Quarantine Control #60: Wondrous Progression

We’ve somehow arrived at the 60th Quarantine Control entry, and have lived to tell the tale. The series has served as a good constant reminder, at least for this blog’s writers, of just how long this pandemic has gone on. A number of western countries are at least very likely nearing the end of this hell with vaccination rates slowly increasing, but we’ve lost more than a year of time that we won’t get back in the process. It’s possible that referring to the end of the pandemic this often could jinx it, but we seem to be at a safe-enough point that there’s no way we’ll go back. Hopefully.

Still, we’re likely going to make it to the 70th entry at this point, but we may not go too far beyond that.

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Joseph Daniels

I can’t believe we’ve made it to sixty weeks of Quarantine Control columns.  Did you know that the traditional gift for a 60th anniversary is a diamond?  There are apparently traditional gifts all the way up to one’s 85th wedding anniversary, but nothing for 90, 95 or 100, presumably because you’d have to break longevity records in order to continue being a married couple for that long.

Even your 85th wedding anniversary is very unlikely.  Let’s say you’re 21 when you’re married.  That would require you to live until you’re 106 and remain married to the same person.  It’s possible, but it feels like a long shot.  Considering the oldest man ever verified lived to be 116 years old, he’d be five years short of a 100 year marriage.

I wonder what you’d give someone if you were married 100 years.  Depends, I guess.

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Over the last sixty weeks or so, I’ve been calling attention to many shows and podcasts that I’ve felt were worth a watch and/or listen, most of which I also really happen to like.  Since then, there have been various updates to several of the shows and podcasts that I feel are noteworthy enough to bring up.

That said, several of the ongoing shows have added more episodes since last I mentioned them, as you’d expect from shows currently airing, but that’s not always noteworthy so I’ll not be bringing up podcasts like LeVar Burton Reads, Canadaland or The Omnibus since the only thing I can say about them is that there’s more.  Similarly, television shows like Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai and Odd Taxi are still ongoing, but have a lot more episodes released by now.

There are also shows that I recommended while they were in progress and they’ve since finished their current season but have yet to announce the next, so if shows like the excellent Monster Girl Doctor don’t show up on this update list, that’s why.  I have still included some of them in the list below since I had stuff I wanted to say about them here.

With that out of the way, here are a few updates.

#1
Beastars (2019)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 12 (so far)

There isn’t much time left before the second season makes the journey outside of Japan.  All of the various twists and turns that await Legosi, Louis (slight spoiler: he makes it out of season one alive), Haru and the rest of the cast are coming in July and I’m looking forward to hearing how well the English voices do.

Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Source: CBS All Access I guess we have to call it “Paramount+” now (United States), Crave (Canada), Amazon Prime (worldwide)
Episodes: 10 (so far)

With a second and third season in production, it’s clear that CBS is putting a lot of faith in the series continuing to perform well for them.  John de Lancie is going to appear as Q in the second season, as well as Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan.  I’m also looking forward to Orla Brady returning in a starring capacity as Laris, one of the Romulans helping to take care of Picard and his estate at the beginning of the first season.  Rounding out the awesome casting announcements for the second season, Jeri Ryan is also being promoted to the main cast, as well as Brent Spiner.

Season two is going to premiere sometime in 2022.

#2
No One Can Know About This (2017)
Source: Spotify (among other places); video feed on YouTube
Episodes: Ongoing

Currently in its sixth season, Jeff Eckman and Ryan Kasmiskie are playing through Final Fantasy VIII, having now covered the first, second, fourth, sixth and seventh entries in the series.  In recent weeks, they covered the second disk, so all of the amazingly off-the-wall spoilers have been covered by now, although the Lunar Tear, Rinoa in space, the final boss of disc one joining the party, Time Compression and Ultimecia are all yet to come.  With how hilarious their reactions have been thus far, the rest of the season is bound to be just as entertaining.

I’m especially looking forward to hearing their reaction when they find out that literally everything in the game is basically a closed loop time paradox.  That is going to be fun.

