Interview: Joshua Mills on his upcoming Fantagraphics book about the late comedian Ernie Kovacs

Even though it's often employed innocently, there's an inherent element of tragedy in the phrase "ahead of their time" when it's associated with unsung or overlooked geniuses in a field. If one is "ahead of their time," odds are they'll never live to see the impact their existence inspired or receive the adulation they so richly deserve. — Read the rest

Levar Burton lets us know what it was really like under Geordi's visor

In the 20th century, nothing screamed science fiction as well as a character with a visor. Whether it was the visor on RoboCop's helmet or the one Cyclops rocked in the X-Men comics, visors were a design choice creators used to subtly impart a story's tone and genre. — Read the rest

Netflix comedy series 'I Think You Should Leave' comes back on May 30th

I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson finally has a premiere date, almost a year after Netflix announced that the show was coming back for a third season. The streaming giant has announced on Twitter that the six-episode comedy sketch series will be available for streaming on May 30th. The show was created by Saturday Night Live alum Tim Robinson, who also stars in it, and SNL producer Zach Kanin. They're not the only comics connected to the show, though: It's co-produced by The Lonely Island, the comedy trio composed of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. 

Each episode of I Think You Should Leave is only around 16 to 18 minutes long, so you can finish a season in one sitting. There are multiple sketches per episode, mostly revolving around somebody doing something absurd in an everyday professional or social situation, as well as some pretty bizarre and over-the-top bits. Really, some parts are so weird, you don't know whether to cringe or laugh. 

The show's first season premiered on Netflix back in 2019, while the second season arrived in 2021. Alex Bach, one of the show's producers, previously told Variety that Robinson and Kanin write every single script and that they "wait for the sketches to come to them" so there have been "extended periods of time between seasons."

A screenshot from the third season of Netflix comedy show I Think You Should Leave.

‘Ted Lasso’ returns with a stronger, more focused third season

I’ve always found the major criticism against Ted Lasso, that it’s too saccharine, to be quite unfair. This is a series in the Frank Capra mold, where the sunny skies and primary colors sweeten the bitter pills being handed out. For every scene of wish fulfillment designed to get you pumping the air, there are meditations on suicide, betrayal and emotional neglect. It’s also funny – enough that Emmy voters gave it Best Comedy two years in a row. Now the third and, far as we know, final season of the show will return to Apple TV on March 15th.

It picks up after the summer break, in the run-up to Richmond’s return season in the Premier League (EPL) after winning promotion by the skin of its teeth last time around. It’s been a long while since the second season aired, the longer gap attributed to behind the scenes issues. Jason Sudekis, who became co-showrunner this time around, reportedly ordered a ground-up rewrite after becoming dissatisfied with the original direction this season was taking. On the basis of the first four episodes, which Apple made available ahead of broadcast, our patience has been well-rewarded.

Such is the nature of Apple’s restrictive covenant on spoilers that I can’t talk about many specifics about the third season. The first episode is the weakest of the bunch, taking time to re-establish where everyone is after their summer break. (Are placeholder episodes necessary given the nature of streaming these days?) Keeley is finding the rigors of running her own business to be harder than expected, while Rebecca has taken Ted’s pledge of winning the league to heart. Ted, meanwhile, is feeling just as emotionally stunted as he has been previously, moreso after spending a summer with Henry, clearly having not dealt with Nate’s betrayal, or the contrived reasons behind it.

As part of Lasso’s evolution from a sitcom to a comedy drama, the runtimes of each episode are now firmly measured in hours, rather than half hours. The narrative has broadened out to cover the personal lives of many of the main footballers, as well as giving Keeley a whole new team to work with. We even get our first proper glimpse of Michelle and Henry back home in Kansas, not to mention the storylines featuring Sam and, of course, the dreaded Nate. That’s a lot for a show to handle, especially one that – similarly unfairly – was described as unfocused and messy in its second season. (Blame must go to Apple for that one, given its late-in-the-day request to add a further two episodes to the order.)

