Netflix’s new series The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is… weird. The title makes it obvious that it’s meant as a parody of films like The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, and The Woman in the Window, and its star, an all-grown-up Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) will pull viewers in. But it’s not quite funny enough, often enough, to be a comedy, and the plotline (and the casting, and the set design, and the costumes…) is drawn beat-by-beat from The Woman in the Window—so if you’ve seen that, you’ll know exactly what happens. But it’s still better in almost every way than its inspirations, so if you’re dithering about what ludicrous suburban crime drama to watch, this is the one.
It had a promising first and third season, twists and turns, clever story arcs, and a contender for the most faithful adaptation of a comic book series from the past decade. The creators of the fourth and final season of Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina gave 2020 a much-needed batch of two complete seasons, and we already gave the third season kudos in the 2020 Best of TV review here at borg. Kiernan Shipka proved to be one of TV’s best young actors, embodying a character that is next in line after Buffy Summers, Veronica Mars, and Liv Moore as young genre heroines who led series you can count on the first time and after re-watches. Already a contender for one of the best TV series of this century, and one of Netflix’s most creative efforts, how did the final season fare for our heroine Sabrina Spellman?
From 1977 to 1993, noted crime writer Max Allan Collins was writing stories “ripped from the headlines” in the Dick Tracy comic strip. Some of Collins’ proposed stories were too racy for the average daily newspaper, so Collins took this as an opportunity to introduce the stories in the pages of Ms. Tree, a series published then by Eclipse. A year ago, I reviewed a new collection of classic Ms. Tree stories from the 1980s, penned twenty years before Jessica Jones, written by Collins and illustrated by artist Terry Beatty—Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother. Ms. Michael Tree is the 6-foot tall, 9 mm pistol-toting private eye with a clever homonym name, referred to as the “female Mike Hammer” in the stories written by the man who would take over the character from Mickey Spillane. She borrows something real and gritty from Erle Stanley Gardner’s detective Bertha Cool and her brand of sleuthing, certainly unique for the 1980s. The Hard Case Crime imprint of Titan Comics is publishing the second volume of Ms. Tree stories next month, five more stories from the dark corners of big city life, inMs. Tree: Skeleton in the Closet. Classic Collins crime tales in the comics are like his 21st century crime novels–they do not disappoint.
We scuffled. He had a gun. So did I. I’m alive. He’s dead.
Twenty years before Jessica Jones, there was Ms. Tree, writer Max Allan Collins and artist Terry Beatty′s 1980s private eye with the clever homonym name. Her husband a cop, killed by the head of a crime family, she sought her revenge and went to jail for it. Now she’s back and the killer’s sister is looking to get her own revenge. A private detective running her own agency, she finds her son has fallen in love with the niece of his father’s killer, the daughter of the woman who is now reaching out to her. That’s where readers meet Ms. Tree in the first chapter of Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother, a new collection of classic stories that will bring readers unfamiliar with Ms. Tree’s exploits current as she’s embroiled in her never-ending conflict with the Muerta crime family. The 268 pages play out like a crime TV series, like Magnum, p.i. or Simon & Simon, maybe with some Rockford Files thrown in thanks to Collins’ ever-present noir style.
Ms. Tree is her own character. She doesn’t have the quirks and antics of progenitors like Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Cool or the meticulous process of a Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher. But she does have the edginess we’d later see with Veronica Mars and Jessica Jones. She’s a bit older, and because of Terry Beatty’s classic artistic style (reminiscent of Crime Does Not Pay and Dick Tracy), you may just wonder if she’s going to duck behind the curtains and emerge with a Miss Fury catsuit at some point. Drawn by Beatty like a V.I. Warshawski era Kathleen Turner, she’s also not Jackie Brown–this woman plays by the rules, but the aura of her agency has that feel of Max Cherry’s agency in Elmore Leonard’s story.
With a style (in both writing and artwork) like Mike Grell’s Green Arrow, Collins populates his story with a variety of supporting characters like you’d find in the world of his Quarry series. Characters like her friend on the police force Rafe Valer, and her colleague Dan Green, who has a hook for a hand in a call-out to J.J. Armes, the famous real-life detective in the 1970s (who had two hooks for hands). The first book in this series, Ms. Tree: One Mean Mother, includes reprints of the stories Gift of Death, Drop Dead Handsome, The Family Way, Maternity Leave, and One Mean Mother, with an appendix featuring Collins discussing why Ms. Tree hasn’t made it to the small or big screen, and a related tie-in short story with a more modern take on the character (and without the pictures), Inconvenience Store. Ms. Tree was featured in an earlier Hard Case Crime novel by Collins, Deadly Beloved. In this volume Ms. Tree reads like it must have been the inspiration for Marge Gunderson’s storyline in Fargo, and the final seasons of In Plain Sight’s Mary Shannon.
