Scaryc

Travelers is a Canadian-American time-traveling TV series, and as of today there have only been two episodes. I stumbled on this unpretentious series quite by accident, at the time only the Pilot had been released. I gave it 5 minutes to hook me, and I ended up watching it all the way through. The premise is the same as the old 80s Jack Deth - Trancer films, send the consciousness back in time by taking over some one else’s body. In Travelers, its people who are destined to die on a certain date, the future Traveller takes over the empty so to speak. Thus far, this show has not been overpowered by lots of wiz bang special effects and CGI, it has mostly relied on some very good acting. This series has a very English feel to it, which I guess comes from its Canadian connections. So far it’s pulling off an understated cool vibe very well. In the second episode they prevented an anti-matter explosion. I guess the ultimate success of this series depends on, coming up with plot lines which are more intricate than a bunch of people running around using their future hindsight. Trying to stop things from exploding and thwarting naughty people. Two reasonably good episodes so far.

I recently watched 13 episodes of Iron Fist, which is endorsement enough for this show, Finn Jones plays Danny Rand who is also the legendary Iron Fist, a martial arts expert with the ability to call upon the power of the Iron Fist. Which also glows when activated! Useful, I guess for finding the enemy in the dark. His girlfriend in the show is Jessica Henwick as Colleen Wing, I can’t tell for sure if her character is a Japanese or a Chinese New Yorker, certainly her characters surname seems to be Chinese. Also, there is the hodgepodge Martial Arts style she seems to teach. I’ve been doing Martial Arts since I was a kid, and most of the technique and explanations thereof in this show, are what I’d term as Bullshido.
This series is based on a comic book, so I guess I don’t have the right to feel too peeved that it gives us a grab bag of just about every Martial Arts clichéd there is, mixes Japanese, Chinese, Tibetan cultural stereotypes in an unsophisticated stew and asks us to swallow it. Well, maybe we would have in the 70s or 80s when no one really knew that much about Asian fighting styles. It’s just a comic book adaptation right? So, why did I feel so uncomfortable when the Colleen Wing character beat up a bunch of guys in a few cage matches? Maybe it was the way it was represented that made me feel disrespected, the practice of Mixed Martial Arts is hard and stepping into that cage takes courage. A show based on a comic should not propagate the notion that traditional chop suey is a match for any MMA fighter. Did Fred Ettish bleed for nothing way back in UFC 2, in 1994?
So, Iron Fist the show disrespects Martial Arts, and Asian culture, by being clichéd and propagating Bullshido. But that is just to a Martial Arts tragic like myself, it is a reasonably entertaining series, but a bit more care in the writing and a bit of research could have made this show a lot better.

It has been said that if you give an infinite number of Monkeys hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare or in this case the script for the Outpost. The Guardian reviewer describes the ‘The Outpost’ as a “second rate is Game of Thrones meets Xena: Warrior Princess, as written by Enid Blyton. Or a single tired micro dosing Monkey. It is prime pandemic fare. Feast!” For the most part I have to agree with this assessment, still I watched 3 seasons of this and a couple of episodes of the fourth season, why? The contradiction is troubling me. I could pick apart this B grade fantasy pot boiler in almost every way. From bad acting, lazy writing, two dimensional characters, badly choreographed and filmed fight scenes and what appears to be early 1990s sub-Buffy special effects. Talon the main protagonist of ‘The Outpost’ played by Jessica Green, is the last of the Blackbloods who are humanoid but with pointy ears. Talon cuts off her pointy ears with a big honking knife as a child. She does it rather more neatly than Chopper Reed did, to blend in with humans. She must have cut a nerve or something because when she grew up she seemed to have lost the ability to form any sort of facial expression whatsoever. But I digress. Jacob Stormoen does his best playing Captain Garret Spears the male pretty white boy that Talon moons over but is thwarted by bad writing, and the fact that the character of Spears is about as dimensional as a card board cutout. Anand Desai-Barochia who plays Janzo is the stereotypical geeky scientist who solves all the technical puzzles à la Gilligan’s Island. (As I said lazy writing). And Princess-then-Queen Rosmund is played by Imogen Waterhouse who I actually found to be quite a reasonable given some of the drossy lines she has to deliver. However, I have to mention that the acting did seen to improve as time went along and a couple of standout performances include a Blackblood called Zed, played by Reece Ritchie and the Blackblood prophetess Yavalla played by Jaye Griffiths, although she has her share of hockey lines and seems genuinely out of place wandering around some sort of papier-mâché labyrinth under the Outpost looking for a mystical tchotchke. (As you do!) This show has a low budget and it shows, it is trying to ride on the coat tails of GOT, but it lacks any sort of edginess, sexiness or lateral thinking when it comes to the plots which for the most part are plundered from better films and stitched together into a pseudo medieval fantasy piñata. When a show is a huge stitched together piñata it’s fun to whack at it. It’s often cringy and painful to watch, but your eyes get tired of rolling and its hard to look away. You watch it and zone out, and maybe that’s what some of us need during a pandemic. Televisual junk food that leaves us unsatisfied but somehow, we can’t help gobbling it up anyway