There are more threads in the storyline, but Ted Lasso has refocused its episodic structure around the Premier League season. And two parallel narratives come to the fore: Ted’s struggle to access his emotions in a healthy way, and the battle over Nate’s soul. Rupert, played with evil relish by Anthony Head, is the devil lurking on the wonder kid’s shoulder, dangling temptation before him at every turn. I probably can’t talk about [ACTOR] playing [CHARACTER], either, a condensed version of every mono-named prima-donna footballer that is often idolized and hated in equal measure.

I was interested to see how the show’s newfound embrace by the footballestablishment would alter its customary lack of grounding in reality. This season sees plenty of filming at some big name stadiums, even down to the retention of the sponsor walls for post-match interviews. But don’t go in expecting a new-found commitment to footballing verisimilitude, with the opposition teams all played by actors with little resemblance to their real-world counterparts. Just remember that this is still Ted’s world, we’re just lucky enough to spend a little time watching it.

Ted Lasso (Jason Sudekis) and Nate Shelley (Nick Mohammed) face off while Rupert Mannion (Anthony Head) lurks, evily, in the background.

There's going to be a Creed/Rocky "cinematic universe"

Reporting on movie studios developing their own cinematic universes is like checking a "days without incident" sign at work. No matter how long the gap between incidents is, you know that another one is inevitably waiting right around the corner. Granted, since the MCU has started to incur more criticism from fans and critics alike, the endless conversations about every studio developing a cinematic universe have thankfully stalled. — Read the rest

Amazon scoops up ‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ after HBO Max cancellation

Amazon has reportedly picked up Batman: Caped Crusader, the animated series Warner Bros. developed for HBO Max but scrapped last August to cut costs. Despite also drawing interest from Netflix, Apple and Hulu, the upcoming show will have a home on Amazon Prime.

First announced in May 2021, Batman: Caped Crusader sounds like a spiritual successor to Batman: The Animated Series, the beloved 1990s weekday afternoon staple. The upcoming show was created by executive producers JJ Abrams, Matt Reeves and Batman: The Animated Series developer Bruce Timm. In addition, celebrated comic-book writer Ed Brubaker is on the creative team for the 10-episode first season.

The Amazon sale was part of Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans to monetize content by selling it to third parties. The studio will now focus on the Batman IP as part of a 10-year DC Comics meta-story spanning film, TV, gaming and animated series. In addition, a sequel to Reeves’s 2022 film The Batman and spin-off series The Penguin on HBO Max are in the works.

“We are beyond excited to be working together to bring this character back, to tell engrossing new stories in Gotham City,” Abrams and Reeves said when Batman: Caped Crusader was announced. “The series will be thrilling, cinematic and evocative of Batman’s noir roots, while diving deeper into the psychology of these iconic characters. We cannot wait to share this new world.”

Promotional artwork for the series ‘Batman: Caped Crusader,’ featuring Batman scowling in a dark and moody nighttime scene with the moon behind him.

The Best of the Worst Cartoons Ever

ToonHeads: The Best of the Worst Cartoons Ever was an unaired 2003 Cartoon Network Special [via Metafilter, where you should read John Harris's notes]. Hanna-Barbera, Ruby Spears and Filmation have much to answer for! For all the Scooby-Doo knockoffs and corporate zaniness, though, there's an experimental quality to much of it (at least within the bounds of what was possible on network television) and some surprisingly weird imagery. — Read the rest

'Star Trek: Discovery' is ending with season 5 next year

There's only one more season left before Star Trek: Discovery bids farewell. The Paramount+ series is ending after season 5, which according to its official summary, "will find Captain Burnham (Martin-Green) and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncovering a mystery that will send them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries." According to Variety, Paramount+ is also streaming the fifth season in 2024 as opposed to this year as previously expected. 

Star Trek: Discovery marked the first time the franchise has had a Black female lead and has prominently featured LGBTQIA+ characters. It also largely took on a more serialized format, wherein each episode is its own installment in a season's main storyline, unlike other entries in the franchise. That became a point of criticism about the series, however, until the showrunners changed course and embraced storytelling with an overarching plot in season four. 

As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the series currently holds the distinction for being the longest-running drama on Paramount+ so far. Its debut back in 2017 led to record sign-up numbers for the streaming service then known as CBS All Access, and its success paved the way for other Trek shows, including Lower Decks and Prodigy.