#5
No Evil
Source: Newgrounds & YouTube
Episodes: On-going (36 so far) (40 so far)

With how long it takes to make each episode, I’m very grateful that Betsy Lee uploads more than just the main No Evil series.  Since I first recommended this, some cute videos about math and a demonstration of a lesser known board game have appeared, as well as some more outtakes and another short dialogue video starring Calamity.

The series does continue, though, and is up to forty episodes.  It’s up to 40 episodes.  That’s as many as four tens.  And that’s not terrible at all.

#6
Canada’s Worst Driver (2005)
Source: YouTube, among other places (both legal and less than legal)
Episodes: 112-116, depending on which ones you count

“The series is available on YouTube, both officially and pirated, and according to Wikipedia, is apparently available on places such as the iTunes Store and Crave, but only in Canada.  Unfortunately, outside of Canada, you’ll likely have to settle for watching the pirated uploads on YouTube.”

Now that I actually have a Crave subscription, I can tell you that Canada’s Worst Driver is indeed available there, but only the last two seasons and only in French.  Might as well stick with YouTube.

#8
Tenable (2016)
Host: Warwick Davis Sally Lindsay
Source: ITV

Guess what?  Guess what?  Guess what?  Warwick Davis is finally filming more Willow!  Instead of making the second and third movies (the original plan back when the movie was released was to make a trilogy), a television series is being made for Netflix and will air in 2022.  If this column is still being written in 2022, and if the new series is any good, count on myself talking about it at some point.

The problem for Tenable is that the two shows were going to overlap production, but that’s okay, because the show tapped Coronation Street‘s Sally Lindsay to fill in as host for a bit.

2021 seems to be the year for guest hosts of game shows, as fans of Jeopardy! will be able to tell you.  These same fans will also be able to tell you that guest hosts can vary in skill and also aren’t always universally liked.  Mehmet Oz deservedly pulled rather dismal ratings when he hosted the show for a couple weeks.

Fortunately, Sally Lindsay not only does a very good job, she looks like she has fun as well, and that’s the main thing about hosting Tenable.  You have to be able to have fun with it.  Viewers in the United Kingdom have been saying nothing but good things about her, too.  Warwick Davis has big shoes to fill and now that Sally Lindsay has a feel for hosting the show, perhaps series six will feature the pair of them trading off hosting duties?  Maybe this will lead to more episodes being made, too.

#10
Crapshots (2010)
Source: YouTube
Episodes: Ongoing (Currently 684) (Currently 695)

The production of these has dropped off dramatically thanks to COVID, so they only arrive in short bursts now.  I imagine once they can resume unrestricted production, there’ll be more again.

#11
Elena of Avalor (2016)
Source: Disney+
Episodes: Ongoing (currently 74) 82

Disney announced the end of this series just one month after I talked about it on the blog, and then the finale aired a month later.  Not only that…

DuckTales (2017)
Source: Disney+
Episodes: Ongoing (currently 56) 75

DuckTales has ended as well, fairly recently, also after only three seasons.  Is there something about Disney’s animated shows that requires them to end after only three years?  They did Gargoyles dirty this way, too.  Doubly if you think about The Goliath Chronicles.

Right now, only two seasons are available on Disney+ but the third should be available later this year.

#12
Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (2018)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: Ongoing (currently 39) 40

Speaking of shows being cancelled not long after I talked about them, Netflix decided the latest season of Patriot Act was going to be the last.  I don’t think they ever gave a reason why, either.  I suspect it was because Hasan Minhaj started calling out Netflix on the show for things it’s been doing wrong, but for all I know, maybe TurboTax didn’t appreciate episode 40’s expose and put pressure on Netflix to dump the show.

#14
History 101 (2020)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 10

“Unfortunately, the episode on the AIDS epidemic was removed due to the Haitian community in the United States taking issue with how some of the information in the episode was presented.  Hopefully the episode can be corrected and brought back, not just because the failings of those in charge during the initial outbreak should be brought to light, but also because now more than ever, the United States needs universal health care and an episode like this one illustrates why this is a very good idea.  We need people in the streets chanting “Health care is a right!” again, and given how many jobs have been lost due to Covid-19, more people than ever have nothing but time on their hands to protest.”

