Nice Improvement, Annoying Glitches: Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass Is Still Worth It!

The Good: Cool new game styles, (Mostly) Impressive graphics, Amazing variability in the multiplayer mode
The Bad: Some terrible glitches, Lack of a narrative, Some sloppy character renditions (Chewbacca!)
The Basics: Star Wars: Battlefront gets more complex and fun to play with the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass which expands the character, map and weapon base beyond the original game!


Not very long ago, I finally got around to reviewing Star Wars: Battlefront (that review is here!) and as I am preparing to commit 2017 to an entirely different immersive video game, it makes some sense for me to review the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass. Since DICE and EA began expanding Star Wars: Battlefront with the Season Pass's four expansions early in 2016, I have been avidly gaming my way up the Star Wars: Battlefront ladder. I never thought that I would be a gamer who would put in thousands of hours on a single video game, but the stats section of Star Wars: Battlefront does not (presumably) lie! Much of my time on Star Wars: Battlefront for the past six months has been spent on the maps and special new games from the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass expansions.

Despite my daily gameplay on Star Wars: Battlefront, I still do not consider myself a professional game player. This is very much a layman's review of Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass. For the purposes of this review, it is worth noting that I play using a Playstation 4 (reviewed here!) and because the Season Pass is entirely composed of expansions to the online multiplayer portion of Star Wars: Battlefront, in order to play the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass, one playing the game on a Playstation 4 requires a subscription to the Playstation Network.

Basics

The Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass is a video game expansion, much like the Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Season Pass (reviewed here!) that is downloadable content (DLC). The four expansions that make up the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass are entirely part of the online multiplayer version of the game. Like the basic game, the Season Pass expansions are set in the Star Wars Universe and allow the player to play as Rebel soldiers, Imperial soldiers and heroes (or villains) from the classic Star Wars Saga and Rogue One. The four expansions for the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass are The Outer Rim (Jabba's Palace on Tatooine and Sullust), Bespin (various portions of Cloud City), Death Star, and Rogue One: Scarif.

The Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass is a first-person shooter video game, both for ground-based forces and fighter vehicles. The expansions in the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass continue to not have gore; shot adversaries simply fall, there is no carnage in the game.

The Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass allows the player to play as a common soldier or as one of the heroes of the Star Wars Saga for most of the styles of game within the broader game. The Season Pass allows players to progress from the previous cap up to a Player Level of 100, which unlocks for players new skins for their soldier appearance. The Season Pass also introduced new characters to the hero and villains lineup of character. By Rogue One: Scarif, players have the ability to play Nein Nunb (much cooler than one might guess!), Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, and Jyn Erso on the hero side or Greedo, Dengar, Bossk (incredibly cool!) and Director Krennic on the Imperial side.

The Season Pass introduced a new mechanic for delivering weapons and Star Cards to players in the form of Hutt Contracts. Hutt Contracts are specific goals that a player must complete to unlock the new weapons or tools they pay into the contract for. New firearms include things like an incredibly powerful targeting rifle that can deliver a lethal shot at a great distance (and finally has a scope that older players like myself can see characters who are far away!) but has a fairly long reload time to a six-shooter to a new blaster rifle that delivers a shot almost like buckshot! One of the other cool weapons is a blaster pistol with a night vision scope, which allows players to see any adversary, including Imperial characters wearing black who hide in the shadows on Sullust!

The Star Card weapons and tools added to the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass include dioxis grenades (a poison gas cloud that damages and kills anyone within its radius until it dissipates!), a scatter gun (which allows players to fire through personal shields), light grenades, and laser trip mines! DICE shot its wad early on the Season Pass as the Dioxis Grenade and Scatter Gun seem to be the most consistently useful weapons to come out of the Season Pass and weapons like the Stinger Pistol, which is such a minor inconvenience as a weapon and so underused by players that I was shocked last week when I was, in a weakened state, actually killed by someone playing with one!

Gameplay for the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass is essentially done by equipping a player with a firearm and three Star Card weapons/tools and then going into one of the maps to run around and shoot. Each of the four expansions from the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass creates a new style of gameplay for the multiplayer mode from Star Wars: Battlefront. While the expansions continue to utilize familiar game modes - Blast, Heroes Vs. Villains, Walker Assault, Cargo, Droid Run, Fighter Squadron, Drop Zone, Turning Point and Supremacy - the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass creates the new play styles: Extraction, Sabotage, Battle Station, and Infiltration. In fact, the only style of gameplay from the original Star Wars: Battlefront that was not added into the Season Pass was Hero Hunt.

For The Outer Rim Expansion, DICE created Extraction. All of The Outer Rim expansion maps were ground-based and Extraction is available on all of the new maps for The Outer Rim! Extraction finds the Rebels trying to get a whole palate of cargo from one end of the map to the other. Rebel forces must set the palate in motion and guard it from the start point, through two checkpoints to a final point where a Rebel ship comes to take the team to safety. The Imperial players must work to stop the Rebels and deactivate the palate to prevent the Rebels from getting to the final checkpoint. At the beginning and first checkpoint, hero tokens appear for the Rebel players; at the first and second checkpoints, villain tokens appear for the Imperial characters. Originally, the Extraction games had specific hero characters who players were transformed into when they activated the tokens, but with the release of the Rogue One: Scarif expansion, Extraction characters were changed into any of the heroes/villains, which makes for even more diversity in the game.

Sabotage is a two-phase game style that was introduced for the Bespin Expansion of the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass. Bespin had one airborn map that allowed players to play Fighter Squadron among the clouds, but the new game - Sabotage - was a ground-based game. In Sabotage, Rebel players must activate explosives on three Tibana Gas generators, scattered around the map. When the explosives are activated, there is a countdown and after a minute, the explosives explode. During the first phase, Rebels have four hero tokens that pop up around the map to allow Rebels to use greater firepower to defend the explosive points (or overtake them if the Imperial players actually play a decent defense!). If the Rebels are successful in destroying all three gas generators within the allotted time, the second phase begins. During the second phase, the Rebels must fall back to an extraction point to wait for a Rebel transport to come and get them off-world. The extraction point is like a control point in Supremacy or Turning Point and Rebels must maintain a dominant presence within it to win the game. Imperials - who are granted four villain tokens in this phase - must penetrate and gain supremacy over the extraction point before the time runs out.

For the Death Star expansion in the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass introduced Battle Station, a three-point game that alternated between ship-based combat and "ground based" (it's inside the Death Star) combat. Rebel players first must launch an assault on a defensive Star Destroyer (which is only vulnerable intermittently, much like the AT-ATs during Walker Assault), while Imperial players must try to destroy the Rebels and their Y-Wing bombers before they can blow up the defensive points on the Star Destroyer. When the Imperial players fail, Battle Station moves into a second phase, aboard the Death Star. On the Death Star, Rebel players must go from one end of the map to the deepest point, where R2-D2 is being restrained. Rebel players must then activate R2-D2 (who becomes a playable character to the player who liberates him!) and bring him to an extraction point (which is a simple "cross the finish line" style goal, as opposed to a control point that must be held). Throughout the Death Star interior are hero tokens which may be picked up by Rebel or Imperial players and can vastly change the outcome of the game. If the Imperials successfully defend R2-D2 and keep him from getting to the extraction point, they win and the game ends. If the Rebels manage to keep activating R2-D2 and get him across the finish line, the Battle Station game enters the Trench Run phase. In the final phase of Battle Station, Rebels try to fly through a prescribed series of checkpoints to a final point from which they may launch a proton torpedo that destroys the Death Star. Imperial teams that prevent the Rebels from getting to the final checkpoint and destroy the Death Star win, while Rebel teams that blow up the Death Star win.

