The Umbrella Academy
Of all the shows my friends and I have watched on our Thursday Night Teleparties since the pandemic started The Umbrella Academy is easily my favorite. Each week I'd patiently wait for the next episode, and let me tell you, there's something about spending that prolonged time with them that makes the show hit so differently than if you binge it. They became my family, a wonderfully fucked up family of ex-childhood superheroes and their continued efforts to thwart the apocalypse that just seems to follow them wherever and whenever they go. The dark humor, the dancing, I was in love with all of it. Until the end. And let's acknowledge upfront, there was no way that the seven Hargreeves siblings and Lila were going to get a happy ending. This isn't the world that they live in. Time and time again they clawed their way to some sort of happiness only to have it brutally taken away. Their deaths were a given. I mean for most of the show one of them actually was dead. So I'm not arguing that ending, I'm arguing how they got there. And I probably should have said spoiler alert, they all die... Now I'm in no way blaming the actors and their spectacular work, it's the writers who let them down. In fact, the ending of season three, with the universe being rebooted would have been a preferable ending to this, whatever this was. Because it seemed like the writers weren't serving the characters, they were serving themselves. They had all these little ideas they'd been kicking around for years and decided to shoehorn them into the overall arc at the expense of the greater story. Why else would we have Klaus wasted on a storyline where he gets pimped out and has a ghost possess him to have sex with his ex? A job he does just to get the drugs. Oh, and he's also buried alive and rescued by a ghost dog, but again, how does this serve the overall story? It doesn't. Nor does Luther being a stripper or Diego working at the CIA or finally having Lila and Five be together. This season started strong because the family was together. But as soon as they separated them they started chipping away at what makes this show work. Their bickering and their badass skills are what brings them together. Also, they weren't paying attention to their own rules. Marigold, AKA what made them them, was a name Harlan gave to his powers. IT WAS NOT THE UNIVERSAL TERM! It was Harlan's term! But then again, they end with a big old plothole; a grandfather paradox. If the Hargreeves don't exist how do their children? It breaks the rules! I just wanted Five to pop in after the credits and be like, actually... This isn't how it happened. At this point you're thinking, damn, she hated this season, why did she rate it in her top ten adaptations of the year? Because I love me my Hargreeves. That's why. This might have ended on a whimper instead of a bang, though the end did kind of start with a bang, Ben and Jennifer sex joke! But it's still one of the best shows out there. It was clever, it was unique, and I want more. I'd be willing to totally forget this season ever happened in fact... But this season did give us something. Closure on why Luther was on the moon and Ben's death. We actually learned how Ben died, and it was way more brutal than you could ever have imagined. And then he died again with the worst CGI I've ever seen that is some horrific tribute to Junji Ito and Kaju. Though I'll let that go. I'll let it all go. So what if I had no emotional connection to this Ben. I at least got to see Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman get down to Cher. Something I imagine is a typical Saturday night for them.
Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths
