Television Reviews

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The Elysian Kingdom

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  • Title: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The Elysian Kingdom
  • wiki: link

“The Elysian Kingdom” is the first major misstep in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ First Season. In what feels like a holodeck episode (set in a time before the holodeck existed), most of the Starfleet officers on the ship start acting like characters in Rukiya‘s (Sage Arrindell) favorite story. The sets of the Enterprise get marginally redressed to act as locations in the book and only Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) and Hemmer (Bruce Horak) are aware that something odd is happening. The end goal of the series is to write Rukiya off the show in such a bizarre deux machina that you feel disappointed given all the set-up over the course of the season. As for the actors playing out the tale with limited sets and props, the episode has a community theater feel to it that doesn’t fit with anything we’ve seen before (and hopefully won’t see again).

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Only Murders in the Building – Framed

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  • Title: Only Murders in the Building – Framed
  • IMDb: link

“Framed” centers around the painting found in Charles’ (Steve Martin) apartment. Although the podcasters don’t learn who put it there, or why they want to frame them for Bunny’s (Jayne Houdyshell) murder, the painting itself provides some answers with the arrival of Bunny’s mother (Shirley MacLaine), who like the artist, once had an affair with Charles’ father (Jeffrey Emerson). The painting, which turns out to be the replica rather than the original, only creates more questions for our intrepid amateur detectives who may be helped, or possibly be led astray, by Bunny’s parting gift to Oliver (Martin Short).

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Baymax! – Kiko

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  • Title: Baymax! – Kiko
  • wiki: link

The second episode of Baymax! follows the same formula of the first with the personal healthcare companion attempting to help someone who doesn’t initially want Baymax‘s (Scott Adsit) help. This time around it’s elderly Kiko Tanaka (Emily Kuroda) who Baymax attempts to help exercise to help her various ailments and get over her fear of the public pool next door. At first we get the robot’s wackier attempts proving she doesn’t need to be afraid of the water before tricking her into a bit of exercise and leading her into the pool where the truth about her doubts and fears come to the surface. As with “Cass,” Baymax is eventually able to help and leaves another patient better than the robot found them.

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The Old Man – I

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  • Title: The Old Man – I
  • IMDb: link

An old adage for stories like these is how much trouble you can get into when you don’t let sleeping dogs lie. The opening episode of The Old Man introduces us to relatively normal looking Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) whose time in hiding has come to an end when an old file is reopened and agents are sent to find and collect the agent of the CIA who disappeared decades before. I’ll give the show credit in casting Bill Heck as a younger version of the character in flashbacks who fits perfectly into what the show needs (at least for this episode). While we see glimpses into the skills Chase had, he isn’t John Wick or Bryan Mills, he struggles with dealing with the far younger agents sent after him.

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Fairfax – The Circle of Hype

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  • Title: Fairfax – The Circle of Hype
  • IMDb: link

A trip to the Fairfax Flea Market leads to revelations for each of the kids as Truman (Jaboukie Young-White) learns to enjoy the moment when playing with a mom band, Dale (Skyler Gisondo) and Benny (Peter S. Kim) find something unexpected on the shady side of the market where older brands have been shunned, and Derica’s (Kiersey Clemons) purchase of a new jacket leads to immediate hype, hallucinations caused by dehydration, and then eventually emotional insight and a chance meeting.

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