“And away we go”

While I enjoyed the first season of Rick and Morty, I wasn’t all that sure about the show’s staying power with Adult Swim.  I’d talked about the show with some friends, but for the most part this seems to be a show that finds its fan base more in their late teens.  It’s fair to say it’s been more than a few years since I was a teenager, so perhaps it shouldn’t be much of a surprise I was a little hesitant with this season (feel free to check out my review of Season 1).
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“I heard that if you don’t give him a name, he’ll turn the children into icicles.”

It has been a long time since I have seen a decent psychological thriller, and Altered Minds is a great film to bring me back to this type of film. To give readers a frame of reference, films like Identity or Session 9: they are most certainly part of the “psychological thriller” genre, but you are led to believe there are supernatural forces at work during the film. Then, just when you think the film will have a supernatural climax, you are offered a twist ending that is not supernatural and actually makes sense to the plot.
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I previously reviewed Season 3 of Sisters in May of this year, so Sisters lovers, you can go back and review. In dealing with this season, I am going to focus on character, because as much as any show can, this show focuses on the differences between people who are very close with ties of family and love. Sisters is well known to be a women’s show, and I wouldn’t disagree, nor would I intimate that it is a bad thing to be labeled as such. So many shows have been focused on an assumed male dominance in society, but Sisters was a show that brought the power of women to the forefront. It was also one of the first shows to show a female audience had an important demographical significance. But I don’t want to make this an ideological dissertation. I am simply going to look at the purity and relevance of the show, even today.
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Ed Asner’s character Lou Grant started life on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. The sit-com lasted seven seasons, taking a large stash of Emmy awards during its run. It also competed with All In The Family as a heavy-hitter in spinoffs. Rhoda and Phyllis each had a respectable run also in the sit-com world. But the most amazing spinoff and the most successful wasn’t another sit-com at all. It was an hour-long drama that took us inside the workings of a major L.A. newspaper, The Los Angeles Tribune. There Lou Grant, fired from his television station gig in Minneapolis, lands on the doorstep of his good friend Charlie Hume (Adams), who happens to be the paper’s managing editor. The job’s his, and the drama ran for five seasons.
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The premise here is dirt simple. They’ve taken the buddy cop idea and found a way to work in the forensics science fad and deliver a procedural with a few twists. The show is based on a series of mystery novels by Tess Gerritsen, who introduced us to Jane Rizzoli & Maura Isles in 2001. Angie Harmon plays Detective Rizzoli. She’s wanted to be a cop all of her life and is living the dream, working with a special unit out of Boston PD. Her best friend in life happens to be Dr. Maura Isles, who is the Chief Medical Examiner for the unit and is played by Sasha Alexander. These are the kind of friends who finish each other’s sentences and share a lot of history together. That’s not to say they are at all alike.
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With the success of the Teen Wolf series, it comes as no surprise that MTV would not just capitalize on creating another genre series to the channel, but also tap into the success of a young adult book series. It seems like a no-brainer. Tackling the book series of The Shannara Chronicles was a big risk for the network, with a large cast and a lot of effects, but most importantly, this may be the most dramatic shift the network has had in appealing to a demographic.  Really, let’s take a moment and realize how the network that once appealed to the audience that praised the exploits of The Jersey Shore is now attempting to appeal to a geekier and, let’s face it, a smarter audience. It’s a true sign of the times and how things have changed, and it’s a change for the better.
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“And then there’s Maude.”

In football, there’s always a lot of talk about coaching trees. You know the idea. Some great mastermind who saw his assistants go on to have success of their own and who passed that lucky charm down to others for, perhaps, generations. All In The Family would be the television equivalent to a coach with a long tree. There were an incredible number of spinoffs that led to other spinoffs. Archie’s neighbors The Jeffersons moved on up to the East Side and had their own several years of success. That show saw maid Florence have her spinoff from that show called Checking In. Meanwhile, Archie’s daughter had her Gloria series, and after Edith’s death, Archie settled into Archie Bunker’s Place. Even the Bunker home had a spinoff called 704 Houser Street when a new family moved in.
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For the horror fans out there, I’m sure you’ve noticed that there have been a lot of horror anthologies being pumped out.  It’s a concept that I can appreciate, but even as a fan, enough is enough already.  It’s great to see talented people coming together to film a handful of short films, all with a collective theme, and seeing how the filmmakers use the platform to tell the story.  For me the VHS series is my favorite of the bunch; not every story will be everyone’s cup of tea, but there are at least one or two stories per DVD that people can enjoy.  When it comes to Monsterland, I feel this is a film that somewhat cheats the rules of a true anthology, because it’s really just a collection of short films made independently of one another that seem to have been purchased for this one release.
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