The Umbrella Academy – Season Three

I’ve talked about the first season and the second season of The Umbrella Academy so I thought I might as well share my thoughts on season three of it. I was hoping to see Elvis or Lightyear this week but didn’t get the chance. Keep an eye out for them next week though.

Anyway, The Umbrella Academy’s third season picks up right where we left of. They are confronted by The Sparrow Academy and they have a bit of a fight then go on their separate ways. The Umbrella Academy do actually stick together a bit more this season though.

I think the strongest aspect of this season is the fact that we get to see the Umbrella Academy actually spend some time with each other. The cast have really good chemistry and it’s very entertaining to see them arguing.

I thought the show did a good job of integrating Elliot Page’s transition into the show and have Viktor be a trans man as well. Hopefully it brings some understanding to people about how you should treat someone who has transitioned. I like that they show how easy it is for the family to start saying Viktor because it is just that simple to be accepting.

The end of the world plot feels a bit more ominous in this season. It hangs over the heads of the characters in a way that it didn’t before. It was good to see some of them reach a level of acceptance about their fate.

Overall, The Umbrella Academy’s third season was pretty good but I do hope that the next season is the last as I’m not sure how many apocalypses I want to see them survive. Also they always end on cliffhangers and I wish they wouldn’t as I don’t trust Netflix to not cancel the show.

13 Reasons Why – Season Three

This show somehow continues. Did you watch this show for the Hannah Baker plot? Well too bad! That’s gone now. There are still references to Hannah and the tapes but the show is very much moving forward without her. This season feels so different that it might as well be a different show. This season is a murder mystery where Clay and a new character, Ani, try to find out who killed Bryce Walker. The narration for each episode is done by Ani in the form of her talking to a police officer during an interrogation.

The first two seasons were pretty well structured I’d say. The first season is divided by each tape that Hannah made and the narration is the tape. The second season is divided by each character’s testimony in the trial and the narration is the testimony of the character. I think both of these examples work very well but the third season’s structure is a bit off to me. The intro suggests that each episode is divided by a different piece of evidence but Ani seems to be focusing on a character rather than a piece of evidence in her narration.

Ani is basically the new main character. They always needed to introduce a new character if the plan for this season was to try and redeem Bryce because all the other characters hate Bryce too much for them to be used a character that the audience gets to know Bryce through. The only character that still likes Bryce by the end of season two is Monty and he probably not the best character to use since he’s basically the secondary villain of the show after Bryce. Ani has no real history with Bryce so he can open up to her so the audience can know he is trying to change.

Redeeming Bryce is an odd way for the show to go especially considering how much they went out of their way to show how much of an arsehole he was in the first two seasons. I think it is always going to be hard to get the audience to feel sorry for him. Also, I think by having one of the main characters kill him off, you write yourself into a corner because now you have to have characters all work together to basically cover up a crime and that feels like the complete opposite of what these characters were about in the first two seasons.

Clay is still a pretty bad character who gets closer and closer to being a “good guy” character who’s only purpose on the show is to feel entitled to whichever girl he is attracted to at the time. He gets to call out morally questionable things done by the characters but he does so many morally questionable things to the point where he becomes the number one suspect in the Bryce murder case and you start thinking that maybe he has done it.

The show does have an overarching theme for this season or at least I took one away from it after watching it. This season seems to be about “breaking the cycle”, a phrase that several characters say throughout the season. They want to stop the cycle of abuse that takes place at Liberty High as a result of the jock culture. Jessica starts Hands Off, which is a safe space for survivors of abuse. Zach tries to break the cycle of abuse with the football team by trying to stop Charlie, a new student at the school, from being taken in by the bad guys like Monty.

The problem faced in the school has parallels with a lot of what’s going on in the world at the moment. There are people in society that are allowed to do things to people and get away with it. In the show, there are members of the football team that don’t want to be judged as a whole by the actions of “a few bad ones” but they need to stand up and take action against the bad ones on the team, it’s not enough to just not be a bad one. You need to break the cycle by reporting their actions. The football team gets a lot more funding than any other department in the school, which sounds familiar to something else in America.  It’s the police! I’m comparing them to the police in case I was being too subtle. I don’t know if this is a thing that other people thought while watching the show but I got it.

