Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: Welcome to the Daily Review with Brad Munson. And just for change, just a little thing. Let's talk about what I'm not watching on the streamers and nets these days and haven't been for weeks.
See, this is the downside of Peak tv, a period of content glut that may be behind us now, since the drought of the writers and actors strikes has left us pretty slim pickens compared to the more recent past. And a whole lot of stuff from Korea the last couple weeks. Have you noticed that? Still, we're getting a wave of stuff that's literally from all corners of the world, because the subscriber services like Netflix and Apple plus and Paramount and Hulu, all those guys, have to keep us coming back for more. They have to stop us from canceling that twelve or 14 or 1999 monthly charge, because there's just one more thing worth watching. But inevitably, unavoidably, a lot of what they sling at us is just mediocre. And some of it is obviously not worth watching even from the outset. I mean, not rebel Moon bad, maybe, but definitely not worth the time. So here are three examples of recent offerings where I couldn't get past the first few minutes and I would put them at the top of my not worth watching lists. Maybe I should do a newsletter with that name, like all the shit you should just avoid wasting your time on. And a couple of sentences on why these are so bad. Number one, Zoro. Amazon prime. Now, even though I remember the originalish Zoro from when I was a kid in the black and white Disney series starring Guy Madison from before his lost in space days. Yeah, I'm that old. But I also know that Zorro was created by an intensely white guy named Johnston McCully way back in 1901. No kidding. Nearly 125 years ago for a pulp magazine called All Story Weekly. And he knew nothing about spanish history and didn't really care. Though, by the way, he also created a lot of other characters that were among the very first masked vigilantes, predating Batman and the shadow by a couple of decades. Looking back now, the Disney Zaro series from the painfully stereotypical, I mean, not racist, in that the hero was Latino Don Diego de la Vega, but the show was just filled with racial caricatures like the lazy sergeant, the drunk indian, the oversexed femme fatale, and this new version, produced in Mexico, I believe, somehow manages to repeat many of these embarrassing mistakes in just the first few minutes. Maybe it's partly that I, like all of us, have gotten spoiled by the great combat of the 21st century. No, I'm serious. The sword fights, the fistfights, the gun battles, and even the lowest rated series and movies are just so good compared to what I grew up on. Hey, watching the fight scenes from the original Star Trek series with Kirk's patented double fist on the back of the neck move is just painful to watch today in a more wasted one. But really, when you get underneath it, it's not just that. In all the attempted revivals of Zoro, even with people like Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones, they have to work so hard to try to keep this from looking, well, silly, even compared to the masked vigilante stuff from other sources. And this new version manages to recreate all of these worst errors almost immediately. You've got this big dumb mexican soldier getting jumped in the middle of the first scene. You have a bunch of inept soldiers blinking at innocence with their one shot pistols, which seem, remarkably to have extra bullets or balls or whatever. And when Zoro comes riding in and stops long enough to make his know, rear back and look heroic, they don't unload every single weapon they have into know. End of story. No, they throw aside their guns for a sword fight. And if that wasn't bad enough, it is the slowest, dumbest sword fight I've seen in years, where each of the half dozen guys that attack politely wait until the guy ahead of him gets bested before he jumps in and Zoro gets him. And at one point, Zoro's got like four swords pointed at him and he just swooshes them out of the way with one very slow sweep and. Never mind. This was as far as I got between the ignominious history of the character and this very bad intro. I was out, and you should be too.
