After Life – Season 1 Review

After Life

I like Ricky Gervais for the most part, but when he does non-comedy, it comes across as a little too in-your-face and pretentious. I swear, at least once every episode, the main character in After Life literally says, “I’m sad. I want to kill myself.” There are far better ways to convey your character’s struggles with depression than to have him spell it out like we’re too dumb to notice. Nothing about After Life is subtle, especially during the montages when super cheesy music kicks in to remind you, “Hey, he’s sad, remember? This is sad! Feel something!” But for as much as the show wants you to feel sorry for protagonist Tony, he never demonstrates that he is or ever was a “good guy.”

While we do occasionally see into his pre-dead-wife past via home videos and video diaries, it’s incredibly forced and insincere. He pulls a prank on her, and she laughs, or she looks at the camera and says, “You’re a good man, Tony.” But why? Because he pulls pranks? That kinda suggests he’s always been a bit of an asshole. Post-death, Tony’s mean to everyone, and everyone puts up with it, because they know he’s sad. But Tony has so much disdain for life that he even helps a local junkie overdose. So the revelation/reversal in the final episode feels completely hollow. Tony didn’t grow at all during the course of the show. Rather, the show was about to end, and we needed a sappy wrap-up, so… Tony magically got better, everyone!

Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out Review

Leisure Suit Larry 6

The Leisure Suit Larry games were always in the background of my PC gaming childhood, notorious point-and-click adventures that I was (understandably) forbidden to play. Well, take that, Mom, I can buy ’em on Steam now! But after playing 6 and 7 back-to-back (which is probably way more Larry Laffer than anyone humanly needs in a weekend), I’m not sure if I was merely filling in a gap in my childhood or purposefully regressing as an adult. These games are certainly a product of their time, brimming with homophobic jokes, racist stereotypes, and misogynist goals that wouldn’t fly today. It’s never totally insulting, but it does feel very dated.

That’s to be expected, though. I mean, the game originally came out in 1996, back when point-and-click adventures ruled the gaming landscape. But I was in the mood for some nostalgia, and these are pretty much the only ones I hadn’t played yet, so… here we are. But you know what? Aside from some antiquated humor, the games hold up surprisingly well. I’m choosing to spotlight 6 over 7, though, because the VGA graphics are pretty endearing, the setting/story is a little less hokey, Larry is more of a lovable loser, and the point-and-click gameplay consists of true pointing and clicking without the gimmicky text inputs that 7 weirdly reintroduced.

Of course, this is a 90s adventure game, which means there are plenty of moments where you’re aimlessly clicking on things, hoping something new happens. A lot of the times I got stuck boiled down to me not realizing a certain pathway existed or that the commands “use” and “take” are sometimes interchangeable and sometimes not. It definitely felt like Sierra hadn’t quite figured out how to best do icon-driven adventure games yet. Fortunately, the majority of the puzzles make sense and are fun to figure out. I liked it overall and am thankful services like Steam have preserved these games so I could, 20 years later, finally see what the fuss was about.

Captain Marvel Review

Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel is a great example of the damage a trailer can do. I feel like I was robbed of the main enjoyment you could potentially get from this movie, because the trailer gave everything away. Going in, we already know Carol grew up on Earth, and we already know she’s gonna go Super Saiyan near the end and destroy a bunch of spaceships. What’s left to be surprised by? It would have been cool to actually watch an “alien” slowly discover she isn’t so alien, after all. And while that could have still played out in interesting ways even with trailer foreknowledge, it just… doesn’t here.

Carol is a bland character through and through. The only personality she has is the occasional and mandatory Marvel quip. Outside of that, she’s Super Serious and as straight-faced as they come. Each new revelation about her past on Earth doesn’t faze her much and feels like a poor attempt to humanize her in place of an actual character arc. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with having a solemn hero, but said hero needs a good supporting cast to play off of if that’s their angle. When Carol teams up with Nick Fury, the story does get better, but the two aren’t always together, and their banter often feels very forced.

