Hello, this is NerdVomit, I'm Doug, I'm a nerd and this is my vomit. I could have thought of a better intro. Thank you for all the wonderful feedback for NerdVomit. I know the biggest one was that I was very monotone, I was very concise.
I was like reading a very boring op-ed, I was like reading very boring reviews and I know that there's going to be a learning curve on doing this myself so I'm hoping that I at least end up it more lively when we get into the fall season of television. I know I'm a couple weeks back behind even, but it's basically because I will eventually catch up and I will do so. Now, like I said last episode, the fall season, how we've done the talking points and how I'm going to be doing the talking points going forward, is that we talked about the season premiere, the mid-season finale and the season finale. That way, unless there's a huge event that happens somewhere in the middle of all of that, we'll talk about it, but that way not every episode is about all of these shows over and over and over ad nauseam and that there's no room for any other things that we can talk about which I have plenty to talk about outside of the fall season.
So let's get started with that. The Return of the Good Place. Now, the Good Place was a show that I thought was just a generic sitcom. I had no idea how funny and interesting and smart it was going to be.
I should have assumed now knowing that it was created by Michael Schor who also did Brooklyn 9-9 and Parks and Rec. Season 3 has brought in some interesting twists with the fact that the four souls, the four main characters, and how on earth. And there's a whole new experiment in trying to get them into the Good Place. If you're not following this, I'm not going to outline the last two seasons.
All I'm saying is the first two seasons are fairly quick watches. Go ahead, go back, do it. You'll thank me later. But I just love the smart and sweet writing on it.
The fact that this demon played by Ted Danson cares about these four humans and now he's literally just going to throw the universe into disarray because of them, because he cares about them, because as they become better people, they've made him a better entity is great and it's still so smart, so funny. Still has, even in the 22 minutes it's on, still has twists and turns. Like what's going to happen next? And that, literally every episode ends on Cliffhanger.
It's fantastic. Gifted, has come out with the gift that I remember being just gifted. Gifted is a show on Fox that is set in the X-Men Fox universe. It follows Steven Moyer, who's the actor, and Amy Acker, who's a father and mother of these two children who have very destructive mutant abilities when placed together very much thanrass from the comics.
If you follow that, this season has started out with a bang that basically everyone thinks that this mutant underground cell is dead and they've been divided. Some have, you know, were thought dead in the underground and some have gone on in a shadowy conspiratorial group called the Hellfire Club, which of course, if you're at the comics, you know, exactly what that is with the inner circle. And you have the birth of Polaris's child. You have Steven Moyer, who was a human, thought he was a human, turns out he was a mutant with destructive powers that his father managed to suppress for decades and now his powers are starting to erupt and they are literally corrosive.
He seems to be able to disintegrate things. How is he going to control this? How is he going to deal with the fact that he may not be able to touch anything for the rest of his life, not his family, not a book, not a PlayStation controller, not a clock? I don't know, I'm just looking around, I love lamp, looking at things that he would, you know, not be able to touch.
So I'm really digging it. I've loved the showrunner Matt Nix. He did burn notice. Now I dropped off a burn notice after I think the third or fourth season, but I loved it.
It was just one of those I had other things to do and I kind of dropped out of watching a lot of TV there for a while. Kind of came back from the Golden Age of up television to college or this new Golden Age. Walking Dead came back. This season has been good.
It's only two episodes. I know it's going to be Rick's last season and it's going to be Maggie's last season played by Andrew Lincoln and Lori Cohan respectively. I am going to watch it because I want to see how they're going to write these two huge, like very integral characters out of the show. They're going to kill them or they're going to run away.
I don't know. Hot air balloon race and they'll come back into seasons. Who knows? Actually, I kind of like that last one.
We'll see. Walking Dead though. It's going to be a problem where the last couple seasons have been, instead of being tense pop boilers, they're just boring. I know last season was like the war and there's a lot of planning.
It's a lot of the general talking to their army, so to speak, and their subordinates and all the planning. It was supposed to be really tense and you're like, oh my God, is this plan going to work? Is it not going to work? What's going to go wrong?
Really, it was just boring. There was this people talking and that's it. I'm interested to see what they do this season. The theme seems to be rebuilding rebirth after the death of Carl and Carl Carl writing those letters to Nican and Rick saying like, forgive each other, rebuild this world.
We can do it better than what was before in those characters struggling against their baser feelings, their baser behavior, their basic nature as both humans and animals. To rebuild something better has been, I think it would be interesting. And like I said, I will see where it goes. I've been grudgingly sort of watching the seasons.
I'm like, you know, I've been watching this for eight years, nine years. Am I watching it just because I'm a completist and I will just keep watching it? And right now the answer is no, I'm really enjoying this season so far. But once again, it's only, you know, the third episode just premiered last night, I still haven't watched it.
I'm always kind of a day behind. But I'm not begrudgingly watching The Walking Dead this season. Now, when we hit mid-season finale, will I have changed my mind? Will my tune have changed?
Possibly. And that's why we talk about first mid and last with premieres and stuff because who knows? I could go on and on and on about The Walking Dead every week, but that's not there. Literally Walking Dead podcast.
You can, there's a little show after Walking Dead about Walking Dead called Talking Dead. So despite anyone's opinions on Chris Hardwick right now, or that or in the future, the point is that show does exist. So speaking of other shows that exist, big-mouth season two, holy shit. I'm a huge fan of this show.
And while the second season didn't seem as quotable as sharp as the first season, I think the first season was like, boom, here it is. Here's this world. Here's the craziest shit going on. And you don't know if you're going to get a second season.
The second season, I think really lets other characters kind of breathe and have their own experiences. Not so much about a couple of kids going through the puberty. That's what the show's about. It's about going through puberty and the changes in life and social interactions and boys and girls and men and women.
And I think on this season, they really got into some of the parents and their stuff as opposed to just focusing on the kids. It was like, yeah, it's not as concentric. I didn't think it was super quotable the way the first season was, but I think that it could get deeper into the layers of each character emotionally and even physically with the changes in puberty. And letting the parents be able to breathe and have their stories.
And when you find out about Andrew's parents, holy shit. That got fucking real. And it started out so funny. It started out with the mom seeing delight in the 90s.
And then it takes a shockingly weird, dark twist. I will say that. It involves a slide whistle. And of course, I would be remiss if I did not bring up the new character, the other side of the coin from the horny Hormone Monster, the shame wizard.
Now, talking to friends that have watched this, the shame wizard is just exactly what you think. The shame wizard voiced by the guy who plays Remus Lucas on Harry Potter. And the shame wizard was his character where I didn't know I had one until I was faced with it and I went, oh, yeah. No, I've totally met the shame wizard.
I just didn't have a name for it. Same thing with the Hormone Monster. It was one of those. I didn't know I had one of those until I saw it went, yep, that makes sense.
Back when I was like, you know, 12, 13, 14. Oh man, just in the first part, we go rage, rage, fucking rage. And he pushes his friend and I'm like, oh my god, that's totally, yes. See, I just quoted the first season.
Can I quote the second season? Not at the time of my head, well, of course I could. Because there's a part where I coach Steve thinks the shame wizard's name is Shane Lizard. And it is hilarious.
The coach also loses his virginity and refers to it as quote, making thick in the warm, which is gross. But man, it's this one's a lot more emotional and I think it's fantastic and it ends on a cliffhanger of one of the boys getting a female Hormone Monster. What does that mean? Could he be gay?
Trans? Is there going to be that kind of talk in the next season where it's like, well, you're a boy, you should have a boy Hormone Monster. What does it mean if you have a girl Hormone Monster? Is that different?