Tanya Giles, chief programming officer at Paramount Streaming, said in a statement: "Star Trek: Discovery is a perennial favorite on the service, near and dear to the hearts of legions of ‘Star Trek’ fans as well as all of us here at Paramount+. The series and its incredible cast and creatives ushered in a new era for Star Trek when it debuted over six years ago, embracing the future of streaming with serialized storytelling, bringing to life deep and complex characters that honor Gene Roddenberry’s legacy of representing diversity and inclusion, and pushing the envelope with award-winning world-building. This final season will see our beloved crew take on a new adventure and we can't wait to celebrate the series’ impact on the franchise leading up to its final season early next year."

At the moment, Trek fans can watch Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming on Paramount+. Its third season will also be its last, but there are rumors going around that the service is developing spinoffs centering on characters from the show.

A screenshot of Star Trek: Discovery season 5.

Don't make me watch 'Boba Fett' to understand 'The Mandalorian' season three

Spoilers for The Mandalorian seasons 1-3 and The Book of Boba Fett below.

Somehow, Grogu has returned. At least, that's what many people will assume when they tune into the first episode of The Mandalorian's third season. When last we left our lone bounty hunter and cub, Grogu was heading off to Jedi training with a creepy de-aged Luke Skywalker. Mando took off his helmet and braced for solitude. We all shed a tear. (How did a show manage to make us care so much for a monosyllabic man in armor and a green puppet? Bless you, executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni.)

But at the start of this season, Mando (AKA Din Djarin) and Grogu are paired up once again, saving people from gigantic monsters, fighting space pirates and generally being adorable. To a casual viewer, it's like that dramatic season two finale was Jedi mind-tricked away. It turns out if you wanted to get the full story – which also explains why Din is flying a Phantom Menace-era ship, or why Grogu is becoming a more adept force user — you had to watch the final few episodes of The Book of Boba Fett.

Lucasfilm

If I wasn't already a hopeless Star Wars fan, I'd be pretty confused and annoyed. How are normal people supposed to know that The Book of Boba Fett basically served as a stop-gap between Mandalorian seasons? Disney didn't promote the connection between the shows much, so if you weren't reading geeky news sites, or talking to nerdy friends, it was easy to miss.

The first few episodes of Boba Fett made it seem like a far less ambitious series – did we really need to learn the specifics of how he survived the Sarlacc pit? And who cares about his future as Jabba the Hutt replacement? I've talked to several Star Wars fans who tapped out early on, only to catch up once they heard Mando and Grogu popped up. (Honestly, it almost seemed like Favreau and crew got tired of the Boba Fett story – so did we.)

It's not like I'm against the idea of narratives shifting between different shows and films. Everything Marvel's done since Iron Man has practically trained us to consume pop culture this way, with the rise of the Avengers initiative to the ultimate smackdown with Thanos in Endgame. The geeky side of me is overjoyed when I discover connections between films I love. (You should have seen me in the theater at the end of M. Night Shyamalan's Split.) But the idea that viewers have to keep tabs on everything is beginning to feel like homework, and it's particularly frustrating when one piece of media is inexplicably crucial to something that comes later.

It doesn't help that The Mandalorian barely referenced The Book of Boba Fett during its introductory episode. Even a bit of a nudge during the "previously on" opening section would help. Instead, the premiere episode just wants to get us back to normal, with Mando on a video game-like quest and Grogu having fun along the way. It's a shame, since the end of season 2 made it seem like The Mandalorian would actually change things up moving forward.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, creator and executive producer Favreau said he appreciated being able to check in on characters between shows.  “I knew that I didn’t want to dedicate a lot of screen time within The Mandalorian to a period of time where there wasn’t a lot of character progression," he said. "Both [Din and Grogu] were kind of stuck, as far as character progression goes, until they were reunited. So, my feeling was that it would allow me to do both of those things and freed me up now two years later to have a whole new context for these two characters to have a relationship and move forward.”

