Mr. Burke Reviews

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 #6: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Season 1 I recently rewatched the series Dirk Gently because during its first run, a glitch somewhere prevented my DVR from recording one of the episodes, pivotal as it was. For anyone not aware, Dirk Gently is the creation of Douglas Adams , who also wrote the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series and had worked on Doctor Who back in the 70s. Keep this in mind as you watch Dirk Gently. Adams wrote two Gently novels that I'm aware of, but I haven't read either one. This review is coming from a non-reader, based only on what I saw on the screen, without any comparisons to the source material. Maybe at some point, I'll revisit the books. I won't lie: the first time I watched the first episode, I hadn't a clue what was going on. But that was okay, because a lot of the characters weren't too aware of what was going on either. On the rewatch, I already knew what was going to happen, and i could still s...

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...

Review #1: Orphan Black When I launched this blog, the series finale of Orphan Black was about to air. Why would I pick a show that's ending for the beginning of a new blog? Because it's that good. If you've been watching the show, there is no reason to review the finale. Most everyone I talked to was happy with the story's conclusion. If you haven't been watching it, you are in for a treat. I discovered Orphan Black the night it premiered. The commercials aired during an episode of Doctor Who on BBC America . In that ad, you saw a woman watch "herself" commit suicide. That is to say, it wasn't her, it was a woman who could be her twin, but it was someone she didn't know. That was all the hook I needed to check out the first episode. The first episode hooked me for five seasons. Sarah Manning lives with her foster brother, Felix. She also has a young child, Kira, who lives with Sarah's foster mother, Mrs. S., who doesn't want to...