Vince Vaughn and the Ill-Behaved Primate

Bad monkey, so-so title, great show

I didn’t have high hopes for Bad Monkey. Don’t get me wrong, I like Vince Vaughn as much as the next guy; Old School was one of those movies I loved growing up, but have been a little hesitant to return to because I’m not sure how well it has aged (actually, I’m fairly certain it hasn’t aged that well, thinking about what I remember of it). So I sort of assumed that Bad Monkey would see a continuation of that sort of “lad humor” that I’m really not that into anymore. I figured if I’ve outgrown Old School, I’ve outgrown Vince Vaughn. But, I was convinced to give it a shot and I couldn’t be more glad that I did.

It turns out that Bad Monkey is kind of a combination of a noir detective story, Miami Vice, and, oddly enough, Ted Lasso, with which it shares some of the creative team. Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy, an on the rocks detective in the Florida Keys, who is in trouble because he, somewhat rashly, but in a sort of justified kind of way, pushed a rich old guy into the ocean…with his car. But anyway, he went from Miami PD to the Keys, and is perpetually a dog with a bone.

The inciting incident is somewhat gruesome. An arm is found during a fishing tour and Yancy’s boss wants Yancy to take the arm up to Miami and try and dump it on them so his precinct doesn’t have a murder counted against them. Do this favor and his suspension would be lifted. So, he drives the arm up to Miami and when he’s rebuffed by PD there, his boss instructs him to dump the arm, this time into a swamp so the alligators can clear the case for them.

Remember what I said about Yancy being a dog with a bone? Well, in this case, it means that he couldn’t let that go. I know cops don’t have the best reputation these days and rightly so, and often I find myself having a hard time stomaching a certain type of cop show that is still prevalent on network TV, but Yancy seems to not only truly care about justice, but in the Ted Lasso tradition, he also truly cares about people. Like the legendary moustache man himself, Yancy is a surprisingly kind and open-hearted fellow who likes to talk. A lot. But there’s this almost incongruous quality to the job that he does and the way he goes about it. He reads people well, but he takes as them as they are. He judges a bit, sure, we all do, but it’s never too petty (though at times it does get pretty petty), but his approach to life and to people is very positive. He’s an oversharer, perhaps, but Yancy really does come across as a person who believes in right and wrong in a way that is very much live and let live, until you start harming another person. Unlike Lasso, Yancy does have a bit of a rough edge to him and he has his fair share of flaws—he’s not a relentless ball of positivity and energy that Ted Lasso is, but he’s definitely a good person. Even though he’s a cop. Well, he’s mostly a cop. Well, sort of, anyway.

It’s not just a character-driven show either and it’s more than Vaughn’s performance as Andrew Yancy that keeps you there. And it’s also not just my unending appreciation of Meredith Hagner’s abilities as an actress either that kept me interested (if you haven’t seen Search Party yet, it streams on HBO and she is an understated powerhouse in it). In fact, just about the whole cast is excellent. It’s difficult enough to point to Vaughn’s and Hagner’s performances as standouts amongst their peers, because it’s even more difficult to not mention how good just about every other actor is in the show. I mean, this is a show that also has Michelle Monaghan, who is one of my favorite actresses of all time and whom I rate very, very highly on the talent scale. In addition to her, there’s also Jodie Turner-Smith, playing a dubious island mystic known as The Dragon Queen (you may have seen her playing Mother Aniseya in the unfairly maligned The Acolyte on Disney+, but that’s a whole thing for another post), Natalie Martinez, who shines in her starring role, and Rob Delaney, Ronald Peet, and John Ortiz (fresh off his role in American Fiction) who round out the cast with aplomb. Everywhere you look in Bad Monkey, there’s an abundance of acting talent. But, the story is compelling and it comes to a narratively satisfying conclusion after 10 episodes (really sort of feels like the sweet spot for TV series these days, 8 to 10 episodes, except for Bob’s Burgers and Abbott Elementary, for which there will never be enough episodes for me). It weaves itself from a whodunnit to a howcatchem and I am completely fine with that. Every transition and story movement feels natural and organic, nothing comes out of nowhere. Yancy was never going to be Philip Marlowe and he was also never going to be Columbo, but the show threads the needle very well, giving you an engrossing story that you enjoy watching unfold. I don’t want to go into too many details and ruin the experience for you, but suffice it to say that from the very first episode, I was hooked. The twists and turns along the way are always earned, they’re never just there for shock value, and every beat they hit feels like part of a well composed symphony.

And that’s one of the hardest tightropes to walk when writing a mystery, even though this isn’t strictly a mystery all the way through. Too many times, you find yourself embroiled in a plot, running the numbers in your head, pinning up yarn on your corkboard until you look like Charlie from Always Sunny and then the show decides to throw you something at the end that makes no sense just because it’s something you’d never have thought of. Or, sometimes the clues are there, but the conclusion is so unsatisfying that it tanks the rewatchability of a series. A great mystery is a great mystery, even after it’s solved. But some shows just don’t stick the landing and they do it in such a poor manner that you can’t go back to it and enjoy the process again in the future, such as recent hopefuls Death and Other Details and A Murder at the End of the World. It feels like it’s happened so many times that I hesitate to recommend a mystery until I know that the ending is a good one. But that’s not a concern here, as everything is crafted so well and no surprise is too far out of left field as to feel too easy or manipulative. The show respects its viewers and doesn’t pull cheap tricks. I really like that and I appreciate the skill it takes to manage that feat.

