Percy Jackson and the Olympians
I was never into Greek Myths. They either get you at a young age or you're immune, kind of like ponies. I wasn't a horse girl either. And I sure as hell wasn't Rory and Paris spending their Spring Break in a Florida motel watching Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. Every few years I think to myself, maybe I should give the Odyssey a second chance. Only to very quickly remember how much I hate Odysseus. And if there was any show that would finally change my mind about Greek Mythology I can safely say that this was not it. The problem is that Percy Jackson and the Olympians wrongly assumes that their audience knows all the Greek Myths and would know who everyone was and what was going on from the start. You know what they say about making assumptions? Well, I don't like being made to feel like an ass. This first season, because, yes, they bafflingly renewed it, only has eight episodes in it and it wasn't until Edge showed up and did a big infodump in episode five that I actually was able to kind of figure out what was going on. And while I'm not a fan of the infodump, Edge as Ares delivers it so perfectly, so insouciantly, that I can't help but love it, even if the arrival of the information is too little too late. Edge, or should I say Adam Copeland, is one of the reasons I turned into this show. The children are nobodies, and Walker Scobell as Percy is the most punchable lead ever unless you factor in the actor playing Percy when he was younger, because Azriel Dalman has made me a hater for life, but the adults, good gods damn, they're a stacked cast; Toby Stephens, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Timothy Omundson, Megan Mullally, Jason Mantzoukas, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Suzanne Cryer, Jay Duplass, and Lance Reddick! But I felt like it was a bait and switch. Our hero's father is Toby Stephens and you get to see him exactly twice in this show. No more, no less, and yes, it will break your heart. Perhaps they're trying to put us in Percy's shoes with how he feels about not having his father in his life, but he never knew his father was Toby Stephens and those of us who did now feel cheated. And also have a desperate need to rewatch Jane Eyre or Black Sails, hell, I'd even rewatch The Camomile Lawn! And I know I'm not the target demographic, I was just hoping I'd enjoy it. And yes, sometimes there's occasionally a really great music choice that made me laugh, but guest stars and jokes that will go over most people's heads like Lin-Manuel Miranda humming the theme to Arthur shouldn't be the only things you like about the show. You shouldn't sit down and think, you know, these end credits really are the strongest part of this series. And yet, that's what I thought after every episode. Because if someone asked me right now what exactly happened in this show I would in no way be able to tell them. But if someone asked me to describe the end credits, I would be waxing lyrical about their WPA mural roots and how perfect they are. Dammit, now I want to go watch the end credits again. Especially because I do love Bear McCreary... OK, that's settled, off to watch the credits and ignore the amazing guest stars they have lined up for season two. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I will come for you.
If you are looking for something to fill the gaping hole left between seasons of The Gilded Age this isn't where you should be looking. And yes, a lot of it just falls on the scope scale. The Gilded Age has a budget of roughly $15 million an episode and this, this did not. The average Hallmark movie has a budget around $2 million. So you can see there's a steep divide. And I went into this with an open mind. I knew to lower my expectations. That this was just the first movie adapting Alyssa Maxwell's Newport books and I should enjoy this delightful series getting exposure, but so many WTF moments kept pulling me out of the narrative. Which means let's talk letterpress. Our heroine, Emma Vanderbilt-Cross, works at a newspaper. Newspapers in 1895 means letterpress. But just slapping a press in a room with a cabinet does not a proper newspaper make. The entire newspaper seems to be run out of one office with an old guy in the corner with a small platen press... Which is actually impossible given the printed newspaper we are shown. Also don't get me started on how slow he sets the type. Did the writers of this know there used to be competitions among newspapers to see who had the fastest typesetters? Because our friend here would come in last. But the vagaries and lack of knowledge regarding printing is, in my experience, quite common. Don't get me started on the Heidelberg Windmill fiasco in 
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
Bleeding Hearts by Erin Lark Maples
Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik
A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft
An Academy for Liars by Alexis Henderson
Bringer of Dust by J.M. Miro
A Pocketful of Diamonds by Pam Lecky
When We Flew Away by Alice Hoffman
Hampton Heights by Dan Kois
The Lies We Conjure by Sarah Henning
The Others: Book 1 by Evette Davis
Stage Fright by Wendy Parris
The School for Wicked Witches by Will Taylor
Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood
My Vampire Plus-One by Jenna Levine
Does This Taste Funny? by Stephen Colbert and Evie McGee Colbert