I think the show has lost its way by this point. I think it tries hard to link it back to Hannah and the first two seasons but I think that it is too detached to try and link it. I was hoping to see something a bit more detached from the seasons while still feeling like it was in the same world but this feels like a different show and the characters feel different from the first two seasons. This season should’ve been about Clay writing fan fiction where Hannah is still alive and he has to be talked away from Hannah by his friends in the real world. I’m imagining like the G.I Jeff episode of Community but that’s probably a bit too out there for this show.

 

Top 5 Simpsons Season 3 Episodes

Season 3 is a really tough season of The Simpsons to pick a Top 5 for. I think this is when The Simpsons really started to come into its own and they managed to get the perfect balance of jokes and heart. We get a chance to see side characters like Krusty and Edna Krabappel get some development in their own episodes. We get a better understanding of the family dynamic, especially between Homer and Lisa.

There are some episodes early in the season that allow us to see sides of characters that we didn’t see. ‘Mr Lisa Goes to Washington’ is really the start of the politically minded Lisa that we see moving forward in the show. It was really tough to pick a Top 5 and as the season went on, it got harder as the episodes got funnier but I think I am pretty happy with my Top 5.

5. Bart the Lover

This is one that I didn’t think would have been in my Top 5 before I started the Season 3 rewatch but I really liked this one. The main plot is about Bart pretending to be a man replying to a personal ad placed in the newspaper by Mrs Krabappel. We get to see Edna in her personal life where we realise that she is a very sad character that is desperate to find someone. Bart comes along and pranks her by arranging a date which no one shows up for, leaving Edna alone. Bart has a moment of growth when he realises how sad Edna is and he writes her a letter that gives her some closure and leaves her happy.

It probably has one of the funniest B-plots in a Simpsons episode where we see Homer having to stop swearing after Todd Flanders says he doesn’t want any “damn vegetables”. Homer then gets a swear jar which leads to a great montage of him swearing. I love the ending when Lisa and Marge just buy a new doghouse with the swear jar money and Homer gets some beer but not after the disappointment of thinking he got Maggie.

4. Black Widower

I love a Sideshow Bob episode of The Simpsons and this one is up there with Cape Feare for me. I like how we see Sideshow Bob laying out the pieces of the plot to kill Selma throughout the episode as it makes it more believable that Bart would be able to solve the mystery. This is probably the best-looking episode of the season, which seems to be a common thing with the Sideshow Bob episodes. It was tough to pick a still from the episode to use but I am pretty happy with the one that I used.

3. Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk

This is episode is up here for the land of chocolate sequence alone but this episode has some great moments. I love how much Homer is down on his luck in this episode. He sells stock in the Power Plant for $25 when everyone else held on and sold theirs for $5,200. He is then the only employee to be fired by the new German owners. He obviously lands on his feet when Mr Burns gets the Plant back but Homer still has to watch out for Mr Burns in the future.

One of the highlights has to be the botox that Lenny gets done that makes him have a permanent smile even when it’s the worst day of his life.

2. Flaming Moe’s

I love this episode, mainly for just the idea of the Flaming Moe (Homer). I just like the idea of this drink that’s a mad mix of different alcohol and cough syrup which tastes better after it has been lit on fire. The Cheers sequence is great, which is why I used it as the image for this episode. Homer and Moe’s friendship is put to the test in the episode but Moe comes to realise that Homer is a true friend and loyal customer, who stands by him. The line of the episode has to be “Oh look at me, I’m making people happy”.

1. Homer at the Bat

This was always going to be number one. This is such a standout episode and it is weird to think that episode like this is so good especially with how many guest stars there are in this episode. Sometimes when celebrities appear on The Simpsons, it feels like they idolise them too much but this episode takes famous baseball players and has them basically become cursed. Each thing that happens to a player is great but I love Mr Burns shouting at Don Mattingly to shave his sideburns.