I make no bones about it. Doom Patrol delights me like few shows do. There’s a kind of love being put into it that comes from a passion project with all the nuance and nods. I’m probably considered a fairweather fan of the comics as I only really enjoyed the Grant Morrison run on the property but I had read what came before and then some of the relatively more recent material. But that run by Morrison defined it for me with style, character, and the artwork from Richard Case. And this show brings all of that to life while also touching on the far more dated material from the 60’s period and more. It’s not exactly a linear series in a sense in how it tells its tale, opting to be creative and working some limited bottle episodes in a way, but it’s building an engaging world with a fantastic cast of characters and actors behind them. And it’s doing it all with such a sense of whimsy, silliness, and love for the absurd way of doing things that I can’t help but love it because it is doing it from the heart. The service is worth it just for this show, quite frankly.
The other big part for me this week was finishing off The OA. I had watched just the first couple of episodes the week prior but burned through the remaining six of eight this week and that ate up a lot of time. What a trip though as we get the parallel world storyline going in earnest with a look at just how different they can be while still looking the same. And I loved how it used something like tinnitus, which I have, as a kind of neat little focal point that just made me grin. This is definitely going to be a divisive series in general and between those that loved the first season but struggle with the second simply because it doesn’t try to repeat things and goes in a bigger and crazier direction. But I loved it all and hope we get a lot more of Jason Isaacs and Brit Marling in this fashion.
This past week was a bit of a quiet one in some regards as a lot of my sitcoms weren’t on and the Arrowverse shows were a bit thin with just Arrow for me. Which is shaping up decently as it doesn’t look like it’s going to go for a clean and upbeat ending when it wraps up next season with an abbreviated ten-episode run. Thankfully, this week sees the return of Legends of Tomorrow and that has me hugely excited because the show is just a romp.
The debut of What We Do In The Shadows this past week was certainly an enjoyable reworking of the film for the TV format and I love that the guy from The IT Crowd surfaced here as I always confuse him with Jermain Clement to begin with. This’ll just reinforce it more. It’s a fun show but I’m holding most of my judgment until we get past the stuff we’d seen done in the film. The cast reworked as it is here with the female vampire as well definitely makes a huge improvement, however.
The usual HGTV material was here with the latest Home Town while the new season of Property Brothers: Buying & Selling got underway and those were both enjoyable experiences to see ways of working the homefront. I’ve also been recording all of Big Bang Theory from the start and picking and choosing episodes at random to revisit simply because I do enjoy the show and with it close to wrapping up its twelve-season run I wanted to revisit some of the more enjoyable pieces of it.
