Quarantine Control #188: The Separated Punctuation Generation
There’s been a seemingly constant stream of bad news lately, but a small glimmer of good stuff poked out this week. Recent election results in the US prove once again that a lot of voters do not want outright fascism in this country, and think the Republican Party is comprised of too many unlikable freaks. The big test, of course, will be next year, with Donald Trump running yet again to plunge this country into ruin. The recent election results are a good sign, sure, but a year can be an eternity in politics. Let’s hope for the best.
Geoffrey Barnes
My topic this week may not be too much of a surprise.
Gen V (2023)
Source: Amazon Prime Video
Episodes: 8
Gen V’s promotional campaign did the likely-unintentional job of lowering expectations for the series itself. The details, images, and trailers made it resemble a fine-enough spinoff of Amazon’s popular The Boys series, a nice show that would serve as an appetizer considering the gap between its third and fourth seasons. (A gap that will be more pronounced thanks to the the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes that studios affiliated with the AMPTP could have solved months ago.) The promotions, fortunately, sold Gen V way short. I knew from the first episode that this series would have the potential to stand on its own as a great series, quality that’s maintained throughout its duration.
Gen V shifts the setting from The Boys’ the Seven, this universe’s extremely corrupt and murderous iteration of the Justice League, to the Godolkin University School of Crimefighting (God U for short) and its students and some staffers. Though the Seven is still in the backdrop, as it would be in this kind of superhero tale. The school is giving several students the chance to join a now-unoccupied spot among the Seven. The series focuses on the characters with the highest potential, particularly Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), who has the powerful ability to psychically manipulate blood. Marie herself is mainly focused on finding her sister, who she lost contact with after she unintentionally killed their parents. This alone makes her too good for the Seven, though it’s not like she wouldn’t have company there.
A significant focus of Gen V is on the students’ desires to find out what God U is hiding from them. Marie is joined by Emma Meyer (Lizzie Broadway), Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips), gender shapeshifter Jordan Li (both London Thor and Derek Luh), and Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo) in the quest to find all the secrets. The subplot helps to show how this is very much connected to The Boys, but that doesn’t take away from the series’ focus to establish its own entertaining take and characters. The focus on the plot combined with solid direction and writing made this a special experience, to the point that calling it The Boys season 3.5 is an insult. I can’t praise the storytelling and character development enough.
Gen V also shows how it’s part of the Boys’ universe through its sheer grotesqueness, partially through its nudity and sexual scenes but especially through its graphic violence. Like The Boys at its best, though, this never feels forced. It’s done to show how several characters involved are more morally grey than they like to let on, and how those, minor and major, deserve just punishments and occasional rewards. Their stories don’t always end with the best people being successful, though. Not in this universe.
This is all combined with great acting from the leads, who do a hell of a job convincing the viewer that they’re of traditional college age despite the actors themselves being notably older than the characters. Shelley Conn as God U dean Indira Shetty was another standout performance. All of Gen V’s elements coming together makes for one of the most memorable superhero shows this year. I know that’s not saying much given the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s recent struggles (though Loki’s second season is pretty good), but I want to emphasize how much I enjoyed this damn show.
That said, I won’t hesitate to point out some faults. It became very apparent early on that the show wouldn’t take advantage of the university setting by showing the key students and certain other characters on the side engaging in traditional university activities. Parties and on-campus hangouts are shown, too. But I was almost hard-pressed to remember the segments that showed the students in class. It gives the impression that the students are skipping them, one assuredly unintentional.
I’m also glad to hear that Gen V was renewed for a second season, because the ending sure as hell isn’t conclusive. It’s nice to know that future subplots will be resolved in this show and not The Boys itself.
If it wasn’t already clear: I was very impressed with the quality of Gen V. Even if the students’ university lives were underutilized, they made sure to craft a great tale utilizing how younger characters with superhero powers live in this universe with powers they didn’t ask for. It has far more potential even beyond everything shown during this season, and I hope Amazon keeps it around for a while as solid alternative content for The Boys — even though, again, it’s much more than that.
Angela Moseley
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Separation(2023)
Source: Hulu
Episodes: 13
Two weeks ago I wrote about the first part of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War and my history with the franchise. To be honest, I was almost done with The Separation as well, but I didn’t have time to get to those last three episodes before I needed to start writing. So I held back on watching those episodes until about Friday, October 27th. Yes, I tend to write these contributions anywhere from a day to two weeks before they go live.
