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Trailer Park–The Next Superhero TV Series Edition

Filed under: Comics & Books, Fantasy Realms, Superheroes, TV — Leave a comment

May 26, 2017

If you thought audiences may be souring on the onslaught of television series based on superheroes and comic books, you’d be wrong. Hollywood is fully engaged in the realm of continuing to adapt comic books to the small screen. Along with all the current series moving into next seasons this year, like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, Gotham, iZombie, Riverdale, Supergirl, and Wynonna Earp, you’ll have at least three more new series featuring superheroes to check out this Fall. Check out previews for all three below after the break.

Black Lightning is the latest character from DC Comics coming to the CW. Cress Williams plays the title character who is Jefferson Pierce by day. On paper Black Lightning sounds a bit like The Incredibles, with a retired hero returning to the superhero business. The superhero debuted in the comic book Black Lightning Issue #1 40 years ago. Tony Isabella and Dennis O’Neil wrote the original stories, with artwork by Trevor Von Eedon. Black Lightning also stars China Anne McClain, Nafessa Williams, and Christine Adams.

The Gifted hails from a pretty powerful TV combo: Bryan Singer, known for everything from House, M.D., to The X-Men movie series, is co-producing the show with series creator Matt Nix, showrunner on the successful series Burn Notice. The series stars Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker (Angel) as parents who take their family on the run after they discover their children’s mutant abilities. The series producers have said it will not intersect with the X-Men movies, but you’ll see familiar characters like Blink, Polaris, Thunderbird, and Eclipse. The show co-stars Burn Notice’s Coby Bell, Sean Teale, Jamie Chung, Emma Dumont, Blair Redford, Natalie Alyn Lind, and Percy Hynes White. The show will air on Fox.

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Michael Westen, Fiona, Sam Axe, Madeline and Jesse say goodbye in moving Burn Notice series finale

Filed under: Con Culture, TV — 2 Comments

September 13, 2013

When USA Network announced last year that its hit spy series Burn Notice would see its last season this year, it really seemed like the right decision. The ramifications of Jeffrey Donovan’s Michael Westen getting a burn notice, blacklisting him and leaving him with nothing: no cash, no credit, no job history, stuck in Miami doing whatever came his way for six years with his trigger happy girlfriend/ex-girlfriend/girlfriend again (Gabrielle Anwar), his old friend that used to inform on him to the FBI (Bruce Campbell), his mom (Sharon Gless) and another spy who he burnt along the way (Coby Bell)–it all seemed like there was not much left for the series to show us that hadn’t been done.

But as happens with writers and creators of many TV series who know they are working on their swan song, it’s like someone gave them some java juice, and they delivered the best of their past three seasons.

Much credit goes to some superb casting this year. Heroes’ Jack Coleman, featured throughout the year as Michael’s CIA handler Andrew Strong, was the best featured character to come along since Coby Bell signed on as Jesse Porter in Season 4. Coleman was believable and likeable, in contrast with the misery the series put us through with Jere Burns’ black hat villain Anson Fullerton last season. Veronica Mars and CW’s Cult lead actress Alona Tal was also a welcome and interesting addition this year as Russian spy Sonya.

Thursday night’s series finale even featured a small role for genre favorite Alan Ruck as a scientist working for this season’s villain James Kendrick, played by John Pyper-Ferguson. If there was one storyline this season that almost turned us off it was leaving viewers to figure out what were the motivations of Kendrick, although Pyper-Ferguson managed to give us the best layered villain of the past several seasons. Was Kendrick ultimately “doing good” or was he a villain? Would Michael be justified in a continued support of Kendrick’s causes, or would the other villains–the CIA–win out in the end? Who would Michael eventually side with? With the penultimate episode and the finale last night, all of the questions posed over the past year, and even over the entire series, were laid to rest.

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Burn Notice starts Season 6 with a bang… or several

Filed under: TV — Leave a comment

June 16, 2012

Review by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Burn Notice is a longtime favorite here at borg.com, and we thought last season got off to a great start. And then… Anson Fullerton (Jere Burns), second worst villain to hit the airwaves last year (the top honor going to that weird English nobody in Chuck). I hated the entire Anson storyline so much (Really? He killed Michael’s father? Seriously?) that I actually didn’t make it through the season finale, and I couldn’t think of a show whose premiere I was less looking forward to. But, knowing readers would be expecting our review, I choked down last season’s ender and braced myself for More Anson.

And I got it. And there will be more forthcoming, unfortunately. But despite that, our fan favorite delivered a pretty satisfying episode, all round–enough to convince me not to delete it from my DVR season pass just yet. “Scorched Earth” was fast-paced, nonstop action with plenty of classic Burn Notice moments and a respectable level of suspense. Continuing last season’s plot revolving around Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) as the chief suspect in a British consulate bombing, the show picked up where last year’s (or last night’s, depending) cliffhanger left off, as Fiona turns herself in to the FBI while a helpless Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) looks on, crying “Fiona!” a la Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. We barely have a chance to digest that storyline when the show skips on to Jesse (Coby Bell) and Agent Pearce (Lauren Stamile, Grey’s Anatomy) cleaning up the mess of the CIA op gone awry (thanks, yet again, to the absurdly ubiquitous machinations of Anson!), followed swiftly by the news that Anson’s latest designs center on Michael’s mother, Maddie (Sharon Gless).

The show skips quickly through those key plotlines, which of course converge in a frenzy of lies, explosions, harrowing narrow escapes, occasional moments of brattiness by Michael, and a truly satisfying conclusion to Maddie’s solo adventure back at the Westen homestead. We leave our heroes pretty much as we found them (Fiona is still in FBI custody, Sam (Bruce Campbell) and Michael still fast friends, Agent Pearce still a capable official asset, and Maddie still smoking), and we’re left with the hope that this season might be a little more fun than last year.

There are a couple of fun additions that longtime fans will have noted. The famous show opener, “My name is Michael Westen, and I used to be a spy,” has been tweaked again–watch for a Fiona status update and the cheer-inducing addition of Jesse (Coby Bell) to the lineup, too. And it was great to see Michael’s old CIA nemesis, Agent Jason Bly (Alex Carter, Trilogy of Terror II, X-Men video games, Life, Leverage, Haven) turn up as Fiona’s FBI interregator. He was always a fun foil for Michael, and it will be interesting to see if he ends up kinda-sorta on “our” side.