The Antisocial Socialist

I watched a lot of telly this year. Not as much as last year, but still quite a lot. 

Ongoing shows that I watch and like:

Doctor Who: Flux. This had the distinction of being a Chibnall DW series that I didn't hate. It's a low bar, but look, the Doctor was in character for the most part and more importantly she was a character as opposed to a walking Wikipedia entry. she didn't go on about loving Amazon, and she didn't turn a BIPOC person over to the Nazis. So like, a vast improvement over Chibnall's previous two series. It was overpacked and I'm sick of stories where the entire universe is at stake, but it was fun to watch and Doctor Who hasn't been fun in awhile, so well done. It's really a pity that Jodie Whittaker didn't have a good showrunner because she's great in the role and finally got to live up to her potential here.

Star Trek: Discovery. I'm enjoying the latest season. Again, I'm sick of plots where the entire universe is at stake, but at least they allow it to impact the characters (albeit sometimes to the detriment of the show). I really love the President and I hope she isn't evil, and I enjoyed the asshole Risan scientist a whole lot. It needs more Grudge as long as they don't put her in danger. I also vastly prefer Vulcan/Romulan/Ni'Var plots to, say, Klingon plots, so this season is already winning a lot of points with me for that.

The Expanse: Being that there have been only two episodes so far and there are only six in this last season, there isn't much to add past the fact that it's been the best thing on TV for several years now. I feel like the showrunners are good enough that they'll somehow make two and a half books resolve in six episodes in a satisfying way. I guess? I will just say that the 30-second conversation between Amos and Naomi about trauma and feelings in the second episode did a better job of exploring trauma and feelings than the last two seasons of Discovery. Sorry, Discovery. But The Expanse is peak sci-fi television.

New shows that made me happy:

The Chair: This was my Problematic Fave. I know a lot of people had very valid critiques about it—it was an unrealistic depiction of academia, it focused too much on the white guy, it exaggerated the problem of cancel culture, etc.—and those critiques are very valid, but ngl I absolutely loved it. I thought for all the lack of realism in its setting, it cut to the core of what it's like to be incredibly passionate about education while surviving in a bureaucracy. It was cathartic and its emotional arc felt authentic to me. Sandra Oh is hella relatable and I love her. 

The Pursuit of Love: I'm kind of surprised that it took so long for Nancy Mitford's semi-autographical novel to get adapted into a miniseries. I loved said novel and the adaptation is note-perfect. The casting, the cinematography, even the anachronistic music choices are all wonderful and give it this weird, off-kilter feel that throws you into the era and the characters. The only problem I had was that the leads had a little too much chemistry for characters that were supposed to be cousins.

Ridley Road: This is a BBC adaptation of a novel that I'd never heard of and should probably read. It's about a Jewish hairdresser in the 1960s who accidentally becomes a member of an anti-fascist group and has to infiltrate the British Nazi Party. It was only because I was really busy that I did not binge all four parts in one go. It's melodramatic and over-the-top and I immediately wanted more people to scream about it with when I'd finished.

Leverage: Redemption: Does this count as a new show? I guess it kind of is? I was very into Leverage back in the day. If you somehow missed it, it's about five criminals who divest rich assholes of their riches and redistribute said riches to their victims. It's pretty much the perfect show with a perfect ending so why reboot it? Except, I started watching and there was a good reason to reboot it. They've done a great job keeping the original politics and character dynamics while exploring some of the ways in which the world has changed. Look, you get to see a band of criminals go after certain billionaires with the serial numbers filed off and I appreciated every second of escapism it offered me.

Lupin: I actually thought this came out last year but I just checked and no, it was this year. Time really blurs together. Anyway, you've probably seen it, but if you haven't, you should probably stop what you're doing and go watch. It's like Leverage but with the dynamics of race and class played for drama rather than comedy (though it's plenty funny, too). It's about a master thief who goes after the business tycoon who killed his father. The acting is so solid that it legitimately took me most of an episode before I realized I was watching a French show dubbed into English. 

Baking Impossible: I watch all of the baking shows but this is the best one. It pairs bakers with engineers to create robots, cars, boats, and so on that actually work and can be eaten. It's ridiculous and it gave me new goals in life.

