Weekend Watching: December 24
Dark, Season One
I mean, who am I kidding—OBVIOUSLY we'll watch more stuff this weekend. But for now, here's what's on my mind:
We've only watched the first episode of Dark so far—and really, it wasn't we, it was me, because Josh totally fell asleep—but I have a feeling that we'll end up blowing through a whole lot more of it very very soon.
And by soon, I mean TODAY.
Just now:
Me: I think maybe we should re-watch that first episode of Dark bec—
Josh: YES, YES WE SHOULD, BECAUSE ONE MINUTE A GUY WAS JOGGING AND THERE WAS A BIG SCARY CAVE AND THEN I BLINKED AND THEN THE WHOLE WORLD HAD GONE BANANAS
Me: Considering you hardly saw any of it, that's surprisingly accurate.
Anyway, it's dark—SEE WHAT I DID THERE OMG LOLOLOL—and moody and creepy and suspenseful and the visuals and color schemes are interesting without being try-too-hard-artsy and the acting has been pretty great across the board.
The only drawback is that it's dubbed from the German rather than subtitled, and the dubbing often doesn't match up with the facial movements and so on—BUT a lot of times the camera is on the listener for reaction shots, rather than the speaker, so it ended up mostly working for me and by the end of the episode I'd pretty much forgotten all about it.
Liz Shaw, first appearance
Liz Shaw, Queen of the Bun
Liz Shaw, later appearance
We've also been working our way through some of the older Doctor Who—I grew up watching them, Josh didn't—and we're watching the Jon Pertwee run right now and I am HAVING FEMINIST KILLJOY PROBLEMS because the first time Liz Shaw shows up she is VERY capable and no-nonsense and really smirky... and then two arcs later, she's gadding about in pigtails and miniskirts and appears to be there solely to ask all of the usual OH MY GOODNESS WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW, DOCTOR questions, rather than actually contributing to the problem-solving by, I don't know, USING SCIENCE. (Seriously, she's supposed to have, like fourteen degrees in various fields, it's so insulting.)
The issue isn't the miniskirts, obviously, it's the shift in the way they wrote the character. (And let's be real, that shift included the costuming.)
Still from the opening credits of Batman: The Animated Series
LASTLY—for nowwwww—I discovered last night that Batman: The Animated Series is available via Amazon Prime, and OMG IT TOTALLY HOLDS UP I AM SO HAPPY and I don't think that's purely because of nostalgia? They play all out of order, though, which is weird and annoying—I had the same problem streaming Are You Afraid of the Dark?—but ANYWAY, it strikes a really nice balance between the comedic version of Batman from the Adam West years and the grimdark Batman of today, and three episodes in, I find that I'm enjoying it more than I've enjoyed anything Batman in quite a long time.