For the release of Rogue One, the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass included new maps of Scarif from Rogue One and a new game style: Infiltration. Infiltration, interestingly enough, is based upon the original ending to Rogue One, which had Jyn Erso and other Rebels physically running the Death Star Plans to a ship that got them off of Scarif! Infiltration is another three-phase game that only progresses when the Rebels complete each of their missions, while Imperial players attempt to block them from accomplishing their goals. Infiltration opens with the Rebels attempting to get a U-Wing troop carrier through the planet shield surrounding Scarif. Rebel players randomly are chosen to be a U-Wing and when the first few attempts with one U-Wing fails, Rebels get multiple U-Wings at a time making the attempt. Once a U-Wing gets to the shield point, the second phase begins. On the ground of Scarif, Rebels must plant explosives on one of two grounded cargo ships for a distraction. Rebel players who manage to activate the explosive and keep it active through a successful detonation win the round and progress to the final phase. The final phase of Infiltration is extraction where Rebel players start in a common point where the Death Star Plans are being held and three players may pick up the plans and attempt to run them across the map to an extraction point. When a player carrying the plans is killed, the plans remain where they fall for a set amount of time, which gives other Rebel players the chance to pick up the plans and continue the run. If the time runs out on the plans, they return to the phase's start point. Imperial players that prevent a carrier from crossing the extraction point line win, whereas a Rebel player with the plans that runs to the waiting U-Wing on the ground will win the Infiltration game.

Story

There is no cohesive narrative to the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass. Sabotage, Battle Station and Infiltration have phases, but there is no actual narrative to them, just progress points that must be reached to enter the team into the next phase.

Game Progression

Just as the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass lacks a coherent narrative, there is no real progression to the game. Players begin at the same point in each round and the games end at generally solid points (like the destruction of the AT-ATs, timing out as one defends the control points or getting R2-D2 to a Death Star hanger).

Effects

The graphics for the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass are generally incredible. I played Star Wars: Battlefront on the Playstation 4 connected to a Sony Bravia HD (reviewed here!) and it looked and sounded immaculate. . . for the elements that were so created. The detailing on the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass maps is absolutely incredible. From costuming aspects - there are scratches in the gloss on the Stormtrooper helmets! - to character expressions, Star Wars: Battlefront's Season Pass expansions looks amazing. Players are very easily distracted by running around shooting and preventing themselves from being killed, but DICE clearly worked to make the worlds of Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass look and feel real.

While most of the characters move with lifelike realism in the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass. The notable exception on Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass is Chewbacca. Chewbacca's fur looks matted and pixelated and terrible. It is amazing that DICE got Bossk (who had virtually no screentime) and Dengar (who is voiced on the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass by Simon Pegg!) to look and sound amazing, but they could not nail Chewbacca!

Replayability

Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass has generally impressive replayability based on the fact that each game has different players, different potential weapon and goal combinations and no coherent narrative. This game is exceptionally easy to jump back into at any point.

Unfortunately, the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass is painfully glitchy in points. For example, it took me two games of Infiltration to recognize that Rebel players may easily get through the first phase by simply taking the U-Wing straight up for two bursts of the speed burst at the start point. From that point, the enemy TIE fighters cannot possibly catch the U-Wing before it gets to the shield point because they lack the speed or positioning on the map to interact with the U-Wing! This is a pretty obvious flaw that makes it impossible for a seasoned Rebel team to actually lose the first round and be blocked from progressing!

Even more problematic is the Lando Calrissian flaw. One of Lando's special attacks is a Power Burst. Some players (possibly cheaters who have downloaded something, if the message boards are to be believed!) play the Power Burst constantly (with no recharge time and no diminishing of the firepower), which makes Lando invincible. I've played against people who play using this exploitative problem and have been at the opposite end of a map, playing The Emperor or Bossk and shot once at the outset of a game by Lando and killed! I've played Lando and cannot activate the Power Burst in a similar way, so it's a known flaw or cheat point that seriously undermines the game.

Outside the glitches, the Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass games are eminently replayable. In fact, since any hero can be played now in Extraction, I have enjoyed going back and playing it with all of its new permutations of heroes and villains!

Overall

The Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass is a decent investment for those who truly love the expanded Star Wars Universe and are comfortable with the gaming style of Star Wars: Battlefront. As a casual gamer, I certainly enjoyed the content of the Season Pass far more than I enjoyed trying to learn other video games while I was hooked on Star Wars: Battlefront!

Star Wars: Battlefront Season Pass utilizes settings and characters primarily from:
A New Hope
The Empire Strikes Back
Return Of The Jedi
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

For other game reviews, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
Angry Birds Star Wars
Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor

7/10

For other video game reviews, please check out my index page on the subject by visiting my Software Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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One Year Later . . . We Continue To Mourn David Bowie With No Plan

The Good: Good vocals, Some decent lines
The Bad: SHORT, Poor cohesiveness as a self-sustaining album, Entire EP is available already as a second disc!
The Basics: David Bowie fans who overlooked the Lazarus Original Cast Recording are rewarded for holding out with a chance to buy the second disc's contents from that album with the "new" No Plan EP.


One year ago today, David Bowie died. Bowie's death is one that has resonated in my household for the entire year as my wife is a huge fan of David Bowie's works and one of her bucket list goals when we first met was to see him in concert. Bowie's final album, Blackstar (reviewed here!), has been played on pretty high repetition in our home for the past year. And recently, when we rewatched Gilmore Girls (reviewed here!) in preparation for the revival, the most angry my wife ever became at the antics of Lorelei Gilmore was when Lorelai acts like a spoiled brat about going to a David Bowie concert because she is not all that fond of the guy. When that episode came up, it took less than half a second before my wife realized that the episode would have been set during what was actually David Bowie's final U.S. tour and she was screaming at the television, "It doesn't matter who the guy is, you go see Bowie!" So, when the new posthumous EP No Plan was released as a digital download, that was big news around our home.

For those who have a similar affinity to David Bowie and his enduring legacy, the bottomline on the No Plan EP is: skip it. It is short and it is already available. No Plan is identical to the second disc in the Lazarus Original Cast Recording Album. More music (Michael C. Hall singing Bowie!), identical content and less-exploitative, the Lazarus Original Cast Recording is a far better value for fans than the No Plan EP.

That said, No Plan is the work of David Bowie from one of his last major projects. The EP has four songs, clocking out at 17:59 and all four were written and performed by David Bowie. The version of "Lazarus" that appears on No Plan is identical to the one that appeared on Blackstar. The EP was co-produced by David Bowie, so it is hard to argue that it is not the vision he intended for the music presented upon it.

The three songs "unique" to No Plan are "No Plan," "Killing A Little Time," and "When I Met You." All three feature David Bowie's distinctive voice, which is enough to make listeners pine for him all over again. The songs might have gelled well in the context of the musical Lazarus, but they have less cohesiveness when put one after another on the No Plan EP.

There is something tragic about listening to "No Plan," in such a familiar way that fans might be surprised that Bowie left the song off of Blackstar. When Bowie sings "All the things that are my life / My moods / My beliefs / My desires / Me alone / Nothing to regret / This is no place, but here I am / This is not quite yet" ("No Plan"), the listener is reminded of how prepared Bowie seemed to be for his death. "No Plan" is a slow, soft, sad track that is carried on the majesty of Bowie's vocals and the longing tone of his voice is tear-evoking. "No Plan" is the highlight of the album.