As of the time of writing, Bad Monkey’s season finale just aired this week, but its fate for a second season is still up in the air. Luckily, it’s on Apple TV and not Netflix, so it hasn’t been cancelled five times before even airing, but it also means that it’s not as widely available as it would be were it on Hulu or Peacock either. But if you have Apple TV, it’s well worth your time. And if you don’t have Apple TV, but can get a free trial of it, definitely do that. I won’t tell, promise. Yancy would probably let it slide too.

I Want a Clean Fight, No Blows Below the Fold

Newspapers: They’re not just for Garfield comics and lining birdcages

It’s amazing how little changes over time.

There are a few kinds of movies I’m always going to be interested in. I love a war movie. When I hear of a new one coming out, I always eagerly await the reviews, decide to watch it anyway, and if it does disappoint, I keep my head up looking for the next Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Dunkirk, or The Covenant, when, sadly, we have a lot of Jarhead 2s and Hacksaw Ridges. I love a whodunnit, I’ve seen all the Branagh Poirot movies at least twice and I tell anyone who will listen that See How They Run is an underrated gem. I also love movies about curmudgeonly writers, but I feel like if I said why, that would be telling.

But I’m not here to talk about any of those kinds of movies. I want to talk about another kind of movie that I love—reporter films. It’s not something we see too often anymore (though it seems they’re making a comeback), but as a kid, reporter was always one of those things I wanted to grow up to be, along with astronaut baseball player and moon knight (not the superhero Moon Knight, mind you, a knight on the moon who rides a space dragon), as well as a brief stint wanting to be a chaotician, so when a good reporter film comes along, they’ve got me hook, line, and sinker. I love seeing an overworked, underpaid underdog taking on the system to get the truth to the people. I especially love it if they’re exposing corruption and conspiracies, but it doesn’t always have to be so grandiose. I don’t always need it to be as hefty as Spotlight or State of Play, or as understatedly brilliant and touching as Safety Not Guaranteed, or as significant in scope as Frost/Nixon or Zodiac. Because when it comes to those fighting for the truth, it is always hefty, it is always touching, it is always significant; to me, at least.

And that brings me to The Paper, a movie that I’ve had in my Netflix queue for weeks, but I could never find myself in the right mood for until it got the dreaded “Leaving Soon” tag on the thumbnail. Of course, the way streaming services work, it’s likely only a matter of time until it pops up on some other streamer, so I could always go on the hunt for it again in a few weeks (don’t you love the freedom of cable cutting?), but I found the two hours or so and decided to put down Astro Bot and watch it.

Boy am I glad I did.

Tomei shines as Marti, just one of the excellent performances in this film

For those unfamiliar, like I was, The Paper is a 1994 film about a struggling New York newspaper that is a stand-in for the New York Post, taking place over a 24 hour period, or one news cycle, which is how the news used to be before 24 hour news channels and eventually Twitter changed the entire scene. We open on two young Black men stumbling across a vandalized car with anti-white slurs painted on it. They think the occupants are asleep, so they approached the car to wake them up and tell them that it’s not that safe a place to bivouac for the night and they should probably move on. But in the car were two slain white men and beside it, a discarded MAC-11 lying on the sidewalk. As one man reaches for the gun, the other tells him not to, and a witness stumbles upon the scene, causing the Black men to flee in fear of being held responsible for the double homicide they did not commit. More on this later. Then we get to see Henry Hackett, played by Michael Keaton, whom, depending on how old you are, you may remember as Batman, Beetlejuice, Birdman, or if you’re one of the unfortunate few who also sat through The Flash, old Batman. You may also recognize him from Spotlight, another excellent film in which Keaton plays a dedicated newsman. He wakes up next to his seriously pregnant wife (played by Marisa Tomei), fully dressed, and very deeply in trouble with her. You see, in addition to being the metro editor for a troubled paper, he’s also about to become a father for the first time and his wife is worried—and scared—that she’s going to lose her career, also as a reporter, and end up raising their child with an absentee father and partner because he’s always at the office. Rounding out the cast is not only a ton of talent you’ll recognize, namely Glenn Close, Robert Duvall, and Randy Quaid, but also a veritable who’s who of slightly younger than you remember them white guys, such as the bad guy from Mr. Robot, Gil from Frasier, that cop from an episode of Monk where he briefly rejoins the force, and another guy who was also in Spotlight. There was definitely a lot of “Oh, I know that guy, he’s the one who does the Nixon impression in that episode of Parks & Rec”, but overall it was a reasonably diverse cast for 1994, including Geoffrey Owens and Roma Maffia, and I commend them for that. With these older movies, you take what you can get; diversity wasn’t a priority in the 90s, so when you see anything even reasonably diverse, it’s memorable.

