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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Power Rangers Beast Morphers Season 2 Episode 22 Review: Evox Unleashed

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This POWER RANGERS BEAST MORPHERS review contains spoilers.

In the end this is how it was always going to be. For as excited as I was after last weeks triumphant Power Rangers Beast Morphers episode, there was no way this episode could live up to it. ‘Evox Unleashed’ is good but it’s not great and much of that can be put down to the mandate that has held back Beast Morphers from living up to its true potential.

As I’ve mentioned many times before but bares repeating now, when Senior Vice President of Power Rangers Franchise Development and Production Brian Casentini left the franchise he left us with this revealing quote.

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“I am a big fan of serialized storytelling, but most broadcasters across the globe want more episodic storytelling for scheduling ease.”

Knowing this was a limitation helped me understand the series more and review it under the proper context. It improved many episodes knowing the plot line wouldn’t continue and I could appreciate what they did in such a short time. It hurt others when they didn’t use the standalone story to give us more insight into the characters or even tell a proper one and done lesson. Standalone doesn’t mean it has to be completely disposable.

Casentini went on to say in that same interview that, “I think we found a really great balance (between serialized and episodic) with Power Rangers Beast Morphers.” To give the show credit, many of the serialized episodes did work. The problem was that they more often felt like glimpses into a fully serialized show than proper serialized stories in of themselves. Something felt off about them even when they were good.

That’s not to say only the serialized stories had merit. Some episodic plots were fairly fun and a few were great. Most of them though weren’t used to develop the characters in a meaningful way. Without that the serialized moments the show was able to have couldn’t land. Without character arcs even the biggest of plot moves feel empty.

So it’s no wonder that when we get to the finale we get a lot of great moments that are kneecapped by a lack of development from earlier in the series. The start of the finale is great. It’s tense, we get a tearful moment between Zoey and her mom, and there’s an incredible sequence of the Rangers busting out old weapons. I still wish they had put more time into explaining how the Ranger Vault came to be but it was genuinely clever to have them use old weapons to get around Evox’s ability to absorb their own. Great way to have fan service but still impact the story.

We also get some good callbacks to last episode when Nate says, “I made you, Evox, but today we’re gonna destroy you. As a team!” Perfect way to cement the lesson he learned. Evox later saying, “it’s been a long time since I’ve taken out a civilization” was an excellent RPM callback.

Steel’s sacrifice was also powerful and devastating. More than anyone else we’ve gotten to know and love Steel over these two seasons and he’s always been a delight. Seeing him sacrifice everything was a huge shock but very effective. It gave the rest of the episode more weight. The problem is that while the solution the team comes up with is a good one (combining their human DNA with Morph-X) it’s rooted in the message that the team is strong because they’re human. That’s… true, I guess? But the finale acts like this is something that’s been building up the entire show. It hasn’t. Outside of Steel’s desires to be human this was never built up as a central theme. This wasn’t a constant problem the characters had to deal with in their episodic adventures. I guess you could stretch and say Ravi felt like a bit of a robot when he had to ignore his feelings for Roxy and his love of art but that’s being generous.

Far more effective would have been the very simply message of you don’t have to solve your problems alone. That would have tied into pretty much everyone’s stories in the series. Devon needed to take advice from his dad but refused to listen. Zoey was determined to solve big problems but often tried to do it all on her own. Ravi hid away his feelings and suffered alone. Nate felt isolated from the world and had to build a brother to find friendship. Hell, that would have been a great way to bring in Ben and Betty who while bumbling have always worked together.

And making the ultimate theme of the show, “you’re strong because you’re human” is even more head scratching when you remember the Beast Bots. Are they not strong because they’re robots? Are they only strong because they have human best friends? Is Steel only strong because he’s half human? It’s an odd message with some alarming undertones if you sit there and analyze it. Just looking at on the surface it boils down to ALL MACHINES ARE BAD… when the show did a lot of work to make the Beast Bots sympathetic.

