#some badass Pete and Vegas for your pleasure

[raelle-writing]

Chapter 9 is live :) 

Chapter summary:

Porsche scrambles to find Vegas. Pete fights his kidnappers.

[daleisgreat]

2016-17 TV Season Recap Part Four: Bonus Summer TV Edition

Previous TV Season Recaps – (2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 2016-17 TV Season Recap, Part 1 (Gotham, Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow) 2016-17 TV Season Recap, Part 2 (Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Legion, Riverdale) 2016-17 TV Season Recap, Part 3 (24: Legacy, South Park, Horace & Pete, Stranger Things)

I did not anticipate there being so many new shows to keep up with this summer, and the last summer shows just wrapped up over the last few weeks in time for season premieres of the shows I am currently following. When I reflected back on the summer, there ended up being six seasons of shows I wound up devouring throughout the summer, and it felt like plenty to warrant a quick blog with my thoughts of the summer of television. A few of these shows I covered in prior TV Season recaps, but their premieres got pushed back a few months to the summertime instead of their usual spring debuts, and a few other shows caught my eye too, so let’s get to it! Glow - For those unfamiliar with GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) it was a edgy women's wrestling league that ran from 1985-90. The Netflix series focuses on a new cast of fictional characters with some based on personas of the former wrestler's in the promotion. Glow centers on one Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) who has been looking to catch her first break in Hollywood and took up a role in GLOW because it was the only thing available. The 10 episode season introduces the cast of the dozen or wrestlers and builds up to the season finale which is the shooting of the pilot episode. Obviously, the wrestling nut in me is really biased on this, but I feel safe in saying it is a legit good show and you do not need to be a wrestling fan to dig it. Only about 30% of the show deals with wrestling while the rest is fleshing out the rest of the cast. Wrestling fans will dig a few cameos from former WWE/Impact stars peppered throughout the show. The episodes are roughly a half hour each and with only 10 episodes it made for a quick and entertaining watch. Grade: B+

Defenders - This is the equivalent to the Netflix Marvel Universe to what the first Avengers was to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Defenders is the team-up show of the four heroes introduced in past Netflix Marvel shows over the last few years featuring Daredevil (Charlie Cox), Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter), Luke Cage (Mike Colter) and Iron Fist (Finn Jones). I loved seeing Daredevil, Jones and Cage back again and kicking ass, especially once they all start teaming up in the back half of the show. Another positive is this season is only eight episodes compared to the usual 13 of previous Marvel Netflix series so there is a lot less fluff. On the negative however, Defenders doubles down on nearly everything I loathed on the Iron Fist show. I am not a fan of the villains known as ‘The Hand’ at all as they come off as meaningless cannon-fodder, but Marvel went all in on them this season by unleashing Elektra (Elodie Yung) as their leader. She kind of gives The Hand a smidge of an edge, but I was never much of a fan of Elektra either so that did not really help. Like most of the Internet, I was not big into Iron Fist also and it is unfortunate that Iron Fist is the primary focus of the four heroes in most episodes as he plays a pivotal role in trying to vanquish The Hand. By the end of the show I still was not swayed to be a fan of either Iron Fist or buying into The Hand as a formidable antagonist, but at least I can take solace in enjoying how Daredevil, Cage and Jones all played off each other along with each show’s periphery characters in each episode so the season was not a complete waste. Grade: C-

‎American Grit - The first season of American Grit was a guilty pleasure of mine and I am glad it returned along with host John Cena for a second season. It is a Survivor-esque reality show where a bunch of people are divided into four teams in a military themed camp with a former military veteran as their leader and compete in challenges each week that leads to someone going home each week until there is one left to win a million dollars. This season mixes things up a bit by having a 50/50 mix of contestants consisting of athletic builds and everyday Joes/Janes and all have a theme of trying to find their grit. That means a part of each show features a little bit of everyday drama of the competitors having a big personal moment revealing their past personal struggles and why they entered the show. There is also a little bit more of a focus on the team leaders this season too and watching their turmoil bubble over throughout the season resulted in some entertaining animosity. I usually try and avoid most reality TV but naturally I made an exception for this show because it involves the charismatic beast that is John Cena and I got a kick whenever he appeared to shed some wisdom to the entrants or gossip with the military veterans. The challenges are also fun to watch for the most part and consist of a unique boot camp style variant so I was always looking forward to what challenge they cooked up each episode. The ‘finding your Grit’ theme resulted in several emotional moments throughout the show of the cast spilling their guts about their past and for a handful it looked like they legitimately came out of the show changed and finding out something new about themselves. Grade: A-

