Quarantine Control #187: Groovy and Wild Hustlers

DC Staff | November 2, 2023 | Features, Reviews, Television, Videogames | No Comments

The ledes to these Quarantine Control entries tend to be neutral. It should, then, be neutral to say that Israelis dying in Israel is bad, while also acknowledging that the country taking their frustrations from a terrorist attack out on all Palestinians in Gaza is also bad. This is the bare minimum. The latter scenario is far worse given the history between Israel and Gaza, and the sheer differences in power between the former compared to the latter. Yet, there are too many people making this hard for some reason, which really says more about them than anything. Certain people need to approach this from a more humanitarian perspective, but they likely won’t.

Geoffrey Barnes

Ash vs. Evil Dead (2015-2018)
Source: Starz on Demand
Episodes: 30 (across three seasons)

Ash vs. Evil Dead feels like the kind of cheap nostalgia bait that many vocal people have rolled their eyes at over the years. After the 2013 Evil Dead reboot came up short in terms of its reception (though it’s since found a cult audience), director Sam Raimi and a team wanted to go back to what worked with the franchise by continuing Ash Williams’s quest from the 1980s Evil Dead films and Army of Darkness. This was originally planned to be a new movie, but the team came up with so many ideas that they had to go through with a TV series instead. Starz, fortunately, gave them the means to present those ideas to the intended audience. The idea behind it was ostensibly cynical, but the overall series is a delectable treat all the way through. It’s nostalgia bait that works.

The series begins by establishing how Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell in all his glory) still works at a hardware store in Michigan years later, though it’s no longer S-Mart. He hasn’t even moved up significantly in the ranks in terms of being a normal grunt employee. It doesn’t take long after the series begins before the Evil Dead rises again, leaving Williams to pick up his trusty chainsaw and boomstick (sawed-off shotgun) to beat them back yet again, despite being nearly 60 years old by this point. Two other employees, Pablo Simon Bolivar (Ray Santiago) and Kelly Maxwell (Dana DeLorenzo), are also caught up in the quest, who survive situations that would have killed ordinary people as they seek to stop Ruby (Lucy Lawless) and others from reviving the Dark Ones using the Necronomicon.

I want to emphasize that Ash vs. Evil Dead seems like the kind of series that shouldn’t work as well as it does. A solid portion of the central cast is new, but plenty of returning characters and references to the older films (including Army of Darkness after the first season, when the rights issues were cleared up) are made throughout the series. Even entire locations are revisited — some more than once, in fact. It’s not subtle in being nostalgia bait, but it all works splendidly.

It chiefly works because the show mixes the best bits of all the Evil Dead movies that featured Ash, for fantastic results. The series is as bonkers and laugh-out-loud as Army of Darkness, perhaps even more so with how quippy Campbell is these days. All the jokes about his old age land, and his charisma with Pablo, Kelly, and Ruby is a significant boon. This is combined with the horror and the kind of over-the-top violence of the original Evil Dead and especially Evil Dead 2 provided well. (This is also why Ash’s appearance in Mortal Kombat 11 would have been perfect, alas.) The show’s horror themes, ultraviolence, and humor all segue extremely well together thanks to some excellent writing and direction. Even one of the showrunners leaving in the middle of the series wasn’t enough to stop the train across a remarkable three seasons.

It’s clear this show mainly happened because the producers were able to keep the budget low. The show has a solid number of rotating stars, including Michelle Hurd and even Lee Majors, but most of them were largely unknown before this show aired. Yet, those like Santiago and DeLorenzo hold their own compared to all of them. There are others too, but I’ll leave those identities out here for those who actually want to watch it after reading this. I’m sure they’re reading it. This, of course, doesn’t have to be watched on Halloween.

That said, the budget does show in a few moments, through some underwhelming CG usage and obviously-fake blood and prosthetics. But that’s also part of the charm, the same kind that worked in the older Evil Dead films. My only big problem with the show is that it ended, and didn’t do so entirely conclusively. Campbell and Raimi are both trying to get an animated series green lit, likely because it will be cheaper to do and because Campbell himself is getting too old to keep this up in series form. I hope it’s green lit. Otherwise, this will be another show I’ve finished in recent memory without a conclusive ending, even though this and Hannibal (which I reviewed last week) end well enough.

The Evil Dead series will continue with more serious content, like the recent Evil Dead Rise. Rise was a very good movie, and I’m glad it performed well critically and at the box office. But watching that and Ash vs. Evil Dead in close proximity showed me that I far prefer the horror comedy approach, which distinguishes it from most other slasher horror works out there. There aren’t many other shows that can maintain solid quality across 30 episodes in three seasons, which is why this show should be cherished.