He’s not paranoid if they’re actually out to get him, right?

What is also memorable is what hasn’t changed. Young Black men are still blamed for crime, the NYPD still busts down your door with guns drawn no matter who is in the room, and the truth is still a fight. It’s a story as old as stories about the news—business wants while the news needs. The paper, the New York Sun, is recovering from teetering on the edge of shutting up shop when the business-minded paper savior and managing editor Glenn Close brings them back from the edge, but only just. And here it is. Here is the crux of the story, the spool around which all the threads are wrapped. The news needs the truth; the news needs accuracy, clarity, timeliness, and diligence. And all these needs cost money. Business wants profits. In order to maximize profits, it’s usually the needs of the news that suffer. Business wants, the news needs. It’s hard not to see the tension and how both sides here have genuine pros and cons; Close may be the antagonist in the film, but she’s hardly villainous. After all, you can’t have the paper if you can’t keep the lights on and put ink on the page. So in order to have independent journalism, you need to have someone footing the bill. But there needs to be balance—all too often now, business seems to take the forefront. Sensationalism is the word of the day; if it bleeds, it leads, but even better now if it makes you angry. In an era where the truth has become malleable, where total fictions and outright lies are run with loudly and corrected quietly, and misinformation and disinformation are beamed to your phone in an instant, The Paper seems more relevant than ever.

I know it may seem like they’re friends from this picture, but they’re not

In a way, it’s a love letter to journalism, including the dirty side of it. The Paper doesn’t shy away from the characters’ personal struggles and faults. Glenn Close is having an affair with a reporter. Robert Duvall has an estranged daughter and a prostate the size of a bagel, according to him. Marisa Tomei is nigh on petrified that she’ll be raising their child alone, losing her identity in the process. Keaton wants to be there for his family, but constantly ignores the concerns of his wife because of his dedication to the paper; so much so that he steals a lead from competing paper The Sentinel, while there on a job interview for a job that Tomei desperately wants him to take because it means better hours and more money for their nascent family. Randy Quaid’s character is a needed bit of comic relief in what is ostensibly a comedy, but even he has his troubles—we meet him sleeping on Keaton’s office sofa with a revolver tucked into his pants because he believes the civil servant he’s been lambasting in his column is coming after him. These people do a thankless job with little pay and great personal sacrifice; at least when it’s being done right. The movie still finds the comedy in their situation, though. Through all this, there are plenty of laughs to be had, but it’s not the thing about this film that really stuck out to me; it’s how even thirty years later, these stories still feel familiar, not because they’re overused tropes, but because they’re still relevant. Because we’re still facing them. Because not enough has changed. Print media is still in peril. The truth is still under attack. Profits are still being prioritized. The police and public are still all too happy to blame the closest Black person for crime, and the cops still come through the door in a way that makes every arrest feel like it could end up like Two Distant Strangers.

Now that campaigning politicians can lie, admit it’s a lie, and continue to run on the admitted lie and people believe them, it may seem quaint for reporters to come to literal blows over a headline painting two innocent kids as murderers being brought to justice, but the fight for truth has to happen on every level. Shades of the Central Park Five loom over the lead story in The Paper, but beyond that, we know here, as viewers, that the two teenagers accused of the murder are innocent, but we’re not the only ones. After hearing some chatter on the police scanner, Quaid is convinced that not only is the arrest bogus, the cops know it’s bogus, and the arrests are just for optics. But, Close wants to run a gotcha headline because they got pipped to the post the day before on the actual murders; and I mean she literally wants to run a photo of the suspects doing the perp walk to the prison bus with the headline of “GOTCHA!” plastered across the front page. News reports running in the background televisions have interviews with people cancelling plans to come to New York; tourism dollars were starting to become a concern citywide because the murders and news coverage were stoking racial tensions. Pressure on all sides. Keaton decides to step up, running with Quaid’s intuition, but doesn’t have the proof. But like any dedicated journalist, he’s determined to get it.

A bagel, he says, ruining one of my favorite breakfast items for the next few months, at least

The story has lots of plot points that weave together, but it all comes to a head when, two hours after they’re supposed go to the presses, let’s just say that Keaton and Close make more than impassioned arguments for their side. And what ensues, well, that just needs to be experienced without me tinting anything for you. But what I will say is that while The Paper may be a forgotten film, overshadowed by other blockbusters from 1994 like The Lion King, Forrest Gump, True Lies, Clear and Present Danger, and Speed, this is a movie that holds up to the test of time and—in the current news climate—is more than relevant, it’s important. The Paper leaves Netflix on September 30th, so I haven’t given you a very large window, but like I said, if you miss it, keep it on your watchlist. It’ll show up somewhere soon enough and it is absolutely worth your time. Because good journalism is as important as ever and this movie acts as a well needed reminder.

Here Keaton uses an ancient relic, a landline.

