The Mandalorian – The Jedi

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Mandalorian – The Jedi (Chapter 13)
  • wiki: link

The Mandalorian - The Jedi television review

At last, the episode we’ve all been waiting for. With her appearance finally here, The Mandalorian wastes no more time in getting Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) on-screen for the first time as a live-action character. Dawson makes a good choice for the older Ahsoka, burdened not only by departure from the Jedi but also by their fall and the dark truths uncovered about her former Master. Introduced battling Imperial remnant soldiers on a small outpost on Corvus, “The Jedi” reveals little detail about what she’s been up to since the Star Wars Rebels finale, as she is still on the hunt for Grand Admiral Thrawn (but no mention is made of Sabine Wren or Ezra Bridger). The show’s action scenes, particularly the first featuring Ahsoka taking out the troops and later the short battle between the former Jedi and the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) are some of the best of the season.

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Bull – My Corona

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Bull – My Corona
  • IMDb: link

Bull - My Corona television review

Bull returns for its Fifth Season by delving into New York in the middle of the COVID outbreak. The first 10 minutes of the episode catch us up on Bull (Michael Weatherly) during the months with which the office has been shut down and no new clients have walked through the door. Courts final start opening up, and Bull gets a client no one wants – the owner of a company that runs security background checks for apartments who is being sued by those denied new homes by reports wrongly identifying them as criminals. While the episode pulls the rug from under us in the final few moments, revealing most of the episode to be a COVID-fueled fevered dream, “My Corona” does some interesting work dropping Bull within a completely changed world with far less access to the jury and far fewer prospects for clients.

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Animaniacs – Episode 1

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Animaniacs (2020) – Episode 1
  • wiki: link

Animaniacs - Episode 1 television review

Before viewing the first episode of Hulu’s rebooted Animaniacs, I did go back and do a refresher on the original by viewing the original premiere from 1993. I hadn’t watched an episode of the 90s series in several years, but a single viewing brought by the crazed wackiness of the first Animaniacs. Perhaps because so much of the first episode is centered around the idea of a reboot, or getting various characters caught up the present, “Episode 1” didn’t have quite the level of insanity of the original. On an Animaniacs wackiness scale, this was hit maybe a 7 (out of 10). That said, there’s plenty to enjoy here with the opening Jurassic Park parody and the return of Pinky (Rob Paulsen) and the Brain (Maurice LaMarche) – my two favorite characters from the original – along with, of course, Wakko (Jess Harnell), Yakko (Paulsen), and Dot (Tress MacNeille) – all voiced by the original actors.

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Zappa

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Zappa
  • IMDb: link

Zappa movie reviewAlex Winter (Bill of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure fame) helms the new documentary on musician Frank Zappa. The aptly titled Zappa is most notable for Winter’s level of access to Zappa’s extensive vaults of video and musical recordings (he apparently recorded everything) along with interviews from those who knew him best. A mix of celebration of a genius and portrait of a self-indulgent individual catered to by a small but fiercely supporting base, Zappa explores the musician’s driving force to translate and recreate the music heard in his mind into reality.

What Winter delivers is an unapologetic portrait of a man who would likely have been interesting to meet but impossible to live with. While Zappa loved his wife and children, the documentary shows a man who didn’t necessarily believe in the idea of friendship while being largely obsessed in using people to manifest his own dreams into existence. The documentary also touches on Zappa’s experimental style, his celebrity within the music business, his aversion to making hit records, working as an ambassador for Czechoslovakia, and his growing role against censorship of music.

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FBI – Never Trust a Stranger

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: FBI – Never Trust a Stranger
  • IMDb: link

FBI - Never Trust a Stranger television review

FBI returns with a new season and a new agent in Special Agent Tiffany Wallace (Katherine Renee Turner) but apparently without Ebonee Noel. “Never Trust a Stranger” returns Special Agent Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) from her undercover assignment to investigate a mass shooting at a liberal media company by a White Power group which involved a source (Andrew Yackel) of OA (Zeeko Zaki). The first-half of the episode deals mainly with Scola (John Boyd) and Wallace getting off on the wrong foot as new partners and Maggie wondering if OA is too close to his missing source to face hard truths about a kid he’s determined to think the best of (even after he takes seven people hostage to avoid being arrested by the FBI).

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