What would you get if Desperate Housewives took a supernatural slant and decided to be about #MeToo? You might get a new spin on The Witches of Eastwick, but you'd definitely get Sanctuary: A Witch's Tale, a tryhard show that never states the obvious conclusions from it's own narrative, that witchcraft really is the problem. Sanctuary wants to be relevant so badly it's painful. Here's a political buzzword as a plot device, here's #MeToo, here's quarantine, here's this, here's that, and at the end of the day this many-headed hydra doesn't work together to vanquish it's foes, it fights itself until it's dead, or until it's lost its audience. And if I'm the typical viewer, that's very fast. And I wanted to love it! It's adapted by Debbie Horsfield, she of Poldark fame, how could she go wrong? I wanted Broadchurch with witches! I wanted it hard. But that isn't what this show is. It wants to be, but it isn't. This show is a politically correct nightmare that I can't get my head around, and what's worse, I don't want to. So I'm now going to spoil it all for you, so if for some reason you actually want to watch it, turn away now. Golden Boy Dan Whithall dies at a party. But Dan has a lot of secrets. The biggest being that when he was younger he died and the local witch, Sarah Fenn, did what she shouldn't have done and brought him back to life. Dan grows up to be a horrible human being, having raped and molested all the young girls in town, though somehow none of the adults know this. His mother, who is a member of Sarah Fenn's coven, decides that if Sarah can't bring him back, again, then she'll blame it all on her and thus ensues a good old fashioned witch-hunt. It escalates as one would expect, but what just gets me is that, well, the witch-hunt was kind of justified. Sarah is supposed to be a white witch, yet she's doing spells on her friends husbands to "help" them out, and then there's the aforementioned bringing someone back from the dead. If she had just left well enough alone none of this would have happened. I mean, yes, you could say that having the power to bring a beloved child back from the dead shouldn't be wasted, but maybe she should have investigated his death a little closer. Because he died the first time when Sarah's own daughter's magic manifested to protect her friend who Dan was trying to sexually assault. Sarah's own daughter who grows up to date Dan and then when they break up he drugs and rapes her. Why did she date him in the first place? I mean, so much of this show was just why!?! I literally don't get any of the characters' motivations. Yes, they are trying to protect themselves and their families, but this isn't the way to go about it. They are just all so self-centered and oblivious I just can't with them. Keep all of Sanctuary in quarantine forever. Burn it to the ground and let's speak no more of it. But before the cordone goes up please send out your interior decorator, because they are fabulous and if it wasn't in Sanctuary I'd move into Sarah Fenn's house in a heartbeat.
American Horror Story is a cultural phenomenon. It took such a hold over everyone that despite the continuing declining quality over the last decade we all keep tuning in. We watch to see our stable of Ryan Murphy staples in new yet familiar roles. Every season we wait with baited breath to see what Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk will make us fear next. For me it was never seeing Jessica Lange do a David Bowie impersonation ever again. What makes this newest season, Delicate, so unique isn't that they're trying to make us think that Kim Kardashian can act and that she's somehow still human with all that plastic surgery she's had, but that it's based on a book. That's right, we're getting the body horror and the pregnancy trope this time thanks to Danielle Rollins and her book Delicate Condition. So it's nice to actually have a female take on something that's happened in almost every season. Wait, is there even a season without a weird pregnancy? Murder House, obviously, Asylum, yes, with aliens, oh Coven breaks the cycle, but don't worry, there were many more creepy pregnancies in the following seasons. But what's extra weird here is that they were filming the book months before it was even released. And I'm not sure why. Though it's not like this is the first time it's ever happened. The publishing world and how rights are acquired are their own horror show. Also having to split the season in half because of the writers strike, despite production on this season crossing the picket line, didn't do it any favors. Any momentum that it had, and let's be honest, it didn't have much, just died in the womb. This could have been a tight three episode season instead it was a bloated nine. I do give it credit that we learned what the weird immortal "Alice in Wonderland" bunny "delicates" that look like they're from Good Omens were plotting. It was a superrace of monster who were going to take over the world and fix it making it a matriarchy if you were wondering. I mean, OK, but this does seem like a very very long game. Seeing as they controlled Queen Mary couldn't they have achieved their goals faster? But that's beside the point, because even if they had been able to achieve their goals sooner I wouldn't have cared because I hated every single character. The acting was so bad it almost swung around to good again, but don't worry it pushed through and I can definitively say this isn't just the worst acted series of American Horror Story, it might be one of the worst acted series I've even seen. Case in point, Kim Kardashian. She can't act. You think I'm being hyperbolic? In one scene she has to just stand still and shake. She can't even do that. Also her voice is so flat. There's no modulation. Just a monotonous murmur. This season was literally so bad it might have actually made me give up on the show. Something I should have probably done long long ago. I will say that there were two episodes with succinct and interesting plots, and those two episodes were good. Especially the Mia Farrow bit with her on the set of Rosemary's Baby. Because in the end that's all this season wanted to be. Here's a hint. Go watch the film instead. Heck, go watch the remake with Zoe Saldana, because it would be better than this. 