Much of the weight of the start of the episode was able to establish is lost in this confusion and in Steel coming back to life as a human. It’s cute that he finally gets what he always wanted but it robs the show of a more powerful ending. I can understand not wanting to kill a Ranger even if he is a robot but if there were anytime they could get away with killing a Ranger, it’d be here. The human ending is also strange because they add Steel’s voice to his human version. I get why they did it and it was okay in the body swap episode but here it felt too silly. Just give him a regular voice. It would help sell the scene instead of distracting the audience with unintentional comedy.

We then cut to one year later and the montage of scenes is mixed. It’s incredible that Mason Effin’ Truman comes back for a small cameo that also ties off Scrozzle. It subtly does some world building (Corinth and Grid Battleforce are in more contact) and it allows Ben and Betty to finally get some development. Anytime Power Rangers uses James Gaylyn it gets an extra point.

Devon suddenly being a commander doesn’t really work. He moved up in the ranks that quickly? After one year? That’s a little far fetched. Was he even officially enlisted in Grid Battleforce? No one can go from being a recruit to a commander in one year. If he was a commander-in-training I could believe that. This, not so much. Did he even express a desire to be a commander? If this was rooted in an episodic outing earlier in the series it might have been a little easier to buy.

Zoey and Nate working on clean energy was nice though and a good reminder of the franchise’s progressive history. I’m glad they took the time to explain how the city moved away from Morph-X to something that’s attainable in the real world. Power Rangers loves a good message and this was a small but needed one.

General Shaw (love this promotion!) painting with Ravi was cute although it just reminded me how human Roxy was barely in this show. Same with the very bizarre bit with Steel becoming an actor and Blaze being his stunt man. Uh, that came out of nowhere? Steel being an actor, okay, he’s a wacky guy and I can buy that. But Blaze being a stunt man? Yeah he did karate a few times but nothing in the previous episodes set that up. That would have made a nice episodic story that could have reminded us Blaze existed!

The series closes out with the team throwing Steel a birthday and they sing ‘It’s Great to be Human” cementing it as the very odd theme of the show.

Parts of the finale do work, especially the first half, but without any buildup of the shows central themes or the character arcs it all feels flimsy by the end. Its competent but the episodic mandates on the show as a whole crippled its chances. This could have worked with more planning on how the episodic stories could have supported a larger theme but that wasn’t allowed or simply wasn’t done. It makes the finale feel like a slapdash ending that wants to be big and grand but can only manage the trappings of it. The human DNA mixed with Morph-X was a great solution to destroying Evox but rooting it in “it’s great to be human” just made it fall flat. It’s a decent finale but one that will sadly be more known for finally wrapping up the Venjix cliffhanger from RPM than wrapping up Beast Morphers’ story.

This leaves Beast Morphers in a middle ground in the history of Power Rangers. It was a decent series with a lot of potential but ultimately couldn’t deliver on most of it and felt aimless for much of its run. There were genuine moments of quality throughout and you could see a great show in it. Sadly the episodic stories were not up to a high enough quality to sustain the series between the serialized ones, where the show seemed to spend much of its energy. This was Beast Morphers‘ biggest mistake.

Those standalone stories could have been structured in a way to still be episodic while forming a backbone to the show that let those serialized stories thrive. Without that backbone the attempts at serialization just felt like reminders of wasted potential instead of solid stories in their own right.

I’m very interested to see where Power Rangers goes from here. Simon Bennett is one of the more experienced show runners to join the franchise so his influence on the show could be a positive one. Hasbro has also gotten out of the training wheel phase with Power Rangers and could have a better idea of what they want out of the franchise. I hope they take the lessons learned from Beast Morphers and use them to find the best way to work within their mandates to make Power Rangers the best show it can be. It has the potential, Beast Morphers showed that. Let’s hope they can live up to it.

The post Power Rangers Beast Morphers Season 2 Episode 22 Review: Evox Unleashed appeared first on Den of Geek.