It’s Thwippin’ Time: A Game of the Year Post

Sure, it’s got superheroes and a whole guy made of sand, but it’s humanity that’s at the core of Spider-Man 2

I normally don’t do “of the year” posts. I’m not a professional reviewer; everything I review is something I watch or play in my free time and I have my own limitations and personal likes and dislikes. When I do make lists, I always try make sure I couch it as simply my opinion and not try to present it as a definitive list. I don’t say “best”, I say favorite. My top five Christmas movies, not the five best Christmas movies, you know what I mean? When it comes to video games, not only is the initial investment higher than waiting for it to come to a streaming service, the time it takes to experience a game meaningfully is much higher than a movie or TV series. Sure, Rebel Moon may feel like it’s 70 hours long because of how rote and by the numbers it is, but it’s not actually. Even at my busiest, I can manage to get through a movie in at most two or three sittings (except for The Meg 2, somehow they managed to squeeze all the fun out of the first movie and make it borderline unbearable to watch). So when I talk about my Game of the Year, it’s just that. My game. Two or three games have really been at the forefront of GOTY discussions and of those, I’ve only played one for a short time and the other two I haven’t played at all. So, suffice it to say, I don’t have a complete knowledge of every game that came out this year. But one game did make an impression on me that was surprising, lasting, and deeply affecting.

Of course Baldur’s Gate 3 has dominated the Game of the Year conversation, along with Tears of the Kingdom, the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel, and to a lesser extent, Alan Wake 2. And with good reason. I personally haven’t given Tears of the Kingdom a go yet; I didn’t really enjoy Breath of the Wild for a few reasons, despite the fact that every time I booted it up, I did spend a good twenty minutes just in awe of how beautiful the world was and how amazing it looked and felt to move around that giant space (really kind of mind-blowing when you consider that was a launch title and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet launched 5 years later and doesn’t look or perform half as well). But, it seems that TOTK took BOTW and improved on it and was a very rich and rewarding gaming experience for those who do enjoy Zelda games. I’ll eventually get around to it, even if I have to use guides to get through. I’m determined to eventually get firsthand knowledge of why Zelda is such a beloved franchise—I was a Sega kid, after the original NES, I went to Genesis and never really played many Nintendo titles, save for Pokemon and a few random Game Boy/DS titles. BOTW was my first Zelda. I’ve also never come close to an Alan Wake title, but boy does it sound interesting.

Now, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a masterpiece. A perfect 10 out of 10 on IGN. 96 Metascore. On the podcast The Besties, Griffin McElroy described it at “miraculous” on numerous occasions, at least three times over multiple episodes. So it’s only fitting that it’s one of the most talked about games in the GOTY conversation and that it indeed won The Game Awards’ Game of the Year. But it’s not my game of the year.

There’s nothing I have bad to say about Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s amazing. I don’t have that much play time in it, but what I have done so far has been exhilarating, satisfying, and rewarding. I’ve played in a few stalled Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, loved the movie (boy did that come out of nowhere, I never thought a D&D movie could be so fun or well done), and generally enjoy being able to do roguish things in video games, so it’s generally a good fit. I love that there are completely and meaningfully different ways for you to approach just about every problem in BG3. A lot of games give you the illusion of choice, a dialogue tree that eventually gets you to largely the same conclusion regardless of your choices, but BG3 doesn’t feel like that. Your choices feel like they have real consequences and consequences that are unique to your playthrough; including ones that are unforeseen. I can’t take anything away from Baldur’s Gate 3, but for me, it had some of the same problems that BOTW has. Part of it is just that the scale is so massive, it’s intimidating. That’s probably the biggest one. Trying to jump into BG3 felt like swimming the English Channel while I’m still getting used to wearing my floaties. Even the opening sequence is almost impossibly large in scale. Perhaps it’s my own failing, but in the face of BG3’s expansive narrative, deep lore, and massive map, I felt immediately lost and quite small. Launching the app became a daunting task, an Everest to climb before getting out of bed. It is a game that demands—and deserves—your full attention and dedication and at this time, giving it that just didn’t seem on the cards. I will, no doubt, revisit BG3, and soon. Though I may only have about 5 to 10 hours in the game, I want to play more. I feel the drive to get in and master my character, learn more about the game, and immerse myself in the world.

But there’s one game from 2023 that made me feel all those things as well; one game that had me spending idle moments waiting for the slivers of free time to jump in and get going, one game that had me coming back everyday because of how amazing the gameplay experience is. And that game is Spider-Man 2.