The episode in question returned in August 2020, making the full season available once again.

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (2019)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 18 26

Although I liked season two, I agree with many fans who thought it was not as good as season one.  My thoughts on season two were posted yesterday, if you haven’t read them yet.

#15
Uma Musume: Pretty Derby
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 13 26

“A second season is unlikely to be made, considering these thirteen episodes cover pretty much the entire real world racing careers of the featured horse girls, and a new season would have to follow the next generation.”

Of all the shows to get a second season, this was one of the last I would’ve expected.  Also, whereas season one put most of its focus on Special Week and Silence Suzuka and their friendship, this one focuses on the life and career of Tokai Teio, a horse girl whose career develops alongside Special Week and Silence Suzuka.

The second season also re-introduces the universe of the show by making it sound like the girls only take the names of the horses from our world so that their careers might live on, whereas I seem to recall the first season actually said that it’s the souls of horses from our world that make their way to the other world.

The second season takes place not long after the first, since Silence Suzuka is living her dream of touring the United States, but thanks to video chat (something which we’ve grown accustomed to in the real world, so no doubt it influenced the writers of the show), she can still contribute to the story.

When tragedy strikes early in a horse girl’s career, what does she do?  Does she give up on her dreams or try harder?  Season two explores this and more.

Umayon
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: Ongoing (currently 2) 12

It turns out that this was more than just a straight comedy show.  It did a little bit of everything.  One episode was even a short musical.  This is probably why my initial assessment was that one of the episodes was a lot stronger than the other.  They weren’t trying to keep a consistent style.  This was more like a sketch comedy series than a sitcom, where the horse girls take on different roles, like the kind of skits Loading Ready Run and the Royal Canadian Air Farce used to do.  With that in mind, I can upgrade my recommendation to a full one.

#16
David Tennant Does A Podcast With (2019)
Source: Spotify (and/or your favourite podcast service)
Episodes: 14 26

There’s just something cozy about David Tennant’s voice.  He has a way of making you feel very comfortable just listening to it.  Maybe it’s his Scottish accent.

For the second season, since it was being produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tennant did everything remotely.  This allowed him the opportunity to talk to people he might not otherwise have been able to drop in and chat with.  Stacey Abrams is probably the most surprising guest this season, but she’s not the only interesting one he talked to.  George Takei from Star Trek, Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory and Billie Piper from Doctor Who show up, among others.

The funniest thing about season two is that you can faintly hear a lawnmower that one of Judi Dench’s neighbours were using when her episode was being recorded.

The podcast is once again on hiatus, but if you haven’t heard the second season yet, it’s all there for you to enjoy.

#17
The Bright Sessions (2015)
Source: Spotify (and/or your favourite podcast service)
Episodes: 63 (plus bonus episodes) Ongoing once again

The Bright Sessions ended in season four when Dr. Bright found herself getting rehired by the AM by its new director, her ex-boyfriend Agent Green.  However, the cast and crew weren’t done with the series.  Season five was released shortly after season four and acted like a prologue to the entire series, a kind of anthology season of sorts featuring Dr. Bright’s early talks with some of her patients.  It was a nice throwback to the first season which consisted mainly of therapy sessions between characters which later became main characters in the ongoing drama of the setting.  Season five’s patients were mostly characters we’d never met before and the focus on brand new voices offered the opportunity to tell new and interesting stories.

A series known as The AM Archives, taking place after The Bright Sessions and focusing on Dr. Bright’s efforts to reform the AM, was released as a premium series but starting in March of this year, the entire series is being released weekly on free platforms as season six of The Bright Sessions.  The College Tapes, the second premium spin-off, is going to be released as season seven.  Will this be the end of the setting or is more to come?  Time will tell.