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petekaos · 4 years ago

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When did you have your FIRST ever thought about Jay and Benz? I'm so curious how you created them and the first "drafts"? Like did you keep the storyline the same or was it very different at the beginning? How did you decide their jobs, their friends, their names etc? I'm very intrigued!!

hiii nonnie!! oh this is such a sweet question, thank you!

so my first ever thought about jay and benz was perhaps back during the middle of may? i have no concept of time whatsoever but i was thinking about manboss and how brilliant it would be to have gunsmile and mike do a rom-com/romantic drama together. however, i didn’t really think about jay and benz concretely just yet -- i just had ideas for the kinds of characters i wanted them to play. the premise for tell me it’s real is actually something that stayed as a vague idea in my head for a long time as something i wanted gmmtv to produce. once manboss started to become more of a thing i liked, i thought about combining these two premises together! more storylines and characters started forming in my head, it was only a matter of choosing gmmtv actors to play them.

however, the fleshing out of their character arcs and plotlines? that i am still in the process of and genuinely taking seriously now. tell me it’s real is a project i’ve been wanting to undertake for a while now, and once i watched gunsmile and mike on screen and knew that i wanted them to play jay and benz... it fell into place! their character arcs and stories are clear to me, now it’s a matter of working out all the plot points and the side characters and what they have to deliver to the story. the way i decided their jobs was like this: i wanted them to balance each other out, therefore jay has a job to do with the arts and benz has one to do with the sciences. honestly, i personally am really interested in film and marine biology and know a couple of things about the subject matters, especially film. also, i wanted to showcase the contrast these two characters have in their personalities vs their jobs, benz being a very abstract and outgoing person who works in research vs jay being more reserved and analytical yet working in film. their jobs play some role in the story as well!

their friends came to me easily as well. i knew i wanted jay to have a bit more of an outgoing best friend who’s like him in terms of silliness but can also be serious when needed, and that’s how kai was born. for benz, i knew i wanted him to have a bit more of a silent best friend who he knew since childhood (the reason she’s quieter plays a role in the story as well but no spoilers!) and so... film was born! she’s very much nurturing and caring but finds it difficult to talk to people for reasons i won’t disclose now. because jay’s best friend is also his coworker, i wanted benz to have someone to rely on at work as well, and so mint sprung into existence, and she’s very much alike benz apart from the fact that she knows her feelings and therefore provides some sort of contrast and yet a parallel to benz. now -- both jay and benz have friends that they can rely on, but something felt missing to me. in comes ton, someone older and a bit more mature that they can go to for advice and who laughs at their hijinks. he’s a kinder character who is there to impart the lessons that he’s learned, and his background is very much similar to benz’s, providing him with a kind of reassurance and lifeline. in the same way, yut is very much pivotal to benz’s... past, and while he is a minor character, his existence impacted benz’s life in many ways and impacts jay’s a lot in the series. and still, i didn’t want that to be... it. so we have benz’s two friends, film and mint; we have jay’s friend kai; we have benz’s ex-boyfriend yut who comes into the story every now and then; and then we have ton, who is their neighbour. they have conflict, they have people to rely on, everyone is interlinked. i could have stopped here -- but i wanted someone else to provide some lightness, some comic relief, and just be their link to a community, and that’s where golf comes in. he is their link to the community around them and who gives them a much needed reality check when they get too lost in their thoughts or when things get too hard.

as for names... that was very much hit or miss. i knew i wanted jay and benz to be called jay and benz, and mint was mint from day one, film was a bit of a wild one considering that jay... studied film, but i decided that one would be good! i mostly just went onto thai sites with nicknames i could use and tried to make it an okay and memorable mix. but yeah, jay and benz were characters that i wanted to be a bit more complex and have different backgrounds, and yet fall in love and learn how to love each other and be loved.

i hope this answered your question, nonnie!!!! please please please send me follow up ones if you want me to elaborate, it honestly made my day seeing this ask and knowing that you are interested!

#didn't proofread this so it might be a bit messy fhsnfhs #jay and benz #tell me it's real #rahul answers

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recentnews18-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-apprentice-not-one-candidate-is-actually-stupid/

The Apprentice: 'Not one candidate is actually stupid'

The Apprentice is back for another series. And, fortunately, so are the ridiculous introductory statements from the candidates.