What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, Bleach.
The period of time between seeing parts one and two of Thousand-Year Blood War wasn’t long at all, so I have many of the same feelings from two weeks ago. Thankfully, I also have additional thoughts.
After having successfully finished his training in the Royal Palace, Ichigo prepares to return to the Seireitei. However, he’s given one more task by Hyosube who claims the Substitute Soul Reaper still isn’t powerful enough to take on Yhwach. So he’s given one more task before he can return. In the Seireitei, the reprieve from the Quincy attack is short-lived as the group returns to start what they finished.
This time around, the Soul Society Captains are better prepared having gone through short, but intense training or finding new sources of power. Despite their best efforts, and even taking out some Quincy higher ups, the Soul Reapers can’t seem to best the invaders. Having completed his own training Ichigo returns from the Royal Palace to help turn the tides of battle. However, he’s shocked to learn that his friend, Uryu Ishida has gone to his fellow Quincies and now stands as Yhwach’s right hand. Worse yet, the Quincy King and his elite soldiers used the opening from Ichigo’s return to reach the Royal Palace. There they face off against Squad Zero.
I will say events get rolling faster in Thousand-Year Blood War – Separation. There isn’t as much backstory and set up to wade through. At this point, it’s just a series of hard hitting battles. Captains revealing their Bankai for the first time against Quincies who have their own mysterious powers. The match ups range from exciting to overly drawn out.
When I first watched Bleach 18 years ago I found the battles to be refreshingly brisk compared to Dragon Ball Z. Fights only took an episode or two versus multiple episodes for DBZ. Now compared newer shonen anime such as My Hero Academia or even shorter shonen series, it feels like some of these fights drag on for way too long. For example, the back and forth between the Quincies and Squad Zero is both predictable and manages to overstay its welcome. I suppose, that’s the curse of getting into anime as a teenager, and then reaching middle age as a fan of the medium. It’s hard to be impressed when you see the same tropes ad nauseam.
That said, I did appreciate the antics of Squad Zero. They’re basically an all captains squad who are the best of the best in the Soul Society. Visually, they look like a bunch of misfits, but their teamwork is amazing. They feel like an actual team rather co-workers who just happen to be working together. And reveal of their Bankai did catch me by surprise. On the other hand, the one-on-one fight between Yhwach and Hyosube has been painfully predictable, even as Hyosube has a slate of fascinating powers. Still, it’s boring if an opponent can just negate everything through sheer force of will. Basically, the anime version of god-mode in a role-playing forum. God-mode is usually forbidden in role-play because it’s no fun just like in Thousand-Year Blood War – Separation. The season leaves off on a big cliffhanger, but I’m honestly just waiting for a “when” not “if” Yhwach defeats Hyosube. Or maybe there’s a twist I won’t see coming. (I’m doubtful though.)
As with QC #186, my recommendation hasn’t changed. Hardcore fans have likely already seen Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – Separation and are waiting for the next part. Lapsed fans like me will struggle through the ups and downs of the series. And if you’re a new fan, you shouldn’t be starting here at all.
Joseph Daniels
Last week, I mentioned The Escapist in passing when talking about Loading Ready Run’s commodoreHustle series, and I wasn’t planning on talking about The Escapist again so soon, but then they spontaneously imploded, so I figured, why not laugh at an industry that never learns anything? Tee hee hee! (I know Drew already talked about them earlier this week but I’d like to as well.) This is making it almost seem like I had some inside knowledge about what was going to happen, but it’s entirely coincidental.
The biggest series to come out of The Escapist was probably:
Zero Punctuation (2007)
Episodes: 834
Tigers?: Frequently (clip art)
Rabbits?: I think there were a few of these, too
Zero Punctuation actually survived the first time the website burned to the ground and for a while, had been literally the only thing appearing on the site. The history of Zero Punctuation began on YouTube where Yahtzee Croshaw started posting some amateur reviews of video games, and I guess the right people watched it at the right time because he was invited to start making the series on a weekly basis for a young upstart website called The Escapist. This was a brilliant move on their part, for the website became the house that Yahtzee built.
