossover, the one where Mulder has to fight Native American spirits or something and it's filmed exactly like a Neil Breen movie, and one where Mulder and Scully have to travel into a video game and play a first person shooter (which I vividly remember as the first ever episode I watched as a kid, and it colored my view of the show for years). And this series is absolutely a terminal case of introducing a huge mystery box that goes nowhere and not even the writers have any clue what the answer is. Though I did eventually discover why X-Files fans revere Darin Morgan so much, because all of his episodes are great, Clyde Bruckman, Jose Chung, Humbug, and he's the only writer in the revival seasons delivering new ideas instead of recycling the same hits. This guy's episodes are why X-Files has an enduring legacy, because those other episodes I described... ugh.

I also tried X-Files' sister show Millennium, because a darker, moodier X-Files that replaces the sci-fi with apocalyptic urban fantasy and stars Lance Henriksen sounded much more like my kind of thing. And this one was a lot more interesting and it's kinda sad but understandable why it's become significantly more obscure over the years. None of the banter or chemistry that makes X-Files so appealing to mass audiences appear here, and the dream that there's something more than what we know out there is replaced with a constant reminder that we're in the end of days. There's a Vince Gilligan interview where he cited the show's unrelenting dark tone as a writing lesson, one that led to him deciding Breaking Bad needed to have comedy in order to work. And granted, almost 30 years means this is hardly anywhere near the darkest show. We've got Mindhunter and Chernobyl these days. But still, Millennium is pretty morose barring a rare comedy episode (including a 2nd Jose Chung appearance). Eschatology's a huge running theme throughout most of what I've seen from this show, with any endings that even seem kind of happy being covered in the reminder that death is nigh and the only thing we can do is pray it won't be a painful one. Shocking that this was competing with Sabrina the Teenage Witch on primetime. But like X-Files, it also has the problem where it gets wildly inconsistent, every season's helmed by a different showrunner and they've all got wildly contradictory ideas for where to take Frank Black's character or what the show should be about. Fucking KISS shows up in one of the aforementioned comedy episodes, without reason too. It's ironic that the one season I found the most coherent and ambitious was the one co-showrun by the guy who directed Dragonball Evolution. Reminds me how Angel never had much of a consistent tone across its 5 seasons either beyond the obligatory "If nothing we do matters, what matters is what we do" theme.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Been a while since I did an update on Wrestling but I mostly just stick to WWE now since AEW's booking has been dog-shit for a couple of years now and match quality alone can't get me to commit my limited time to keeping up with it for several hours a week. Likewise, I just don't have the time to watch a bunch of stuff like NJPW and TNA, among other promotions, outside of clip highlights and the occasional match if I hear that it's good enough.

With WWE, I tend to watch an odd Raw or Smackdown if I have the time, but I also kind of just stick to YouTube highlight clips since these shows feel so padded at 3-hours (I really miss the 2-hour shows). Raw has gotten slightly better in pacing on Netflix since it seems to average about 2 and a half hours now instead of a full 3, but it's still too long for my taste.

Now, I do keep up with the PLEs pretty regularly, and outside of feeling way too padded between matches (they should really add a match or two to each card instead of having so much filler in-between), the PLEs have genuinely been pretty strong for the most part. Even the lower-card wrestlers tend to still get pretty good matches in with interesting stories leading into them.

Recently we had the Royal Rumble, which I enjoyed for the most part. To get the elephant out of the room: No, neither winner of the Women's or Men's Royal Rumbles is who I personally would have been interested to see win, myself, but also part of the fun of this is seeing how things shake-out for the winners between now and Wrestlemania. For the Women's side, I didn't need to see Charlotte win a Rumble again. She's kind of treated like how the crowed used to treat Roman Reigns before he adopted the Tribal Chief gimmick. On the one had I feel that it's uncalled for, since she is an excellent worker and feels like she has the main event star power that so few other women on the roster can match at this point. On the other hand, I do get how her getting such blatant favrotism can be frustrating for fans who want to see other up-and-coming talent get a more significant push in her place. That said, I must admit that while I'm not thrilled about her winning, if she ends up challenging Tiffany Stratton I believe that we will get a pretty great match out of it, and possible a double-turn since the crowd will naturally turn Charlotte heel while Tiffany is getting babyface reactions already.

Now for the men's side of things, I get that having John Cena or CM Punk go over at the Rumble would have been more in line with what people expected and wanted. That said, Jey Uso was a more unexpected choice for many (funny enough is that I always thought he had a good shot at winning given how much of a push he's been getting). I must admit, I'm not a big Jey Uso fan. I think he has some good charisma and really does a great job of getting the crowd behind him, but his work rate and mic work both leave a lot to be desired for me. That said, the whole point of the Royal Rumble is to make new stars, not to push already established stars. Both Cena and Punk, as well as Roman, Seth, and other big names are already former multi-time world champions and frankly don't need that win. Also, there's just more story potential if their road to Wrestlemania is unclear. In this case you can do anything with them and it's almost guarenteed to be a big deal from their star power alone. Jey is popular but he needs that credibility to be treated as a bigger star, so this win was probably a good idea for trying to get him more over at a higher level. Granted, I'm not thrilled about him seeing face Gunther again since we literally JUST saw that at SNME a couple of weeks ago, and I want to see Gunther face other opponents given how good he is in the ring, but it'll be a great moment for Jey Uso fans if he wins.

Also, the Internet backlash on Jey from a small but vocal part of the fanbase is one of those things that makes me shake my head at the IWC. It's a bunch of angry, emotionally-immature idiots who can't stand when things don't go exactly the way that they picture it in their heads. Like I said, part of the fun of wrestling is trying to predict the outcomes of certain stories or matches, or which wrestlers will get pushed, and it needs to be a little unpredictable at times to be entertaining. If anything, I found that WWE has been playing it way too safe for the most part lately, so even if the results here weren't what I personally wanted, it's still refreshing to see them mix it up with the booking recently.

On a side note, I am still bitter that LA Knight never got the Jey Uso treatment given how over he was for such a good amount of time. It does bring up the fan speculation (not even really speculation when it comes to the Vince Mcmahon era since it has been confirmed on several occasions) that the company is reluctant to push superstars who get over on their own. They like to have credit for being the ones to make a new star. That, and apparently Knight has heat with some of the decision-makers of that company for no apparent reason that I have been able to find (to be fair, it's just a rumor), so for one reason or another he gets kept square in the mid-card no matter how popular he gets. You can see that his popularity is starting to finally cool off a little (not really through any fault of his own) given his lackluster booking, so it's one of those times that it's really frustrating to be a fan of someone's work and not see them get pushed the way that you feel they deserve to be.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Found myself watching a lot of that new show High Potential, and I'd say it's surprising, but then I see the credits and go "Oh, hey. The guy who made Veronica Mars. And oh hey, it's the guy who directed Cabin in the Woods and wrote a bunch of late-stage Buffy and Angel episodes." And that's not a criticism at all, but it is very "What if a 90s/00s WB show had a midlife crisis?". Which is sorta welcome in a TV environment where the CW is now a skeleton of its former self. Look at that CW schedule. Literal skin and bones there.