The Company by J.M Varese
The Shadow Key by Susan Stokes-Chapman
Mary and the Rabbit Dream by Noémi Kiss-Deáki 
To the Bone by Alena Bruzas
Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White
So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison
Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert
William by Mason Coile
Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror edited by Ellen Datlow
Under Her Spell by K.L. Cerra
They Thought They Buried Us by Nonieqa Ramos
The House on the Cover of a Horror Novel by Ev Knight
The Examiner by Janice Hallett
Nightmare of a Trip by Maureen Kilmer
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by T.J. Klune
One of my best friend's parents immigrated to the United States during the Vietnam War. Her father barely got out during the fall of Saigon. And the thing is, not many people cover this time in history from a Vietnamese perspective. I mean, there had to be a reason for the book winning the Pulitzer right? Some reviews likened the show to getting your dissertation in Vietnamese studies. And for that little slice of history the show captured something interesting, something unique, a look into my friend and her family's past, until it went off the freakin' rails. I know we're fully in the Robert Downey Jr. renaissance but that doesn't mean the dude can't make a mistake or two or five in his artfully heightened shoes. Whomever suggested to him that all the prominant American men in the Captain's life be played by him needs to be taken to a reeducation camp. I really thought we had moved beyond Robert Downey Jr. playing culturally inappropriate roles after the Tropic Thunder blackface debacle. And the thing there is while it was so wrong it was being used to show how wrong it was. Here it's just Robert Downey Jr. being so racially offensive that even justifying that he's all these characters because he plays the Captain's father feels like it's a bandaid for a limb being hacked off. I mean, why is Professor Robert Hammer literally Robert Downey Jr. camping it up as John Waters? If you wanted John Waters just hire John Waters! As for Congressman Ned Godwin... Sure, be some weird amalgam of a Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Film director Niko Damianos who is supposedly inspired by Francis Ford Coppola and John Landis should have led the two of them to sue for defamation if you were actually able to figure out it was supposed to be them. But the kicker is Bradley Cooper got a whole bunch of shit heaped on him for supposedly anti-Semitic prosthetics in his portrayal of Leonard Bernstein. While you could point to the long and horrible tradition of Jewface, what Bradley Cooper was doing was trying to make himself look just like a very specific person, which he succeeded in spectacularly, he WAS Bernstein. It's too bad the movie just wasn't any good. But where was the outcry for Robert Downey Jr. having a prosthetic nose for his character of Niko Damianos? Not a peep. That, my friends, is a double standard. At least people are calling him out on Doctor Doom because he's not Romani. I bet those people watched this show. Oh, and let's not forget the scene where all the characters he plays meet and have an orgy! I mean, I can't believe that this level of ego and narcissism was on a scene in this day and age. It's made me completely rethink my ever having liked him. How did he think this was a good idea? Seriously, how!?! If it wasn't for Queenie and her vaginal tears this would have been the worst show I watched this year. It will easily rank as one of the worst shows I've ever watched. Moreso because after seven episode there isn't even an ending.
My Dad has issues with the first episode of TV shows. He doesn't like to spend the time getting to know the lay of the land. He wants the story to just start immediately without bothering to learn character names or relationships or any details that might be relevant. No matter how many times I explain that this worldbuilding is important for the audience to form a relationship with the characters which will pay off in later episodes he almost always will declare by episode two that "this episode is so much better." Sigh. It's a cross I will forever bear. On the other hand, his weird predilection for being thrown into a story with no context means that Queenie should have been the show for him. It wasn't. I don't know who this show is for. I tuned in because of the commentary on how calling Queenie the black Bridget Jones was doing the show a disservice. And it is, because one bunny suit and Sally Phillips does not make this Bridget Jones. In fact I would willingly watch the abysmal Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason several times versus watch this show again. This show is just so depressing. Queenie wallows in bad life decisions as a result of not dealing with trauma. A trauma whose reveal is drawn out so long that you think it has to be really bad, sexual abuse, physical abuse, something earth-shattering. Well, let me save you the trouble of having to watch this piece of shit. Her mother left her alone so that her partner wouldn't hurt Queenie. Now, yes, you can have severe abandonment issues which lead to relationship problems later in life, but compared with what was happening with her mother and what could have happened to her, Queenie comes across as an entitled bitch who might just be the most self-centered character I've ever seen in a television show. A show that every aspect of it is a mess. First, there's just the confusion that is this show. You don't know who anyone is and therefore you don't care. The texts and memes and messages that flash up on the screen are too quickly removed to be read and are in such color and font choices that they can't be read even if you cared to. Everything is just whirling confusion. The visuals of this series are just a mess. But I guess they compliment the mess that is my second point, the characters are a mess and I hate them all. Queenie is not likable. She's not relatable. At eight episodes this felt like it was a hundred, half of them wallowing in shit and then half of them trying to get out of that shit. Oh, and how does she get out of that shit? By being a hypocrite and taking money from her mother who she won't talk to. And as for her job that she royally fucks up by having sex with a married coworker on the bathroom floor, what is it? What does Queenie actually do other than make bad life choices? I have no idea what her job is. And worse, I don't care. This show was about a miserable person who makes horrible decisions and then gets rewarded for admitting she needs therapy? Just no. All the no. These actors deserved better. Oh, and Cabbage Patch Kids weren't out in 1979. 
