Mr. Burke Reviews

Review #16: Jessica Jones, Season 2 Season two of Jessica Jones dropped, and even though I didn't intend to binge it, I pretty much did. Watching the entire series in under a week is binging for me. There's still plenty of violence and death, but not as murder-y as last season was. It also addressed concerns I had from season one: is she going to get any real cases that pay the bills (even if they aren't the focus of the episodes), and is she going to give in to the villain to save the life of a person who's just going to die in the next episode anyway. (Pet peeve of mine: I hate that, and my hate grows exponentially when that gets repeated.) So there were a couple of jobs, or at least references to getting back to work, before the series arc kicks in. I won't say too much about it because of spoilers, but there's another "experiment" just like Jessica out there, but meaner. The season is definitely a "novel for television" or "mini...

Review #10: Inhumnas Possible spoilers for parts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) , particularly Agents of SHIELD . Hard to believe that the current series of blockbusters coming out of Marvel Studios started with, of all things, Iron Man . It's equally amazing to some newer, younger fans that Iron Man was basically a B-list hero before Robert Downey, Jr. got a hold of him. One reason for this is because Marvel had signed away the rights to some of its franchises, particularly Spider-Man , The Fantastic Four and The X-Men -- which included use of the word mutant . (Side note: this is why DC Comics uses "meta-humans", which are essentially the same thing, even if the mechanics are slightly different.) That brings us here. To the average non-comic-reading viewer, there would probably be little difference between a mutant and an Inhuman , even if, story-wise, they have totally different origins. At one point, The Inhumans was scheduled for later this decade ...

Review #8: The Defenders This review contains spoilers for both seasons of Daredevil as well as Jessica Jones , Luke Cage , and Iron Fist . The day The Defenders dropped on Netflix, some nice young women were in midtown Manhattan handing out free stickers, cookies and sunglasses. Not that this matters much, except it certainly got my attention. A few days later, I asked some friends on Twitter if I needed to see the other shows before viewing this one. The consensus was, "No, you don't, but you'll enjoy it more if you do." They were all crazy: viewing the earlier shows is mandatory. Furthermore, if you watched Jessica Jones or Luke Cage , you absolutely need to see The Defenders before you catch the next season (if any) of those shows because their story lines continue here. Unlike the other series, we only get eight episodes of The Defenders, but that's all that's necessary. The familiar faces from the four tributaries flow right into the river of t...

Review #7: Daredevil, Season 2 Finishing up my pre- Defenders viewing by watching Season 2 of Daredevil out of sequence. (It should have come after Jessica Jones and before Luke Cage .) In a nutshell, while better than Iron Fist (damning with faint praise), it's a letdown from the first season. It has its moments, and yes, there are some great characters, but it's just all over the place. Basically, they have enough plot and characters for a 22-episode season (or 44 on The CW ) and they cram it all into 13, running from here to there, and forgetting stuff along the way. And I'm past complaining about the cost of saving a person who then goes on to die in later episodes. The result is something that is neither episodic nor season-long story arc, and more showing people and things so that they can be referenced in future projects. As the season opens, Hell's Kitchen is ripe for the taking since most of the underworld was disrupted or on the run. The Irish Mob is...

Review #5: Iron Fist, Season 1 Continuing my "pre- Defenders viewing... There's a line in the first season of Daredevil where Matt tells Foggy how he was trained in martial arts by an older blind man. Foggy responds, "Isn't that the plot to Kung Fu ?" He's not far wrong. That old TV series was just as much an inspiration for creating the character of Iron Fist as those Saturday afternoon martial arts flicks were. Thankfully, Iron Fist only uses the Kung Fu fighting style, not their story line. First off, after Luke Cage , I was pretty sure that Iron Fist would be a little bit of a letdown. However, I didn't expect it to be the least impressive of the bunch. You have to figure that they had the other series to build upon, right? So I piece of advice would be watch this series before you watch Luke Cage. There's a brief reference that won't really spoil anything, and you'll end on a stronger note. Iron Fist is the least satisfying a...

Review #4: Luke Cage, Season 1 Writer's note: now that school has started again, I don't know how much time (or inclination) I'll have for "binge-watching" TV shows. Plus, I running out of Defenders predecessors. There are not enough parts for black actors, and as a result, there is a huge talent pool to choose from when a project like Luke Cage comes along. Mix in Marvel's reputation, and you can attract the best talent available into your production. Exhibit 1: look at the "big names" in Hollywood doing Marvel sequels . Exhibit 2: Luke Cage . This Netflix show features Alfre Woodard , who has been winning praise and awards for decades, as well as Mahershala Ali , who recently won an Academy Award for Moonlight , which I haven't seen, and appeared in Hidden Figures , which I did. A little recent revealed to me that the reason he looks so familiar is because he starred in the TV show The 4400 , which appeared for a few six-episode season...

Review #3: Jessica Jones, Season 1 Before it premiered, Jessica Jones was just a name to me. I had no information about the character other than what I picked up from others. I guess she's after my time with comics. What I did know was that this one was definitely more adult-themed. For starters, I knew that she had previously been under someone else's mental control and now living with the after-effects. I didn't know, prior to viewing, what those were, and if that control was magical, physical, psychological, or psionic in nature. And I knew she was going to be a private eye, and that David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor, for anyone counting) signed on to be the Big Bad for the season. For anyone knowing as much as I did, Tennant plays Kilgrave who was able control Jessica Jones, and anyone else, simply by talking to them and given them an order. The person would have to comply. Jones broke from him and thought he was dead, but he's made a comeback. Jones is a priva...

Review #2: Daredevil, Season 1 I knew that The Defenders , another TV show based on an old comic, was coming to television. While I do have a Netflix account, I can't say that I've watched a lot on it, but something made me want to check it out. As soon as I saw the promo material, I noticed that it was a collection of all the other Netflix comic book shows. I asked someone who had binged-watched the series if I needed to watch all the other shows first. He told me, "No, but you'd probably enjoy them." He does know me. Daredevil is my first Netflix series., not just the first of these. My background with Daredevil: I know of his origin and I may have read a few comics years and years ago. I wasn't a regular reader of the magazine, but probably read a few here and there. I knew him from "Team-Up" comics and things like "What If ...?" . Likewise, I knew Kingpin more from Spider-Man comics, back when Marvel comics shared some of its vil...