We'll see. I've got a sneaking suspicion that Connie, the female Hormone Monster, was Nick's dad's Hormone Monster. And that's why he's such a listener, so respectful. And there's a word I'm looking for attentive to woman's needs.
That's my theory for next season. I guess we'll find out next year. So that's Big Mouth. Once again, quick watch.
I burned through it and I could've done it in the day if I would've had a day job. But I need to read burn through it and re-watch it once I'm through with Daredevil, which I'll talk about next week because I want to get through this list so we can start fresh. Let's see. Oh, well, then I always talked about what we called DCTV or all the shows on the CW, which three have premiered.
Supergirl might have premiered. I don't know. I don't watch it. I think it's terrible.
That's all I want to say about that. But Flash, Arrow, and Black Lightning have returned Flash. I kind of have a good feeling bad feeling about it. My good feeling is that I do love having Chris Klein come in and play the villain Cicada who I know from the comics is a person who runs a cult dedicated to the Flash and he ends up showing his Lord Master Flash, his appreciation, his dedication by killing people that Flash has saved and using their life force to keep himself immortal.
Yeah, because that's how you do it. So I love that Cicada is going to be at least the big bad for the first half. I like that there is now more and more good speedsters. I like that they introduced excess.
I like that she's referenced Batman Beyond word Shui. I like that she mentions Lightning Lad. I like that she mentions the Legion of Superhose in the 30th century. I like that.
Here's what I don't like. She's now like her whole thing is that she's there to stop the crisis that the Flash appears in which by the way isn't like another like four years, ten years, whatever it is. I found a picture of the newspaper and it's like she has plenty of time. And like the Flash disappearing in the crisis, you can't have a Flash not disappearing in a crisis.
That's kind of part of the crisis in every DC crisis. And we've talked about ad nauseam on some of our earlier shows on No Plaza's The Clap that DC have crises and Marvel has wars, secret wars, civil wars, and DC always has a crisis on infinite Earths or a crisis on multiple Earths or identity crisis or a final crisis. So in every one of those crises, a Flash disappears. They tend to come back, but a Flash disappears.
You can't have a crisis without that. And having an ignore makes no sense. Barry Allen has two children, Don and Don. I wish I was making that up, but I'm not a son, D-O-N and a daughter, D-A-W-N, Don and Don.
And the tornado twins who end up forming a superhero duo and thus creating the Legion of Superheroes in the future. So to have access named Nora, it doesn't even make sense. She's like a distant cousin of Wally West. It's Barry Allen's grandson and then she's like his kind of distant cousin because he was like in a group in a VR world, it gets super sci-fi.
I don't worry about it. But she's really impulse somewhere in the future. And I'm talking like 24th century future. So that's kind of the bad part where I'm not a fan of this excess character.
I mean, I like the character herself on her own and I like the character in the comics. Mark Wade kind of pulled her into his Flash run, which worked because at the time that Flash Wally West needed a whole team of speedsters to take down Cevatar, which they ruined in the show, but anyway. So yeah, good, Cicada. Bad, this whole side point side thing with access with Nora Allen, the daughter not the mother, trying to stop Barry Allen from disappearing into a crisis.
We'll see. Flash, I thought the last season was kind of draggy in terms of I like the thinker and Flash met each other almost right away. They knew each other's secret. Demities, I was like, wow, that's never happened.
And then it was just a lot of machinations that took forever to play out. It was like the world's most boring, Rube Goldberg machine watching the last season of Flash. So we'll see with Cicada. I hope they kind of move along pretty fast.
Once again, my whole thing with Flash, I wish they would do things that they do with agents of shield, which I know is probably on its way out, but that they kind of break it into what they call pods, where you kind of have, at the mid-season mark, they kind of pivot into a different big bed or a different aspect. And I think that keeps the show fresh, and I think that's what Flash did. Or I'm sorry, what the Flash should do, and what this next show I'm about to talk about did last season, which was Arrow. Because you think that Michael Emerson playing the character I can't think of the name off the top of my head, but the hacker genius, you think he's the big bad, and then you find out the guy from 12 monkeys, whose name I can't think about that.
