BUDDY BUYS A DUMP The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from Hate Comics Volume III Peter Bagge [Fantagraphics] So Buddy buys a dump, eh? What else would you expect from an all-grown-up slacker like Buddy Bradley? You didn’t think he was ever going to get a real job, did you? Best case scenario, he might …
One of the best things this season of True Blood has done is balance the action with retrospective character moments–the past two weeks have featured plenty of bloodshed, so “Lost Cause” fittingly focuses solely on the residents of Bon Temps, human and supernatural alike. The result is an episode that isn’t particularly thrilling but is still satisfying on a deeply emotional level.
Remember when True Blood premiered, and it was simply a campy, supernatural-flavored summer show–a fun way to pass the time, but too lighthearted and silly to truly take seriously? Sure, the characters were great and the writing was good (if not always coherent or streamlined), but True Blood’s never really been truly great television. Until “Death is Not the End”, that is.
Sound on Sight takes a look at the best episodes of television that have aired so far this year. Part one includes episodes from shows such as Rick and Morty and True Detective.
From the very beginning of the show’s pilot, True Blood has done its best to explore the idea of belonging and fitting into a world that doesn’t want or accept you. Sure, the show originally used vampires as a metaphor for LGBT rights, but, with the final season, the struggle to belong is much more rooted in the show’s supernatural and small-town environment.
While Wilfred doesn’t always take its titles head-on and through to their natural conclusions in the space of 20 minutes, “Loyalty” is an episode that manages to balance the ongoing mystery plot of the series’ final season with strikingly honest commentary on the concept of loyalty.
Proving last week’s stellar season opener wasn’t a fluke, “I Found You” is an excellent follow-up episode. Despite the supernatural nature of the show, True Blood’s final season is unfolding with a heavy dose of realism–the actions and emotions of the characters are right on point, and even the brief touches of humor feel natural and earned among so much horror and dread.
Already halfway through its first season, Power has shown no interest in leaving its story in fifth gear. There are moments when the pace quickens to what you might expect from a thriller, but they are few and far between–and for good reason, it seems.
In the first two episodes of its final season, Wilfred embraces its mythology head-on. It’s hard to say whether or not this will go down well with viewers, because I don’t even know who is watching Wilfred anymore and why.
“This is Real” mostly deals with the reverberations of Ghost’s actions in Power to this point. That may take the form of the key chain that his daughter chokes on, but it is also represented in how all the groups involved in the crime plot–police forces included–are responding to the message that Ghost sent via severed body parts.
There’s a clear path this first season is taking and no indication that it should have any trouble reaching its end. It could afford to take more risks, but that’s hardly the most egregious of flaws, especially for summer programming.
There’s certainly plenty left to explore here, and even if the series moves further down the path of plot development, this world is one of television’s most interesting.
“Episode 5” paints a much clearer picture of who Simon really is by going into who he once was. Leave it to this series to find the most heartbreaking narratives possible.
If I’ve been missing some of the more character-driven moments of In the Flesh’s first season during this plot-driven sophomore season, “Episode 4” instills nothing but confidence and satisfaction.
As was the case last year, Da Vinci’s Demons concludes its season with a somewhat frustrating cliffhanger that leaves plenty of doors open but fails to satisfy enough by not paying off certain season-long threads.
Even more so than in either of the season’s first two episodes, “Episode 3” allows In the Flesh to effectively utilize its extended episode order to tell a story that isn’t entirely necessary, yet it succeeds so much almost because it’s not necessary.
With an episode like “The Strategy,” the former perennial Emmy-winner still proves it can outshine the best of contemporary television even when contemporary television is becoming increasingly high quality.
After a thoroughly entertaining departure from the series norm by visiting the New World, Da Vinci’s Demons brings several of its central characters back to Italy–Leo to Florence and Riario to Rome.
After a season premiere that was a little bogged down with trying to re-establish the world of In the Flesh, treading slightly too-familiar ground, “Episode 2” is an example of everything this series does right.
If I had to guess how the second season of Elementary was going to end, I wouldn’t have landed anywhere near the tone of “The Grand Experiment,” which reverses last season’s triumphant finale by blowing up the core of the series.
The (undead) beating heart of this series has been, from the very beginning, family. Fittingly, the first season of the series ends on a thoroughly familial note, with several generations of originals gathered together once again. Despite last week’s not-so-excellent episode, “From a Cradle to a Grave” proves how genuinely great this show still is and can be.
The Ginsberg storyline isn’t the only one in “The Runaways” that feels odd. The whole episode functions almost like a collection of vignettes, capped by a sequence that is both the episode’s most powerful and most important.
The gradual build in quality, the most impressive aspect of which has been balancing several different point-of-view characters across multiple episodes lately, isn’t astonishing; however, it is noticeable and worth appreciating.