Angela Moseley

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017)
Source: Nintendo Switch
Episodes: 1 Video Game

Back in September I wrote a Geek Babble about finally getting into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It took a while for the game to grab me, but I’m fully invested now. That said, going back to work meant that my dedicated free time for this game took a huge hit. Fortunately, I am able to play on my lunch break for stretches of 20 to 30 minutes at a time each night during the work week. I’m also finally getting some good usage out of the screen and improved battery life on the Switch OLED I purchased back in 2021. I also moved past my issues with using the control schemes on the Switch’s handheld mode. Granted, using the Joy-Cons don’t beat a full-sized controller, but I don’t feel nearly as helpless as I did when I first started the game.

(On a side note, I noticed the Joy-Cons that came with the OLED Switch flexed on their tablet rails way too much for my tastes. Thankfully, I had extra Joy-Cons to swap them out with. This solved the flexing problem.)

When I left off in Geek Babble, I had just beaten the second Divine Beast, Vah Naboris and was on my way to unlocking the final two towers. Even though my progress has slowed dramatically, the map is fully unlocked, and I’ve completed about a dozen more shrines. As of this writing I’ve unlocked 78 out of 120 shrines. I’ve also taken back Divine Beast Vah Medoh. Out of the three beasts I’ve fought and reclaimed, this was the easiest. I just had to get used to navigating updrafts with the paraglider. I was even given ample bomb arrows to get the job done. Just one more beast to go.

The final beast, Vah Rudania is located deep in the heart of Goron country, around Death Mountain. The only reason I’ve been putting off my journey to Death Mountain is because it is a place filled with flowing lava. Last time I set foot near the deadly mountain Link was overheating rapidly to the point where I was worried he’d catch fire. I turned around in a hurry and found something else to do. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to stock up on fireproof elixirs before I try my hand at finding Vah Rudania. I suspect that I’ll need to reach the Gorons first, and hopefully they can provide me with some kind of fireproof armor. Or at the very least a good supply of elixirs.

Until I’m ready to brave Death Mountain I’ve been content with exploring the high northern regions of the map. Namely, the Tabantha Frontier and Tundra, and also the Hebra Mountains. Before taking on Divine Beast Vah Medoh, I purchased the full Snowquill armor set from the Rito Village. Putting on all three pieces unlocked the Unfreezable set bonus. With the set bonus, I no longer had to worry about consuming warm meals or equipping fire weapons in order to stay alive. Enemies and the environment could no longer freeze Link solid either. It made recapturing the bird Divine Beast much easier. Additionally, staying warm was my biggest hindrance regarding the northern regions of the map. With the Snowquill armor I can finally explore at my leisure. Of course, the enemies in this region are fairly tough. So I took the armor south to the Gerudo Desert to have it blessed twice by the Great Fairy for improved defense.

At some point, I got tired of breaking all of my weapons. Setting out to find the Master Sword seemed like a reasonable conclusion to make. I’d read that a minimum of 13 hearts were required, and I had 16. So I put my quest to explore the north on pause and decided to track down the legendary sword. I pondered over its location and my husband pointed out that in the majority of Zelda games the Master Sword is in the Lost Woods. He suggested I look for a huge forest near Hyrule. He turned out to be absolutely correct. Once I got there, I discovered I had no idea how to navigate the fog areas without being returned to the entrance of the woods. In the blog’s Discord server, Magnus helpfully pointed out an NPC who could tell me the secret of the woods. After I found that NPC, pulling off the trick was simple enough. I was in Korok Forest before I knew it.

Once there, I pulled the Master Sword from its resting place with very little effort. It turns out the reason Link is required to have 13 hearts is because pulling out the sword consumes health. If you don’t have enough hearts, it’s an instant game over. After obtaining the sword I was disappointed to learn that it could actually run out of energy if used too long. Worse, it has a nearly 10 minute cooldown once said energy is spent. There goes my plan for not needing any other weapons.

The Koroks had their own shrine trials for me and I completed them without too much trouble. Unsurprisingly, there was a final trial for completing the Riddles of Hyrule. I tabled that quest and will likely return with a guide in hand to speed things up.

Once I was done in the Korok Forest, I doubled back to the Hebra Mountains where I’m currently searching for more shrines and a few side quests along the way. So far I’ve found the Forgotten Temple ruins, solved the North Lomei Labyrinth maze, and hid from a White-Maned Lynel. (I said I was more comfortable with the controls, not competent.) I’ll probably hang around Rito village and complete a few side quests. After that, I’ll try my hand at Death Mountain since I only need to take back one more Divine Beast.

