Agents of SHIELD

by Revis Edgewater

Whenever Mrs. Revis and I don’t have anything in the current TV season to watch, we’ll go back and rewatch a show we’ve already seen before. A while back, we went through the entire series of Castle again. Castle was such a good show. I just wish they would’ve gotten one more season so they could give the show the finale it deserved.

Our current rewatch series is Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. There are 7 seasons of this show, but we only watched until somewhere between midway to three-quarters of the way through the fourth season when the show was originally airing. The first half of the fourth season was pretty good, but the quality dropped really quickly as the season went on. Back when it originally aired, there weren’t streaming services where you could stop watching something and easily pick it back up again. So, when we stopped watching it to focus on shows that we liked better, we never picked it back up.

We were scrolling through Disney Plus not too long ago and saw that they had added it. When we needed a new rewatch, we decided to go with it… and I’m glad we did.

At this point, we’ve only gone through the first two seasons and a handful from season 3, but right now, the series is just as good, if not better, than I remember it. There’s a good mix of humor, superhero action, and intrigue. Agent Colson is one of my favorite MCU characters, and each member of his team adds a little something to the show.

I’m hoping that we’ll be able to make it past the part we left it the first time and finish the show. Only time will tell, though.

Code 8

by Revis Edgewater

Code 8 is a movie that is currently on Netflix. It stars the Amell cousins, Robbie (who played Firestorm in the first season of The Flash, among other things) and Stephen (who played the Green Arrow in Arrow). Code 8 is about superpowered people, but there are no superheroes in it. The synopsis, on IMDB, reads: “In a world where people with “special” abilities are living in poverty, Conner Reed (Robbie Amell) is a powerful young man who is struggling to pay for his ailing mother’s medical treatment. To earn money, he joins a lucrative criminal world led by Garrett (Stephen Amell), who works for a drug lord (Greg Bryk).“

I watched Code 8 a few years back and I really liked it. There’s a grittiness to it that you don’t see too much in superpowered stories. Like the mutants in Marvel, the people with superpowers are vilified just because of what they can do. Unlike the X-Men, however, the superpowered people in the Code 8 universe don’t use their powers to try to save the planet. They just want to live normal lives, to be normal. Their society won’t allow that, though.

The reason I bring this movie up is because I learned yesterday that the sequel was already out. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know it was already available to watch. So, after the girls went to sleep last night, I stayed up and watched it. Both of the Amell cousins were back, which was cool. The main protagonist in the movie is played by a guy who only had a minute or two of screen time in the first movie, but I’m really glad he had a much bigger part in the sequel. His name is Alex Mallari Jr, and I know him because he played Four/Ryo Ishida in the series Dark Matter.

I dislike spoilers, so the only thing I’ll say about the plot is what’s on the IMDB page: “After witnessing the murder of her brother and subsequent cover up, a teenage girl with abnormal abilities seeks the help of an ex-con (Robbie Amell) and his former partner-in-crime (Stephen Amell). Together, they face a unit of corrupt police officers who deploy advanced robotic technology to prevent themselves from being exposed.”

I liked Code 8: Part 2 just as much as I liked the first one. Maybe a little more. I still haven’t decided for sure. Either way, if you haven’t watched them yet, and you like those kinds of movies, I definitely recommend that you give them a shot. Well, the first one, at least. You don’t absolutely have to watch the first one to enjoy the second one, but it would certainly help.

Friday Question #3

by Revis Edgewater

I used to do a series of posts on this blog called Versus, where I would post who I think would win in a fight between two fictional characters. This week’s question is one that could be a Versus post.

Who would win in a fight, Number 5 from Short Circuit or the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) Terminator?

On the surface, this seems like an easy one. A killing machine from the future versus the best robotics technology the 1980s has to offer? Doesn’t feel like a fair fight when it’s put that way, does it? If you look at a few things more closely, though, it may not be as clear-cut as that.

First, the Terminator has trouble killing an untrained human. Sure, she had Michael Biehn protecting her, but they’re still human.

Second, if you’ll notice, I said “Number 5” and not “Johnny 5”. After the electrical discharge that scrambled his circuits and turned Number 5 into Johnny 5, the robot was more of a pacifist, preferring nonlethal solutions. Nonlethal probably wouldn’t work well against a Terminator, so I’m going with the original version. The original Number 5 was designed for war. Plus, its shoulder mounted laser cannon was shown destroying Jeeps and troop transport trucks in one shot. If it can do that to a vehicle, it can do that to a Terminator.

Which do I think would win in a fight? I think it would depend on which weapons the Terminator is using. If it’s using the real world guns and ammo it used trying to kill Sarah Conner in 1984, I think Number 5 would probably win 6 out of every 10 fights. If the Terminator was using the laser guns we see it using in the future, I think those numbers would be reversed and it would be the Terminator winning 6 out of 10.

What do you think?

RTOTD: 24172

by Revis Edgewater

People don’t like it when you point out that their hairstyle makes them look like Forrest Gump. I told my department lead at work that this morning (because it’s true), and he was not a fan of this observation. On the plus side, it’s given me lots of laughs today.

YouTube Friday

by Revis Edgewater

YouTube Tuesday was something I did on here a long, long time ago where I would post a video of a song that had been stuck in my head at some point during the week. I haven’t done one in a while, and my dear Jaded commented that she liked those posts, so I thought I’d go back to doing them every once in a while. Since I’ve had the same song stuck in my head for the past 3 days, this seemed like the perfect time for the relaunch.

Friday Question #2

by Revis Edgewater

This is the second in a series of questions that I stole from a post on Joseph Mallozzi’s blog.

Who is a t.v. character you hated at first but ended up loving?

Let me start by saying this: there are plenty of characters that I like or dislike, but very few that I invest in enough to love or hate. Because of that, I can’t really think of one that I hated at first, but then ended up loving. Every character who I love is one I liked from the beginning. Same with the ones I hate. If I hate them now, I never liked them in the first place.

There are some, however, that I started off disliking that I started to like, so I’m just going to answer this with the first one of those that comes to mind: Captain Gates, from the show Castle.

When she first took over as captain (at the start of season 4), she was very short, distrusting, and just downright rude to Castle and the detectives he worked with. As the series went on, her behavior started making sense. She didn’t like how he had turned the precinct into, basically, a sideshow. He eventually won her over by proving he just as committed as she was to solving cases. Still, she was kind of a bitch at first.

What about you? Do you have any TV characters you like despite not liking them initially?

RTOTD: 24152

by Revis Edgewater

I think someone other than EA (because Madden isn’t really as good as it should be) should make a football video game called FFL, or the Fictional Football League, and it would be filled with players and teams from your favorite movies and TV shows. It would take some money to buy the rights for them, but I think it’d be worth it.

You could have two conferences. One for professional fictional sports teams (such as the Miami Sharks from Any Given Sunday or the Washington Sentinels from The Replacements) and one for collegiate fictional teams (such as the Texas State Armadillos from Necessary Roughness or the ESU Timberwolves from The Program).

You could also have free agents, fictional players who played for actual college or professional teams, but you don’t want to pay to use those names (such as Chadwick Boseman’s character from the movie Draft Day who played for Ohio State or Ray Finkle from Ace Ventura who played for the Miami Dolphins). You could even have other random characters, like Al Bundy (who once scored 4 touchdowns in one game for Polk High). The company that makes the game could also release new players and/or teams after the game comes out as DLC to make a little more money.

I need someone with the money to get the ball rolling on this. If done right, I think this idea would make a lot of money.