lennholm82 Reviews

Married... with Children: A Man for No Seasons (1994) Season 9, Episode 11

Out of ideas?

[4/10 · 25 February 2024]

This episode basically has the exact same plot as the previous episode but with baseball instead of American football.

That said, the jokes are better than in the previous episode and the subject matter is the less dumb one of the two US exclusive sports.

Apparently, the episode ties into real-world events that were ongoing at the time it was produced, so all in all it seems to have more of an excuse for existing than the episode that precedes it. I just find it baffling that they put these two very similar episodes back to back instead of spacing them out more. Then again, unlike contemporary legendary sitcoms like Seinfeld and The Simpsons, Married... with Children was often very sloppily put together in regards to writing and production, the show lived and died entirely by its side-splitting jokes.

The Orville: Nothing Left on Earth Excepting Fishes (2019) Season 2, Episode 4

Decent copy-cat drama

[7/10 · 8 May 2021]

It's highly ironic how the plot of this episode is the same as one of the plot lines in Star Trek: Discovery's first season...

In this episode, the show abandons all pretences of being a comedy. I've been going back and forth on whether I think the humour adds to the show or if it would be better without it all together (just like the show itself has seemed unsure of exactly what it wants to be) but after this episode it's clear to me that the show absolutely NEEDS the comedic aspect. Without it, it becomes all the more obvious just how much of an unoriginal clone of Star Trek: The Next Generation it is. Nowhere is this more apparent than with Captain Mercer. Without the jokes, he's nothing more than Seth MacFarlane cosplaying as Captain Kirk (I guess Seth prefers to see himself as the dashing and daring Kirk over the bald and "boring" Picard) and I just can't take his botoxed face seriously.

With all that said, this episode and the show overall is still enjoyable to watch and I definitely prefer it to Star Trek: Discovery, which I gave up on in its third season because watching the next episode increasingly felt like a chore that I had to force myself to do. With The Orville, I'm still looking forward to watch each new episode. It is, however, far from the masterpiece that all the 'Disco' haters make it out to be.

P. S. The ending of this episode was pure cheese.

Vikings: The Revelation (2018) Season 5, Episode 11

So that's that, then?

[3/10 · 12 April 2021]

A couple of episodes back we were teased the return of Rollo but got the complete cop out of "Rollo was too busy to come here himself". Then we got a proper tease by seeing him approaching and now here he is... but this is it.

Back when Rollo settled in France I was really hoping we would get to see a parallell storyline with the establishment of Normandy and the Norman people. We obviously didn't get that and instead he disappeared from the show and we got lame attempts at copying characters and plot twists from Game of Thrones. And now Rollo is back for a small cameo. He's obviously speaking directly to us viewers when he says "you'll never see me again". Great... thanks...

Breaking Bad: Dead Freight (2012) Season 5, Episode 5

I guess i just don't get it

[7/10 · 17 June 2020]

I just don't get why this episode is so highly rated. It's a great episode, but all the set-up for the heist and the heist itself feels too much like a clichéd Oceans Eleven pastiche. It unoriginally uses a clueless character to provide the opportunity to present the expository dialogue to explain the plan. It even has the "oldest trick in the book" trope of artificially creating suspense by waiting too long to finish up with the task, way beyond the point where it's within safe parameters, and still having it turn out perfectly anyway. I felt the same way about the first episode of the season and that is also a beloved episode so I guess I just don't get it.

I also noticed some logical flaws (but maybe it was just me not getting it again). They establish that they only know six hours ahead of time which train car contains the methylamine. So was it just a stroke of luck that the day they decided to carry out the robbery that that train car was positioned in such a way that the distance between it and the locomotive was exactly the same as the distance between the bridge and the railroad crossing?

With that said, and my rating, it might seem that I don't like this episode but that's not the case at all. Breaking Bad is my favourite show of all time and it simply doesn't have a weak episode. If this was any other show I'd probably rate this episode a 9. But I hold BB episodes to a higher standard and I feel this one doesn't quite live up to it and it gets more praise than it deserves within the BB fandom.