A thrilling opening sequence gets you right into the game and adds to the cinematic feel most open world games lack

Now, there’s no way I can sell you on Spider-Man 2 being the technical marvel that BG3 and TOTK are. I know that. But there’s still a lot to love here and for many reasons. As a narrative action open world RPG, Spider-Man 2 doesn’t skimp on any aspect of the experience. The combat system here is refined, changed only slightly from the previous games, and while I did miss some of the old features that made crowd control easier and gave you a feeling of invincibility at times (my kingdom for a Web Blossom every once in a while), I can’t fault the changes they made. Sure, there were times where the game felt more like Arkham, where Batman’s brutality was doled out in smaller doses before having to retreat to the darkness, leaving enemies frightened and nervous (especially those with guns). I did find myself having to strike quickly, lay a small beat down on some enemies, and then swing to relative safety to catch my breath and evaluate my strategy for the rest of the fight. I did lament the loss of that feeling of invincibility, but as the narrative unfolded, I realized how important it was that the combat helped you remember that you’re Spider-Man, not Superman, and that things very well can come to an end for Peter or Miles. They’re not invincible, anything but. I came to appreciate that I felt more vulnerable in fights; after all, I think it’s Spider-Man’s humanity that makes him such an enduring and appealing hero. I’ve never really read any Spider-Man comics with regularity, I watched the cartoon in the 90s, but ranked it behind X-Men and far behind Batman: The Animated Series, I enjoyed the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films (emo Peter’s dance number aside), but I skipped the Andrew Garfield movies and the MCU’s No Way Home left a very bitter taste in my mouth even though I like the first two movies (it felt a lot more like Jurassic World than Jurassic Park, if you know what I mean), but despite all that, I’ve always ranked Spider-Man as one of my favorite heroes.

Traversal has never been more fun

But more on the narrative later, let’s get back to gameplay. Now, I’m usually one to say that I generally look for one of three things to do in a game—shoot bad guys in the face, be a Premier League club manager, or pet and/or battle with Pokemon. Failing all that, it better be a racing game. Spider-Man 2 offers almost none of that (there are some missions where you get to zap some bad guys in the face, they offered a fun departure from the regular combat loop), but I still found the combat in SM2 (as well as SM1 and SM: Miles Morales) to be incredibly satisfying, if not the most satisfying combat of any game I’ve ever played. It’s not just fun, it’s the right amount of challenging and the right level of difficult to engage you on both a reactive and strategic level. For a game like this to hold my attention at all is a minor miracle, but for me to wake up thinking about what I want to tackle in-game during my free time that day is a completely different feeling. I’m not a completionist by any means, and even in games that I’ve spent 80 to 100 hours in a single player campaign like Red Dead Redemption 2, getting to 100% is just something I’ve never cared about. But despite the fact that I’ve finished the story, I’m going to go back and get to 100%, just because the experience of being in the game is so much fun. Much like the previous games, traversal is an exercise of pure joy, as you zip, swing, and thwip your way across a simulacrum of New York. New for this game is the ability to glide using “Web Wings”. Personally, I found it largely a practical inclusion because of the distances you had to travel and the smaller buildings in some of the new areas of the map, like Brooklyn and Queens. And yet, after I spent a little time trying to master the new mechanic (and spent a few points upgrading my character), I found the flight to be almost as satisfying as the webslinging, though it still doesn’t hit the same way. I mean, lots of superheroes can fly, it’s almost a given in the superhero world; but only Spider-Man webslings. SM2 introduced a new way to fast travel, something I only tried once because I heard that it was something you had to try at least once (and it was cool). Getting around is just such a good time, I never found a good reason to want to get to my destination any faster than I already could. Traversal this good makes this game such an amazing experience. I remember in the early days of the pandemic, when quarantine was still new, I used to boot RDR2, just do go for a ride on my horse, go fishing, and play some poker at a saloon. Now, that’s a testament to just how much you could do in that game and how well it was all executed, but despite being a smaller scale of game, I did find myself playing just to have a quick swing around the city and stop a few crimes rather than always jumping into missions. That’s how enjoyable the game is. It took everything about the previous games and just made it better; and those were both fantastic experiences to begin with. So the gameplay is slightly different, but still somehow much improved.

A passing familiarity with Spider-Man lore would leave you quite worried at the sight of Peter’s cool black suit

The way the story unfolds is different as well. While in the previous games we get a taste of Miles’s origin story, these games have benefitted from largely avoiding the origin trap and giving us an established Spider-Man to pilot around the city. Now that both our Spider-Men have gone through their beginnings, you get to see levels of growth that you haven’t really seen in the movies, which seem to be rebooted every decade or so in a weird licensing tug-of-war hell. Peter is in a different phase of his life; still dealing with the fallout of the events of the first game, Peter carries the weight of loss on his shoulders. Miles has a different journey than Peter, one that sees change in his life as well. And despite the fact that in any other situation, I’m extremely tired of superpowered teenagers, Miles’s problems are palpable and relatable—surprisingly grounded for a guy who can swing around on webs and punch people with electricity.

Everything here is more mature and nuanced than the previous games, letting you slow down and take a breath and live in the story with the characters. This game’s New York feels very real and lived in and the fact that the main characters and their support have their own issues that they’re dealing with and working through makes it feel all the more real. There’s a real sense of grief, of loss, of coping, of rage and anger. All these characters, not just Peter and Miles, feel like real people. When you interact with them, it feels like they’re living their lives and you’re just jumping in for a small vignette, rather than feeling like NPCs are waiting patiently for you to interact with them.