Overall, Nick Fury is probably the best thing about Captain Marvel. Seeing a younger, more optimistic Samuel L Jackson was pretty fun. I’m not sure the movie benefited from being set in the 90s, though. The period music never worked, mostly because Carol felt so disconnected from all things Earth. And the other 80s and 90s references—Blockbuster, pinball machines, tin lunchboxes—were too on-the-nose. It’s like the creators were told to use Guardians of the Galaxy as inspiration but only watched it half-awake and didn’t take notes on why those elements worked there. Because they sure don’t work here.

Diablo III: Eternal Collection Review

Diablo III

I originally played this game on the Xbox 360 and didn’t get very far into it before giving up. When I restarted with the Switch version, I was hoping whatever qualms I may have had with Diablo III were fixed, but it didn’t take long for old “demons” to resurface. And the big problem I have with Diablo III is that it’s just too friggin’ easy. You can bump up the difficulty at any time and unlock harder difficulties as you progress, but it wasn’t until Master (three tiers up from Normal) that the game started feeling like a challenge. And even then, there wasn’t much of a penalty for dying. You can resurrect yourself after a 10-second cooldown and come right back without losing any progress.

Getting the difficulty right in games like this is tricky. If it’s too hard, it’s not fun. If it’s too easy, it’s not fun. But it honestly feels like Diablo III didn’t even try. On Master, I still rarely died, and knowing that I wouldn’t be set back if I did die caused me to not care as much about the majority of fights. It’s a shame, because everything else about the game is super polished. It looks great. It controls great. The spells and moves are fun to experiment with. There’s a lot of content and a lot of dungeons to explore. It supports local co-op! But it became a little too mindless. Don’t get me wrong, I like mindless hack-and-slashing. However, I also require the bare minimum in stakes if I’m going to stay invested.

Russian Doll – Season 1 Review

Russian Doll

Well, that was pretty great, and maybe the best show Netflix has debuted in a long time. I think I have The Good Place to thank for priming me for this type of content, though. Both are weird, existential, dark, funny, and touching all at once. While the surface story isn’t terribly original at first—imagine a raunchier Groundhog Day—the show becomes its own thing by the end of Episode 2. I gotta enter spoiler territory to explain why I started loving the show so much at that point, but here goes… Once we’re introduced to a second victim of the time loop, Russian Doll takes on a completely new journey that’s less “trying to repeat the correct steps each day” and more “how the eff did we both get into this mess.”

While Nadia was a fun character with the right amount of snark, I couldn’t see her carrying the show on her own for the entire season. So pairing her with Alan was perfect, and it was a lot of fun to see how the two of them handled their situation, dealt with their recurring deaths, and ultimately grew as people. I was worried where the show was going to end when the penultimate episode was framed like a horror story with weird and creepy things happening for no reason. But the finale more than made up for it. I really like the note it ended on, a very Good Place-esque, bittersweet sense of acceptance. Given the ending, I don’t think a Season 2 is warranted, but I do hope we start seeing more content like this on Netflix.

Friends From College – Season 2 Review

Friends From College

I really didn’t care for Season 1 of this show, but I’m always curious if bad TV can learn from its mistakes. The opening scene of Season 2 certainly seemed self-aware of its own awfulness when a character sums up the previous year as an “epic shitshow” that nobody liked. With Season 1’s big affair out in the open, the characters aren’t quite as terrible as they once were, though it’s hard to forgive/forget what the inciting incident was leading into the new season. These episodes are all about the fall-out of the affair and how it ruined pretty much everyone’s lives. Which, again, begs the question… why is this show called “Friends” From College?

Season 2 actually is better, though. I’ll give them that. There were some fairly funny sight gags and word play throughout, but when the show goes for broader humor, it’s still really cringey. Not Office or Curb cringey, just… blatantly trying too hard to be funny. This kind of humor feels even more out of place considering the rest of the show wants to be a serious drama. Some of it works, but most of the time, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for people who haven’t done much to redeem themselves. They still don’t get along with each other. They still use people and sleep around. But it’s supposed to be okay now because they’re more honest about it? Baby steps, I guess…