Well, that was…unexpected. Having spent half the season foreshadowing its endgame through hushed whispers of something called The Undertaking, you’d think the episode of Arrow actually called “The Undertaking” would see Malcolm’s cataclysmic scheme finally put into motion. By the end of the hour though, all we really get is a big fat cliffhanger, as a big rig hauling the mysteriously named Markov device into Starling City merely signals that, for real guys, the big event the whole season has been building towards is just around the corner. So while “The Undertaking” doesn’t really make good on what’s implied by the title, the bigger surprise is that it still manages to be one of Arrow’s best episodes to date.
The closest thing Mad Men has had to a running joke lately -other than the ongoing farce that is the love life of Pete Campbell- isn’t even really a part of the proper show. Matthew Weiner’s absurd zero tolerance policy regarding anything and everything that could be called a spoiler has bedevilled many professional critics, who have to write early seasonal previews with more redacted information than a hotel review for Gitmo. We laypeople see the strict code of silence most clearly during the obtuse “next week” promos after each episode, which are usually just a string of random non sequiturs that leave you with no impression of what’s to come. This week's featured a shot of a shirtless Roger giving a kissy face, then cut to Don returning the look in a completely different scene, which is good for a laugh, though will no doubt disappoint a few Don-Roger shippers come next week.
In my recap for the last episode of Arrow –a mostly insane, drug-fuelled trip to crazy town that earned the two week hiatus which followed- I mentioned that we’re in the phase of the season where sidebar loose ends need to get tied up, and preparations for the big finish have to begin. At the time, I had assumed these final four weeks of episodes would see the show's serial, season-long plots all coming to bare. Seems we needed one more week before getting down to brass tax, because after all the spring-cleaning accomplished with "Unfinished Business," the latest episode, "Home Invasion," was all about setting the table for what's to come. Considering where things stand after tonight, and that next week looks to be the big Undertaking episode, I'm hopeful we’ve got three weeks of real deal, go-for-broke Arrow ahead of us.
Manhattan is starting to look a whole lot like Westeros these days. Sure, they’re in different timeslots, on different channels, and completely different genres, but Mad Men and Game of Thrones have more in common than you might think. Their plots are expansive, but carefully measured, featuring scads and scads of characters that can sometimes seem indistinguishable under all the suits -armored or Armani. The production design is as big a draw to the show as anything else, which helps the undercurrents of death, and the terror mortality, go down easier. And there’s always plenty of backstabbing, betrayal, lust, and greed, but this week in particular, Game of Thrones and Mad Men both came down to the red stuff. For the former, that was blood; for the latter, it was ketchup.
After spending most of the '00s putting out increasingly lukewarm regular installments of the main Mortal Kombat franchise -and one totally awesome brawler, Shaolin Monks-, NetherRealm’s 2008 entry (and their last under the original Midway Games production title), Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, put enough juice back into the Mortal Kombat name to make it matter to this generation of consoles. One game later, NetherRealm is returning to the fanboy well with a new, all-DC character fighting game, Injustice: Gods Among Us.
The same could be said of Bioshock: Infinite, the latest from Irrational Games that, depending on how you approach it, can look like a magnum opus, or an overreaching Ouroboros; the same coin, a different perspective, to borrow the game’s own words. Few video games have stoked quite the conflagration of textual dissection this one has, which is a rare, welcome sight for a medium where “how does it play” is usually the primary point of interest. Infinite scratches an itch that’s only grown more irritating with the medium’s continued evolution, the continued dearth of gaming experiences that hook into a user’s emotional, intellectual centers, and not just the adrenaline gland. It asks the player to engage beyond the surface, default experience of gaming as entertainment, and offers itself up for analysis. Where most other triple-A titles want to be a rollercoaster, Bioshock says, “You must commit this much thought to enjoy the ride.”
You guys, it finally happened: we now have a reason to take pity on Jon Hamm. I know, I know, it didn’t seem like this day would ever come. The guy’s not only charming, funny, and a talented actor (in addition to being just stupid handsome), but even his problems sound pretty enviable to your average guy. Part of you has to rationalize that anyone as all-around awesome as Hamm, has to have some horrible, preferably ironic baggage that balances the fairness scales of life, but it wasn’t until tonight that Jon Hamm’s terrible secret came to be known: he directs bad Mad Men episodes.
What’s the deal with Starling City? There’s probably a way to work up to that question without making the theme from Seinfeld play in the back of your head, but really, what do we know about the place Arrow calls home? Last week, I assumed McKenna Hall had been written out of the show with extreme prejudice just short of returning to her home planet, but as it turns out, Coast City is practically within spitting distance of Starling. But to figure that out, I had to Google a map of the DC universe, which is a real thing someone made, as it turns out.