Spider-Man 2 reminds us that the people we surround ourselves with are a source of strength and support

Much has been said about the side missions of the previous games and how the ones in this game are better, and they are. But they’re not just better because they’re less repetitive, less annoying, and more rewarding, they’re better because they tell stories. Some of them echo the feelings of loss and regret that the protagonists are going through. Some touched me more deeply than others, more deeply than I thought video game stories still could. But by the third time I was wiping away tears from my eyes, I knew I was playing something special. The key word to this game’s narrative is empathy. The way the story shows empathy to not just the protagonists and the people that they care about, but to the random person on the street who simply needs help and to the game’s villains themselves puts empathy at the forefront of the game’s core set of values. As you work through the missions and more of the story is unveiled, you feel for the characters, even the so-called villains. The game makes it a point to humanize just about everyone you deal with, minus the scores and scores of nameless criminals you beat and web up with gleeful abandon. But hey, you can’t stop and smell the roses at every mugging, kidnapping, arson, or monster attack. I know that rightful praise has been heaped on Baldur’s Gate’s narrative and I’m sure it is every bit as deep and rewarding as Spider-Man 2’s or more so, but the way this feels so human and so easily understandable is remarkable. I couldn’t help but feel like a part of me was in almost every character. The anger of Miles, the grief of Peter, the fear of the New Yorker looking for her aging grandfather, the yearning of Harry to feel healthy and normal, the need for MJ to make a difference, the quest for peace of Howard the homing pigeon keeper; I saw a little bit of myself in each and every one of them. And yet, despite all this, despite the game making me face feelings I didn’t particularly want to face, despite the greater heft of the story, I found myself able to dip in and out and do some regular superhero stuff to re-center myself before going back to the story missions. The relatively seamless switching between Miles and Peter gives you a back door when the story leaves you needing a break emotionally. If things are getting too deep with Peter, swap to Miles for a bit and do some of his missions and vice-versa. There’s always an out, so the weight of the story never becomes too taxing.

More focus on Miles means wonderful new confusingly named Venom powers

And here lies one of the biggest reasons Spider-Man 2 is the Game of the Year for me. Approachability. The size and scale and openness and consequence of games like Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 can be paralyzing at times. Permadeath adds a level of pressure to the gameplay that isn’t always welcome; I understand its inclusion in games and I’m not against it in general. Giving real consequences such as character death in the game raises the stakes, the intensity, and does leave the palms sweaty. It’s not like it’s a bad thing, but I’ve found that I’ve become the kind of guy who wants everyone to make it home at the end of the day. If put in the role of a leader of people, I want to get them all to the end of the game alive. I don’t know, call it a flaw, but I want to be a hero. I want to save people, including my own party of course. But yes, much like character death in films, sometimes it’s necessary and I completely understand that. However, it doesn’t lend itself to a super casual experience. And not everything needs to be a casual or relaxing experience; there’s room for all this in gaming (and in film, for that matter), but at this point, where I am mentally and emotionally, it’s an added stressor to the gameplay and makes it a little more difficult for me to engage with a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 because I have to get into the right mindset (or manage a hell of a lot of save files) to play and I can’t just pick it up and play to lift my mood.

Spider-Man 2’s New York map is huge. It feels so much bigger than Spider-Man and Miles Morales. But it never feels daunting; it’s New York, I’ve been there a hundred times physically and virtually thousands more. In film and TV, New York is nearly 50% of all the cities in the world (the others being Los Angeles, and occasionally “London” or “other”), so no matter how big it got, it always felt familiar to me. Perhaps people who grew up playing games like Zelda or other Baldur’s Gate games feel the same sense of familiarity with those maps and that helps it feel like less of an enormous playground to get lost in, but for me, it’s like learning a new language. But that familiarity definitely made things easier for me to jump into and out of SM2 as necessary.

Harry’s back and he’s happy, healthy, and alive, like the Nutriboom founder’s wife

Everything about Spider-Man 2 felt comfortable. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a challenging game or that I want games to be easy, but I often look at media as a form of give and take. I look at what experiencing an uncomfortable piece of media, for example, say The Power of the Dog, gives me and I think about it in terms of what it takes from me to watch it. What emotional distress it causes, what personal feelings it may dredge up that I’ve spent a lifetime neatly packing away in a little box in my brain, and what it gives back; the experience, the engagement, the enriching of my life. When something gives more than it takes, it’s usually worth it for me, whatever frustrations or distress that may come along with it. And Spider-Man 2 gives me a great deal and doesn’t take too much, despite the very real, mature, and sometimes depressing story points that make me face things in some of those tiny little brain boxes. And that’s why it’s my Game of the Year. It was an experience that will not only stick with me for the rest of my life, but one that I will come back to over and over again, like rewatching a favorite movie or replaying an Uncharted game (which also often feels like rewatching a favorite movie; but my god, the Uncharted movie was unwatchable drivel).

