Blogocentric Formulations

May Watch List

Explainer ▼

I keep meticulous track of all the books, scripts, and comics I read every year. Plus the podcasts I listen to. But the one thing I don't do very often is write about the things I watch. I don't really know why I haven't until this point, but I recently noticed that a friend of mine writes up a "media consumption" post on Facebook every month and I thought I might start doing the same.

To qualify for the list, it has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, it just can't be reruns of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I won't list the stuff I lost interest in quickly, but I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish.

Movies

          The Muppets (2011)
          Muppets Most Wanted
          Snake Eyes


Television

          Barry (Seasons 2 & 3)
          Bosch: Legacy (Season 1)
          The Boys (Season 1)
          Ms. Marvel


For some reason, I had never gotten around to watching the two most recent Muppets movies until now. We watched them last weekend with the kids and I was shocked at how funny they were. Not just kid humor, but tons of inside jokes about show business that are meant for grown-ups. As cheesy as the movies are, they were genuinely fun and I find myself wanting to revisit a bunch of the other Muppets properties with the kids that have been created over the years.

Snake Eyes, on the other hand, is yet another entry in the "nobody knows how to make a good G.I. Joe movie" genre. If you're familiar with the property, Snake Eyes is the good ninja that works for the Joes. Storm Shadow is the evil ninja that works for COBRA. And somehow, inexplicably, they made this a movie where Snake Eyes is a complete garbage person who is welcomed in by Storm Shadow, treated like a brother, and betrays him at every single step along the way. By the end of the movie, Snake Eyes has basically taken Storm Shadow's place in his own family, and when he stalks off and joins COBRA it's kind of like, "Yeah, no wonder why." Also, Henry Golding may be pretty to look at, but he's clearly terrible at stunts and fight training.

On the television front, I watched our new series Ms. Marvel that comes out in June, as well as the new Bosch: Legacy spinoff series which I love, don't get me wrong (because the original Amazon Prime series is great), but for the life of me I can't figure out why they made it. It was made for Freevee, a streaming service that used to be IMDb TV which is owned by... Amazon. So Amazon basically has a completely secondary streaming service for which they're... creating new spinoff shows based on shows Amazon Prime itself has canceled.

I finally got caught up on Barry which is excellent (although Season 3 takes a real turn in a lot of ways and it's a little jarring compared to what came in the two seasons before), and I fell in love with The Boys which is an irreverent take on superheroes (specifically super teams like the Justice League) and what would happen in a world where they're complete assholes, narcissists, and have the same mental problems the rest of us have. Honestly, if you're at all a fan of superhero fare and you don't mind a darker twist on in, this is a great show that turns a lot of tropes on their head. It's delightfully dark and twisted.


TOP PICK: The Boys