Reservation Dogs: This is a truly brilliant show about four Indigenous teenagers on a reservation in Oklahoma. After the death of one of their friends, they're determined to steal enough money to move to California, but come into conflict with a rival gang. Funny and heartbreaking in equal measures, this is one of the best things I've seen on TV in a very long time. The writing is top-notch and the acting is stellar. Unlike most kids on screen, the young actors really do come across as authentic teenagers, with all the goofy, awkward charm that entails. 

And finally, my top pick for TV in 2021...

We Are Lady Parts: I told you about this in the music post but now you get to hear about it some more. Nerdy, romantic PhD student Amina just wants to study and get married to a nice Muslim man, but ends up catching the eye of Lady Parts, an all-female, all-Muslim punk band in desperate need of a lead guitarist. This is a romance where the love interest is anarchic punk rock. It's a joyous celebration of badass women. The script crackles. The characters are well-written and compelling and funny. The soundtrack, as I mentioned, is perfect. It's very short (I think I did actually binge this one in a night) but fortunately has been renewed for a second season. It's hands-down one of the most original and hilarious things I've seen on TV and if you haven't watched it yet, please go do that and thank me later.

 Confidential to whoever introduced me to the Mitfords (I think it was ironed_orchid  but it might have been lapinlunaire  or kore ???) that there is a Pursuit of Love miniseries and I am currently watching it. Giant thanks to katebacross without whom I wouldn't have known such a thing existed, and I am passing it along in case anyone else didn't know.

Conversely, there was so much good TV this year that I've been a bit apprehensive about posting because I know I'm going to forget something that I loved (it has been a very long year).

Guardian: It was 2018, but 2019 was the year I bingewatched a weird Chinese web series that destroyed my heart. I know I've posted a lot about it, but: Take your usual supernatural police procedural with a dash of overarching mythology. Now take the best written fanfic of it—the one that's far superior to the show itself. It's trope-a-licious, gay as fuck, and ultimately an emotional rollercoaster. Film that instead. Run it through the filter of Chinese censorship laws that forbid you from actually showing the leads engaging in physical intimacy but ends up making it much, much hotter. Don't worry about props or special effects (that's what Dollarama steampunk Halloween accessories and Adobe AfterEffects are for, lol!); we're watching for the character interactions, so cast actors who can basically sell you on anything. It's an absolute delight right up until the point where it rips your heart out and steps on it a bunch of times.

Now I'm watching The Untamed, which is a similar sort of thing but with a higher budget.

The Good Place: The Good Place is almost over, and I'm going to miss it, but it's such a tightly written, carefully planned show that I'm also glad that they're going out on the right note. If you haven't started watching it, don't read anything about it; the less you know going in, the better. I had to try to explain Kant to a high school student taking Philosophy online (yiiiikes) the other day, and I ended up just recommending that she watch this show.

BoJack Horseman: I was expecting to be a bit more devastated by the latest season, but I think that's coming in the second part. Not that a lot of it didn't really mess me up—Diana's depression in particular hit home, and Princess Carolyn's struggles—but it feels like set-up for something absolutely soul crushing coming up.

PEAKY FUCKING BLINDERS: This show gets me. What do I want out of life? To see Tommy go head-to-head with Oswald Mosley, obviously. Tommy is...not a good person, to say the least, but he is very relatable, in that he is typically the smartest guy in the room but no one listens to him, which is what I also have to deal with at work. And the way to make this gangster-turned-Labour-politician sympathetic after everything he's done? Put him up against the face of pure evil. I did want them to go ahistorical and was a bit sad that they don't just shoot Mosley in the fucking head, but then they made up for it by doing the one thing, no matter how preposterous, that I wanted even more. Spoiler spoiler spoiler. If you've watched it, you likely know who one of my favourite characters is and why I was thrilled with this plot development even though it made zero sense.

Good Omens: Before I decided to abandon the idea of picking a best thing of the year, this was going to be my pick for best TV of the year. I did not think they could do it, but they made a truly great Good Omens show. There were two flaws, in that I thought it was over-narrated and the kids were kind of thinly written, but I don't care because it was the Aziraphale and Crowley Show and both of them were so superlatively perfect that anything else is just kind of a bonus. 