Spider-Man 2, much like the Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse films, proves that I’m not suffering superhero fatigue as much as I’m tired of seeing the same old thing with a different filter on it. Just like choosing a Street Fighter character with a slightly different colored outfit isn’t nearly as exciting as playing with a new character that feels different, watching the same movie with a different actor and slightly different powers doesn’t excite me. But Spider-Man 2 weaves together a story that was familiar in a way that I hadn’t seen it before and it benefitted greatly from the balance between the new generation in Miles and the older in Peter, while giving them real people and support structures that make everything feel real. Even if it is a game about two separate people who get bitten by two different radioactive spiders. I’m so looking forward to where the next game will take me.

If you’re still here, I want to thank you for reading my blog. Whether this is your first time or you’re a regular, I appreciate every moment you spend on reading my content and I hope you enjoy it. With 2023 coming to a close, it’s a good time to reflect, and I wish for you all a better 2024, with much more content to come!

What’s more human than fighting for what you love? I’m a lifelong MJ defender.

Back to the Studio…How Hard Can it Be?

The Grand Tour boys plan their next move while on the hunt for buried treasure

So, it turns out The Grand Tour is coming to an end. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ve probably already seen the news, but if I’m the one breaking it to you, I’m sorry you had to find out this way. As it turns out, this news has hit me way harder than I expected it to. After all, it’s the end of a show, shows I love end all the time. They come to a natural end, like Succession, they come to unsatisfying ends, like Dead to Me, they get unceremoniously and unjustly cancelled well before their time, like Lodge 49, The Tick, Terriers, Firefly, Infinity Train, and countless others. You’d think I’d be used to it now.

But this feels different. It’s not just the end of a show. It’s the end of an era. It’s the end of a phase of my life, and perhaps a phase of the world, that I was not prepared to see ended as I casually scrolled Facebook looking for people to wish a happy birthday to. If you don’t know, The Grand Tour is basically a continuation of the BBC’s revitalized Top Gear, starring Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond. It’s a show about cars, but also not about cars. It was equally scripted as unscripted (perhaps tilting towards scripted more and more as the years went by), equally a spectacle as a documentary, equally a comedy as it is nonfiction. But it’s always been a comfort to me. I discovered the show when I was in undergrad. I won’t go much into details, but undergrad was a very bad time for me. I was away from an unhappy home, but still in an unhappy situation. I was at the same time halfway escaped and yet halfway in an emotional prison. Needless to say, in a place like that, you try to find comfort wherever you can.

Richard cooks his signature dish, beans, in the back of his WRX living space

This is before the time streaming services were available. Netflix hadn’t even started mailing people DVDs, Hulu was only introduced around the time I was graduating. Amazon was shopping site; Prime didn’t exist yet, and Prime Video even further away. I retreated into my DVDs to drown out the reality around me, even to fall asleep. But, completely unprepared for my circumstances, I only had a handful of movies and a couple TV seasons that fit into a small bag with my CDs (CDs were like small circles that had music on them before iPods were replaced by phones). And, as it turns out, you can only listen to the first season of The Office on repeat while you try to fall asleep so many times before your sanity suffers. I’d always loved cars, ever since I was a small child. This blog, in its original form, was about the joys of driving, and was originally called Acceleration Therapy. My monthly drive out to Barnes and Noble to pick up the latest issues of Evo and Car magazine, UK publications, was just a brief refuge. As a friend turned me on to Top Gear, the only way then to get it was to torrent it. So I did. I immediately fell in love with the show. It was hilarious, eye-opening, and focused of course on European and Japanese cars and locations, places I’d never come close to seeing at that point in my life and cars that I’d never heard of from all over the price scale. It was nothing like the car TV I’d seen before, usually dry retellings of the printed magazine conclusions accompanied with a reading of a spec sheet. It was dynamic, fast-moving, filled with comedic observations and easy chemistry among the hosts. It gave me everything I wanted in a car show, especially for a young man hundreds of miles away from his PlayStation and his copy of Gran Turismo.

Driving one of the most dangerous roads in the world in SUVs that really shouldn’t be there

In only a short time, I started making playlists in WinAmp so I could fall asleep to the episodes as well as watch them as soon as I, ahem, downloaded them. Top Gear became a part of me. I shared it with my friends. I would go on car forums and discuss the latest episode. As my life changed, as I moved on from undergrad, I still watched Top Gear as regularly as I could. Over time, streaming services started to carry it, and I followed it around as it bounced from platform to platform. I ended up with a 2 year subscription to Motor Trend just so I could watch it on their woeful streaming service. When that iteration of Top Gear came to an end because of Jeremy Clarkson’s antics, I was crestfallen, but I understood. And yet, I was overjoyed when I heard the trio was returning on an Amazon Prime show called The Grand Tour. I followed that through its teething issues, got to its relatively perfected third season, and then again felt torn up when I found out they were ending the show. But it was only that format, mostly a copy of the old Top Gear format, where they had a studio, or in this case a tent, and audience, with different segments, car reviews, and celebrity guests. They’d continue on doing specials, arguably the funniest and most memorable episodes of either Top Gear or The Grand Tour. It made me so happy. But now that’s ending too.