#27
Magic of Disney’s Animal Kingdom (2020)
Source: Disney+
Episodes: Ongoing (2 so far) 8

The entire first season of the show is available now.  It plays out somewhat like a forty minute advertisement for Walt Disney World, with a bit of Hope For Wildlife thrown in whenever one of the animals has a medical issue that needs to be explored.

Despite having the feel of an extended commercial, it plays out like half a nature documentary, half a behind the scenes documentary.  I’d say the best way to think about this is, picture your visit to the park like a BluRay movie.  Everything you experience is the movie itself.  The rides, the food, everything.  Watching this series is thus like the bonus features on the disc, a look at how the park is run with a focus mainly on the Animal Kingdom and what goes into the magic we see when we visit.

#31
I’m Standing on 1,000,000 Lives (2020)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: Ongoing (5 so far) 12

After getting to the end of season one, I feel like I’m seeing the birth of another Light Yagami, but one that required twelve episodes to reach the same point Light took one episode to reach.  Keep in mind when I say this that I haven’t read the manga so I could be completely wrong.

Sometimes the most compelling villains are the ones that start out with good intent but who find themselves sinking further and further into depravity in order to keep doing the good that they’re convinced they’re doing.  This is the basic plot of Death Note and of Breaking Bad, and I may be wrong about this show but it does seem like main character Yotsuya is taking the first steps towards the same grey morality that can destroy one’s soul.  With how little value he places on the lives of others, and how he’s still seemingly convinced the game isn’t 100% real even after being told it’s just as much a real world as his own, I’m beginning to wonder if the title has a second meaning, and the heaping pile he’s standing on in the season one opening is the million lives he’s apparently standing on.

A second season was announced and is to begin airing in the beginning of July, so I’ll likely soon find out how right or wrong I am.

#32
Restaurant to Another World (2017)
Source: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12

Recently, a second season of this show was announced and I’m very much looking forward to watching it, since I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the first.  And considering these second seasons have been popping up sometimes years after the first, this gives me increased hope that maybe someday there’ll be a third season of Spice & Wolf.

#35
The Chase (2021)
Source: ABC
Episodes 9 (so far)

Speaking of shows I’m looking forward to a new season of, the second batch of episodes, which I guess count as a second season already, is set to premiere next Sunday with some notable reruns to air this weekend to prepare viewers.  The Futon Critic has fourteen listings for episodes prepared and doesn’t list a specific episode count, so it’s possible there’ll be more than fourteen episodes for season two.

Not only that, but the chaser from the GSN version is joining the cast of the ABC version.  Mark “The Beast” Labbett is indeed going to chase American contestants once more and try to defeat them.

“I guess it would be too much to ask him to come back when he still appears on the original British version and started appearing in The Chase Australia after the first American version ended.”

I love how wrong I’ve ended up being in multiple Quarantine Control columns.  First, my prediction that Uma Musume: Pretty Derby wouldn’t get a second season and now this.

#37
Alice in Borderland (2020)
Source: Netflix
Episodes: 8

A second season was announced not long after I posted about this show, although a release date is not yet known.  It would be a pleasant surprise to see Netflix release season two by the end of this year, but I’m honestly expecting it to show up in early 2022 instead.

#45
Cover My Ass (2019)
Source: Official Website
Episodes: 98 (100, minus two missing episodes) 100

“As of this writing, I have reached out and asked what happened to the two missing episodes, but I haven’t received a response.”

Update: I did, in fact, hear back after posting that week’s Quarantine Control.  The episodes accidentally didn’t get copied over when changing to a different podcast hosting provider.  This has been fixed and all hundred episodes are once again available.

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Geoffrey Barnes

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
Source: HBO Max
Episodes: 1 movie (and it’s a long one)

No one could have been blamed for having low expectations for the first Wonder Woman movie in 2017 (my thoughts here), considering the wildly inconsistent quality of DC Comics’ films compared to the far more entertaining Marvel Cinematic Universe. But against all odds, the movie largely turned out well. It did its job in establishing Wonder Woman better than any prior live-action work. Even with the ending somewhat throwing away the realistic tone to haphazardly create a typical superhero movie conclusion, it was a lot of fun.