"No Plan" leads very poorly into the guitars of "Killing A Little Time." Drums and guitar on "Killing A Little Time" make a swirling, noisy sound that is antagonistic after the quiet beauty of "No Plan." "Killing A Little Time" is derivative of "Bring Me The Disco King" for the way Bowie's vocals are sublimated to a musical accompaniment that is more unpleasant than it is anything remotely melodic. And, it's not like his lines "I'm falling, man / I'm choking, man / I'm fading, man / And broke and blind" ("Killing A Little Time") are much of an upper to get one away from the miserable feelings evoked by the guitars and percussion.

"When I Met You" is a percussion-driven love song that is frenetic and has an almost angry sound to it. By the time Bowie comes in with his vocals, the listener is on edge from the cacophonous instrumentals that precede his voice. Even so, when Bowie breaks through with lines like "When I met you (You're feeling depressed) / I could not speak (You're drowning in pain) / You opened my mouth (You're walking in midst) / You opened my heart (You're leaving again)" ("When I Met You") it is hard for his passion not to break through the noisy musical accompaniment and touch the listener. Bowie's voice carries the song and in some ways, "When I Met You" makes the listener recall the moment they first fell in love with the music of David Bowie all over again.

The contents of No Plan are not bad, but they are not enough to sustain even its own EP. The release of the No Plan EP is the musical equivalent of releasing DVD bonus features as their own release and expecting fans to lap it up happily. Given the quality of the Bowie recordings unearthed and released since his death, there are far, far better options for fans than No Plan.

For other David Bowie reviews, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Man Who Sold The World
Hunkey Dory
The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars
Aladdin Sane
Pinups
Diamond Dogs
Christiane F. Soundtrack
Let's Dance
Labyrinth
Labyrinth Soundtrack
Never Let Me Down
Eart hl i ng
Best Of Bowie (1 Disc version)
The Best Of Bowie (2 Disc version)
Best Of Bowie (DVD videos)
Heathen
The Next Day (Deluxe Edition)

3.5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Not Worth The Wait: The 2016 Foxy Pair Ornament Isn't Quite Cute Enough!

The Good: Good detailing for the fur
The Bad: Left bias, Seems pricey, Coloring contradictions
The Basics: The 2016 "Foxy Pair" ornament is inconsistent, which undermines its cuteness.


Ever since my wife started getting into collecting Hallmark ornaments, I have started to pay attention to the non-genre ornaments. Every year, Hallmark Keepsake produces a number of ornaments that trade on being cute and largely, they succeed. Unfortunately, the 2016 Foxy Pair ornament is not one of the successes.

The 2016 Foxy Pair ornament is an ornament with a pair of foxes, wearing scarves, which seems like an initially cute concept. But, the contrast on the ornament - combined with a balance issue and an original price that seems a bit high for the size and quality - between realistic-looking fur and cartoonish scarves undermines the ornament and guts the adorability of the ornament. For a piece that is trading on cuteness, that is something the ornament cannot recover from.

Basics

The Foxy Pair ornament is a standalone ornament of two foxes and the scarf with writing on it. Made of durable plastic, the 2016 Foxy Pair ornament is a cute, generic, Christmas ornament. Measuring two and one-half inches tall, two and three-eighths inches wide and one inch deep, the "Foxy Pair" ornament is a medium-sized Hallmark ornament. For the size, the Foxy Pair ornament seemed a little expensive to me with an original issue price of $15.95.

The Hallmark "Foxy Pair" ornament is well sculpted. The foxes are instantly recognizable as foxes and include cool details like the animal's tails wrapped together to form a heart shape. The foxes have their noses close and their eyes closed in a loving way. The foxes wear scarves, but the high water mark for the quality of the sculpt is the fur. The fur on the foxes for the Foxy Pair ornament is sculpted with an incredible sense of texturing that is impressive!

The coloring for the Foxy Pair ornament is average, but is the source of the ornament's fundamental contradiction. The fur has fairly impressive depth and shading to it. The foxes look almost real with their coloring and the separation between the reds and browns and the whites of the fur is well-handled. Unfortunately, the contrasting green scarves look comparatively simple and cartoonish. The result is an appearance that does not entirely land.

Features

As a Hallmark Keepsake ornament, "Foxy Pair" could have either a light or sound effect, but it has neither. This ornament is simply the two foxes wearing scarves that trades only on the cuteness of the subjects.

Balance

As with all ornaments, the intent of the Hallmark Keepsake "Foxy Pair" ornament is to be hung on a Christmas tree. And the "Foxy Pair" ornament is a mediocre generic Christmas ornament. The ornament has the steel hook loop embedded into the top of the left fox's ear, as near as is reasonable to the center of the ornament. From that position, the Foxy Pair ornament has a noticeable left bias to it.

Collectibility

Hallmark Keepsake began delving into the collectibles market in 1991 with Star Trek when it introduced the exceptionally limited edition original U.S.S. Enterprise ornament (reviewed here!). Within a few years, every major franchise from Star Wars to A Nightmare Before Christmas to Indiana Jones started making Hallmark ornaments. "Foxy Pair" is a non-genre ornament. Given the comparatively high release price and the sheer volume of these ornaments I was able to find after the season was over, it seems highly unlikely that it will appreciate in value, in the near or long term. This ornament seems like a terrible investment for ornament collectors and investors.

Overview

Fans of foxes, adorable "lovey dovey" things, Hallmark ornaments, and generic Christmas ornaments are likely to still find the Foxy Pair ornament to be entirely underwhelming, especially for the price.

For other 2016 non-genre Hallmark ornaments, please check out my reviews of:
Season's Treatings ornament
Winter Wonder ornament
Frosty Fun For You mini-ornament set

4.5/10

For other ornament reviews, please visit my Ornament Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Wait? What?! I Completely Come Around On One Day At A Time Season One!

The Good: Smartly raises a number of social issues, Good performances, Moments of character
The Bad: Laugh track, Often falls short on resolution
The Basics: One Day At A Time Season One is an unlikely success for Netflix as a surprisingly smart sitcom!


Netflix has a decent, albeit recent, history of producing television shows that have a definite "must watch" quality to them. Recently, however, it seems like the studio is churning out productions at a rate that gives viewers very little time to find - much less enjoy - their original content. Indeed, some of it is being released with such a lack of fanfare that the only way one finds it is by searching the Netflix Originals section of the streaming service. That was how I found the first season of One Day At A Time, which (apparently) was released last Friday for its full thirteen-episode season.

I sat down to One Day At A Time with a sense of excitement and trepidation. The excitement came from the fact that the preview trailer (which I watched in advance of the season) featured Justina Machado prominently. Machado impressed me with her performance on Six Feet Under (reviewed here!), but has been more or less off my radar since. I was excited to see she got work again and was headlining a new show.

My trepidation with watching the first season of One Day At A Time came from the heavy use of the laugh track in the preview trailer. Weren't laugh tracks pretty much dead by now?! Wasn't one of the key selling points of Netflix supposed to be that it was attracting a caliber of viewer (on par with its prime competition, HBO) who was smart enough to be able to laugh at what they found funny, as opposed to being prompted by an idiot laugh track?! My trepidation was deepened when, in doing the most basic prep work for the review, I learned that One Day At A Time was simply a remake of a 1970s sitcom.

The thing is, despite how truly terrible the laugh track is in One Day At A Time, the first season of One Day At A Time is high on charm, subversively smart, and develops far better than one might expect from what initially appears as a TGIF reject. After an initial sense of dismay over the resolution to the first couple of episodes and the predictable nature of the resolutions, One Day At A Time starts to hit a stride that becomes wonderfully more complex than it began!

