nathanwagenet Reviews

DC's Legends of Tomorrow: Leviathan (2016) Season 1, Episode 13

I knew it was coming...

[1/10 · 9 May 2016]

But that doesn't give the show a pass. As soon as Kendra spared Vandal at the end, I turned it off. I will not watch another episode. This conflict with Savage has been SO drawn out already, and now that they legitimately have a chance to take him down, she can't do it? Even after all that talk about moving on with her life and not being stuck on Carter? Bull. This show is terrible.

There had been just enough things up until this point to keep me coming back. I enjoy the mix of superhero characters, and some of the fight scenes turned out pretty well. In this episode in particular, Ray fighting a giant robot was actually pretty cool, and apparently preempted the Ant-Man "reverse polarity" in Civil War by about a week. But Savage has been a weak character this whole time, and the end of the world stuff is getting old. It was time to do away with him once and for all, but the writers just couldn't do it—or else they got here too fast, and were forced to extend the show. Either way, it doesn't work, and this show needs to die a quick death.

Chuck: Chuck Versus the Goodbye (2012) Season 5, Episode 13

Wonderfully bittersweet

[10/10 · 15 August 2014]

I had heard a lot about this show while it was still coming out week-by-week, but I didn't get into it at the time. Then a friend started watching it and raving about it to me, and I decided that I had to see what it was all about. I ended up watching all five seasons in less than three weeks, averaging about five episodes a day.

There were a number of times throughout that I thought about giving up. The overwhelming awkwardness of many moments, particularly surrounding the Buy More and Jeff and Lester, almost pushed me away. Some episodes were just not very good, or brought in plot points that I thought would have been better left out. But always, every time, the writers and producers and actors managed to do something to keep me hooked. For example, The Balcony was so good that, after watching The Gobbler, I wished they had ended it first. But then watching The Push Mix changed that, and I was hooked again.

The last few episodes were a bit like that. As soon as Casey and Sarah were trapped in the warehouse with the Intersect glasses at the end of Chuck vs. Bo, I knew what was going to happen (complete with Sarah losing her memories), and I had unfortunately seen the titles for the final two episodes (Chuck vs. Sarah and Chuck vs. The Goodbye) quite a while earlier. I was afraid that they were going to go out on a bad note because they couldn't find a good way to end the series, something that I see happen a lot.

Instead, they worked it out just right. The ending was not happy and sweet, like Chuck vs. The Baby (which was a great episode, by the way). But it was good. So good. Chuck, as a series, has for me been added to a very short list of some of the best bittersweet stories I've ever heard/read/seen. Other titles on that list are Lord of the Rings (books), probably Harry Potter (again, books), and maybe Dante's Divine Comedy (surprise! books). That final ending montage, starting from Alex and Morgan telling Casey their surprise, reminded me strongly of the ending of Lord of the Rings, as one by one, the companions drop off and go back to their own lives. It is overwhelmingly sad, but also happy and satisfying in a deep way that few stories are.

I'm actually tearing up again as I write this, thinking of how all of the friends are going their separate ways at the end; Ellie and Awesome to Chicago, Casey to find Gertrude, Jeff and Lester to Germany... and most of all, Chuck and Sarah reconnecting. That last part is a strange mixture of heartbreaking and hopeful, as you know that things will never be the same between them because of the lost years of Sarah's life, and yet it's also clear that they will work it out. It's not what I would have expected. Perhaps, to modify a line from Dark Knight, it's not the ending we wanted, but the ending we needed.

Bravo.