The character was Ricardo Diaz, Richard Dragon, it was supposed to be, but it wasn't a very good adaptation of him. But he becomes the big bad in the second half, and it was like, oh, what a great twist, and it kept it fresh, because you're like, it's not just the same bad guy over and over and over again. Now, this season of Arrow, I'm excited for two reasons. One, it starts off with jumping ahead and seeing Green Arrow in prison, because he said, I am the Green Arrow, and I'm guilty of these crimes, and if it saves my family and friends, we'll do it.
Great, I love seeing him in that kind of Super Max kind of way, which was a Green Arrow idea that David S. Goyer, a writer and director, had four Green Arrow movies, so I kind of like to take that and went, how can we do this in a cool way, since that's not going to be a movie? Can we do it with a TV show? Because it's too cool, but I have to let go.
And I agree. So I love seeing the Super Max Green Arrow. I also like the Flash forwards with his son going to the island Lee on New and finding Roy. I cannot wait to see how these Flash forwards pay off.
Cannot wait. It makes me more excited about it. I know what happened to Ollie for the five years he was gone, which kind of got a little repetitive at times. I'm excited to see what happens, what shapes William to become this just at a kid in the current timeline to that he seems to want to become a new Green Arrow the way Connor Hock took over for Oliver Queen in the comics and went down his father's path to see what kind of hero he could be.
There also is another quote unquote Green Arrow running around. We haven't seen, oh no, Diggles working for Arguest, never mind. We don't know the identity. If it's future William, I'm going to vomit and not in a good way like on this show in a bad way.
Like there's no vomiting in a good way. It's only vomiting in a bad way. And so that's what I've got on Arrow. I mean it's only been one episode.
I'm not going to deconstruct it. There are Arrow podcasts. I'm sure if I had one I'd call it like you failed this podcast, which I'm pretty sure probably exists. Black Lightning, I still think it looks like the Shaquille O'Neal movie Steel, but it reads and watches like Luke Cage.
I think it's socially relevant. I think it's as edgy as it can be. And I really like the look of this season. Once again, I think the costume could change.
I think James Remar could maybe not try to summon his inner William Shatner when he's acting. I think James Remar is better than that. That's me. But I'm really digging Black Lightning.
I think it's a really interesting corner of this Arrow verse that CW has created with Flash and Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, which premieres next week or this week, a time of recording, and all of this. So I'm interested to see where Black Lightning goes. It's a fun little watch. Once again, the fact that they can do twists and turns that don't seem, that are a little people by numbers, but don't seem that pedestrian when they happen is very difficult to pull off.
And I like that in Black Lightning. Speaking of pedestrian but pulling it off, Venom, I talked about it on a previous podcast where we recorded it earlier this morning. Venom for being PG-13 is as good as it's going to get for a Venom movie. Now, we'll say spoilers at the top of this episode on the descriptions.
I'm going to tell you right now, even though it's been out for a couple of weeks, spoilers, and they're not really that many because this was an origin story. If you don't know who Venom is, who's a character that's been around for almost 40 years now, that's kind of crazy. 30 years, if not pushing 40, then get with it. Wikipedia, it's not that hard.
Can you make a Venom movie about Spider-Man? Yes. Can you make a Venom movie with a bunch of superfluous tertiary characters that really hold back the story behind Venom and Eddie Brock? Yes.
Should you? Sure. I mean, it made money. You know, it's only big competition with a star as born.
What that's in, a Venom movie that everyone's frothing at the mouth at, and it's big competition was a star as born. And it still kind of, you know, it hit higher that first week. But, you know, I just think that you could have limited, like I said, a few of the characters. The tertiary, like the Doctor, the love triangle Doctor character, I think Michelle Williams was wasted.