“I’m the Beyoncé of business,” claims one in the opening episode.

“Money doesn’t buy happiness,” says another, “but I’d rather cry in a sports car than an old banger”.

They’re just a few of those likely to go down in the show’s history along with the likes of “everything I touch turns to sold”, and “I’m not a one trick pony – I’ve got a whole field of ponies.”

Now in its 14th year, the BBC One show never fails to deliver several contestants who are bigger on arrogance than they are on ability.

But, Lord Sugar says, he “takes exception” to the suggestion that candidates on the show are “stupid”.

“The programme itself is an entertainment programme as well as a business programme,” he tells journalists at the launch of this year’s series.

“Those stupid people you’re talking about run six very successful businesses, one of which has made a million pounds this year, and the others are close behind them.”

It’s true that six former winners of the show have gone on to successful business ventures since the 2010 rule change, which saw Lord Sugar invest in a business idea rather than hiring an apprentice for his own company.

Despite their somewhat over-confident claims, Lord Sugar says: “The whole point of the process is that you do find a winner in the end.

“The people try to fight for their position in the early stages, they say some things which sound a bit silly, but they’re not that daft really.”

“Can I also interject here,” picks up Claude Littner, “and just say, not one of them is actually stupid.”

It’s perhaps a surprising defence of the candidates from Lord Sugar’s sidekick, who doesn’t exactly go easy on candidates on the show.

“They’re all working very, very hard, and the tasks – you may be watching the TV thinking ‘I can do that’, I assure you, you can’t,” he says.

“It’s a lot more complex than you think. And they’re really trying hard, and it’s very, very difficult.

“You get a group, they don’t know each other, they’re fighting for a position – it’s much, much harder than it looks, believe me.”

The behaviour and claims of the candidates often bring them notoriety and a brief spell of social media fame.

But that is arguably a drawback – as it could mean the show is more likely to attract people who are fame-hungry rather than those who possess genuine business skill.

“That’s a very good point,” says Lord Sugar. “I do worry a lot. In the selection process, sometimes I worry that people are there for the wrong reasons.

“And if I do come across them, they don’t tend to last too long, let’s put it that way.

“Having said that, a lot of the contestants come with the intention of winning the prize and getting the job.

“And what happens is they get fired, and there’s that kind of withdrawal symptom after the show ends, where they’re not spotted in Tesco anymore.

“They then want to do something else, because they got a flavour of being on TV.

“And I have to say, with the exception of only one that I can recall, that they don’t get very far. They get used as dummies in quiz shows in things like that and get made fools of, and then fall away.”

(The exception he’s referring to is probably Katie Hopkins – whose controversial opinions helped her maintain a high public profile after leaving the show via newspaper columns and radio shows.)

Hopkins recently had to apply for an insolvency agreement to avoid bankruptcy, after the food writer Jack Monroe won her libel action against her.

Asked what advice he would give Hopkins now, Lord Sugar says: “She’s made her bed, she’s going to have to lay in it.

“It’s one of life’s lessons that she’s learnt. Maybe it might be a wake-up call for her. She’s got to solve this thing and move on. There’s no advice really that I can give her because she made her own problems. So I hope she’s learnt from it.”

The opening episode of the new series sees the candidates flown to Malta for the first task, in which they are given a list of items to track down and buy as cheaply as possible.

It’s a familiar challenge on the show, but the location is new, and the language barrier is just one of many factors which stop this year’s crop from covering themselves in glory.

Baroness Brady, Lord Sugar’s other sidekick on the show, says: “What’s incredible is that, literally, Alan says to them, ‘thanks very much for coming, here’s a map, here’s some euros, go find me nine items’, and off they go.

“And the problem is, they all think they’re brilliant, they think they are the perfect person who’s going to win and they’re full of enthusiasm and energy, but immediately they begin to realise it is, as Claude says, more difficult, everything takes a bit more time.

“They do work hard, they’re not all stupid, but they do say some stupid things.”

This is the first series of The Apprentice to air since Lord Sugar apologised for tweeting a photograph which compared the Senegal football team to beach sellers in Marbella.