If you’re a fan of Zelda, you’ve already played Breath of the Wild and you probably don’t need my seal of approval. If you’ve slept on Breath of the Wild (which everyone on this blog who owns a Switch has), and enjoy open-world games you’ll probably enjoy this one too. At times I wish the game had less padding, and at other times I enjoy just exploring and seeing what I can get into. If you prefer a more straight-forward adventure, this probably isn’t the Zelda for you. As for me, this won’t be the last time I cover Breath of the Wild for Quarantine Control. I’ve also been logging my adventure in our Discord’s Gaming Progress Channel complete with dozens of screenshots.

Joseph Daniels

I can’t believe I wasted several hours today looking up hard to find information for one of the Retrospective articles I’m working on. At any rate, I’m continuing to kick the can down the road regarding Quarantine Control because I have stuff I’d like to talk about in this column and I haven’t been giving myself a lot of time to work on this alongside my Retrospectives. Rather than try to force something this week, I’m going to instead make the new episode of commodoreHustle my short film of the week.

Oh, what’s that? You don’t know what commodoreHustle is? Oh, good! I do have something to talk about this week, then!

commodoreHustle (2008)
Source: YouTube, formerly The Escapist and other smaller video sites
Episodes: Ongoing once more (currently 83)

cH, as I will be referring to it as, is made by the same people who did Road Quest, a series I highlighted in the very first Quarantine Control on April 10, 2020. Loading Ready Run are a group of Canadian sketch comedy writers and actors who have largely transitioned to a mostly Twitch-based streaming group in the years since they stopped making content for The Escapist, but which still produce comedic content both live and taped.

cH started before the crew’s days at The Escapist and was originally a semi regular feature of their weekly sketch comedy videos that they produced between 2003 and 2014, and over the years, it’s gone through several iterations.

The first “season” was a set of sitcom style episodes which aired throughout one year and followed a general storyline about a group of highly fictionalized content creators fighting against someone who proclaimed himself their nemesis for no good reason, and they ultimately defeated him in the season finale. The season had a structure similar to other comedy shows that were being made for the Internet at the time, kind of like The Guild.

However, creating a series that consisted of fifteen minute (or more) episodes while also putting out regular weekly content was proving too difficult, so rather than craft another season of episodes related to one another, season two consisted of largely unrelated stories and were about half the size of a season one episode, and aired whenever they had a new idea for it. This also helped their new audience on The Escapist because presumably none of them would be aware of the series’ previous continuity, and it was assumed none of them would care enough to look it up. This era of the series came to a close when Loading Ready Run retired their weekly sketch comedy video.

The next era of cH began in 2015 with a return to the original format of the series, when a season would consist of several episodes that connect into an overarching narrative that would resolve itself at the end of the year. Without a weekly video to put out, though, the release schedule was even more sporadic, and whereas season two is considered to have taken place over four years and consisted of 28 episodes, season three occurred in 2015 and was made up of six episodes, where the crew are stuck trying to come up with a business plan and ultimately have to abandon their base of operations when it gets taken over by an evil AI.

Eight years later, this storyline is somehow even more relevant and a little prescient.

This era consisted of several seasons of very few episodes. Season four, for example, was only four episodes long and ended on a cliffhanger. In all, this era took place over three years and contains sixteen episodes. Incidentally, if you’re a Persona fan, this era contains an episode that is basically Kathleen’s tribute to Persona 5, and it is awesome.

The next (and current) era started when the series became a regular fixture in Loading Ready Live, their somewhat regular live show that they broadcast on their Twitch channel, a variety show which admittedly, the Internet doesn’t have a lot of. The only other show I know of that occurs with any kind of regularity is the long running Funday Pawpet Show. When Funday ended, the void it left was so vast, the only show that was able to fill it was itself, a year later. The Internet desperately needs more good variety shows.

cH’s current era, unfortunately, has some hits and misses, as you can usually expect when you have to come up with episodes on a deadline. The Escapist era at least had the luxury of quick episodes if the inspiration struck, with a couple month break if a good idea wasn’t available. The Loading Ready Live era requires one episode a month, and so some episodes are better than others. Interestingly, the last episode to be made before the series was forced to go on hiatus due to the pandemic was released a couple weeks before our first Quarantine Control column, so this week’s brand new episode is the first to be uploaded since our own weekly feature began.

I’ve seen comments stating that the new episode is a great starting point for anyone new to the series, as if it could count as a second pilot. As it’s this week’s short film, I’ll invite you to judge for yourself:

cH: Back From The Past

It also should be neutral to support a ceasefire with Israel against Gaza, because far, far too many civilians are being slaughtered in an avoidable conflict supposedly targeting only Hamas. But this also has a lower chance of happening than it should. Until next week, everyone.

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