I think Jenny Slides' character could have not been in there at all. And it's weird seeing her play kind of straight dramatic, quote unquote dramatic after seeing her as Mona Lisa on Parks and Rec, and she's missing on Big Mouth. If I can bring that show up again as well as Parks and Rec that came up earlier. I think you've gotten rid of some of the characters.
I mean, really the girlfriend and the refrigerator, which if you don't know what that means, don't look it up. I'm not going to get completely into it. It's a female character that dies to spur the male character into action. The kind of girlfriend and the refrigerator character was like this homeless woman.
And it was just like, you didn't need to build a whole lot of emotional connection. It was like Eddie Brock and this homeless woman, like you know, are friends because you know, he knows the people like in his like three square blocks of San Francisco. And then when he finds her dead after, you know, the experiment on the Life Foundation, that spurs him. Like you didn't need Jenny Slides in the movie to die to spur him.
Like there was, it's like, it's like everything was just like there to get in the way. And really the best parts of the movie were the symbiote and Eddie talking and getting to know each other. And you find out how, and I'm not going to be glib here, how alien the symbiote is because well, he seems to be able to like kind of understand the world through the lens that is Eddie Brock. He still doesn't know what a dog is and thinks they look delicious.
Whereas he seems to know like other things were like very basic knowledge and he's able to talk to Eddie, but it's like, you don't know, you couldn't have shared that part of his brain. You know what a dog is? That seems really strange to me. The thing I have to address is this six months thing.
Now what this is, is that the other symbiote that you see in the trailers, Riot, is moving from like whatever it was, Malaysia where the ship crashed that has the symbiote in them, Riot and Venom and the other ones. That Riot jumps from body to body, trying to get from Malaysia to San Francisco, right? Okay. You see Riot jump into a little, or bond itself to a little girl in Malaysia and you see Eddie Brock become a disgraced reporter who ruins his life.
Okay, great. He says six months later, literally says six months later, Eddie Brock's a mess. He's an alcoholic. His fiance broke up with him and is dating some guy from Veep.
You know, he can't get a job. He's almost out of money. Like his life is awful. Remember, this is six months later and that's fine.
It says six months later and you see the little girl get off in an airport in San Francisco and I'm like, wait, it took her, even if she took a fucking train, it wouldn't take six months. So boom on you. And it could have been, that is an easy thing to fix in terms of editing. Literally show the girl getting off the, off in the airport in San Francisco and then cut to Eddie Brock six months later.
That way you're not implying that took her six months to get from Malaysia to San Francisco. I'm getting so angry about this. It was worth seeing. Was it worth seeing twice?
No. Is it worth a sequel based on the post where it's seen? Yes. Which is a big reveal of Cletus Cassidy.
Can they pull off a BG13 carnage? That's a better question. Did they succeed in pulling off a BG13 venom? Yeah, I think so.
I mean, it's going to be what it's going to be. He doesn't have to be full of bloodlust in mayhem, but carnage does. So how are they going to pull this one off? It's going to be a homicidal symbiote bonded to a serial killer and it's going to be PG13.
I'm Colin shenanigans. We'll get into some quick video game talk and then I'm going to wrap it up. After beating Spider-Man, I went back to play Finish Off Batman Arkham Knight. I got to a spot where I was very frustrated.
So I was like, I'm going to put it down and get into something different. I tried playing Nioh or Neo. I don't know how it's pronounced NIOH. I'm sorry, but for like a game that's highly rated, I couldn't get past it at tutorial level and I use Eric what I say about it because it doesn't tell you anything.
I hate games that do that. Now I'm not a dumb guy, but I'm sorry. There should always be a level that you can choose to skip or not with a tutorial where it's like, this is how to equip a weapon. That way I'm not running around.
I had a sword. I had no idea how to use it. So I'm just getting slaughtered by these people guarding these. I'm supposed to escape with a tower of London, which it just wasn't.