But what Favreau saw as a problem, I see as an opportunity. In Book of Boba Fett, Din and Grogu's time apart is handled briskly. Neither can fully let each other go. That stalls Grogu's Jedi training, as that's mostly focused on detaching yourself from the world and emotional connections. (Did that really work so well for Anakin Skywalker? Come on, Luke.) Din, meanwhile, acts like an empty nester who's lost his life's purpose. This is all good material for drama, but Favreau cuts through it as quickly as possible on a spinoff show. What a waste.

I may be particularly annoyed by The Mandalorian's disjointed narrative after seeing how Marvel handled its latest big bad, Kang the Conqueror, in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. In that film, Kang is introduced as a castaway, someone banished to the Quantum Realm because of his penchant for, well, conquering. But we never got a sense of his true motivation, his powers or what he's actually trying to accomplish.Perhaps that's because the folks behind Quantumania assumed you saw Kang's brief introduction at the end of the Loki streaming series, where he's presented as more of a trickster and vague threat.

Lucasfilm

If you didn't watch Loki and were confused by Quantumania, it's almost like Marvel is saying that's your own fault. To me, that's simply irresponsible storytelling.

Coming off of Andor, Tony Gilroy’s self-contained and trenchant exploration of the Star Wars universe, the simplistic and confusing nature of The Mandalorian feels like a letdown. The show was always a pulpy and almost video game-like romp. But after the end of season two, there was potential for something much greater. Instead, Favreau took the easy way out to deliver more of the same.

Din Djarin in The Mandalorian Season 3

The first episode of Star Trek: Picard’s final season is free to watch on YouTube

If you read Engadget regularly, you probably know how we feel about the final season of Star Trek: Picard. In short, it’s not worth your time. But if you must see the show for yourself, or can’t resist the chance to see the Enterprise-D crew one last time, Paramount is offering a free way to watch the first episode of season three. Provided you live in the US, you can catch “The Next Generation” (no, not that Next Generation) on YouTube for a limited time (via Gizmodo). And if you don't live in the US, you can probably find a way to transport yourself for an hour, can't you?  

The debut episode sees Jean-Luc Picard return from retirement (yet again) after his friend and former first officer Will Riker receives a warning from Dr. Beverly Crusher. Engadget Senior Editor Daniel Cooper had the chance to watch the first six episodes of season three before it began streaming earlier this month on Paramount+. In his view, the final season is dull and joyless, with a plot that is far too obvious. But don't let that stop you from making your own decision.

A still image from the TV series 'Star Trek: Picard Season 3' showing Picard and Riker sitting in a neon-lit bar at a table drinking liquor in tumbler glasses with the bottle on the table between them.

Don’t watch ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season three, it’ll only encourage them

The following article contains spoilers for earlier Star Trek properties but doesn’t reveal specific spoilers about Star Trek: Picard season three, not that you should be watching it anyway.

It’s 2034 and Warner Bros. decides it needs to wring more cash out of Friends, the decade defining cultural juggernaut and sitcom behemoth. Imagine what that show would be like; A warm and cozy three-decades-later check-in on characters you know intimately well. After all, you probably spent your formative years watching them mature from young single New Yorkers to a series of families. Maybe it’ll tickle those nostalgia glands, reminding you of when you watched the show with your own family as a kid.

Unfortunately, the hotshot creator of the age decided they want to go in a different direction this time. This needs to be a dark and gritty miserycore grief orgy that better reflects our more rough-and-tumble times. After all, TV these days can’t be gentle or comforting, offer escapism or posit a better world, not since Trump, Brexit, Bolonosaro, January 6th and Ukraine. The creative team have got that quote on a poster in their office, the one about thetriumph of evil, and they’re not going to sit idly by, they’re taking a stand.

In the sequel, Rachel’s famous for her wellness TikTok that often makes allusions to “reclaiming” the US as a white ethnostate. Joey lost an arm while filming a movie and is now in prison after a failed heist to pay off his life-ruining medical debt. Monica’s got a crippling adderall addiction and slips away most nights to murder the neighborhood cats and dogs. Everything’s shot in ultra gloomy vision, and there’s no laugh track, jokes or a studio audience, just unrelenting misery.

