What Are You Watching?

[Painted Outlaw]

The other week when I was at Newbury Comics, I picked up the box set of Beast Wars since the show was recommended to me and all. Hopefully, I come out liking it as much as other people seem to. (Looking through this thread, I need to get back to Simpsons too. It's on my list!) What my question is is that the set for BW seems to come with something marked a prequel comic. Is that super-duper important or can I just boot up episode 1 without worrying about it?

[Dr. Insomniac]

Just boot up episode 1. I don't remember the last time a tie-in comic was necessary to watch a Transformers show.

[Painted Outlaw]

Ah, good. That's a relief, then. Seems I have a couple of hours before Jojo airs on Toonami so, I'll try to knock some off tonight.

[Avaitor]

I have no memory of a prequel comic when I watched the show a few years ago, and I enjoyed it. Let us know how you feel!

[Avaitor]

After releasing Porky Pig 101 last year, the Warner Archive is trying classic animation again, by releasing the first volume of color Popeye cartoons. Apparently the future of getting more classics out- primarily non-Tom & Jerry MGM works and the rest of the Looney Tunes, not just the rest of Popeye- will depend on how well this one does.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, over the last few weeks I started and got caught up on F is for Family. I had kind of been burned out on family sitcoms for a while (animated or otherwise), but my older brother got me into this one and it's style of humor is right up my alley, personally. It's a good indicator that animated family sitcoms can still work just fine so long as the execution strikes a good balance between various elements. In this case, the humor is crude and often mean-spirited, but not in the way that certain other shows go overboard with it and hammer it in too much to the point of being unbearable. To balance out the obscene nature of the comedy, though, there is a genuine sense of heart and drama to the characters that always keeps getting touched back on, and the more grounded nature of this show tends to keep the core characters feeling relatable in some way, while not being afraid to also acknowledge them as deeply messed up individuals.

I also like that Frank is a more interesting version of the Dad archetype in these kinds of shows since his main character flaw is being driven by impulse and temper rather than just being an idiot for the sake of fulfilling a stereotype. I've actually had friends with father's who act similarly to him. Displaying him with the demeanor of being a well-meaning person but not necessarily a good person is a pretty ballsy move since it could be very easy to hate him, but he has this strange quality that makes you want to see him succeed in some way. Also, I'm a fan of Bill Burr so having him do the voice here is genius in my book; though, then again, it makes sense when you consider that he based most of this show on his childhood experiences.

[Avaitor]

Glad to hear from another person whom I respect that it's good! The show has its supporters, but it doesn't tend to get the same kind of buzz BoJack or Big Mouth do. I still need to find time for both it and the latter of the previously mentioned series.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Reminds me that I need to watch more Bojack. I like what I've seen of it. I couldn't really get into Big Mouth, though, but that's purely subjective preferences on my part.

And yeah, I'm actually surprised at how overlooked this show is compared to it's peers, especially with the level of talent attached to it (besides Bill Burr and Laura Dern, it even has freaking Sam Rockwell), with Mike Price as the head writer. It's definitely underrated in my book.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've been re-watching season one of Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes lately and the show still holds up pretty well, IMO. It does a really good job of juggling multiple story-lines while still retaining somewhat of an episodic nature, and can easily integrate and set-up future arcs without taking away from what's going on in the current one. It does make me a bit disappointed that this show got canceled after only just two seasons, since you can tell that they clearly had a lot more material planned for it, and I could've seen it lasting at least another two or three full seasons before wrapping up on it's own terms.

[Avaitor]

That's a show I'd really like to see again. I admire what the MCU has done with its wealth of characters, but I still like how this one went for a slightly more classic approach to the team, and got just about everything right. It almost feels like the end of an era, since we don't really get action cartoons like that anymore, the new season of Young Justice aside. And I just can't gel with that as much.

Oh, speaking of super hero shows, I finally got around to picking up a copy of Batman Beyond season 3, and watched it all pretty quickly. It was a good set of episodes overall, ultimately better than season 2 thanks to having a shorter season and focusing less on Terry's school life. I think the first season may be the best overall though, with its slightly darker tone. I'm frankly just glad to finish it and complete my DCAU collection.

[Dr. Insomniac]

That's a show I'd really like to see again. I admire what the MCU has done with its wealth of characters, but I still like how this one went for a slightly more classic approach to the team, and got just about everything right.

I'm still wondering what went so right with EMH that Marvel Animation can't do it again for their later shows.

the new season of Young Justice aside. And I just can't gel with that as much.

I don't know what's going on with that show. I admire the ambition in doing a show about the entire DCU instead of just one part of it, but YJ's stuck juggling so many characters in the air that they can't give proper focus on many of them. And I hate this version of the Outsiders. Geo-Force and Cyborg repeat the "angsty teen superhero who takes half the season to mellow out" schtick that Superboy had throughout most of season 1, Forager's fucking annoying and needs his vocal cords ripped apart, and Halo being the show's Kenny McCormick feels off for some reason. There have been some bright spots like the Vandal Savage episode and the one where Beast Boy was stuck in a VR hell, but it has the same problems season 2 had and then some. It's still a lot better than most action cartoons in the past year, but it's hard not getting pissed off by the pacing, characterization, and everything else. You know something's wrong when the romance in an Arrowverse show is less insufferable than YJ's.