Ballers - The Rock continues to impress as sports financial manager extraordinaire Spencer Strasmore. I always relate Ballers as a sports-themed version of Entourage for those not familiar with it. The theme of this season is Spencer’s agency trying to expand and make it big by landing a deal to be the owner group in charge of moving an NFL team to Las Vegas. Rock continues to play off well with coworker Joe (Rob Corddry) as the two continue to party way too hard to impress potential clients. I also dig the athletes on this show as they face popular NFL controversies such as dealing with concussions and suspensions over failed drug tests. I will also give a shoutout to the Dolphins scout, Charles (Omar Miller) and Dolphins GM Larry Siefert (Dule Hill) as I have always dug their love/hate dynamic and they continue to steal the show with a few unforgettable scenes including a dinner scene that goes all kinds of wrong just like the average WWE wedding. There are a couple clunker episodes, but for the most part this was another must-see season. Grade: A- Leftovers - I have no idea where to begin on this show that deals with living in the aftermath of the Rapture. The first season had a little bit of a standard plot structure, but last season and for this final third season, The Leftovers went off the rails in all kinds of unpredictable ways where I stopped trying to guess what happened and went along for the ride. The primary plot point for this episode is the cast worrying about a second, far greater Rapture occurring and the cast going to insurmountable lengths to prevent it. Some of those lengths feature crafting a new version of the Bible, the wildest boat ride in TV history and finally getting the payoff to what happened to the 2% of the population that vanished in the original Rapture.

It is hard to recommend this show as I stopped questioning what they were doing early on in the second season and am just accepting whatever they throw in my face, except for almost anything relating to the Guilty Remnant cult. It appears the writers heard our dissatisfied pleas and the Guilty Remnant are laughably written off early in the season with a throwaway line of dialogue and have a minimal presence this season. I take that back, I do like Guilty Remnant member, Liv Tyler getting her overdue comeuppance this season in a glorious manner. The series finale delivered like few other series finales before it and I will never forget conversing with a friend for nearly a half hour breaking down the entire season in a way I do with no other TV shows. Grade: A+ Game of Thrones - After many brief teases and minor skirmishes this is finally the season of Game of Thrones that goes all in on white walkers/zombies. It is impossible for me to give this show a fair breakdown in just a paragraph or two because it has such a huge cast and I am awful at remembering almost of all their names. I will say I liked the setup to capture a living white walker and bring it to Castle Black. Those two episodes really stood out the most where Jon Snow and his motley crew put their lives on the lines into the icy wastes to capture a white walker. The confrontation with the walkers surrounding Jon Snow on that island lead to him and his men laying it all on the line in a EPIC showdown that had me buying into their fates until an unexpected ex-machina transpires and had me popping huge at the TV.

I loved how Game of Thrones built up the big negotiation session between Snow and the Lannisters as a dramatic TV event for the ages and that episode delivered in a big way with meaningful payoffs. I do echo what a majority of the online feedback that the pace of travel is amped up far too fast compared to previous seasons. I recall prior seasons where certain characters spent an entire season getting from one location to another, but in this shortened season characters would leave one location, appear on another side of the world later that episode and make it back to their home region by the end of the same episode. I get it, the show is winding down with one more season to go so they need to fast track some of these story arcs, but after setting a precedent for the five prior seasons it is difficult to make that adjustment. There is still so much more I want to touch on including Arya being a badass assassin, dragons, zombie dragons, that grayscale-sickness seeming to be a little too convenient to cure, the awesomeness of Hot Pie and the cowardice of Theon, but I am already pushing 2000 words here and need to wrap this up. Suffice it to say, Game of Thrones continues to amaze, and I am gratified that I am finally caught up and cannot wait for the final season next year. Grade: A Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Angry Videogame Nerd Volumes 7-9 Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld Final Season Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television