Penelope is a veteran of the U.S.'s war in Afghanistan, who is raising her two children alone, with her mother in Echo Park, California. Penelope works as a nurse in Dr. Berkowitz's office and is struggling to keep a level head while suffering from ptsd. While Penelope fights with her daughter, Elena, about having her quinceanera, and her son, Alex, about his desire to spend a lot of money on shoes, she struggles with depression. While Penelope's mother, Lydia, undermines her by cooking and fighting for Elena's quinceanera, Penelope gets on anti-depressants and keeps her house in order.

Penelope deals with things like an aggressive co-worker, Scott, and quits in a rage when his sexism pushes her over the edge. After getting her job back, Penelope confronts Lydia over her exerting more influence over her family than she is comfortable with. She begins dating and throws a birthday party for her boss. The family car dies, necessitating her buying a new one. That puts her in touch with another veteran and gets her into therapy. Schneider falls in love with Lydia's backstory, Elena gets into a prestigious educational program, and Alex tries to make a student film.

One Day At A Time pulls its punches and works too hard within the traditional sitcom format. The latter argument is certainly tied to the laugh track and use of the audience noises. For example, when Lydia first appears on screen in the pilot, there is a long hoot and hollering from the audience. The reaction comes solely from the fact that Lydia is played by Rita Moreno, who is an accomplished, great actress. But the hoots and hollers that are rendered when she comes on screen pulls the viewer out of the narrative to acknowledge Rita Moreno, as opposed to having anything to do with the show. It's an archaic television conceit and it plays especially poorly in One Day At A Time. I had to look up Mackenzie Phillips to understand why she was getting similar hoots when she appeared on screen (she was, apparently, in the original Once Day At A Time).

One Day At A Time also suffers because it pulls its punches, most notably with Elena. Elena is a strong feminist character who makes rational arguments and stands up for herself in both a healthy and reasonable way, especially when she takes a stand involving her forced quincinera. She capitulates for no good reason and robs the pilot episode of a satisfying resolution. In fact, the first episode of One Day At A Time leads to two big emotional moments, Penelope's where she realizes that she wants the quinceanera for herself and the other where she recognizes that she needs the anti-depressants. The former moment is unfortunately undermined by Elena capitulating to the party, as opposed to Penelope pushing for the idea that she shouldn't because she no longer needs the validation from her peers about what an amazing job she did as a single mother.

At the other end of the spectrum, after Penelope learns about the pay disparity at her job, she takes a reasonable stand. One Day At A Time is smart enough to present a complex view of how management deals with pay - Scott, for example, is paid more because he asked for it initially and when confronted with it, Dr. Berkowitz quickly comes around to giving Penelope a raise. But when Penelope and Lydia have a conflict with one another over religion, Penelope comes around, as opposed to coming up with a pretty credible, combat-based example of how god probably does not exist. Like so many sitcoms, One Day At A Time resolves with homeostasis, as opposed to audacious or interesting changes that force the story and characters to evolve. Similarly, when the show tackles the immigration issue with Elena's best friend dealing with her family being deported, the show goes for a somewhat ridiculous "everyone should be with their family" paradigm instead of "we help people, we'll take her in." It substantially undermines Penelope's (and the liberal's) argument that people who are doing the right thing, contributing in a positive way, regardless of their legal status, when Penelope essentially deports Carmen.

One Day At A Time is a fairly straightforward sitcom for its thirteen episode first season. It takes until the fourth episode, "A Snowman's Tale" before the very literal and formulaic style is shaken up. It is there that it is revealed that Penelope is completely separated and is going on her first date in twenty years. She tells the story of leading up to the first date with flashbacks and "therapy" sessions between all of the people she tells about her anxieties leading up to the date (as well as a flashback to how Elena met her husband).

On the plus side, One Day At A Time fights very hard to fight against stereotypes and stigmas. Justina Machado is not a stick-figure thin, white, blonde woman and One Day At A Time capitalizes on that. Machado fearlessly delivers lines (and a physical performance) about female facial hair, suffering from depression, and not being a Real Housewives style vacuous woman. She is presented as smart, empowered and hard-working instead of anything fluffy or resembling "playing feminine."

In the first season of One Day At A Time, the core characters are:

Penelope - A strong Cuban-American veteran of the U.S. Army, she is raising her two children without the help of her husband (who is working as a private contractor in Afghanistan). She argues with Elena and keeps Alex on the right path, while still working hard. She fights for equality at work, where her good ideas have gone neglected. Her busy work schedule leads her to reject the idea of going to church one Sunday in order to spend time hiking with her family. To keep things good with her boss, she throws him an impromptu birthday party. She tries to play the "veteran card" when she needs to get a new car and she makes an unlikely new friend in the process. Her shoulder injury from Afghanistan flares up, which forces her to deal with Veteran's Affairs,

Elena - Penelope's liberal daughter, she fights the idea of a patriarchal quinceanera and advocates for a compost can at her private school. When Penelope and Lydia pressure her to have the quinceanera, she passively resists by getting a "D" on her social studies test. She capitulates on the quinceanera in order to be able to show off how strong her single mother is. She is heartbroken when her classmates fail to use her compost pail at school and she gets decked with a hamburger instead. She is socially-active and rejects wearing make-up in order to be her own person. She suddenly discovers that she likes gossiping when Penelope goes on a date and she is asked not to tell anyone. Her best friend, Carmen, freaks her grandmother out and is a goth, which is off-putting to Penelope. She advocates for taking public transportation when the car breaks down in order to reduce the family's carbon footprint. She is offended when she is the diversity candidate for a major summer educational program,

Alex - Penelope and Victor's young son, he is obsessed with looking good and being cute. He is almost constantly glued to his laptop. He speaks Spanish and translates Lydia's snarky remarks for Elena. He is an odd mix of naive and (usually thanks to things Elena has told him) incredibly smart. He bonds with his mother over how weird dating is. He succumbs to peer pressure to steal some of his mother's anti-depressants, but is talked down by Elena. He makes a student film, which ends up revealing something surprising from his grandmother's past,

Schneider - The landlord at Penelope's apartment, he hangs around with Lydia more than he actually repairs problems in the apartment. He inadvertently mansplains and works to update his stories about his nanny to remind himself that she is now his step-mother. He is a womanizer, but friendly with Lydia and protective of Penelope. An illegal Canadian immigrant, he is now legal thanks to his rich father and an army of lawyers,

Dr. Leslie Berkowitz - A competent doctor, who is easily pushed around. He inadvertently pays Scott more than Penelope and he works very hard to avoid conflict. He is highly ethical and when Penelope leaves, he immediately tracks her down to try to make things right with her. He is lonely and estranged from his adult daughter, with whom he struggles to have a relationship. He is willing to go with Penelope to a car dealership as a prop so she is not taken advantage of, but he has to see his daughter. He and Lydia start to develop a relationship, though he clearly wants something more romantic than she wants,

and Lydia - Penelope's mother, she is the protector of the family's Cuban culture . . . though she loves yoga in addition to her salsa dancing. She advocates strongly for Elena to have a quinceanera. She is offended by the idea that Penelope might reject going to church. She always wears make-up and communicates with her dead husband. She is willing to go back to teaching dance in order to help financially contribute to the family. She starts to tell Penelope about her past, especially after Alex starts his film project.

One Day At A Time has a fairly decent cast, led by Justina Machado. Machado illustrates that she has a good sense of comic timing - which is not something she was able to showcase on Six Feet Under. Machado has great on-screen chemistry with both of the performers playing her children and with Rita Moreno. Machado brings a bad-ass quality to the part of Penelope that makes it entirely credible that her character was ex-Army. She also has a pretty amazing poker face for delivering deadpan lines. Well within her established wheelhouse are moments when she performs on her own and arguably one of the most poignant is where she acts opposite a five dollar bill. In the subsequent dialogue that follows, Machado makes expository dialogue seem perfectly real with her passionate delivery.