This revival is dense with references to the Friends backstory as well as the broader Friends universe. Remember that Lisa Kudrow played Phoebe’s twin sister Ursula on Mad About You, right? If not, you better get yourself to Wikipedia to study up. I mean, it won’t be relevant to the plot, but it’s something you remember, so clap, go on, clap.

You might be wondering why such a project would be allowed to happen, given that it wouldn’t be fun for fans of the original series. Times change, characters age, but you can’t turn a cozy sitcom into Breaking Bad overnight and expect that to be satisfying. You’d hardly think it’d be a big pull for newbie viewers either, who’d probably steer clear if they weren’t already familiar with 236 episodes of intricate backstory. Nostalgia revivals don’t need to be slavish to their source material, but it’s hard to see the appeal for something so grim and unpleasant.

Apropos of nothing, let’s talk about the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard.

Trae Patton / Paramount+

Season three was sold as something of a course correction for Picard after its first two deeply unpopular runs. It ditched all but Raffi from the roster of original characters created for it, and instead pulled in the stars from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As well as the returning Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner, we’ll see LeVar Burton, Gates McFadden and Michael Dorn back in action. And, in the six of ten episodes I’ve been permitted to watch under strict embargo, I’d say only one of them feels like the character we know and love.

Unfortunately, while we have the other TNG stars, the creative team of Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman and showrunner Terry Matalas didn’t bother to grab any of that show’s lightness of tone. Picard remains a grimdark slog, shot on perpetually underlit sets and featuring a succession of increasingly-bleak setpieces. The plot is stretched so thin that the first four episodes turn out to be little more than an extended prologue for the rest. A prologue that could, I should add, have been an efficient, and possibly more enjoyable, hour. The story is so obvious, too, that you’ll be ahead of the characters pretty much non-stop as they stumble from one idiot plot to the next.

It’s maddening that we can see how much of the plot is blocking itself to ensure things can’t move forward too quickly. There’s a whole episode of gosh-isn’t-this-tense tension that could have been eliminated if anyone in Starfleet pulled out a tricorder and used it as God intended. In this utopian future, where science and technology really are advanced enough to look like magic, why does nobody employ the tools hanging from their waistband? Mostly because Paramount ordered ten episodes, and ten episodes is what we’re going to give them. Another episode has a time-filling punch fight runaround because it’s now somehow impossible for a serving officer to use a Federation ship’s intercom system to call the bridge and warn them of impending danger.

Picard is one of those series where you often find yourself shouting at the screen as the next stupid moment unfolds in front of you. Even worse is that the show’s creative team seem to think that it’s us, the audience, who are deficient in the thinking department. There is scene after scene in which characters repeat the same lines back to each other because the crew assume we’re not paying attention. Because of the limits on spoilers, I’ve re-written a scene to match the sentiment, if not the words verbatim, so you can get a sense of what to expect:

CREW 1: The ship is being pulled closer to the black hole’s gravity well.

CREW 2: We do not have enough power to pull ourselves away, sir.

RIKER: Are you saying that we’re dead in the water?

CREW 1: We will be passing the black hole’s event horizon in 17 minutes.

RIKER: We’re dead in the water and we’re sinking.

PICARD: We’re going to be dead in 17 minutes, Will, unless we can find a way to solve this.

RIKER: We’re sinking into quicksand, and there’s no time to grab a helping hand.

The irony is that this run is so thicket-dense with references that the show basically assumes that you’ve already seen pretty much everything produced during Trek’s gold, silver and bronze ages. But, to make sure nobody’s left behind, everyone has to speak in exposition so hamfisted that, now that this is over, I think Michelle Hurd deserves personal injury compensation. Raffi gets saddled with so many cringe-inducing lines where she states, and restates and re-restates the obvious that I started grasping fistfuls of my own hair to relieve some of my discomfort.

And as for the storyline, what can I say? It’s clear that Alex Kurtzman is only comfortable writing in a single register. His go-to is usually a militaristic, testosterone-fuelled paranoid Reaganite fantasy in which the real villain was our own government all along. He did it in Into Darkness, Discovery season two and even the first season of Picard – to the point where Starfleet is now so lousy with double agents that all of their schemes fail because the saboteurs are all too busy sabotaging each other’s plans instead of that of the wider Federation.