He doesn’t address this directly at the launch, but acknowledges when asked by BBC News that the advice he gives apprentices about their online behaviour has changed.

“The thing is that when we started 14 years ago, there was no such thing as social media, so things change as we go through,” he says.

“The candidates of the programme are briefed at a very early stage that they have to be very careful what they do as far as social media is concerned.

“And social media can be their enemy really, because before we select some of the candidates, we use it ourselves to find out what they’ve been up to. So it’s an era we’re running through at the moment.”

Pressed on the backlash he experienced on social media in the last year, he says: “You just have to take the rough with the smooth really, it’s as simple as that.”

The new series of The Apprentice begins at 21:00 BST on Wednesday 3 October on BBC One.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45641519

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years ago

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David Frankel Contributor

David Frankel is a managing partner at Founder Collective.

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You earn a million dollars a year and can’t get funded?

Dear auto entrepreneurs, please think outside the gearbox

A top four tech company recently approached the CEO of one of our B2B portfolio companies with a tremendous offer. This company, with buy-in from its world-famous CEO, believes the startup’s core technology could help them catch up to a rival in an incredibly important space and wanted to discuss a $20M investment on extremely favorable terms. This partnership would allow the startup to grow 10X in a year and would provide invaluable validation.

The founder was elated. I was terrified. This kind of deal is a classic “whale hunt,” and most of the startups who engage in them are doomed to end up like Captain Ahab.

While it’s immensely gratifying to receive this kind of validation from a market leader, the startup is at an early and important developmental stage. I’ve seen many promising startups blown up by ill-advised business development deals that swelled teams in a bout of euphoria only to see them wither if interest and focus from their partner wanes.

In my experience, arrangements that pair a behemoth megacorp with a Seed/Series A stage startup have a success rate well below 50%. I didn’t tell the founder to decline the offer outright, but I did suggest that the management team consider a few questions before pursuing it.

How much MRR will it add to your business? The project with the large company is in line with the startup’s long-term vision, but it’s a departure from their current focus. A $20M investment is very nice indeed, but once that money is spent, what will the ongoing revenue be? And what is the opportunity cost of not supporting the current business plan? What discount rate will you apply to compensate for the small probability of this deal working out? My advice was that if he couldn’t satisfactorily answer those questions, it was probably the right move to turn the deal down. Even if the deal was structured as $20M in revenue rather than equity I’d hesitate.

How, in detail, will this project help your core business? There’s an argument for entering into an agreement like this even if the immediate revenue contribution is low. If the project will allow the startup to speed up the development of a core technology that is generally applicable to other customers, it would seem far more worthy of consideration but beware our human ability to rationalize (first and foremost to ourselves).

These projects more often end up as bespoke development engagements where despite the initial intention, the startup is producing a custom application for the big co. Founders will rationalize the deviations from their product roadmap, but ultimately sell out their future for a long-shot opportunity to integrate with a worldwide leader.

My advice is to not think magically about product/market fit, and instead, to try pre-selling it to other customers as a form of market development. If you can sell the product, great! If not, you’re probably using venture capital to subsidize the R&D budget of a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

What happens if this doesn’t work out? It’s easy to visualize success, but what happens if the deal doesn’t lead anywhere? In this scenario, imagine the big tech company decides to change its priorities and abandons the initiative. SaaS startups face a similar failure mode when they go to great lengths to impress big companies during pilot programs only to see their project die due to lack of interest. When considering a high-risk, high-reward partnership, founders need to spend time envisioning a gruesome demise.

● What will your pitch be for a bridge round of financing when you have no revenue, you just came up short during a prolonged engagement with the best possible customer in your industry?

● How will you reassure your most talented team members that you know what you’re doing when the deal fails, and capital is running short?

● How quickly can you reorient the company to focus on other customers and how quickly will you start generating revenue from them?

Image courtesy of Flickr/Felipe Campos

How well do you understand the Big Company? Founders with little exposure to big companies are susceptible to misreading cues. My partner Eric Paley wrote about how entrepreneurs regularly misread their likelihood of getting funding from VCs, and the pattern is similar with this kind of business development deal.