Oh yeah, I watched the finale of Star Vs recently. It's fitting that it came out on the same day as Game of Thrones' ending, because it also had a conclusion meant to be happy but sounds horrifying and unsatisfying once you think about it. Even Yara's actress showed up.

[Avaitor]

I know some people complain about JLU having too many heroes to invest with, but I feel like it did a better job at pacing them around than Young Justice's kitchen sink approach.

Speaking of which, this TTG comic parody of YJ cracks me up.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I think it's because for the most part, JLU focused usually on the core seven plus Green Arrow, Question, Huntress, and Supergirl. The main team already have the past two seasons of JL gaining chemistry with each other and figuring out how to work as a team, while the extra four get establishing first episodes right off the bat. Whereas the main YJ team never get that moment of becoming a family like the JL did. The core six of just Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Superboy, Miss Martian, and Artemis only last for thirteen episodes before more members like Zatanna and Rocket get introduced. As soon as Kon mellowed out and quit being an asshole, the time skip happened. And when the show pulled that fakeout Artemis death, and Kon felt sad about it, I struggled to remember a time when the two even talked to each other. At least with JL/JLU, you got that quiet camaraderie with Clark and Bruce, the kinship between Diana and J'onn, John and Shayera's romance, everyone annoyed but still good friends with Wally. YJ doesn't do that. It either takes more episodes than it should letting characters defrost from assholes into heroes, or just throws random superheroes at you and expects you to invest in their arcs without any incentive like Blue Beetle. And by the time the show miraculously irons out all those issues and turns into something good like the season finales, boom, time skip and we're back to those issues again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, I'll be honest, while I'm a fan of most of Greg Weisman's stuff up through TSSM, Young Justice just never really clicked with me. I mean, I did enjoy it on an initial viewing (at least the first season), but even the so-called "good" parts of the show are just hard for me to even try and get back into anymore. To me the show's biggest flaw has always been in trying so hard to explore the more "sophisticated" and "complex" (aka "edgy" and "convoluted") side of DC characters and story-lines that it forgets to actually establish them in the first place for us to be invested in what happens in either case. A show like Justice League does show it's age in a lot of places, but I can still enjoy most of it because it works on a fundamental level when it comes to it's core characters that were well-established through simplistic yet effective episodes (mostly from season two, since a lot of season one is kind of cringe-worthy in retrospect). However, with YJ, as Dr. Insomniac mentioned we only just barely got to that point by the end of the first season, and then all of a sudden we were thrown into a time-skip with the entire status-quo changed off-screen, and any investment we had in any ongoing character arcs thrown out the window, thus losing any sense of connection we had built with the main cast up to that point and as a result making everything that followed seem less interesting, no matter how much the show tried to shove how big and important it's stories were down our throats.

Again, starting simple and building from there is just a more effective way to do this. The Kree-Skrull arc of AEMH, for example, is carefully seeded throughout the first season before coming into full swing for the first half of season two, but it works so effectively because by that point the show has successfully found a way to make us give a shit about all of the key players in that event, only introducing new characters and plot-lines as necessary to service the grander story-line. Now, imagine if instead of clearly seeing Captain America capture and replaced by the Skrulls at the end of season one, we just get a reveal out of nowhere in season two that Cap has been a Skrull the whole time, and then another reveal an episode or two later that the Avengers knew all along and were just playing him to get more information. That'd be pretty lame and contrived, but to me that's essentially the kind of writing found in Young Justice in a nutshell. It's plot-twists and big moments just for the sake of plot-twists and big moments, without any sufficient build-up or carefully planted clues to convincingly lead to them, and it comes at the expense of everything that normally makes stories of this nature so engaging. So in the end, the show and it's characters just end up feeling hollow without any layers beneath the flashy surface.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And as a whole, I don't care for the Light. How many times have the YJ cast seemingly won the day, only for the show to reveal it was part of the Light's plan all along? It feels like Weisman recycling Xanatos/Nerissa/Norman's schemes to diminishing results. I enjoy crafty villains as much as the next guy, but there needs to be a limit before it gets too ridiculous. Like when Cersei in Game of Thrones somehow outplayed everyone in Season 7. It didn't make her looks like a cunning master of the game, but only made everyone else (especially Tyrion) look like complete idiots. And that's the same case here. Instead of an equal footing between both heroes and villains in a game of cat and mouse, the Light always manage to outplay every superhero that it becomes predictable. Every time Dick stops a bad guy from killing people, it was somehow part of a 25-step plan Vandal's been thinking up. Meanwhile, the Justice League are so stupid in this show that they don't sense anything wrong with gathering all of their loved ones in one suburban house, and are only saved from a villain killing them all because Lady Shiva said it wasn't part of the plan. The same Justice League who all got mind-controlled by Klarion in season one.