Has been hotel, also on Amazon prime. Look, I love musicals. Come on, it was a theater kit. I ate those things up in high school and college. I just watched the trailer for the upcoming movie version of Wicked with the awesome Cynthia Arivo and Ariana Grande, and I am all over that. But I'm also kind of critical of musicals that come around. And as much as I love the musical episodes of everything from Buffy to strange new worlds, I am picky about my weekly music shows. The first season of Schmigadoon and the second, to a lesser degree, were great. The last great animated one I remember, though, is the underappreciated central park on Apple plus with voices of people like Josh Gadd and Titus Burgess and Catherine Hahn and had great dance numbers, great songs. Week after week. I mean, yes, not as good as the closing credits on any given episodes of Bob's Burker, but still. And I can't say has been hotel doesn't try. I mean, it does. The production value is fine, although not awesome. It's just that it's all kind of forced. I mean, the jokes and the songs and the character work, very been there, done that in a lot of ways. And I made it through most of the first episode and then suddenly realized how much I missed Central park. So I went back to Apple plus, and I watched a few episodes of that, and sure enough, I was right. If you like your musicals short and hilarious, go to Central park. Don't stay at the Haspen Hotel. And finally, for this week's wreckage squid game, the challenge on Netflix.
Now, I admit I was late in coming to squid game. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming just a little into what I thought was just another inept, metaphorical world drama like Hunger Games or divergent or a whole lot of terrible movies about people waking up locked in mazes or cubes or dungeons and trying to get out. And yes, when I finally dove into Squid games, I was at first astonished and then pleasantly surprised at all that was going on there. All it had to say. And I'm actually looking forward to the second season later this year. But squid game, the no. Do you remember about, what, six months ago, maybe longer, when Netflix foisted this thing called zombieverse on us? It was kind of a reality game show that half pretended to be in the zombie apocalypse. We trashed the hell out of this show over on our twisted sister website, zombie World, because at its very core, at the very basic premise, it just couldn't work. Real people in a real zombie apocalypse? Sure, except in any zombie world, you have to be able to kill the zombies and you have to see innocent people get killed by zombies or it's not worth watching. It's just a dumb show with the emphasis on the dumb. All the real stakes, all the real fun, in a weird way is drained out of it. If you know that no one's really going to get hurt. I mean, I'd rather watch the floor is lava where you know it's fate rather than wasting time of going just to the edge with slow zombies all around, but all they do is grab at you and then you can just shove them away and run off, watch them fall down, and nobody gets bitten and nobody gets turned into a zombie. It was just a waste of time. And that is exactly the same problem with squid game the challenge in the original series, there's this genuine sense of shock or horror when the participants play the horrible red light green light game right at the beginning. And if they move, they get shot down, not eliminated, not escorted from the arena, shot dead. And the whole nature of the game and the drama changed in that moment of horrified realization. The stakes went way up. But in the challenge, no, in fact, the opposite. They played the same red light green light game, and people get shot with blood squibs with little paintballs, and then they fall down and just play dead badly. There were cushions under the untempered glass to fallen, and they are escorted from the arena, not dead. So what's the point? Look, we've already got a ton of game shows with risky physical challenges, everything from american ninja warrior to the beloved aforementioned to the floor is lava. Doing a bad version of zombieverse in Squid game drag is just a waste of time, not an ounce of drama or good humor here. You can just skip it. So, hey, three misses you can easily avoid. You're welcome. And in the meantime, plenty of good stuff you can watch. I mean, if you want a good sword fight, skip Zoro, but go watch. I don't know, the Witcher or Dungeon and dragons, honor among thieves, that was really good. Or even the beloved Princess bride for the 19th time. If you want short, smart musicals, visit schmigadoon or Central park. And if you want bizarre game shows, oh God, the list is too long. But I'd probably seek out one of the non american versions of the traders and just enjoy the hell out of that. Because let's face it, there is way too much good television out there these days to waste your time with anything less than good. Especially anything like this aforementioned junk.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: And that's it for today's Daily review. I'm here with something new every day, Monday through Friday, every damn week. So come on back whenever you can stand it. There are links to what we've been talking about in the show notes and in the accompanying blog on thebradbunson.com. Take a look and please do all the normal stuff, like rate review and subscribe on iTunes or any podcaster of your choice. Tell your friends, invite your know, spread the word, and let me know what you think.
[00:10:00] Speaker A: You can also follow me for more.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: And different stuff on Instagram or threads at at thebredmunson and on my website, weirdly enough, called thebredmunson.com. So until next time, I'm Brad Munson, and that's the Daily Review.