It’s not that I don’t understand. Pretty much everything about the show is questionable now. Clarkson himself is no stranger to controversy; he’s made casually racist comments, he’s been sexist, homophobic, I think he threw a phone at someone once. Or maybe he just punched someone. He’s no angel. Cars have been on the decline for over a decade now, I don’t even keep up with the car market anymore. Almost nothing comes with a manual transmission and cars are so fast these days, they’re made with such high limits that they’re no longer fun to drive at anything close to legal speeds. Sensation and feel have been replaced with spec sheet one-upmanship and a greater focus on technology integration. Instead of trying to get people to stop texting and pay attention to what they’re doing, cars started being designed to make it safer. I guess if you can’t stop people from texting while driving, that’s the right thing to do. Still, it makes me sad. Then there’s also the whole climate change of it all. I’m not a scientist, but I choose to listen to the scientists who, well, are, and they tell me cars have a negative impact on the environment. I’m not in love with that information, but I get that driving is a thing we have to do less. So an extravagant, globetrotting comedy show celebrating the automobile in its modern iteration can seem a little tone-deaf in this age. Not only that, Jeremy, James, and Richard are not young men anymore. Time eventually comes for us all; when I think about things I am too tired to do in my 30s that I did in my 20s, I can’t imagine mustering the energy to drive through mud in a modified Caterham with no roof or doors or sleep in the back of a WRX wagon while searching for the source of the Nile or build a truck by hand in a Mongolian desert in my 50s and 60s. I don’t even like camping now. So I understand. All things end.

Honestly, I need a shower just looking at this photo. I’m not built for the outdoors.

But I can’t help this feeling that there’s a hole in me now. Something missing. That some part of me has ended too. What an odd way to face your mortality. Mourning the loss of a television show about cars. And yet, here I am, doing just that. Mourning and facing my mortality. It’s funny how some things sneak up on you and others just punch you in the face. Life starts out so big. At one point in your life, everything you do, you do for the first time. The world is huge and you are so, so small. It’s full of wonder. Then, time passes and life gets a little smaller. You find out Santa’s not real, and even if he were, your house isn’t in his address book. You have your first heartbreak, maybe you fail your first test, maybe you get your driver’s license and taste freedom for the first time behind the wheel of a car like I did. You move away from the place you called home and come to the point where it’s not your home anymore. Dreams for the future slowly become the practical realities of today. Life keeps getting smaller.

Top Gear, The Grand Tour, and the boys Jeremy, James, and Richard kept that sense of wonder alive in me at a time when things weren’t good for me. They kept it alive for many years after that as well. They helped create an emotional home for me when I didn’t really feel like I had another. Other shows and movies helped me there too, and they’ve come and gone. But Clarkson, May, and Hammond have been there so long, I’ve seen myself grow from a Clarkson into a May (well, not perhaps exactly the man affectionately known as Captain Slow or Mr. Slowly, but I have found that his love for small, simple, honest sporty cars has rubbed off on me and I enjoy them a lot more than the latest winged hypercar with a million horsepower). They’ve been part of my life so long, I started to forget that there’d be a time they wouldn’t be anymore. And yes, I can be comforted by the fact that they’re still going to be making content. James May’s Our Man in Japan and Our Man in Italy and Oh Cook are shows I truly enjoy. Clarkson’s Farm, which I’ve written about in this blog before, has another season on the way and perhaps even more after that, I can only hope. Richard still has DriveTribe (with James as well) on YouTube and even though his show with Tory Bellici from Mythbusters, The Great Escapists, was largely unsuccessful, it’s still there to watch. But it’s not the same as the three of them doing something horrendously irresponsible in a car together. And while there’s such a large back catalogue of episodes I can revisit any time I want (for the moment, until the streaming license changes hands once again), it’s not the same as seeing them do it all for the first time.

I suppose, however, that if you look hard enough, change isn’t only a destructive force. Something new will come, some other way to keep the wonder alive. And maybe then, life will feel a bit bigger again. The holidays are coming up, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to note that art is a gift. Entertainment is a gift. And along with that, wonder is a gift. In a way, I write this blog for myself. I don’t know how many of you out there are reading this, but the analysis I do here, the praise I enjoy heaping on projects I love, the scorn with which I criticize properties that I think are best avoided, that’s my way of trying give a gift to all of you. I’d love to tell you all you have a car under where you’re sitting, but since I’m on the other side of Oprah, sharing with you all the things that I love and create that sense of wonder in me is my way of giving you a gift (I mean, logistically, I would have no idea when or where you’d be if you’re reading this, so how am I going to put a Pontiac G6 under your chair? Oprah had a studio, that’s a huge advantage). One that I hope you’ll take and share with other people. So we can all come together, regardless of the time of year, and help keep wonder alive for each other. And we can keep life feeling big.

Thank you for making it this far. I know this was a more personal post than most, so I appreciate you reading it. I’d like to end here, not with despair, not with mourning, and not even with a hopeful message for the future. I’d simply like to thank Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond, and everyone who ever worked on Top Gear or The Grand Tour, all the crew, all the health and safety folks, the guests, anyone who contributed in any way to make them the shows that had the impact on me that they did. Thank you all for being a part of my life. I will miss your work dearly and share it with as many people as I can.