I cried at the end. I don't know how many times I've read the book, but—spoilers—it's a happy ending. But it made me cry. Because...it's an unapologetic happy ending in a story about the apocalypse. How many examples of eucatastrophe does one see in fiction these days? It's always a dark ending with a hopeful note, or a happy ending that feels tacked on, but the task of turning tragedy into joy is a difficult one, especially in an environmental and political climate where everything just seems to keep getting worse. And that's why I cried, and why I loved it so much—it's a story about how people (and, well, supernatural beings) can choose, actively, to be less shit. 

Also how great was Michael Sheen? Actual literal angel right there.

The Expanse: *deep breath*

When Jeff Bezos finally dies and faces his judgment, he will listen carefully as the Almighty reads out a long list of the ways in which he objectively made the world a worse place. Just as God raises His pen to blot out Bezos' name in the Book of Life, the billionaire bastard will clear his throat.

YHWH: What is it now?

Bezos: Well. It's just. I did bring The Expanse back after Syfy cancelled it.

YHWH: Oh fuck. That's such a great show. 

And He will pause (before crossing out Bezos' name anyway because come on, it's Bezos).

Season 4 of The Expanse is a masterpiece, though. Cibola Burn was one of the best in the book series, and they've managed to improve on it in a few critical ways, as the show tends to do. This season takes the Roci crew to one of the new planets revealed in the last season, Illus, where they're assigned by an embattled UN Secretary Avasarala to observe and de-escalate (or, as she puts it now that the show's on Amazon and she's allowed to have dialogue like in the book, "Don't stick your dick in it, Holden. It's already fucked.").

A group of Belter refugees (if you haven't seen/read it, these are humans who have adapted to live in the asteroid belt, and they are the most screwed of the screwed) have managed to get past the blockade to the new planets, set up for perfectly sensible reasons, and have settled on resource-rich Illus. Meanwhile, an Earth-based mining conglomerate sends a ship full of corporate mercenaries who would like to claim the planet for themselves, and a group of scientists who just want to study the shiny new planet. The situation is tense and ripe for conflict, and that's before the planet starts trying to kill everyone on it.

The Expanse is fantastic for a number of reasons. First, nearly every time there is a conflict, it takes great care to ensure that all parties have motivations beyond mustache-twirling evil that the audience can understand. I can't stress enough how well-written the politics of this show are. Avasarala is my favourite character, so of course I'm rooting for her, but her opponent in the election, Gao, is a member of Earth's large underclass and has legitimate beefs with the blind spots in Avasarala's policies. 

My favourite moment is where Naomi and Drummer discuss the colonization of the new planets. They're both Belters, which means that they can only exist on a planet with the aid of drugs and a long acclimatization. In a conversation out of the book, they discuss whether now that there are planets where Belters could, in theory, adapt and settle, whether this erases their identity as a people. I loved the book for its subversion of many of the colonization tropes in science fiction, but it's given an extra layer in the show because Drummer is played by Ojibwe actress Cara Gee.

Mainly I am obsessed with The Expanse for the same reasons that I was obsessed with Good Omens. It's a deconstruction of the singular hero's journey. It is ultimately a radically humanistic work. The universe is hostile and the politics dystopian but at its heart, it is about primarily working class characters (never forget that before they were interplanetary diplomats with a military vessel, the Roci crew were space truckers) trying to do good in a flawed world. Do yourself a favour and check it out.

Some hero in a FB group that I'm in texted Doug Ford, asked him if he'd seen the latest Game of Thrones, and when he said he hadn't, proceeded to text him ALL THE SPOILERS and I can't stop laughing.

Meanwhile Ambulatory Fetus Sam Oosterhoff called the cops on a group of seniors reading outside his constituency office in protest of the government's cuts to libraries.