I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I got frustrated very easily, very quickly. I shouldn't say easily, but I mean, I really did give it a chance.
It's the same with a game called Bloodborne that you just get dropped into it and sometimes that can be okay. But when you don't know how to equip your weapons, you use them. What's going on? I know sometimes that disorientation can be fun in a game, but those are two examples where they are not and I was like, fuck these games.
I'm not touching them. I'm going to blast on my modest podcast. So I started playing a different one called, and it's only like an 8 to 10 game called Murdered Soul Survivor where you play a cop who was guess what, murdered. And as a ghost, you solve your own murder with the help of this teenage smart-mouthed medium.
I got to say, for a game that I never really heard of, I liked it. It was in between the point and click of a tail-tail game and the open world of LA Noir. So it's kind of right in the middle of where, yeah, you ran around, you had a crime scene that you had a point and click at, but they basically built a small town that you could run around in and explore and find side-mission stuff and clues to different crimes and back stories of a town that evolved other ghost stories. And it was really cool, and I'll tell you right now, I'm not going to ruin it.
But the murder, I was shocked. Shocked. I did not see it coming at all. And usually, I'm pretty good at figuring stuff out, especially on video games.
I mean, I don't make him horribly hard. But the murder, I was like, whoa. And there were some plot twists inside of that where I was like, whoa. So Naya, murdered soul survivor.
It is a little simplistic if you're looking for something really immersive. But for a quick, like, 8-10 hour game, I didn't get platinum on it. There was stuff I didn't find because I didn't know what I was looking for. I really appreciated it.
I did start playing Witcher 3, The Wild Hunt 2 immersive. It was like, I need to back out of this. It was, I just didn't have the time to put into it. And the game mechanics were a little twitchy.
I wasn't a fan of them. So I kind of just set it to the side. I ended up picking up the Assassin's Creed at CO Collection, which I'm enjoying. I've never played Assassin's Creed before.
And this is like kind of a Assassin's Creed 2 Brotherhood and Revelations or Bloodline, something like that. I don't remember what the third game is, but it starts with a Assassin's Creed. But I guess he plays the same Italian Assassin the whole way through. And I can tell it's ported over from PlayStation 2 and 3, so the controls are still sticky.
They're not as intuitive. But I liked the idea of it enough and the mechanics enough that I went and got the newest Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which I think I'm going to start playing today. Even if I don't feel like watching Daredevil Season 3 on Netflix. So Assassin's Creed having kind of walked into it blind, I really like it.
I mean, I'd seen the movie, but that doesn't count because that's barely a movie. There's another note for Fallout TV, but you know what? We'll get to it next week and we'll leave you on that cliffhanger. I don't know, I don't have an outro for this.
I don't have any other segments. I'm supposed to get an IMDB trivia thing, but I think I've set enough connections to XYZ on this. I think I've covered most of what I want. Like I said, there's a cliffhanger.
What will I talk about? What fall TV show did I leave off the list that I watched? You probably figured out if you know me well. And I hope I look forward to even more feedback.
Let me know how I'm doing on this. What I can do segments you might want. I'll see about maybe bringing back a cake bane. I always talk about that on no applause or maybe doing Asco Super Villain.
I might have the time to do that again. And of course, I still don't have an outro. So hey, maybe suggest one of those. I'm not going to do that weird vomit sound.
But I did the first couple episodes. I did it earlier when I was talking about Big Mouth. So sorry. Oh, was it that I do I apologize?
Was that my outro? I can't remember. Remind me. Go to our website, BACNpodcast.com.
Click on all of the links and there's details and a blog and all sorts of crazy shit. So goodbye, I guess. If you like this, check out some of our other shows like Mr. Right, Exotic Liability and No Applause, Just the Clap.
You can find us at www.bacnpodcast.com and by searching for BACN on iTunes and Stitcher. Oh yeah. So. Oh.
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