The seasoned performers in One Day At A Time are predictably amazing. Rita Moreno, while originally used for her celebrity, delivers a number of her lines beautifully tongue-in-cheek. Moreno shows she still has the dance moves that made her famous and is able to sell the over-the-top accent her character speaks with (having heard interviews with Moreno, it is very clearly not her normal speaking pattern). Despite how formulaic the scripts are, Moreno blows away a scene in which Lydia reveals a painful truth to Penelope and her ability to emote in telling a story as she does. Stephen Tobolowsky plays Dr. Berkowitz with a sadness and pathetic quality that is sometimes tough to watch, but he is able to act masterfully. Tobolowsky is able to emote with his eyes and a slumped posture in a way that most younger performers never seem to learn.

The scene stealer for One Day At A Time's first season is Isabella Gomez. Gomez plays Elena and the young actress has a screen presence that is impressive. Gomez holds her own in scenes with Rita Moreno and on her own. Gomez has good deliveries and the ability to emote in ways that most young performers do not. The last time I was this impressed by a young person's acting was seeing Anne Hathaway in her early works. Isabella Gomez has a decent sense of comic timing and delivers all of her character's impassioned, high-minded lines with a level of articulation that makes it entirely believable that Elena holds such enlightened views! Gomez is given a lot to do as Elena - including being a fourteen year-old who is questioning her own sexuality - and One Day At A Time uses Gomez appropriately (without exploiting the young actress, possibly because of Ariel Winter's activism?) and in a way that allows her to show off her talent and range, though in the middle of the season Elena takes on less of mousy appearance.

The first season of One Day At A Time is semi-serialized, with a few elements from each episode carrying over into the next. So, Elena's quinceanera bookends the season, with planning occurring throughout the season, with elements like Dr. Berkowitz and Lydia having a burgeoning relationship and the friendship that develops between Penelope and another former military officer.

One Day At A Time has a rough start, but it is so disarming and it develops so well that the laugh track stops feeling so intrusive and some of the predictable reversals in the last five minutes actually manage to work. The result is a surprise winner for Netflix that actually works!

For other works from the 2016 – 2017 television season, please check out my reviews of:
Travelers - Season 1
"A Christmas Special" - Sense8
The OA - Season 1
Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life
"Invasion!" - Arrow
"The Laws Of Inferno Dynamics" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Flashpoint" - The Flash
"The Chicago Way" - Legends Of Tomorrow
"The Adventures Of Supergirl" - Supergirl
Luke Cage - Season 1
Stranger Things - Season 1

7/10

For other movie and television reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Near Perfect, The Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Are Worth Tracking Down While You Can!

The Good: Great chocolate mint flavor, Bag has mild savings over individual truffles, Decent bulking, Good ingredients
The Bad: Environmental impact of packaging, Milk chocolate is a bit mild.
The Basics: Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles are one of the pleasant surprises of the Lindt line . . . making me hope that they will return next year!


My wife has truly made me come around on how I consider milk chocolate. My wife is a huge fan of white chocolate and milk chocolate, whereas I am very much a lover of mint chocolate and dark chocolate - the darker (to a point) the better! My wife has, in our many conversations as I review foods, pointed out that I have a tendency to be harsh on milk chocolates based on the fact that they are simply not dark chocolate and she has made me come around on that point. While I was unable to truly defend myself in my discussion with her - I HAVE had perfect milk chocolates, they were Belgian and shaped like sea shells!, I just ate them all before I could review them! - she adequately convinced me that I cannot punish milk chocolate candies for the simple fact that they are not dark chocolate. So, when I sat down to review the bag of limited edition Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles, I went into it with that mindset and a very open mind.

And the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles were near-perfect. While my wife - who is a strong critical-thinker like I am, not one who loves everything she encounters - told me she would have rated these a perfect 10/10, I could not get myself there. I went through several truffles for enjoyment and several for a very clinical review tasting and even without punishing the Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles for not being dark chocolate (my wife suspects dark chocolate would overwhelm the mint), the chocolate flavor of just the milk chocolate in the truffles was not chocolatey enough to satisfy me. To be clear, these are an awesome truffle and one of the best representations of mint chocolate I have yet reviewed, but even as a milk chocolate, the milk chocolate flavor does not pop enough on its own to wow me.

Basics

Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles are a limited edition chocolate from the Swiss chocolatiers Lindt & Sprungli (or, at least, their U.S.-based subsidiary based in New Hampshire)! Each truffle is a one inch sphere of chocolate with a shell about an eighth of an inch thick. This shell covers a thick chocolate mint cookie ball inside. Each of the truffles comes individually wrapped in a bright green and white foil wrapper, which has green and red stripes in the white section. It is worth noting that while I usually rail against the environmental impact of such things, it is hard to imagine Lindt Lindor truffles not wrapped, so my environmental complaints about the packaging are mostly lip service. The individual wrappers keeps each truffle clean, unmelted and intact.

Each Lindor Truffle is a sphere with a seam at the hemisphere that is essentially a chocolate globe sealing in a cookie-filled ball inside. In this form, the 6 oz. bag, the individually-wrapped truffles are packaged together in a thick foil paper bag. This size has fourteen truffles, so they come out to about fifty cents each, and the thick foil paper bag does little to protect the spheres. The bag is not resealable, though this matters very little considering that the truffles do not go bad as they are individually wrapped and get devoured quite quickly by anyone who loves mint chocolate!

Ease Of Preparation

These are candy, so preparing them is as simple as opening the bag and then opening one of the plastic wrappers around the actual chocolate truffles one wishes to eat. There is no surprise way to unwrap or eat Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles, though I always recommend unwrapping the truffles before eating them.

Taste

Lindt Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate lindor truffles smell nicely like peppermint, with a slightly muted quality based upon the chocolate that it is mixed with. Usually, peppermint has a cold sharpness to the aroma (and flavor); the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles have the distinct peppermint smell paired with a slightly sugary finish instead of anything truly cold, like one might expect. The result is a bouquet that hints at the delightful peppermint cookie middle of the truffle without truly giving away all of the flavor secrets in the aroma!

On the flavor front, the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate have an appropriately milky exterior that almost instantly blends with the peppermint cookie pieces inside the ganache. The exterior milk chocolate is mild on its own, though it is not waxy or overly soft. But as the milk chocolate begins to melt away, it blends with the mint flavors inside. The crunchy peppermint cookie bits inside the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles instantly infuse the milk chocolate with peppermint in a delightful way that makes the two flavors inseparable; if one bites into the Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffle, it tastes homogeneously like mint chocolate! The blend of chocolate and mint is delightful, even if the chocolate is not the most assertive chocolate flavor.

The Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindor Truffles have a mild, cool, peppermint flavor that lingers in the mouth for about five minutes after the last truffle is consumed.

Nutrition

The Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles are candy, so it is tough to look at these for something nutritious and then blame them for not being healthy. Lindt Lindor truffles are surprisingly good, though, which is probably why they are so expensive. The primary ingredients are milk chocolate, vegetable oil and sugar. Still, there is - delightfully - nothing unpronounable in these candies.

A serving of the Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles is considered three balls. From three truffles, one consumes 220 calories, 150 of those calories being from fat. There are five milligrams of cholesterol, minimal sodium (45 mg) and 2 grams of protein in each three-truffle serving. There is also 4% of one's daily calcium and 4% of the RDA of Iron and Vitamin A in three spheres, so there is a little something to rationalize gluttony to!