When I started an ISP in South Africa in the 1990s, I had the chance to pitch the executive team at the country’s equivalent to Walmart . We were talking about the upcoming Olympic Games, which they were sponsoring. I asked if they were bringing their biggest customers to the events. One of the VPs looked at me, bewildered, and said: “Your mother may well be our biggest customer.”

I instantly realized they didn’t have big customers; they were a big customer. Their suppliers took them to the Games and fancy dinners. I felt silly at the moment but learned a valuable lesson about B2B power dynamics. Here are some other dynamics to be cautious of:

Are You Aware of the Work Pace Differential?

Startups measure their survival quarter to quarter while big companies plan in five-year increments. It’s often shocking how slowly big company partners move on everything from email to product roll-outs. Decisions made by gut feel at startups have to navigate a maze of meetings and committees at a big company. Startups often drown in the number of process leviathans require to make the smallest of improvements.

Who are the Internal Champions?

Promising projects can die on the vine because the internal champion gets reassigned or leaves the company. Successful partnerships will involve multiple high-level people from the larger organization. They also typically involve the startup being paid a fair market rate or are paired with a strategic investment to help defray the burden of non-recurring expenses. If not, beware.

Most sponsors will say their project is critical to the company, but it’s the startups CEO’s job to check that out. Founders should reference the opportunity in the same way they would reference an investor. This kind of deal is often an all or nothing bet on your company, don’t make it too blithely.

Is the Project a Priority for the CXO/VP?

Partnerships between startups and big companies work best when it solves the problem of a VP or CXO level executive. Below that level, we’ve seen startups spend large sums and risk their future on what amounts to a proof of concept project for a mid-level director with no real juice.

This is especially common with startups who sell to retailers. Theoretically, the brick and mortar shops need a bulwark against Amazon, but in reality, we’ve seen many of them default to more focused on protecting their physical retail turf rather than truly investing in online sales. They’ll run pilots to assure investors that they have their eye on the future when in reality the efforts are more PR than a business plan.

Do you Understand Big Company Logic?

A $20M investment to a small startup is a massive deal. For a big company, it’s essentially the size of an acquihire and can be shut down with no repercussions. In the context of a half-billion dollar company, $20M bets actually fail far more than a startup may appreciate.

Are you competing with another startup?

Is this project a “bake-off” where multiple companies are competing? The most dangerous kind of whale hunting is when a startup is competing with one or more competitors to win a large book of business. Founders considering this kind of arrangement should give serious thought to skipping the process and building out a less concentrated revenue base with fewer impediments while your competitors fight to the death.

Do you have a deep bench of vetted candidates ready to be hired? Founders often underestimate the challenge of growing 3-5X in short order. Every successful startup has to do this, but it usually happens more organically over time. The kind of business development deal our portfolio CEO is considering will change the company overnight.

Entrepreneurs need to ask if they have a long list of former co-workers, peers, vetted candidates eager to join their company? If not, massively scaling the company to meet the demands of a major partner will likely lead to sub-par hires to fill an urgent need while slowly poisoning the company’s culture. Money is rarely the most challenging part of hiring. Hiring fast when you control your destiny is hard enough, doing so in an uncertain arrangement can be very detrimental.

Beyond hiring, it’s important to view a partnership through the lens of Activity Based Costing.

How much time will this take up? 50%? 80%? More? Will you have to drop existing customers or products to make the project work? Are you still able to grow the business outside of this partnership or is it genuinely all-consuming?

Are You Ready for the Hunt?

If you can answer these questions confidently, then you may be ready to go whale hunting. When these projects work, they can be the first domino in a cascade that leads to growth and good places. More often, it results in a startup spending a year and a large chunk of its capital on a high-risk business development deal that more often fails to pan out. Chart your course accordingly.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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fmservers · 6 years ago

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Startups should read this checklist before they go “whale hunting” for big partners

David Frankel Contributor

David Frankel is a managing partner at Founder Collective.