📺 Cheetos and chopsticks
Hi! It’s just Jess again this week, but Jenni is coming back from her vacation today, so next week we’ll put the double back in Double Take. If you’re one of our podcast listeners, we’ll also be back next week with a new episode about the finale of Only Murders in the Building Season 2.
In today’s edition:
She-Hulk
House of the Dragon
— Jess Spoll
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Keywords: comedy, Marvel, superheroes
Watch if you like: Thor: Love and Thunder, Ant-Man, Ally McBeal
Jess’s Rating: B+
She-Hulk centers around Jen Walters, played by the great Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), an attorney who happens to be the cousin of Bruce Banner. She finds herself able to turn into a Hulk after they get into a car accident and some of Bruce’s blood gets into Jen’s system. Not willing to be a superhero, she immediately returns to her normal life as a lawyer, as she tries, but ultimately fails, to keep the Hulk part of herself hidden from the rest of the world.
Although we often see the witty humor that Marvel has come to be known for in their shows and movies, this is the first true comedy series that they’ve made. I appreciate that they were willing to try something new, and I especially appreciate a Marvel series with low stakes.
She-Hulk really does play like a traditional comedy, even including the break-the-fourth-wall shtick employed by shows like Fleabag. It’s a lot of fun, and I laughed quite a few times. Admittedly, you will have to see past some pretty bad CGI. And the pilot episode could have used less backstory; it didn’t do a great job of setting the tone for the rest of the season. But after watching the second episode, I’m feeling really good about what’s to come.
Length: 30-min runtime, 2 episodes available now with new ones on Thursdays
Watch on: Disney+
Sometimes a show debuts that isn’t really our cup of tea, but that we want to spotlight. In these cases, we have a guest reviewer provide their take.
House of the Dragon
House of the Dragon takes place about 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and chronicles the first century of the Targaryen dynasty. Like its predecessor, the question of who will sit on the Iron Throne is at the core of the story.
Today we’ve got two reviews for you: one from me, a person that never really liked Thrones, and one from Alan (my dad), a Thrones mega-fan.
Length: 1-hr runtime, 1 episode available with new ones on Sundays
Watch on: HBO / HBO Max
Let’s get this out of the way — I was not a big fan of Game of Thrones at any point. I watched every episode, but its casual violence, especially its casual sexual violence against women, made it hard for me to enjoy watching it. So I wasn’t particularly excited about this new prequel series, but I am giving it a chance.
Despite some wariness, I remember enjoying the first episode of Thrones. It introduced a set of interesting characters and set up compelling stories. The first episode of Dragon, however, left me feeling fairly disinterested. It’s clear that the creators are trying to seem pro-women, as they are depicting the ruinous fallout of a male-led succession line. But, at least so far, we’ve seen much more of the king and his brother than anyone else, with hardly any insight at all into the mindsets of the women characters. Most egregious for me is that the showrunners have said that they wanted to avoid the sexual violence of the original series, but there was a scene in the first episode that could only be described as such — and it was truly disturbing.
Like I said, this series was never really going to be my cup of tea. But while I’d managed to see past the violence of the original series enough to get through all 8 seasons with a mild amount of enjoyment, this first episode felt like a lot more flash (read: dragons and violence) than substance.
Jess’s Rating: C
I was a big fan of the original Game of Thrones series on HBO, and an even bigger fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series on which it was based. I wasn’t nearly as distressed as many people were at how the show ended, although time and distance have actually left me less satisfied with the hurried feeling of the last two seasons. When it was announced that House of the Dragon, a prequel series, would be coming, I was not sure what to feel.
The build-up to this new series has been impressive, as far as the previews and the buzz. The first episode, which aired on Sunday, did not disappoint. It felt very much like season one of Thrones, and it set up what I hope will be an exciting story. The faces and names (so many names, and they all sound so similar to each other!) are new, but the world and the tone are very familiar. It was great being back in Westeros, watching the groundwork be set for scheming, plotting, killing, and general Targaryen mayhem. The series is based on a historical text by George R. R. Martin called Fire and Blood, and, unlike Game of Thrones, the source material is already finished this time around. Martin is quite involved in the show as well, so we’ll hopefully not go too far off the rails at any point. The show is sure to be a spectacle, at the very least, and hopefully a really worthwhile watch.
Alan’s Rating: A-
Your shows, returned:
See, Season 3: Premieres August 26 on Apple TV+
Stargirl, Season 3: Premieres August 31 on The CW
Upcoming new releases:
Welcome to Wrexham: Premieres August 25 on Hulu
Everything I Know About Love: Premieres August 25 on Peacock
The End is Nye: Premieres August 25 on Peacock
Mike: Premieres August 25 on Hulu
Little Demon: Premieres August 25 on FXX / August 26 on Hulu
The Patient: Premieres August 30 on Hulu
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Premieres September 1 on Amazon Prime
Pantheon: Premieres September 1 on AMC+