The Review Show

Episode 149. We watched the Netflix original movie The Devil All the Time, a Southern Gothic tale set across the 1940s to 1960s following several interconnected families. Following the tragic deaths of his parents, young Arvin is sent to live with his grandmother, who has also adopted the orphaned daughter of family friends who died under mysterious circumstances. Arvin grows up protective of his new family, but when he takes violent actions to defend his sister, he opens them up to unforeseen tragedy that has him running from the law and running into a serial killer.

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Episode 148. Alan Busbee from Crossplay joins us to discuss season one of the superhero anime My Hero Academia. In a world where 80% of people are born with a "quirk," Izuku Midoriya wasn't. He's dreamed his whole life of being a hero like his idol All Might, and is determined to make it into the hero academy even if he doesn't have any superpowers. When he gets the chance to meet All Might in person, the hero reveals that his mysterious power is one that can be shared, and he wants to grant it to this promising young student. Izuku can have the power he's always wanted, but he's still lagging behind his peers and his inexperience means the power could tear him apart.

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Episode 147. To coincide with Wandavision, we read the 12-issue comic series The Vision from writer Tom King and artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta. The Vision has created a synthezoid family of wife Virginia and twin teenagers Vin and Viv, and they're attempting to settle down in the suburbs of Washington, DC and lead a normal life like the humans around them. But when a foe comes calling and one of the family members goes too far attempting to keep the rest safe, this begins a spiral of destruction and secrets that attracts the attention of the fellow Avengers, who start to question if The Vision is as heroic as he seems.

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Episode 146. We're returning to the tech drama Halt and Catch Fire to discuss season two. The Giant has brought Cardiff Electric enough success that they've been bought out by another company, leaving Gordon with a huge paycheck to fund any personal project he can imagine, but he encounters some mental roadblocks to getting any idea off the ground. Donna and Cameron are working around the clock to build Mutiny into a powerhouse for online games and revolutionary community forums. Joe is trying to settle down with a new fiancee and leave the tech world behind, but when he stumbles across a promising opportunity, he reaches out to Mutiny with hopes of doing right by Cameron this time.

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Epiosde 145. We return to the Valiant comics universe this week to read all three volumes of Livewire from writer Vita Ayala. Amanda McKee is a super powered human known as a "psiot" with the ability to interface with all kinds of technology, giving her the codename Livewire. After the government declared all psiots to be executed, she retaliated with a nationwide blackout, allowing her friends to escape but causing untold damage to other innocent people. Now she's living in the shadows as a wanted terrorist, haunted by her decisions. As she investigates a school for psiot children and collaborates with a politician trying to give psiots a better name, she works to become a better protector of the people she cares about.

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Episode 144. For Valentine's Day, we watched season one of the Korean drama series Love Alarm. Jojo's high school is obsessed with a new app called Love Alarm that can read your feelings and "ring the alarm" of your crush whenever you come near them. Jojo doesn't need an app to tell her how she's feeling: she has a crush on the hottest boy in school, literal fashion model Sun-Oh, but may also be interested in Sun-Oh's best friend Hye-Jeong. As we follow these characters over four years, the world around them is still wondering who even developed Love Alarm and how it'll change how people love each other.

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Episode 143. This week we watched the 2008 crime film In Bruges, written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Ken and Ray are two hitmen hiding out in picturesque Bruges, Belgium after a job gone wrong, awaiting further orders from their boss. Ken welcomes the opportunity for sight-seeing while Ray is dying to escape the city and the guilt over innocent blood on his hands. As they await judgement in this form of purgatory, they learn about the proper consequences for their actions.

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Episode 142. We're starting another monthly series watching one show from beginning to end, discussing season one of the drama series Halt and Catch Fire, created by Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers. It's 1983, the dawn of the home computer age. Salesman Joe MacMillian leaves IBM on bad terms and goes to the small Dallas company Cardiff Electric, determined to make them into the next big player in the PC market. His scheme pulls in an idealistic software designer who wants to push computing to the next level, and an obsessive hardware engineer who is still picking up the pieces from his last failed project. This volatile team is determined to make the PC of their dreams, if they can all agree on what that is.

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Episode 141. Gino Viteri from Crossplay is joining us this week to talk about the Netflix original drama The Queen's Gambit. After the death of her mother, young Beth Harmon is sent to an orphanage where the kids are given tranquilizer pills to keep them docile. The brightest spark in her life is her chess lessons, and Beth develops prodigious skill at the game. She begins a whirlwind career traveling across 1960s America winning championships, still addicted to pills and confused about normal adolescent life. She's the most renowned woman in chess before she's even 18, and she's grappling with reaching the top of her game and figuring out what to do with her life beyond that.

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Episode 140. We listened to an audio drama this week, season one of The Amelia Project, created by Philip Thorne and Oystein Brager. The Amelia Project is a secret organization that you can call if you want to fake your own death and start a new life. Each episode is a case file recording between a new client and the unnamed Interviewer, exploring the client's problems, how they want to "die," and where they want to go next. There's also interstitial scenes of the daily lives of the charming but mysterious staff of this organization. It's a dark comedy with a variety of standalone cases, and possibly a larger threat looming in the background.

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