The first era of The Escapist brought in content creators from off site and hosted both new content and reuploads of content that was originally posted to YouTube. This era is mostly lost, since not everything was uploaded to YouTube, and what was uploaded is so buried that the only way any of it will ever see the light of day again is if someone remembers it and searches deliberately for it. This was very much an era of lobbing and shooting to see what would stick, and certain content creators like James Stephanie Sterling (credited as Jim Sterling at the time) of Jimquisition fame, James Portnow of Extra Credits fame and MovieBob rose to the top. Loading Ready Run produced a lot of content for the site, starting with Unskippable, a series which won a film festival contest the website held, thus guaranteeing that it would be produced. Eventually, they started uploading their weekly sketch comedy videos on The Escapist as well, and created other content like Daily Drop, a series about dropping every day objects and seeing them break in slow motion. They filmed a lot of drops at once, but the entire process, including the renting of a camera that could film in slow motion, was too much for them to do more than just the one season. It’s for similar reasons that Road Quest never returned for a second season. It was fun to film, but the editing process took forever because they were doing it all themselves on top of all of their other projects.
Certain content can still be found if one searches through The Escapist’s created playlists, but other content seems to be harder to find. I was able to find Game Dogs by searching directly for it, but The Escapist doesn’t have a playlist for it, and sadly this is content that is better off lost. I distinctly remember the pilot episode being the only good episode, but I think my tastes have changed over the years because even that episode isn’t as good as I remember. For a piece of short media, it’s actually not that bad, but it’s still a product of its time.
Game Dogs was lucky though, since I was able to remember it, could search for it, and it had been uploaded to YouTube. Anything that isn’t mentioned on the Wikipedia article for The Escapist, and which they didn’t put on YouTube is probably lost for good, since most of that content was scrubbed from the website long ago, and the “version 1” site that they were going to maintain just went offline one day and never returned. You can find out what all the old shows were if you check the Wayback Machine, but the content itself doesn’t load.
For a while, there was a fallow period where only Zero Punctuation was being made, nothing else. The site was eventually revived with new content and the second era of The Escapist began. All of the content was brand new for the website and they even had Moviebob back, but they went in a different creative direction since then and Moviebob is independent once more.
And what a creative direction it was! Not since the days of Extra Credits and the Jimquisition did they have so much interesting content being released on schedule. Cold Take was one of my new favourites, a series of short opinion essay videos not unlike the old Extra Punctuation opinion column (which itself was back, using the video format as well). They’d launched brand new content barely a couple weeks ago, in fact, in an effort to grow The Escapist brand, but I guess the growth wasn’t as much as the higher ups were expecting because the editor in chief, Nick Calandra, was let go for “not meeting goals”. Never mind the fact that The Escapist was in fact growing. Nick was doing the best he could, and now parent company Gamurs has burned it all to the ground.
With the firing of Nick, most of the staff quit, including all of the video staff, which is going to completely stop their YouTube engagement unless people were to watch the older content. Growth might not have been as fast or as much as Gamurs wanted, but it was happening and The Escapist could’ve been something again. It was something again. But I guess Gamurs didn’t learn from the parent company that gutted the website the first time around.
To be fair, the two eras of The Escapist were very different. The work environment of the first era wasn’t that great, and many content creators spoke out about it around when Extra Credits were having an issue with payment and were trying to run a fundraiser so that one of the crew who worked on the series could get surgery. The second era was much better for content creators, with Nick Calandra so beloved by the video staff that everyone quit in solidarity when he got fired, and if I’m being completely fair, Gamurs probably wasn’t expecting such a show of loyalty to him.
It’s okay, though. Everyone’s landing on their feet, because Nick managed to poach everyone for his own new startup. It’s actually pretty impressive how quickly Second Wind was put together, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
As for this week’s Short Film, I was considering showing the first episode of Game Dogs, but it really isn’t that great. Instead, here’s something more recent I happened to watch on YouTube this week.
This Week’s Short Film
Sharkman and Dog in “Can we be friends?” (2023)
Let’s enjoy the little good news we have, because it sure seems like the flurry of bad news never stops. There will probably be more of that to discuss in the ledes and conclusions to these posts come next week. Until then.
About The Author
dcstaff
The collective will of the Damage Control staff combined into a single article.