Despite the fact that I'm pretty much exhausted all the time, I managed to do stuff:

Thursday, I went with some friends to see Us. Which I loved. A lot more opaque than Get Out, Peele's first film, but that just means that I get to methodically go through all of the thinkpieces in an attempt to figure out the symbolism. Lupita Nyong'o' is so incredible. Go see it if you haven't and then come back here and talk to me about it. I probably need to watch it again b/c I'm not much of a horror movie person, so there were parts where I was just busy being scared and probably missed things.

Friday I got invited to a thing but ended up crashing out and watching telly. I have Opinions about the latest episodes of Disco and The Magicians.

Saturday, I went to see Orville Peck. On the subway on the way to meet my friend, there was a group of teenage girls sitting beside me. One of them asked if they were getting off at Christie Station, "as in the Christie Pits Riot" and another one said "I know all about that!" and they fistbumped. The kids are all right.

Orville Peck is amazing, though the sound at the show did him no favours, at least from where we were standing. (Ran into another friend after and she said that the vocals were more distinct from the opposite side.) Less of a problem for me because I've been listening to the album non-stop since it came out and thus know how the songs are supposed to sound, but my friend hadn't so that bothered her more. Great performance, though. If you haven't heard him, picture Chris Isaak and Roy Orbison giving each other handjobs in a truck stop, only in musical form, and sung by a sexy lamp.


Oh, you think I'm kidding about the lamp thing? I am not.

This is what I'm talking about:



This is my favourite song off the album, which sadly doesn't have a weird music video to go with it:



Truly we live in a blessed time for WTF music.

Obligatory squee post.

( spoilers obv )

If you somehow missed it (which would not be surprising, given the lack of fanfare that it seems to be generated), The City & the City is out and I watched the whole thing. Perfectly legally, of course.
The trailer doesn't do it justice; it is much less a thriller/mystery (even if you didn't read the book, it's obvious whodunnit) and more of a haunting, surrealistic meditation on the absurdity of borders. It's the first of China Miéville's novels to be adapted, and not the one I'd consider the most obvious choice, but they pulled it off far better than I'd expect.

The story goes something like this: Two cities, the dilapidated, vaguely Eastern European Besźel, and the modern, vaguely Middle Eastern Ul Qoma, occupy the same geographic space but exist in different countries For Reasons. Citizens cannot freely travel between one, even though neighbourhoods and streets can exist simultaneously in both cities; there's a complicated set of rules and passports, enforced by propaganda, clothing, posture, colour-coding, and the mysterious all-seeing Breach, who are swift to disappear any violators. Walking film noir archetype Inspector Borlú stumbles upon the murder of an American exchange student studying in Ul Qoma but found dead in Besźel, a crime which may be linked to the disappearance of his wife and the existence of a rumoured third city, Orciny.

My last review for terror_scifi is—not coincidentally—my first review for terror_sffa and is, accordingly, posted in both places. That's right, we now have a community on Dreamwidth! So go over there and join for more reviews, recommendations, discussions, and awesome people.

• I'm going to be reviewing Luke Cage over at terror_scifi. I just posted the first review, and I'll try to keep it to a weekly schedule if school permits. Incidentally I'm only two and a half episodes in and trying to avoid spoilers, so if you binge-watched it this weekend, try to keep schtum, okay?

• It's been an epic time of concerts. There are more concerts than I can reasonably attend given that I have this annoying need to work for money and such, but I am still managing to hit a lot of concerts. Legendary Pink Dots last Tuesday, the Levellers on Friday, Billy Bragg next Tuesday, and Stiff Little Fingers, Tanya Tagaq, Peter Hook, and Dido and Aeneas all in the near future.

I can't stress enough how completely brilliant the Levellers were. I've never seen them live before, and they were just incredible. I ended up right at the front and danced for like two hours straight.

• Went to the big $15 and Fairness demo on Saturday. It was worth attending.

• I think the pedometer on my phone is fucked. It's seriously undercounting my steps compared to what I'm used to, except for at the Levellers show, where it thought I somehow walked 7000 steps during the time I was inside the Opera House. I checked all the things that it could possibly be and they were all functioning normally, which lead me to the conclusion that Apple wants me to buy a new phone but since I don't want to do that, Apple's going to end up with me buying a Fitbit instead.

• L'shana tova to everyone celebrating it.