Stuff I’ve Read, Watched, Done – October 2024 – Blue Towel Productions

It’s been a notable month which started off with me being across the ocean in another country, but soon took me back to my home and to a particularly busy season of life.

That season is intense largely because my wife is just extra busy at the moment, leading a training program at our missions community. It’s a pretty full-time job that I have done many times in the past, so it’s fair enough that she gets to focus on this without having to worry that things will completely fall apart on the home-front.

This does not mean that she and I manage the home-front with equal amounts of grace or efficiency, which was evident when she was away for this program for a few days, and during that time one of our dogs got out of our yard and went on an extended adventure which involved him eating something he shouldn’t have, which resulted in some larger vet bills than I find ideal. Oh well. The dog is okay, the husband has learned a couple of lessons, and the family is waiting hopefully that the dog insurance that we have will come to the party and make the cost of all of this a little easier to bear.

On a happier note, this month also featured the exciting news that my eldest daughter is now engaged to be married!

I was away when the big event took place, but I knew it was happening thanks to incredibly respectful way her fiancé relates to both my wife and I. My daughter went on an extended missions trip before I got back, so I haven’t actually seen her face to face since things became official, but it’s a cause of much celebration in our household. No date yet, but they are zero-ing in on sometime in the first half of next year.

In terms of media and creative work, I have mostly been doing some work to support friends and colleagues in their scriptwriting, as well as doing some editing on a documentary that we’ve been pushing through for a while.

And in terms of TV and streaming series that I’ve been watching this month, it’s mostly been just one show…

I had just finished The Orville, and was poking around on my various streaming platforms looking for something new to get into. Something not too challenging, easy and entertaining to spend some time on. And in this, I came across a show I had heard of but never watched…

Chuck

This is a show that ran for five seasons starting back in 2007, about ordinary guy Chuck Bartowski, who unintentionally gets the “Intersect” downloaded into his brain–a massive database of information compiled from various intelligence organizations that gives Chuck uncontrolled “flashes” of data and insight whenever he comes across something relevant. He becomes a reluctant asset for the CIA and the NSA, forced to go on missions and to keep his family and friends out of the loop with what is really going on in his life. Complicating things even further is the fact that one of his handlers is Sarah Walker, an unbelievably beautiful super-spy that the good-natured Chuck falls in love with.

Chuck is a light-hearted and goofy show. Chuck himself works at a “Buy More” (a stand-in for Best Buy) as part of the “Nerd Herd” who fix your computers. The Buy More is full of a lot of extreme characters which is where much of the show’s broader humor comes from. There is a lot of computer-related stuff that is just silly, and the only thing sillier is the spy stuff. But still I found the show to be breezy and fun and highly watchable.

I watched three and a bit seasons of the show in October (I’m still going with it now), and during that time the premise certainly evolved a bit. Eventually Chuck gained the ability to “summon” special skills, like martial arts or foreign languages, in the same way that he’d flash important information. And out of that, he stops trying to avoid what is happening to him and instead works to be a full-fledged spy. Along the way, he and Sarah fully get together romantically and most of Chuck’s friends and family find out his secrets and occasionally get involved in missions. There are some lulls in the later seasons as the story develops, but each time the show would eventually find a way to keep moving forward.

Chuck stars Zachary Levi as the titular role, which was a surprise for me (like I said, I didn’t know anything about the show before now). He’s quite good in the part, actually–far more interesting than anything else I’ve seen him in, especially in the first couple of seasons. Yvonne Strahovski also makes a strong impression as Sarah. And Casey is played by Adam Baldwin, who I just watched in Serenity, after having been familiar with him from stuff in the long-past like Independence Day and My Bodyguard–I was glad to realize the guy had such an active career.

The show also features a lot of guest stars and recurring characters with serious nerd credentials. This includes the likes of Scott Bakula (Quantum Leap, Star Trek Enterprise), Brandon Routh (Superman Returns, Legends of Tomorrow), Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future, etc), Chevy Chase (Community, etc.), Tony Todd (Star Trek, etc), Tony Hale (The Mysterious Benedict Society), Bruce Boxleitner (Babylon 5, Tron), Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy), Roger Cross (Continuum, Dark Matter), Robert Picardo (Star Trek Voyager), and many more. There’s even an appearance by Reginald VelJohnson as the same character that he played in Die Hard!

The Castle

In addition to Chuck, we also visited an old favorite one night, the Australian comedy by writer-director Rob Sitch, The Castle (not to be confused with The Last Castle, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Man in the High Castle, or Castle). The story is about the fight that working class Darryl Kerrigan puts up against the government when his home is compulsorily acquired by the government to expand the airport. The battle takes a variety of turns and ends up in front of the Australian Supreme Court.