Season five, man. Everyone keeps talking about how it's the best one yet and how Breaking Bad was THE show that only got better with each season, but I can only feel that I miss the brilliance of the "chess match" between Walt and Gus and how season five just makes me depressed with how the protagonist is now completely unlikable, the innocent people get killed in cold blood and the characters you like get dragged through hell. It's all by design, obviously, and executed better than ever but I just can't enjoy it as much. Although, those last four episodes of season 5 probably make up the best television ever produced.

So I don't agree with the consensus that season five is better than season four, even if it's still amazing, as every season is. It's weird though because I usually do agree with the consensus on this show.

House of Cards: Chapter 73 (2018) Season 6, Episode 8

What. The. F!?

[2/10 · 28 April 2019]

I watched this episode a few weeks after it was released. Like the rest of this season I didn't care for it very much, the storyline made no sense and none of the characters behaved like any real person would.

After I finished the episode I thought "OK, so that was episode no. 8, moving on... hmm, strange, episode 9 doesn't seem to be available yet. Well it was kind of a plot twist at the end so I guess it's the mid-season break now..."

Didn't think much more of it until recently. "Whatever happened to the rest of the final season of House of Cards?", I thought. Only then did I find out that this episode was the ending of the entire series!

WHAT!?

What the h**l kind of an ending was that? How is this even an ending? It doesn't resolve anything. It doesn't work as a conclusion to anything other than a few of the sub-plots. It only sets up an even bigger mess that might actually have been interesting to watch.

There have been some terrible endings to great series over the years, but this one really takes the cake.

Space Cop (2016 Video)

Not so bad it's good

[3/10 · 5 December 2017]

This is an intentionally bad movie from the guys who frequently says, on their review shows, that the "so bad it's good" thing only works on movies that are unintentionally bad. Nothing more needs to be said about this movie. It's not funny and it's not entertaining.

They should stick to talking about movies, that's where they're entertaining.

For all their "insights" into the flaws of big budget movies, it seems they simply aren't competent movie makers themselves after all, and because of it they hide behind the "intentionally bad" shield so that they can say:

"It's stylistically designed to be that bad, we know exactly what we're doing! Aren't we wacky and funny and genius by doing something so bad it's great?".

Of course, eagerly cheered on by their fan army. Although it's not cheering, instead they're called "hacks" and "frauds", which here doesn't mean what it actually means but instead is RLM code for "I'm in on the joke! I'm part of the club! I'm a comedic genius just like Mike!"

Game of Thrones: Stormborn (2017) Season 7, Episode 2

"Here's my status update"

[6/10 · 26 July 2017]

This episode was basically every character delivering their status update. A lot of exposition provided by contrived, cringy, uninspired, badly written dialogue and close-ups of cued facial expressions (Littlefinger I'm looking at you as you recycle your standard "smirking at Sansa as she's discontent with Jon Snow's status update" look). I felt like I was watching Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the clones. As early as the 20 minute mark I was starting to look at the clock to see if this episode was about to be over because it felt like it had dragged on forever and I just wanted it to be over.

There were some nice scenes involving Samwell Tarly.

The big finale of the episode was Theon and Yara Greyjoy getting their asses, and their fleet, wiped by their uncle, which could've been an intense scene if it weren't for the fact that the show has done such a p1ss poor job at establishing Euron Greyjoy as the powerful villain he now apparently is. Seriously, is this the guy the show-runners intend to follow in the footsteps of Joffrey and Ramsay?

This was easily the least good episode of GoT, so far.

Screwed in Tallinn (1999 TV Movie)

One of the best mockumentaries ever.

[9/10 · 29 November 2004]

One of the best mockumentaries ever, my favourite along with "This is Spinal Tap". The title is a word play, it can be read as something akin to "Addicted to Tallinn" but also as "Whoremonger/punter on Tallinn" (and the 'on' is not a grammar error made by me), the latter interpretation being a reference to the plot which involves a busload of Swedish men going to Tallinn to find women.

I don't know if it is available internationally with English subtitles but I do hope so, for everyone else. Some of the fun might be lost though since the characters are to some extent based on the social differences (and dialects) between people in different parts of Sweden. It's great to see the actors play different characters. Especially Robert Gustavsson who flawlessly acts such incredibly different characters.