Honestly, these are candy and anyone looking to them for actual nutrition needs to wake up to reality. These are not Vegan-compliant, nor are they recommended for anyone with a nut allergy as they are produced on the same equipment that peanuts (and tree nuts) pass over. They are marked as kosher (dairy), but are not gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

The bags of these Lindt Lindor Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate truffles remain fresh for quite some time. However, even the bag notes they ought to be kept in a cool environment between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Kept in such an environment, these would have remained fresh until June 30, 2017, had my wife and I not gobbled them up before the end of January 2017, and that makes the limited edition truffles a great value. Given that they are individually wrapped in a very sealed package, it is hard to imagine just what it would take for these to go bad outside melting and refreezing.

As for cleanup, throw the wrappers in the garbage and cleanup is essentially done! Outside that, there is no real cleanup needed, unless one is eating them in a hot environment. In that case, it is likely one would need to wash their hands. If these truffles melt into most fabrics, they will stain. For that style of clean-up, be sure to consult a fabric guide for whatever you stained.

Overall

Peppermint Cookie Milk Chocolate Lindt Lindor Truffles are delicious and very much worth hunting down for the brief time they might remain available following the winter holidays. While my wife and I might have marginal differences on how amazing they truly are, we very much agree that they are worth getting while we can!

For other Lindt Lindor Truffles, please check out my reviews of:
Citrus Lindor Truffles
Cappuccino
Limited Edition Dark Chocolate Peppermint

9/10

For other chocolate reviews, please visit my Chocolate Review Index Page for a full listing of all I have currently reviewed!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Agent Carter Fights The "Monsters" . . . Poorly.

The Good: Moments of character
The Bad: Poor continuity, Melodrama, No truly great performances, Mood telegraphs the plot reversal
The Basics: "Monsters" forces Agent Carter into a very simple trap that requires some troublesome filler.


Every now and then, I encounter a very simple work that is stretched out in unfortunate ways to meet the minimum time requirement of the medium. "Monsters" in Agent Carter is one such episode of television. To get to the 43 minute mark, the Agent Carter episode includes contrived scenes and a dragged out mood that telegraphs a number of the plot reversals. The result is that genre fans are much more likely to be bored by "Monsters" than excited by all of the plot and character elements that were mashed into the episode.

Picking up where “Life Of The Party” (reviewed here!) left off, "Monsters" continues to have Dottie Underwood in play with Vernon Masters pulling some of the strings. As well, "Monsters" has to deal with Director Sousa telling Agent Carter that his engagement ended as a result of her.

Opening with Whitney Frost staging a press conference to explain the absence of Chadwick and others on the council, Carter and Sousa try to figure out where Dottie Underwood is. They correctly deduce that Underwood is under Frost's thumb. Underwood is actually in custody of Vernon Masters, who attempts to interrogate her and discovers she is made of stronger stuff than him. When Masters fails to get results, Frost breaks Underwood using her Zero Matter abilities. Carter and her team manage to make Dr. Wilkes corporeal again . . . right before Underwood's tracker goes live again!

With Masters squeezing Sousa for the uranium that Carter stole to prevent it from falling into Frost's hands, Carter and Jarvis head knowingly into Frost's trap. After getting captured attempting to rescue Underwood, Jarvis, Carter and Underwood attempt to break out while Wilkes and Ana Jarvis have a heart to heart conversation. But in liberating Underwood, they discover the true nature of Frost's trap and when Frost abducts Wilkes, Ana Jarvis is caught in the crossfire!

Dr. Wilkes begins to show some of the psychological strain associated with being disembodied as long as he has been. Wilkes advocates using the destruct mechanism in Underwood's necklace and that is a shift in his character, which makes some sense given how he is coming psychologically unraveled. Wilkes has a reasonable evolution in "Monsters" that actually works for his character as he becomes desperate to develop a containment vessel.

At the other end of the spectrum is Vernon Masters. Masters continues to develop as one of the true villains of the second season of Agent Carter. In "Monsters," Masters subtly reveals how he has risen to such a position of authority and power by revealing that he still has some faith in the U.S. Government and the agents under his command. Masters knows how to use the institutions that exist for his own gain and Kurtwood Smith has great range to play both the torturer and extortionist. Masters's machinations in "Monsters" move him to being a more overt threat to Carter and one of the ironic and few delightful elements of the episode is how Underwood alludes to the HYDRA presence within the SSR!

Jarvis continues to have his own sidekick and side story in "Monsters." Ana Jarvis has been watching Jarvis interact with Peggy Carter and she is reasonably concerned about the level of danger Jarvis is put in by "Monsters." While Ana Jarvis and Edwin Jarvis's interactions work wonderfully, the episode takes an abrupt, literal, stop in the middle to have a painfully forced conversation between Edwin and Carter. While there are certainly ways such a scene could work and seem vital, it comes across as very . . . high school in "Monsters."

While "Life Of The Party" allowed Hayley Atwell to present a new level of physical performance that she had not previously played, "Monsters" does not continue to play up Carter's wounds. That is somewhat problematic as Agent Carter should not have recovered nearly so quickly from being impaled as she has. Given that Carter was nearly mortally wounded 48 hours prior, her moving around the way she does in "Monsters" is terribly unrealistic.

"Monsters" has no great performances, though all of the acting is competent enough. The character development is minimal and the sudden attention to Ana Jarvis only serves to rob the episode of any surprise when Frost uses her as a component of her getaway. The result is an Agent Carter episode that barely progresses the main plot and does so in a fairly dull way.

For other works with Hayley Atwell, please check out my reviews of:
Ant-Man
Agent Carter - Season 1
The Avengers: Age Of Ultron
"The Things We Bury" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Shadows" - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America
The Duchess

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Agent Carter - The Complete Second Season, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of Agent Carter here!
Thanks!]

3/10

For other television reviews, please check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Sterilizing? Maybe. Cleaning? Nope! Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes Disappoint!

The Good: Might well sterilize as it promises
The Bad: Environmentally irresponsible, Expensive, Low cleaning power, Poor scent
The Basics: Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes are one of the less successful Lysol products I've yet encountered.


Every now and then, I find a cleaning product at my local grocery store on clearance that I buy right away based on the idea that it seems exactly like something my wife would love for around the house. My wife is enamored with cleaning wipes, which I used to find troublingly wasteful, but she loves for the convenience. As well, she likes to be able to dispose of wipes we use as opposed to trying to wash our various washclothes and rags in our super crappy clothes washer (which was my preferred method of cleaning around the house until we moved to an apartment with a terrible clothes washer). So, when I saw the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes in our grocery store, I picked them right up.

I wish I had not.

I was drawn into the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes because unlike most of the wipes we have bought and used, the Dual Action Wipes have a textured side designed to allow the wipes to scrub surfaces that have more accumulated grime on them. The problem with the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes, other than the scrubbing side leading Lysol to charge twice as much for their canister of wipes, is that the scrubbing side does not actually work as promised.

Lysol Citrus Scent All Purpose Wipes come in a thirty-five pack plastic canister. The canister is a #2 recyclable canister, which can be recycled virtually anywhere that has a recycling program. The canister has a fairly small footprint as it is eight and three-eighths inches tall with a three inch diameter! The canister of Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes fits easily in one's hand.

The Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes has a medium-hard plastic container with a cap that has a flip top dispensing hole. If one fails to thread the wipes through correctly, the cap may be popped off and access granted to the container, though it is not recommended to leave the container open as the wipes will dry out.

What are Lysol Dual Action wipes? They are like baby wipes for one's furniture and possessions. Virtually any surface one might usually dust or use a limited cleaner on is what these wipes may be used for. Use of these wipes is ridiculously easy: flip the cap open on the top of the plastic container and pull the wipe out. As it exits the container, it will present the top of the next wipe for the next time. Close the container by clicking the cap back in place and wipe the surface you wish to clean with the wipe. It is that easy. When you are done, throw the wipe away!