If Picard is nothing else, it’s nearly pornographic in its use and misuse of franchise iconography. I always felt that Jeff Russo’s Picard theme sounded more like the library music for a corporate advert than the makes-your-heart-soar theme a Star Trek deserves. And here, it’s been ditched in favor of Jerry Goldsmith’s sumptuous, nectar-for-the-ears score for First Contact. The first title card is a direct pull from Wrath of Khan, and pretty much every element therein is an elbow to the ribs, reminding you of older, better Star Trek movies and TV series.

An early scene has a character “hijacking a starship” under false pretenses while it’s in spacedock. You know, the mushroom-shaped megastation orbiting Earth from The Search for Spock onwards. And because we’re already going beat-for-beat for a sequence xeroxed from 1984, said starship even jumps to warp as soon as it’s past the exit doors. Despite the fact that the sort of hardcore Trek fans who would spot the reference would also note that you’re not meant to jump to warp while inside a solar system when there’s no urgent need to do so.

I’ll admit, this is postgraduate degree-level Star Trek nerdery, but you can’t have it both ways: If you’re trying to placate hostile viewers with the excessive fan service, you can’t then complain when they point out that you’re doing it all wrong.

The show’s teaser trailer already revealed we’re getting an overstuffed roster of villains to round out the run. Amanda Plummer’s captain of an enemy ship that shares a design with the Narada from Star Trek ‘09. Then there’s Daniel Davis’ holographic Professor Moriarty, as well as Data’s evil twin brother Lore. Both of these sorta make sense in the context, but there’s a hell of a lot of narrative scaffolding to explain away the fact that Brent Spiner is now 74 years old. (The dude looks good for it, but it’s hard to play an ageless android when time marches on and the de-aging CGI budget is spent on smoothing out Patrick Stewart’s face for a single flashback and the pointless needle-drops that open every episode.)

Now, before you scurry off to Memory Alpha to confirm that Moriartywas locked away in a holobox at the end of “Ship in a Bottle,” and Lorewas disassembled at the end of “Descent Part 2,” yes, they were. Try to remember that showrunner Terry Matalas and executive producer Alex Kurtzman treat Star Trek’s continuity less as something which informs storytelling and more as a series of shiny objects to keep us all amused when the plot sags or anyone has any time to think about what’s going on.

I’ll also add that the trailers and promotional material have very intentionally kept a lot of material back. There are more classic-era heroes and villains crowbarring their way into the story in the way that, if it were fanfiction, would seem excessive. But, if I’m honest, the second or third time someone, or something, familiar popped up, I wasn’t whooping and cheering, I was sighing. The Star Trek universe is vast and broad and deep, but Picard makes it feel like a puddle where everyone knows each other, and everyone under the age of 30 has grown up watching The Next Generation. If you’re serving in the US Navy, for instance, how likely is it that you’d know the ins and outs of every exploit of even the most well-traveled combat vessel?

Now, I don’t have the language or experience to discuss this properly, and I’m aware of others who do feel differently. This is just my opinion, but I think the depiction of drug and alcohol use in Picard has always felt off. And since I can’t talk about the third season, I’ll talk about the first, where something very similar happened and is just as vexing here as it was back then. Raffi deals with her son’s rejection by relapsing, but then mere hours later, she’s back at her station and advancing the plot. I don’t recall a sense that her use clouded her judgment and I don’t think it was discussed subsequently – so despite the portentiousness in the build-up, it was depicted almost like someone just having a bad day and knocking back some drinks. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, because there are plenty of people who use drugs and it doesn’t impact their professional lives at all. (Read any Making-Of book about The Original Series and you'll notice how more than a few references to the production team's drug use.) But if you’re going to write a plot where scenes hang on the will-she-or-won’t-she tension of relapse, but it all turns out to be hunky dory straight after, what was the point of depicting any of this in the first place?

