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The Taste Makers

The Taste Makers

WEEK IN GEEK: Our hosts jump immediately into their Weeks in Geek this week which includes Andrew consuming the first handful of episodes of season two of NBC’s Quantum Leap reboot while D. Bethel gives the 2013 “reimagining” of the classic horror film, Evil Dead, his own stamp of approval.

WHOVEMBER: Producers announced this week the titles and dates of the Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials and our hosts are all about it.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • Magic Incarnate” (16 September 2016): Where D. shares his thoughts on the first season of Ash vs. The Evil Dead.
  • A Warm Heat” (23 June 2017): Where Andrew reflects on his thoughts about the first season of Ash vs. The Evil Dead.
  • Mech Media” (14 April 2023): Where Andrew dives into the first season of the Quantum Leap “requel.”

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

Halloween Still

Halloween Still

RTD2: With the next series of Doctor Who wrapping up the tenures of both the star, Jodie Whittaker, and its showrunner, Chris Chibnall, it was announced that the 2023 series will herald the return of the showrunner who brought the show back from the wilderness in 2005, Russell T Davies. Our hosts discuss the possibilities––and drawbacks––of this announcement.

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

  • Teasing the Difference” (05 June 2015): Where D. Bethel discusses playing The Last of Us, the game that came with his purchase of this Playstation 4.

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

Rhythms of the Algo

Rhythms of the Algo

NEW WHO: Series 12 of Doctor Who started up on New Year’s Day. With three weeks gone and now three episodes in, our Who-loving hosts sit down to talk about it (mostly just the first two episodes SPOILER WARNING for “Spyfall, Part 1” and “Spyfall, Part 2”).

RELEVANT LINKS:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

INFO:

FEATURED MUSIC:

25 January 2019 – Slapdash Hot Mess

25 January 2019 – Slapdash Hot Mess

Image sources: Netflix

WEEK IN GEEK: This week, Andrew takes dives into season three of Netflix’s The Travelers and ponders how it continually plays with time travel in interesting ways while D. Bethel gets educated and affected by the Netflix documentary, Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski––a documentary about artist Stanisław Szukalski and his time trying to create a national artistic identity for Poland, his brush with nationalism, his loss of everything due to Nazi occupation, and his rediscovery by a bunch of scraggly Los Angeles underground comix makers.

Here’s the trailer for Travelers, season 3:

And here’s the trailer for Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski:

RELEVANT EPISODES:

INFO:

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Disco Medusae” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
-“District Four” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
*Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Shortcast 70 – Mr. Moustache

Shortcast 70 – Mr. Moustache

FALL (TV IS) BACK: With the summer doldrums of tv coming to a close, Andrew and D. Bethel discuss the Fall tv they’re looking forward to, including the debut of a new Doctor (and production team) with series 11 of Doctor Who, Andrew’s circumspect approach to the reboot Magnum and quizzical anticipation for Alton Brown’s Good Eats Reloaded, D. Bethel’s blind eagerness for the new season of The Gifted and Outlander, and both hosts’ skepticism of the new Riggs-less third season Lethal Weapon. It’s nerdy Fall tv front to back.

RELEVANT LINKS:

“Doctor CthulWho” by D. Bethel

 

RELEVANT EPISODES:

INFO:

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“District Four” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
-“Main Theme” by Sylvester Levay (Theme song from Airwolf).
-“Disco Medusae” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
*Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Shortcast 39 – Holidaycast 01

Shortcast 39 – Holidaycast 01

WEEK IN GEEK: To ring in the holidays, Andrew and D. Bethel take the time to bring you another Week in Geek Shortcast. This week, Andrew plays Greenheart Games’ Game Dev Tycoon on iOS (after having previously played it on Steam), while D. talks about the interesting time-travel, existential narrative of the Jean Grey limited series from Marvel.

RELATED EPISODES:

RELEVANT LINKS:

  • The new Dan & Rusty Video Game Power Hour that went up this week, featuring Deadpool (kind of, not really) and Battle Chasers.

INFO:

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“District Four” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
-“Disco Medusae” by Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com)*
*Tracks are licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Episode 121 – Almost an Andrew Sandwich

Episode 121 – Almost an Andrew Sandwich

WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew watches Netflix’s Travelers while Dan watches Warner Bros.’ Suicide Squad.

GAME OVER ALL OVER AGAIN: This week, Dan and Andrew discuss not only the built-in replayability of games but also examine why we replay games. Simply among the two hosts, the reasons for replaying games differs vastly, which caused us to ask the following:

Why do you replay games and what games (or kinds of games) those would be (tell us in the comments)?

SPOTLIGHT – RESIDENT EVIL: With the release this week of Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (or for those in Japan, Biohazard VII: Resident Evil), Andrew and Dan look back at the game that spurred a genre and kicked off a franchise that is now over twenty years old.

