I do be watching stuff.

#1: What If…? Season 2 Episode 3 “What If Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?”

I’m really liking how Season 2 of What If…? is pretty much just happy and whimsical stories so far. I enjoyed Season 1, but the episodes delved so far into the premise being “what if shit sucked and your favorite heroes died and also everything had no hope?” Here there just seems to be neat little stories put together for the sake of just being a thing to watch. At least until this ropes into the MCU as a whole which it will.

Episode 3 asks the simple question; what if Marvel had its own Die Hard movie but in real life. Happy Hogan (John Favreau) is at Avengers Tower with a very alive Tony Stark (Mick Wingert) as well as Darcy (Kat Dennings), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), and some other people. The Christmas party is ruined when Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) shows up to take over the tower and try to get a sample of Bruce Banner’s blood. It’s up to Happy to stop him and save Christmas.

It’s Die Hard mixed with some other action movie references. All in all not a bad episode, except for Happy permanently transforming into a mixture of purple Hulk and Toxie, but also keeping his sanity in check from moment #1. Josh Keaton took over the voice for Captain America because no way in shit Chris Evans is coming back for a couple voice lines nor is Robert Downey Jr. for Tony.

#2: Avatar: The Last Airbender Episode 2 “Warriors”

I’ll be honest with you folks, I have the vaguest memory of Avatar: The Last Airbender in terms of plot points. As far as this series goes, it may as well be completely new to me outside of a few cliff notes. I haven’t watched Avatar since it first aired back in the mid aughts.

Today’s episode follows Aang as he heads to Kyoshi Island on the idea that maybe connecting with his prior Avatars will give him some ideas on being an Avatar. They arrive at the island to find it not so welcoming to foreigners, a natural side effect of staying neutral during the war and not inviting the Fire Nation. We finally meet Suki (Maria Zhang) who immediately hits it off with Sokka because neither of them have really met anyone outside their tribe and they’d like to fondle each other’s butt cheeks. Sokka may believe himself a born leader but he’d also like her to step on his chest.

Aang is accepting the fact that he’s going to have to let someone train him and Katara is slowly gaining more confidence in her water bending. She’s not that good yet, but she’s getting more confident. She even manages to rough up a few fire nation soldiers.

Meanwhile Zuko enlists the help of Commander Zhao (who naturally figures out that Zuko is hunting the Avatar. Uncle Iroh teaches Zuko the strategic concept of using misdirection to get what you want. The two forces converge on the island where Aang is stuck in a meditative state. Avatar Kyoshi explains that yes, he is going to get people hurt by being present and doing things. But not doing things will result in far more people being hurt, and there’s no way around it. She tells him to give his balls a tug and shows him the true power of the Avatar, whooping two groups of fire nation soldiers and sending them all packing.

All-in-all an enjoyable episode. I’m really warming up to Iroh.

#3: X-Men ’97 “Fire Made Flesh”

Turns out Jean Gray is a clone and it turns out that Mr. Sinister was the one who cloned her. Mr. Sinister tells Jean she can call him daddy, before taking over her mind and making her smash some paintings. Jean then creates herself a new big bobby goth girlfriend outfit, guaranteeing Cyclops will want to impregnate her a second time. Mr. Sinister makes all of the X-Men hallucinate because this is a shared world with Silent Hill Ascension. Everyone is terrified except Beast who maintains his nerdiness quite well.

Also Wolverine who seems more annoyed by the mansion coming to life than anything. And who comes into save the day but Jean Gray. The real Jean Gray. The fake Jean Gray reveals herself as the Goblin Queen, and Cyclops resists the urge to tell her what else she be goblin.

Magneto decides it’s time Mr. Sinister receive an ass-whooping of biblical proportions. Sinister, for those of you who aren’t comic nerds, is a villain obsessed with creating the perfect mutant. He can also clone stuff, so if you knew that you probably figured out immediately that Sinister was behind the clone. There’s a lot of blood in this episode.

Sinister is defeated for the time being but leaves Nathan infected with a form of nanite cancer. The only option is to take him into the future where Bishop might be able to find a cure for him. Clone Jean Gray goes off to find a new life and Storm meets up with Forge who explains that he can get her back her powers. So that whole arc lasted a whole…one episode. Did anyone think Storm would actually lose her powers permanently?

#4: Silent Hill Chapter 15 “Pursuit”

Faith is busy coloring which Eric points out is a great distraction to stop her from trying to stab people, or get them to stab themselves. Krista explains that Rachel isn’t allowed to kill herself because she’s impure and probably the cause of the Withering, but Eric and Faith can go to cult heaven with her. Rachel walks through her house occasionally not noticing some spoopy monsters hiding in the background for the viewer’s pleasure.

Meanwhile Orson is tearing up his book and throwing the pages on the floor, likely because the paper doesn’t taste like grapes and it makes him angry. Astrid is visited by the social worker and I must say after fifteen chapters this show finally got me shocked. The social worker smacks Astrid and Olivia with some needle full of the good drugs and reveals herself possibly as the woman in the woods and a Herald member.

Barbara shows up to Rachel and reveals that she too is a member of the Herald. She explains that The Withering isn’t what they were taught and Xavier was wrong about the Ascension. Xavier wrong about Foundation rituals? No shit, he was so reliable before. Barbara blackmails Rachel and says that she’ll pin Faith going missing on Rachel and Eric will believe it because he’s a moron and will believe anything with a vagina. Recognizing her husband’s single braincell, Rachel agrees.

Well damn, show, you finally had something happen.

It turns out Eva is the start of the Withering, at least according to the Withering group. Eva’s mass murder all those years ago was what ripped the fabric and started the entrance of the Withering into the real world, and Carl furthered it when he killed his wife. Yeah, it turns out he actually did kill Ingrid.  I’m not really sure what else happened this chapter because it’s all stupid.

#5: Shogun “Chapter One: Anjin”

Shogun is like Squid Game, I’ve heard so many good things about it that it started putting me off of wanting to watch it. And then I heard it was very close in spirit to early Game of Thrones but in Japan and I was sold on the concept.

Shogun is a ten episode mini-series based on a novel of the same name from 1975. It is labeled a miniseries which means it’s probably not coming back for a second season and I assume they’re going to cover the whole novel in this show. Created by husband and wife duo Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, Shogun is loosely based on real people but only loosely. Meaning I’m interested in watching it.

The first episode is all about setting things up, as you’d expect. We are introduced to the overall concept of Japan’s leader dying leaving a power vacuum among five regents until the late leader’s daughter comes of age. John Blackthorn (Cosmo Jarvis) washes up with his crew of Dutch merchants only to be taken captive by the Japanese and Lord Toranga (Hiroyuki Sanada). Toranaga has his own problems, being one of the five Regents of whom the other four are very obviously looking to impeach and have killed.

It certainly feels like Game of Thrones but in Japan so it has a little more class. It’s a show that took place in a time where you were either ruthless or you were dead. It’s funny seeing the eastern and western sides both regard the others as godless savages and barbarians, and they’re both not entirely wrong.

The show has some great visuals and at least for the moment seems to be going for less brutality with its violence. Definitely not on the same level as early Game of Thrones. They set the tone in the scene where the characters are going to kill a baby and for a split second you think they’re going to do it on screen for shock, but they don’t.

Time to get into the meat of the show.