Then there’s the violence, and the casual way that it’s doled out, especially in the show’s numerous interrogation scenes. I’m not advocating for forced confessions, but given Starfleet’s advanced science, and the Federation has a planet of literal telepaths at its disposal, why are we always punching people in the nose with a butt of a phaser pistol? I mean, I know why: It’s a nerdy sci-fi show play acting as a muscular basic-cable drama, but that doesn’t mean it works. I’ve often theorized that many modern-day Star Trek creators would much rather be over the hall making their own Star War instead. Maybe I’m wrong, and the Picard crew is really nostalgic for the hamfisted Bush-era politics of 24.

Trae Patton / Paramount+

It was always going to be hard to pull Picard out of its creative slump that started back when the show was greenlit. If there was ever a character who we’d seen grow, change, mature and treat his own life with more kindness, it was Jean-Luc Picard. Some of TNG’s best episodes forced Picard to consider his own life, his history, his mortality, his motives, including the series’ grand finale. “All Good Things” isn’t just good Star Trek, it’s one of the best series finales ever made, encompassing the entire breadth and depth of The Next Generation in one glorious sweep. And between seven years of TV and four less essential but still important movies, he was done.

I wrote somewhere, I forget where, that a smarter idea would have been to center the action on a less-well served member of the Enterprise D crew. I’d have been second in line to watch a Geordi LaForge spin-off (behind uber fan Rihanna, of course), and there’s plenty to explore there. Or a Beverley Crusher spin-off, as she solves people’s problems as a simple country space doctor back on Earth or on some far-flung planet. Maybe a sci-fi version of In Treatment fronted by Marina Sirtis could have worked, and would have certainly cost less than this.

All of which would be preferable to what we got, which despite initially having a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist at the helm, was two years of go-nowhere, do-nothing bore-a-thons. Its brief moments of cleverness drowned out by the baffling character decisions, tin-eared dialog and ligneous acting. And both had plots which would have struggled to fill a movie stretched out across a painfully slow ten hour runtime.

And that’s before we get to the moralizing, which had characters pointing at a bad thing and saying “thing bad.” I don’t think the second season’s 26 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes is because the (inexplicably) conservative wing of Trek fandom was outraged that a show about happy space communists solving problems while remaining friends suddenly “got woke.” Good, old-fashioned Star Trek at least had the good grace to cloak its progressivism in allegory that could slide past the otherwise closed minds of some of its viewers. By comparison, Picard felt like the first draft of a high school theater production made the term after the teacher had explained agitprop.

Maybe that’s why I feel so annoyed by Picard, because all of the things that are wrong with the show, and its kin, are examples of amateurishness. Amateurish plotting, amateurish dialogue, a lack of thoughtfulness about the material, what it says, or what it’s doing. Just an endless parade of big, dumb, brash, po-faced melodrama used in place of some sort of maturity or integrity. I don’t expect Star Trek to be brilliant all the damn time, but I do expect a minimum standard of something to be upheld. And this falls so far below it, it’s hard to call it Star Trek. Some people will call that gatekeeping, but Star Trek can be anything it damn well wants to be, so long as it's competently made and halfway entertaining. 

The constant callbacks got me thinking about the period when Nicholas Meyer was, directly or indirectly, the major creative force behind Star Trek. It’s been 32 years since his 1991 swansong, The Undiscovered Country, and it remains a high-water mark of cinematic Trek. Drawing to a close the story of The Original Series crew, Meyer didn’t go for nostalgia, but savaged his characters, exposing their flaws, their bigotries, their failings. There was redemption, and heart, and it never needed Meyer to stage endless close-quarters phaser-fu fights in unlight rooms.

But that was a filmmaker with a clear vision, and the good graces to really drag his characters in the dirt before washing them clean. Imagine what would happen if Picard encountered any of the same level of subtext – they’d probably spend an hour running from it before beating it over the head with the butt of a phaser rifle and then spend the next hour feeling glum about it. If nothing else, I’d say don’t even watch Picard for ironic kicks, lest Paramount think it’s somehow a runaway hit and continue to produce crap like this.

Image from season three of 'Picard' featuring Patrick Stewart and Jonathan Frakes in the USS Titan ready room.

There's an endless AI generated Seinfeld episode running on Twitch

What's the deal with AI-generated content these days? In the last handful of months, there's been a massive uptick in news stories about the use of AI art. In the world of illustration, AI has become a hot-button issue, as it could potentially threaten the livelihood of professional artists. — Read the rest

HBO renews 'The Last of Us' for a second season

Get ready for more clickers, quips from Ellie and perhaps a trip to a decaying Seattle: HBO has renewed The Last of Us for a second season. That's not exactly a surprise, as the adaptation of Naughty Dog's games is already a huge hit for the network. Some 22 million people have now watched the first episode, five times the number of people who tuned in on the premiere night 12 days ago. The show also saw the largest second-week jump in audience figures of any original HBO drama series.

If you haven't caught The Last of Us yet and are curious what all the hullabaloo is about, there's some good news. You can now watch the first episode for free on HBO Max.

The streaming service often offers free tasters of certain shows in the hopes of getting viewers hooked and prompting them to subscribe. The first episode of Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon, another major success for the platform, is free to watch on both HBO Max and YouTube.

For the uninitiated, The Last of Us is based on a PlayStation 3 (and PS4 and PS5) game of the same name. It's often held up as one of the finest examples of storytelling in video games. It tales the tale of a smuggler who reluctantly escorts a teenage girl across the US after the world has been ravaged by a fungus that turns people into terrifying, mutated creatures.

So far, HBO's terrific adaptation has largely followed the same story with some smart deviations and changes. Critics have hailed the third episode, which airs this Sunday, as the best installment of the season. It focuses on a side story that's primarily told through a note players find in the game. 

Tess (Anna Torv) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) stand face-to-face with serious expressions in The Last of Us. Ellie (Bella Ramsay) is slightly out of focus in the background.

Trailer: Hello Tomorrow! is the show retro-futurism fans have been waiting for

Science fiction has so many wonderful subgenres. If you want your dystopian fiction to hit harder than usual, why don't you try the cyberpunk subgenre? Or what if you want a little fantasy in your sci-fi, Star Wars hears your request and is ready to offer one of the most popular franchises in film history. — Read the rest

Meet the real zombifying fungus behind the fictional Last of Us outbreak

Enlarge / HBO's The Last of Us provides a vivid visual imagining of what a Cordyceps infected human might become. (credit: YouTube/HBO Max)

HBO's new sci-fi series The Last of Us debuted earlier this week and is already a massive hit. Based on the critically acclaimed video game of the same name, the series takes place in the 20-year aftermath of a deadly outbreak of mutant fungus that turns humans into monstrous zombie-like creatures (the Infected, or Clickers). While the premise is entirely fictional, it's based on some very real, and fascinating, science.

(Minor spoilers for the series below.)

The first episode showed us the initial outbreak and devastation. Fast-forward 20 years, and the world has become a series of separate totalitarian quarantine zones and independent settlements, with a thriving black market and a rebel militia, known as the Fireflies, making life complicated for the survivors. A hardened smuggler named Joel (Pedro Pascal) is tasked with escorting a teenage girl named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the devastated US, battling hostile forces and hordes of zombies, to a Fireflies unit outside the quarantine zone. Ellie is special: She is immune to the deadly fungus, and the hope is that her immunity holds the key to beating the disease.

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Do you remember when the Cenobites showed up in Extreme Ghostbusters?

It's kind of bizarre that more horror properties don't crossover in modernity. Why should superheroes have all the fun with interconnected movie and television universes? Especially when you consider that the legendary Universal monsters were the characters that comprised the first shared movie verse. — Read the rest

HBO Documentary "Call Me Miss Cleo" explores the life of famed television psychic

Remember Miss Cleo? If you watched late night television in the 1990s and 2000s, you'll surely remember her as the spokesperson for the Psychic Readers Network (PRN) call-a-psychic hotline. I'll never forget her catchphrase, spoken in her (to some, questionable) Jamaican accent: "Call me now!" — Read the rest

Bryan Cranston: Malcolm in The Middle movie might happen

We're knee-deep in the reboot and revival era. Thanks to the internet, television networks and content distributors are beginning to understand the beauty of narrowcasting. In the late 2000s, it made no sense to keep a show like Veronica Mars on the air when it only promised an audience of three to two million. — Read the rest