On a similar note, no could have been blamed for expecting sequel Wonder Woman 1984 to at least match it in quality. That’s why it’s a real damned shame that it doesn’t. It is, in fact, exactly what any skeptic was worried about with the first movie.

It begins on an encouraging note, showing a training session with a young Diana aspiring to become one of the strongest Amazons despite the character herself already being more than established in the previous film. As in, this would have been a fine start if it was setting up a full display of Wonder Woman’s abilities in the sequel film, the techniques she somehow didn’t use in the predecessor. This was not the case, and the whole segment felt like padding. It wasn’t enough to entirely throw off the pacing of the film, however. That’s a job for the rest of it, but this turned out to be an ominous foreboding.

WW1984 is a movie with good ideas for a WW sequel, to show how the character has further blended in with the real world after spending more than half a century in it, and giving her new villains to play with. What the filmmakers needed was good realization of those ideas, and ingredients like director Patty Jenkins and the remaining team from the previous film were there. That it didn’t receive that treatment is a bitter and heartbreaking disappointment.

The scriptwriting isn’t strong enough, and the movie has too many sudden plot contrivances with minimal buildup that break all willing suspension of disbelief. The explanation for people in the movie’s universe not knowing that Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) even exists despite making frequent helpful appearances is unsatisfactory. There was no internet in 1984, yes, but people still owned cameras and could communicate with each other. (If there was an explanation for why she couldn’t be captured on camera, they should have included that.) The movie doesn’t improve from there. Diana suddenly remembers that she can utilize certain abilities at just the right time, and is able to pull them off expertly despite she herself acknowledging that she barely knows how to do them. There’s also an occurrence late in the movie that involves Wonder Woman mending the world that works far too well to be believed, to a hilarious degree.

What helps make the movie nonetheless entertaining is how the villains are far more engaging. Barbara Minerva/Cheetah (Kristen Wiig) is great, as an archaeologist (not British in this movie’s case) whose sanity slips as she gains more powers. But the biggest villain is Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), a megalomaniacal and egotistical business man who finds and absorbs the powers of an ancient artifact that grants wishes, though with a sacrifice required. It’s a shame Barbara ends up playing second fiddle to him, and the resolutions to their conflicts with Wonder Woman are unsatisfactory thanks to the aforementioned issues of its questionable writing and unexplained plot contrivances. But at least they’re actually memorable.

Part of the villains’ memorability has to do with their actors, both of which are playing unusual roles compared to their prior work. Kristen Wiig tends to do comedy roles, but pulls off a more serious one well here. Pedro Pascal tends to take on more serious roles (like being the titular Mandalorian), and while Max Lord is a serious threat, he also has an arrogant comedic side that Pascal pulls off well. Both end up outshining Gal Gadot by a significant margin. The first WW film’s direction and writing managed to work around Gadot’s acting abilities (or, sorry, lack thereof). Not this one, though, where she struggles to pull off emoting in the movie’s more dramatic parts, and turns in only a passable performance in the action sequences. I know I’m saying this at a time where Gadot’s being justifiably criticized, but that had no affect on my criticism here.

WW1984 isn’t a bad film, but it is a bitterly disappointing one. The action itself is fine, along with some scenes; and I can’t stop talking about how good the villains are compared to the rest of it. But those qualities were not enough to carry it. This movie coming up short and Patty Jenkins brushing aside its well-reasoned criticism has left me with low expectations for the next WW film that’s already been green lit, and Jenkins future efforts — including Rogue Squadron. Hopefully this one is just a fluke on her resume. Between this movie and X-Men: Apocalypse, maybe superhero films should avoid 1980s settings from here on.

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If this trend keeps up, we’ll be able to refer to the pandemic that feels like it’s gone on for a decade by this point as a thing of the past. Then, we can start discussing other matters, like, uh, mass-killing events and people in power horny for a war with China. You know, fun stuff.