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Author Archives: Andrew Bloom
The Simpsons Botches the Relationship Between Homer and His Daughter in “Make Room for Lisa”
Homer and Lisa have the richest, most complicated relationship on The Simpsons. The series will no doubt continue doing Homer and Marge relationship episodes until the sun burns out, and Marge and Lisa have an undeniably special kinship, and Homer and Bart never fail to make a stellar comic duo. But Homer and Lisa are complete opposites who, nevertheless, love each other dearly. That means there’s always fertile ground to cover about how a father and daughter learn to relate to one another and, gradually, understand each other a little better.
Posted in Television, The Simpsons
Tagged Homer Simpson, Lisa Simpson, Mike Scully, The Simpsons S10E16, The Simpsons Season 10
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The Walking Dead Can’t Get Out of Its Own Way, Even When It’s Trying to Say Goodbye in “Honor”
The opening few minutes of “Honor” are The Walking Dead at its best. If you want me to give your television show a little slack, to feel a little extra emotional resonance in an important sequence, then you’re hard pressed to do better than employing a little music penned by Conor Oberst (or, as the show has done before, John Darnielle). “At the Bottom of Everything”, the opening track from Oberst’s seminal album I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, is the perfect accompaniment to the episode’s opening montage. The song tells a story and offers an anthem about the absurdities we face and the joys we wring even in the face of oblivion.
The Office’s Top 20 Episodes
Andrew joins Matt Melis to rank and review the 20 best episodes of this outstanding comedy.
Posted in Other Sitcoms, Television
Tagged Dwight Schrute, Jim Halpert, Michael Scott, Pam Beesley, The Office
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Avengers: Infinity War and the Choice between Love and Victory
Caution: This review contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Avengers: Infinity War.
Before Joss Whedon made 2012’s The Avengers and changed the caped crossover game forever, he created an arguably even more influential T.V. show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Despite its gothic overtones, Buffy had the rhythms of a superhero story, with special powers, recurring villains, and big deaths and resurrections. And in one particularly significant season finale [spoilers for a 15-year-old episode of television], Whedon gave his protagonist a choice: save the universe or save someone you love.
Buffy’s conflict had the same sort of stakes as Avengers: Infinity War, even if the contours were a bit different. A mad god was on the loose and threatening to destroy all of creation. To bring that apocalypse to fruition, she needed to use Buffy’s sister who was, through some magical mishegoss, the key to this grand undoing. When that threat reached a crisis point, friend and foe alike advised Buffy to make a hard choice and sacrifice her sister for the good of all mankind. But Buffy, undeterred, decided to find another way, to rally her allies and fight this evil, rather than capitulate to it.
Posted in Movies, Superhero Movies
Tagged Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thanos, The Avengers, Trolley Problem
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Archer’s “Danger Island” Proves the Show Can Work Anywhere
Another season. Another reboot. The powers that be behind Archer have figured out that the motley collection of personalities the show’s crafted over the past eight years are now officially commedia dell’arte characters — distinct enough to be recognizable but malleable enough that you can plop them into any variety of new stories and situations and trust that they’ll fit right in.
Enter “Archer: Danger Island”, the show’s latest seasonal refresh. Season 9 offers a new backdrop for our favorite band of former secret agents/private detectives/drug runners/noir gumshoes/astronauts/submariners/alcoholics — a Casablanca-esque, French-occupied island in the South Pacific named Mitimotu. The action takes place in 1939, with references to the looming war and a winking vibe that tracks with the characteristically wide-ranging cultural pastiche of an “American abroad” island adventure.
Posted in Other Animated Shows, Television
Tagged Archer, Archer Season 9, Season Reviews, Sterling Archer
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Krypton 101: A Brief History of Superman’s Home Planet
Andrew joins ace T.V. writer Clint Worthington and Cameron Cuffe, star of the new series Krypton, to discuss the different versions of Superman’s home world on the page and screen over the years.
What Remains of Edith Finch and the Awesome, Terrible Power of Stories
When we want to remember someone, we tell stories about them. When we’re processing our traumas, we create representations of them to ease the pain. And when we feel trapped, our imaginations can give us a comfort and a lifeline.
That’s the idea at the center of What Remains of Edith Finch, the 2017 game developed by Giant Sparrow and its creative director Ian Dallas. As I discussed with Robbie Dorman on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, the game tells the story of the Finches, using a visit to an old family home to trace six generations’ worth of seemingly inevitable misfortunes, and the conflicting efforts to remember the individuals behind them and to avoid sharing their fates.
Ranking: Every Season of The Wire from Worst to Best
Andrew joins Randall Colburn and Greg Whitt to rank, dissect, and honor one of the greatest television shows of all time.
Star Wars Rebels Chooses Not to Remake the Past in “A World Between Worlds”
I’m always suspicious of time travel stories. Too often, they open up a big can of worms that even great T.V. shows can’t reseal. They tend to either involve paradoxes and bits of convenience that we just have to accept as part of the time-bending shenanigans. But most of all, they create problems for both plot and drama.
If you can just go back and change some explosive event in the past, why not travel back even further to a more boring one that lets you avoid the conflict altogether? And more to the point, why do any of your actions matter if they can simply be undone down the line? Time travel risks breaking your universe and weakening your ability to tell meaningful stories.
So I was worried, naturally, when Star Wars Rebels introduced what amounts to time travel in “A World Between Worlds”, thereby allowing the show to revisit two of its most heightened and dramatic moments. It’s a choice that connects this series with the past, present, and future of the Star Wars franchise, while also creating the opportunity to rewrite these major events in the show’s own history. But fraught though these time-tampering opportunities may be, Rebels approaches them in a way that is not only satisfying in terms of mechanics and continuity, but which exists as an episode-length rejoinder to the idea of “let’s just fix the past” that’s otherwise inextricably a part of the DNA of time travel stories
“Bart the Mother” Bridges the Gap between Mother and Son at the End of The Simpsons’ Golden Era
It’s deceptively simple. At the end of “Bart the Mother”, Bart understands his mom a little better after being a surrogate caregiver to some “kids” of his own. And Marge has her belief in the essential goodness of her “special little guy” rekindled when she sees his efforts to protect them, the same way she tries to protect him. By the time the credits roll, a mother and her son have been broken apart and fused back together, stronger and closer than ever.
There’s something a little T.G.I.F. about that. But as I discussed on The Simpsons Show Podcast, what separates this episode from its Miller-Boyett counterparts are the three things that always elevated The Simpsons above its contemporaries: smart storytelling, a keen understanding of its characters, and even in shaky Season 10, superb comedy that could still bring the laughs.
