TV Review – 12 Thoughts About Game of Thrones “The Long Night”

SPOILER WARNING – THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 8.3 OF HBO’S GAME OF THRONES

I’m not our official Game of Thrones recapper/reviewer, but I have to talk about this episode.

I think Game of Thrones is the best show to have ever been broadcast on television. For more on that, check out episode 260 of the Needless Things Podcast.

I thought that the first two episodes of this, the final season, were fantastic. They gave me all of the character moments and setup I needed preceding what had to be the biggest and most brutal battle in the show’s history. “Winterfell” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” provided countless payoffs and much-needed breathing room.

Going into “The Long Night”, loyal viewers were well aware of the kind of powerful and breathtaking action the show is capable of thanks to masterpieces like “The Watchers on the Wall”, “Hardhome”, and “Battle of the Bastards” – an episode I still find hard to watch thanks to its intensity.

Did “The Long Night” live up to its potential and deliver the most climactic Game of Thrones conflict yet or had the show already used up its bag of tricks? Read on and find out!

TV Review – 15 Thoughts About Daredevil Season 3

SPOILER WARNING – THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE THIRD SEASON OF THE NETFLIX SERIES DAREDEVIL

Netflix’s Marvel’s Daredevil (or whatever the nomenclature is) has been one of the streaming service’s most consistent programs thanks to an excellent cast and mostly good plotting.

I loved the first season, liked the second quite a bit, and mostly loathed Defenders.

But the end of Defenders left one of our heroes, Matt Murdock – aka Daredevil, the man without fear – fresh for new stories and personal growth. I was excited for the third season, and even more so knowing that the focus would be back on Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk as the primary antagonist.

Did they pull off an excellent season of television or was this another hot start/middle slog/big finish? Read on.

Home Again – November’s Blu-Ray Releases

Continuing by popular demand!

In October I highlighted the horror movies that were hitting Blu-ray each Tuesday. I had fun writing those columns, and I guess you guys had fun reading them because a poll in the Needless Things Podcast Facebook Group determined that you wanted the column to continue!

Since we’re past the spooky season now (not that it ever really ends), I’m also going to be including other genre releases and maybe even the occasional foreign drama. Ha. I’m kidding.

So from here into the foreseeable future, each and every Tuesday I’ll be running down some of the best genre releases coming to home media. In general I won’t be covering 4K releases because I find the format overrated, but if it’s a new release that happens to have some kind of edition feature I might mention it.

All release info is from the excellent Blu-ray.com.

TV Review – 19 Thoughts About Doctor Who 11.1

SPOILER WARNING – THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON 11 PREMIERE OF DOCTOR WHO – “THE WOMAN WHO FELL TO EARTH”

I’ve been a massive fan of Doctor Who since I first saw it in 1983.

There have been times when I haven’t loved it as much, and times when I’ve thought it was the best thing ever. But regardless of how I might have felt about any current iteration, I’ve always loved the franchise and its history.

The 2005 revival made me very happy, despite my expectations to the contrary.

A few years after the return I joined the Earth Station Who podcast to have bi-weekly discussions about the franchise with a wonderful crew. I appeared on over a hundred episodes, participated in panels at various conventions, and fairly early on launched my own Needless Things Podcast.

Eventually toxic fandom and what I perceived as a decline in quality (of Doctor Who, not of ESW – we were still fantastic) led to my amicable departure from Earth Station Who.

To keep things brief – I loved Peter Capaldi’s Doctor, but absolutely nothing else about the show. I started to lose interest around the end of Matt Smith’s run and to this day I wish he’d had the opportunity to work with a different showrunner. The same goes for Capaldi.

But I don’t want to belabor that.

It’s a new day (yes it is) and we have a new Doctor in Jodie Whittaker and a new showrunner in Chris Chibnall. I went into season 11 (40, actually, by my count) hopeful about the future of the franchise.

Am I still hopeful? Read on.

2018 Fall TV Mini Preview

Welcome to the new Needless Things!

As I write this I have no idea how far along the transition will be. Consider this a soft relaunch. A longer post explaining why things had to change and where all the old stuff went is coming, but not today. For today, we talk about the wonderful world of television!

I love TV and it’s a cornerstone of my entertainment world. Right now it’s better than ever, with dinosaur networks duking it out with hungry and daring streaming services; with new creators and the audience at large benefiting from an industry-wide revolution.

Eventually things will level out and we will hopefully be able to streamline our services and spending a bit more, but for now the New Fall Season is upon us, so let’s take a look at all of the stuff that is personally interesting to me!