Lysol Citrus Scent all purpose wipes are 7" by 7 7/8" rectangles of fibrous cleaning power. The baby wipe analogy is an apt one. These cleaning cloths are durable, clean and have limited stretch to them. The scrubbing side is not thick or abrasive enough to be very effective for cleaning, though.

As for the scent, the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes have a vague, antiseptic scent to them and it is not actually citrusy in the bouquet. The scent is clean and disippates fairly quickly, but it is not a pleasant aroma and it is not a clear scent that smells like anything enjoyable or fruity.

Wipes are traditionally good for cleaning up dirt where minimal scrubbing might be involved and the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes are all right on that front. They clean and (apparently) sterilize doorknobs, handles, and countertops. But the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes do not pick up much in the way of dirt or grime - wiping emptied litterboxes quickly clogged the scrubbing side of the wipes. The Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes leave streaks on any glass surfaces or monitors one uses them upon. That said, the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes hold up well with scrubbing and basic dusting.

The key selling point of the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes is the scrubbing power of the more abrasive side and it falls down completely on that front. Between the lack of a decent scent and the failure of the abrasive side, the Lysol Citrus Scent Dual Action Wipes are a bit of a flop.

For other cleansers, please visit my reviews of:
Cascade Platinum Fresh Scent Action Pacs
Lysol Multi-Purpose Scrubber Sponge
Scotch 3M 30-Sheet Mini Lint Roller

2/10

For other home and garden reviews, please visit my Cleaner Reviews Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Ten Years Ago, Jerry Seinfeld Advocated Slavery And Stereotypes In Bee Movie!

The Good: Decent animation
The Bad: Ridiculous stereotypes, Unlikable characters, Terrible overall theme, Predictable and hyperbolic plot
The Basics: Bee Movie is another terrible animated film that has an ultimately horrible message and reinforces stereotypes more than doing anything remotely entertaining.


Years ago, I discovered that some animated films get away with the most horiffic racism, sexism and stereotype-reinforcement when I sat down and watched A Shark Tale (reviewed here!) and it was painfully obvious to deconstruct what was in the film, as opposed to what the writers and producers hoped viewers would see. So, when my wife sat down to watch Bee Movie and she prefaced it with "this is one of the worst movies ever; it is so horrible!" I was ready to believe her, but I still went into it with an open mind. Anti-Semitic and essentially arguing in favor of a slave class, Bee Movie is one of the worst, most subversive films I've seen in a long time . . . even if on the surface it advocates for worker's rights and environmental balance.

Bee Movie was co-written by Jerry Seinfeld, Spike Feresten (who had a delightful late-night talk show for a while that I quite enjoyed!), Barry Marder, and Andy Robin and it is somewhat amazing that it took at least four people to write a film that was so lacking in humor and managed to create something that on the surface was progressive, but has a truly horrible subtext. While the film is built on an obvious series of jokes based on stereotypes about Jews, lawyers and women, Bee Movie has a resolution that is unfortunately ambiguous and leads to a conclusion that appears to advocate in favor of race slavery!

In a bee hive, Barry B. Benson and Adam Flayman graduate from school and are assigned to the hive workforce. Barry wants to join the bees who leave the hive because he has a sense of adventure to him, while Adam wants to work in the hive. Barry goes on a flight out into the city where he learns about pollination and is nearly killed by getting stuck on a tennis ball. When it begins to rain, Barry ends up in the apartment of Vanessa Bloome, who saves him from her neanderthal boyfriend. Barry feels obligated to thank Vanessa, revealing to her that bees have the ability to speak and are fairly reasonable. Barry also discovers that humans are manufacturing their own honey, to the detriment of bees.

Barry and Adam sue the humans, charging that the companies that enslave bees to harvest their honey (while keeping the bees at bay using smoke) are illegally appropriating the by-products the bees create. When the lawyer for the humans, Layton T. Montgomery, goads Adam into attacking him, Barry must complete the case on his own. But winning the case and freeing the bees from human exploitation leads to an environmental disaster that menaces humanity! As bee society falls apart, the relationship between Barry and florist Vanessa Bloome is strained to the point of breaking. The bee and human must work together to save the world!

On the surface, Bee Movie seems to have a great message of the importance of environmental interdependence. The humans and bees in Bee Movie eventually learn that they must work together to protect the delicate balance of the Earth's ecosystem. That is an honorable message. However, the film begins in the hive and illustrates a rigid society that is ordered, well-controlled, and is somewhat oppressive, but ends in Vanessa's lower shop without any closure for the hive. The consequence of this is that it leads to a strongly implied horrible message for the overall film.

After winning the lawsuit in the human world, the humans stop using honey in their products, which frees the bees and menaces their orderly society. But the final scene of Bee Movie has Vanessa featuring "bee approved" honey in her flower shop. The problem with this climax is that there is no visible price on the bee approved honey and it is not clear that she is actually selling the honey, as opposed to giving it away. The problem with failing to close the loop on the hive story is that Bee Movie fails to illustrate that the bees actually profit from their work. The bees successfully stop humans from explicitly enslaving them and stop the humans from manufacturing and selling honey from fake hives created for the purpose of making honey. But, the bees go back to work to protect the environment, keep order in their society and produce honey that the humans then distribute and enjoy. The bees in Bee Movie do not evolve; they merely liberate some of their brethren from explicit slavery. Because there is no scene that illustrates that the bee approved honey financially or materially benefits the bee hive, Bee Movie implicitly advocates in favor of a slave society. The bees do all of the work and are kept under control and the fruits of their labor are used by a vastly more powerful group . . . without any explicit moment that shows them benefiting, this is a slave class that has been bamboozled into putting their seal of approval on their own exploitation.

This troubling ending comes at the climax of a film where the characters are unlikable, based on stereotypes and relationships that make no actual sense. The unlikable aspect of the characters is epitomized in the way Barry uses other people for his own gain. Barry is thrilled when a bear is willing to appear at the trial and act violent in order to benefit his case . . . but then, after the case, Barry disparages bears again. Barry is a user and a racist one at that! Ironically, the writers miss their chance to make a truly relevant social commentary on the way language has been misappropriated by having a lawyer accuse Barry of "playing the species card" when it was the perfect place to use the term "race card" accurately (as bees and humans are actual different races, as opposed to humans of different ethnicities!).

The relationship between Barry and Vanessa is just troubling. Vanessa is a human who seems to fall in love with Barry, the way he fell for her. When my wife shockingly asked, "How would that even work?!" and I came up with some creative ideas to answer that question, I got her to blush and tell me - well before I came to the end of my list - to please stop! Bee Movie is just ridiculous when one looks at the relationships in the film.

While the animation in Bee Movie is fairly impressive, the voice acting is merely adequate. Renee Zellweger goes in and out of dialects as Vanessa and Jerry Seinfeld descends into shtick as Barry.

The result is that Bee Movie is a truly terrible animated film that is not worth watching . . . even for its ten year anniversary!

For other animated films, please visit my reviews of:
Zootopia
Despicable Me
Shrek

1/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Supergirl Joins The Alternative Lantern Corp At Her End In Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible.

The Good: Good artwork, Moments of character
The Bad: Awkward relationship changes, Irksome plot progression, Weird place in the larger DC Universe
The Basics: Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible works to resolve Supergirl's arc before the abrupt end of her storyline when Kara joins an intergalactic peacekeeping force.


As I have found myself into Supergirl of late, I have been interested in the direction that The New 52 took the character in. To that end, I figured that I had to finish the series and the end for The New 52 came with Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible. Whatever momentum the character arc for Supergirl had going into Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible, it is cut short in the final volume. Kara Zor-El has weird beginning in Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible, with an abruptly terminated attack by Brainiac that finishes off yet another crossover with Superman and Superboy that is concluded in Supergirl. But then, Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible goes into an entirely new arc that puts Supergirl as part of a new interstellar team that seems redundant in a universe filled with Corps's like the Green Lanterns.

Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible picks up after Supergirl: Volume 5 - Red Daughter Of Krypton (reviewed here!), with Kara abruptly falling to Earth some point after her Red Lantern Ring has been removed. No longer attached to the Red Lantern Corps and stuck on Earth on her own (Kal-El is apparently completely re-evaluating his place after his experience with the Doomsday virus), it seems instantly strange that after starting a new relationship for Kara, rather than give her real time on her own, Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible puts the Kryptonian woman in a group that is essentially the Green Lantern Corps without the rings!

Kara Zor-El crashes to Earth after the U.S. Military has deployed a Kryptonite bomb to stop Superman after he went crazy and mutated after fighting Doomsday. Rescued by Michael and kept away from the poisoned atmosphere in a bomb shelter, until she learns from Michael that his parents are in Metropolis, which is suffering from everyone inside suddenly falling into a coma. After recharging by flying above the Kryptonite cloud, Supergirl goes to Metropolis and starts to get survivors out, while Wonder Woman fights Lois Lane, who is behind the comas. Supergirl rescues Michael's parents and just as she begins to develop a relationship with Michael, Brainiac and Cyborg Superman attack Queens. After repelling Brainiac, Supergirl returns Michael's parents to him and there she finds Red Hood, who needs her help in taking down a syndicate who is selling alien weapons to street gangs.

After Kara starts working as a barista, where she is visited by Kal, she is abducted by Lys Amata, Perceptor Of Crucible Academy. There, Kara Zor-El is teamed with Maxima, Tsavo, and Comet to train to be a better protector of her homeworld (or adopted world, Earth). After extensive education at the Crucible, Kara and Tsavo are sent to Tsavo's homeworld, Ngo, which is embroiled in a civil war. There, Tsavo's brother has taken over, with the aid of rejects from the Crucible. Supergirl must fight to save Ngo and figure out what is going on with the Crucible Academy!

Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible is a weird volume that yet again redefines Supergirl and marginalizes her within her own book. Kara bounces between Michael, Kon-El (at least in that the volume devotes time to her making peace with the Kryptonian clone), and Comet. Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible rushes through having Kara actually get trained by the Crucible Academy before she ends up on Ngo as part of a "case." The character arc is erratic and hardly focused on Kara.

The artwork in Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible is good, brightly colored and with all of the characters consistently rendered. The sense of movement is all right in Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible, but the narrative is troublingly choppy.

Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible is the short straw of narratives for both Tony Bedard, who starts the volume and whose Red Lantern arc for Kara Zor-El is abruptly ended and is only a tiny portion of a larger crossover that makes Kara "just another Kryptonian," and the by K. Perkins and Mike Johnson, who get stuck at the end juggling between a lingering relationship story and a whole new organization that is created right before it is abruptly canned.

As a result, Supergirl: Volume 6 - Crucible is a mess that never quite hits its stride.

For other Supergirl New 52 works, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Volume 1 - Last Daughter Of Krypton
Voluime 2 - Girl In The World
Volume 3 - Sanctuary
(Supergirl: Volume 4 – Out Of The Past

3.5/10

For other graphic novel reviews, be sure to check out my Graphic Novel Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the graphic novel reviews I have written!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Drag Out The Dragging When "The Hungry Earth" Consumes Doctor Who!

The Good: Performances and effects are fine, The few moments of character development are good
The Bad: Dragged out plot, Dull supporting characters/performances
The Basics: "The Hungry Earth" is a mediocre set-up episode that belabors its duration instead of developing a compelling story.


One of the elements of Doctor Who that I actually enjoy is the way it (occasionally) fearlessly reinvents reality. In the modern Doctor Who, the idea that the moon is a giant egg is presented in "Kill The Moon" (reviewed here!) and against all odds, the idea works for the show. Well before that episode, Doctor Who took a stab at the idea that humans were once not the dominant intelligent species on Earth in the two-parter begun in "The Hungry Earth." The idea of humanoid reptilian life forms that are intelligent is not a new one: V (reviewed here!) did it and the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Distant Origin" (reviewed here!) even posited something remarkably close to "The Hungry Earth" a decade prior to the Doctor Who episode penned by Chris Chibnall.

The Doctor Who take on humanoid reptiles on Earth leads to the introduction of the Silurian in "The Hungry Earth." The Silurian recur in a somewhat nonsensical way - having rewatched "Deep Breath" (reviewed here!) many times, my latest viewing of "The Hungry Earth" and its sequel episode involved looking for clues as to how Madame Vastra was on the surface during that time period. Alas, "The Hungry Earth" does not even hint at Vastra at all.

Opening on Earth, in 2020, the Discovery Drilling Project is digging in the Earth, deeper than humans ever have before. On the day that they hit 21 Kilometers deep, a man is sucked underneath the ground. The TARDIS arrives and The Doctor immediately feels like the ground does not feel normal. Amy is irked because the plan was for the TARDIS to arrive in Rio (which is what she dressed for!) and moments after arriving, Amy and Rory see themselves, from a distance, across the village. The Doctor posits that they are older versions of themselves, come to relive their great adventures, and advises them not to go interact with their older versions. While Amy and The Doctor investigate why the Earth feels weird, Rory finds himself embroiled in a local mystery, in the form of disappeared bodies from the local graveyard.

When Amy is sucked into the Earth, The Doctor works with members of the Discovery Drilling Project to discover why the Earth itself is consuming people. Using the Project's equipment, The Doctor realizes that something is boring its way up to the surface and shortly thereafter, the residents discover there is a force field that is keeping everyone in the village. The Doctor retreats with the workers, Rory, and the family of one of the workers, to the local church to steel themselves from an attack from below.

"The Hungry Earth" transitions from being a pretty typical Doctor Who episode that has The Doctor and his Companion to an episode that pairs The Doctor and Rory and gives Rory a decent amount of story on his own. Rory has a lot of anger for The Doctor and Arthur Darvill manages to play that without ever seeing melodramatic. "The Hungry Earth" repeats The Doctor's characterization more than it challenges or grows it as The Doctor tries to relate to the village's child, Elliot.

The risk with making a two-part episode can often be leading to a feeling of dragging out the elements of the episode to service the shooting schedule/season design as opposed to the narrative. "The Hungry Earth" is an episode that very clearly falls into that trap. The real-time build-up to the siege in the church tries to create a sense of tension that falls flat and feels forced. The use of the force field pushes the attempted mood by creating a field of darkness, but the episode's suspense does not land. In fact, when Ambrose notices that Elliot is not in the church, the revelation is so forced that it guts her character - she suddenly transitions into one of the worst on-screen mothers of all time through her neglect that only is realized when it becomes plot convenient.

The greatest amount of character comes from the episode's penultimate and final scenes, when The Doctor interrogates the Silurian Alaya and attempts to convince the humans in the village that no one needs to die. The Doctor tries his hand at peacekeeping and takes up his usual role as protector of humanity, with decidedly mixed results. In "The Hungry Earth," The Doctor is very much the predictable Doctor and he is surrounded by characters who are generally flatly drawn.

"The Hungry Earth" is not a bad episode, but it is very much an unexceptional one; not much happens, the characters do not grow and develop and the performances are not so exceptional as to wow the viewer. The result is a very basic hour of television that sets up a more impressive one.

For other big set-up episodes, please visit my reviews of:
"Heaven Sent" - Doctor Who
"Call To Arms" - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
"Destiny" - Legends Of Tomorrow

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2017 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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