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

FEATURED MUSIC:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio
-“A Fistful of Dollars” by Ennio Morricone
-“10 Minutes Until Explosion” by Makoto Tomozawa (from Resident Evil Original Soundtrack Remix

Week in Geek: Terminator Genisys

Week in Geek: Terminator Genisys

Recently, Dan talked about watching the most recent film in the Terminator franchise, Terminator: Genisys. I have had a certain curiosity about the movie since the first trailers came out, but I was even more interested when I read that James Cameron felt that “the franchise has been reinvigorated” by Genisys. Given Dan’s opinion of the film (and its availability on Hulu, which I am able to access), I decided to see for myself.

Hey, look, it's that weird Austrian guy from the first Terminator!
Hey, look, it’s that weird Austrian guy from the first Terminator! But with only half a face!

First of all, Dan is correct. This movie rests a lot on nostalgia for prior Terminator movies. More accurately, this movie rests a lot on nostalgia for the first two: the 1984 film, The Terminator, and the 1991 film, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie almost feel like a reboot of the original, with post-apocalyptic soldier, Kyle Reese, being ordered by revolutionary leader, John Connor, to step into the time travel device in order to stop a vicious killing machine from destroying the past. Not much later, we get to see the recreation of a popular moment of cinematic history: the Terminator beats up some weird ’80s punks to get some clothing.

Terminator: Genisys (left) vs the original The Terminator.
Terminator: Genisys (left) vs the original The Terminator. Unfortunately, they were unable to create a digitally de-aged Bill Paxton for this new Terminator film, which is sad for everybody.

From there, of course, the movie starts to go sideways. An older Arnold Termin-egger, along with an unidentified sniper, work together to stop the younger-looking killing machine. Soon after, Kyle Reese encounters a strange police officer who is revealed to be a T-1000 made of liquid metal (but not in the guise of Robert Patrick). It’s crazy, it’s out of control, and the movie lets us know that despite starting like the original The Terminator, this will be anything but. Soon enough, we have heroes Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor time travelling FORWARD to 2017, which should be after Judgment Day but is not. Instead, the nefarious villains of Cyberdyne Systems are about to realize some sort of stupid mega-app called “Genisys,” which promises to be the bomb.com, but will probably end up just being the bomb.

A few reviews I read expressed concern over the convoluted time travel timelines of this movie, and given that the producers intended to make a trilogy of films, the confusion is probably legitimate. But, as a sort of sequel to the first two Terminator films, I found this movie to be an interesting companion piece and contrast to the previous second sequel, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The following analysis may contain spoilers, so be warned.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to Hell!
You really did it! You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to Hell!

The original film The Terminator left the audience with the interesting idea that the whole story could only happen because it happened. The entire thing is a causal loop: Kyle Reese is sent back in time by John Connor to protect Sarah Connor, and in the process becomes John Connor’s father (explaining why John sent him back in the first place). Terminator 2: Judgment Day doubled down on the causal loop, further explaining that Cyberdyne Systems developed the requisite technology for Skynet and the Terminator from the remnants of the Terminator left behind in the first film. So, the audience realizes that this whole world and its future exist because of the fact that they exist.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day tries to change the narrative. After we learn what’s going on and who the real bad guys are, Sarah Connor convinces everybody that the best solution is to prevent Cyberdyne from ever being created. The takeaway theme from the movie is, “There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” By destroying all remnants of the Terminators and Cyberdyne Systems, Sarah and John Connor are able to avert the future apocalypse. Of course, this creates a bit of a paradox-sandwich as we have an established past that involves a future that no longer happens. But, let’s not worry about paradox sandwiches just yet.

No Fate (but what we carve into innocent picnic tables)
No Fate (but what we carve into innocent picnic tables with a combat knife).

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines took a hard left on this theme, changing it into “No fate but what we delay for ten or so years despite our best efforts.” Watching that movie back in 2003, I was exceedingly disappointed on the turn that it took, although it made sense given that the producers were more interested in making post-apocalyptic, dark future Terminator movies. That’s also where we got Terminator: Salvation, which I am certain that I watched but I disliked with such intensity that I forgot everything about it.

That hard left is what I think makes Terminator: Genisys stand out from the other films and makes it feel more like a proper sequel to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. By the end of the movie, we find out that the personification of Skynet has essentially manipulated time in order to re-sequence the timeline to its own benefit. Instead of the “it’s going to happen eventually” narrative of T3, we have Skynet actively taking a role in manipulating time to its benefit. I guess you could say that Skynet has adopted the “No fate but what we make for ourselves” philosophy for itself. Oh, and Skynet is played by Matt Smith.

And that’s the thing that I really like about this new Terminator movie. T3 took the “take the story into your own hands” narrative of Terminator 2: Judgment Day and stole the agency and control of it. It said that no matter what you do, the terrible thing is going to happen. Terminator: Genisys did something different. It still acknowledged that the terrors of the future are a threat, but that it’s because they are actively working against you. It acknowledged that the “take the story into your own hands” narrative was just as much a thing that the villain could do as the heroes. It’s an interesting twist on the story. Somehow, that difference was important to me and I think is what makes Genisys a better “third movie” than Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.