I’ve loved this movie since I first saw it in the cinema in 1997–it’s hilarious, giving a really funny look at an extreme take on blue-collar Australian culture, but without completely losing an essential heartfelt quality. The characters are people you laugh at, but they are also people you feel warm to. And the dialogue is iconic–with a bit of effort I could probably do a countdown of my top twenty funniest and most memorable lines of dialogue, including the likes of “How’s the serenity?”, “That’s going straight to the pool room,” “It’s the vibe,” and “Dad, he reckons that power lines are a remind ofo man’s ability to generate electricity.”

Captain Britain: A Crooked World

Turning to graphic novels, I pulled this Captain Britain collection off the shelf off of my Ultimate Graphic Novel Collection from Marvel Comics; my first real exposure to this character in any form. This collection of short, serialised adventures (some as short as 5 pages long) are written by Alan Moore and drawn by Alan Davis, both in the earlier days of their comic book career.

It is a wacky book, full of all sorts of out-there ideas like alternate timelines, higher dimensions, and the sorts of multiversal shenanigans that might now feel a little tired and old hat, except that it was in the early 1980s. It also reminds me a lot of some of Moore’s work on Supreme, where he played with some of the same ideas. It’s incredibly dense storytelling, told as it is in these short little chapters that pack a lot in but also keeps things moving. It’s more interesting than it is fun, but still worth a look.

The Green Lantern vol. 2: When the Stars Fell

A little less interesting for me, but equally far-out there and creative, is the second volume of stories from The Green Lantern, an ongoing series by Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp. I read the first volume quite a few years ago, and enjoyed it well enough, and after a long time I finally got ahold of the follow-up. It’s well-crafted, to be sure, but demanded a bit more focus than I had energy to give to really understand to really appreciate it. I don’t mind owning it, but I don’t feel terribly motivated to try pick up anything that comes after it.

The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank vol. 1

I pulled this Punisher volume off the shelf of my Ultimate Graphic Novel Collection–it’s the first comic that actually stars the Punisher that I’ve ever read, I think. The story seems to have represented some sort of “back to basics” approach to the Punisher after some period where he was apparently helping angelic beings bring judgment upon sinners. In this one, he’s back to just street level murdering of mobsters–shooting them, setting them on fire, breaking their necks, etc–and loving it, it seems.

It’s absolutely not my cup of tea, and thus joins the ranks of Marvel Zombies as books in this bulk-purchase that I made that I am not interested in keeping. There is some ongoing story elements related to some police officers who are hunting the Punisher, but it’s just nowhere near enough to make me want in the slightest to read any more.

Shazam: Monster Society of Evil

As a bit of a palate-cleanser, I also read this standalone Shazam graphic novel from cartoonist Jeff Smith (best known for writing and drawing Bone, which was amazing). This is retelling of the origin of Captain Marvel (it’s from before DC gave up and stopped using that name for its hero) with both Billy Batson and Mary Bromfield reduced in age and size so they kind of resemble the Bones from Smith’s earlier work. It sets that origin take against a revised version of the Monster Society of Evil storyline, a famous early serialised Captain Marvel adventure which never gets reprinted because of concerns about the racist depictions of characters that it contains.

As such, I’ve never read the original Monster Society of Evil, but getting to read Smith’s version helps to make up for that, as it’s a really fun book. It’s not necessarily my favorite take on Shazam (that’s probably Jerry Ordway’s The Power of the Shazam ongoing series) but it’s still great and is used to great effect here to tell a solid story.

Daredevil: Born Again

Oh yeah, I also re-read Daredevil: Born Again during this month, because that’s yet another one of my Ultimate Graphic Novel Collection volumes. It’s considered one of the best superhero story arcs ever, a reputation it deserves. The book is by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, and came out a year earlier than the same partnership’s Batman Year One, which is another story with a stellar reputation. Born Again is less stylised than Batman Year One, but digs deep in its character work with both Matt Murdock and the Kingpin. The story involves the Kingpin discovering Daredevil’s secret identity and then putting the pieces in place to tear down every aspect of Matt Murdock’s life. It’s gritty and brutal without being overwrought–indeed, I’d call it just wrought enough.

Born Again is a seven-issue arc, but for some strange reason I fully remembered it as only four issues long (like Batman Year One). The first three issues ran as I remembered them, for the most part, but somehow the last four issues were only one issue long in my memory–one badly paced and rushed issue. I’m so convinced by this memory that I almost wonder if I read some strangely abridged collection of the book in the past, but I understand that that doesn’t make any sense. Hypertime strikes again! Anyway, it’s a great book with some absolutely classic moments.

Anyway, as I wrap up this month, here are some pictures of our pets. Here’s Bruno, looking absolutely sad and pathetic after he got into a scuffle with our other dog Charlie and injured his ear.