Take a look at Beatty’s use of color, 1980s style, in these excerpts from the book:
Just as iZombie has aired its first episodes of its final season, showrunner Rob Thomas is readying Season 4 of the series that made him famous, Veronica Mars. Eight new episodes of Veronica Mars are coming to streaming service Hulu this summer. The new series finds the snarky private investigator five years after the events of the 2014 crowdfunded movie with more detective stories of So-Cal noir. Original actors returning include Kristen Bell (Veronica), Enrico Colantoni (Keith), Jason Dohring (Logan), Percy Daggs III (Wallace), Francis Capra (Weevil), Max Greenfield (Leo), Ryan Hansen (Dick), Ken Marino (Vinnie), Daran Norris (Cliff), and Adam Rose (Max).
Rob Thomas is back as script writer, so expect the same quirky dialogue and pop culture references he’s written for iZombie and the first three seasons of Veronica Mars. Don’t forget, Thomas’s two Veronica tie-in mystery novels are part of Veronica Mars canon. If you missed them, catch our reviews of The Thousand Dollar Tan Line here, and Mr. Kiss and Tellhere. Based on Thomas’s use of actors from Veronica Mars in his five seasons of iZombie, we wouldn’t be surprised to see some cameos from a few members of his iZombie cast to make an appearance.
Sorry, Thomas has not yet announced a few key actors from Veronica’s past for the next eight episodes, including best pal Tina Majorino (Mac), or boyfriends Chris Lowell as Piz, or Teddy Dunn as Duncan, or a lost twin sister of murdered friend Lily (Amanda Seyfried).
Hulu has released a trailer for the series. Check it out:
Today a new young heroine arrives in the pages of a graphic novel called Scoop. In Volume 1 with the first story arc titled “Breaking News,” we meet Sophie Cooper, a 14-year-old Cuban-American high school student in Miami. It’s not the red hair and freckles that make her an outsider, it’s her dad. He’s under investigation by a local bank for money laundering–under house arrest he’s trapped in his own home with an ankle monitor, while Sophie’s mother serves as a lawyer in the mayor’s office. Sophie is ostracized by her peers at school and decides to take an internship with a local TV station in the hopes that she can learn something to help prove her dad is not what everyone says he is. Sophie can’t help but make friends along the way, including a has-been TV anchor at the least popular station in town, who proves to be more valuable than she could have imagined. While investigating a lead they encounter a strange otherworldly force that wrecks his car, and an undersea creature who helps her escape a pursuer who thinks she is getting too close to the truth.
“Scoop” becomes Sophie Cooper’s clever handle, her nickname (the first letter of her first name and first four letters of her last name), assigned to her by the news station.Scoop has the framework to become the next Liv Moore from iZombie or Veronica Mars. Sophie gravitates more toward the Veronica Mars angle–your basic teen crime detective–since this first volume primarily introduces the main characters, but writer Richard Hamilton and artist Joseph Cooper plant the seeds for a supernatural, X-Files-inspired future for the teen sleuth.
The imagery features a dose of Burn Notice style from the investigation plot, Miami setting, and locals that pop up in the series’ first 96 pages. Also like iZombie, this is a story and characters not springing from a major comic book universe, so anyone can climb onboard from page one. Sophie Cooper is exactly the kind of character you might see show up in a year or two on the CW Network, engaging and bright, with her precocious younger brother as an assistant she can tap into the latest technology to hone her investigative skills.
After a painfully long wait for fans of the series, the CW Network renewed the hit horror comedy/drama iZombie for a fifth season late Friday. Even the folks at TV Guide had their fingers crossed for this renewal, stating, “At last, our long national nightmare is over,” in response to the news. What began as a successful comic book series by writer Chris Roberson and artist Michael Allred for DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint about a gravedigger zombie gal who eats brains to survive, took on its own life under the deft management of showrunner Rob Thomas, who had already dazzled his target audience with Veronica Mars. Powerhouse star Rose McIver’s Liv Moore has become every bit the ace detective that Veronica was, but she also bridged the audience back to the pop culture references and off-the-wall fun Joss Whedon brought the TV audience with the original badass heroine with his Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And McIver had the added bonus of playing a character that had to change up her performance every single episode while also appearing in nearly every scene, like Quantum Leap’s Sam Beckett and more recently Tatiana Maslany’s several sisters in Orphan Black. And she has met the challenge with high energy along the way. Everyone should be taking a good look at McIver’s performance this year come award season.
That isn’t to say the series hasn’t had a few ups and downs as it found its footing each season, upping the ante for its characters faster than anyone could have predicted… Liv and Major (Robert Buckley) are off, then on again… Ravi (Rahul Kohli) and Peyton (Aly Michalka) are off, then on again… Major and Blaine (David Anders) were zombies, then they weren’t and now they are, etc. The experimentation worked, as the change-ups kept the show fresh and interesting, and as other shows get tired after the first or second season iZombie has taken the road traveled by NBC’s Grimm, a show that kept up the momentum taking major risks and changes only to get better with every new episode.
This week’s Episode 10 of the fourth season, “Yipee Ki Brain, Motherscratcher!” was the kind of crazy fun you might find on an early episode of South Park or Buffy. Mocking shows that run out of funds that then are left to have their action scenes off-screen to be summarized on-screen by a character afterward, in an audaciously hilarious move by the writers, co-star Malcolm Goodwin (last year’s borg.com pick for Best TV Actor) was left to pantomime a recap of his off-screen heroics for the episode. That was coupled with the kind of genre trope episode the series’ fans love: a bombardment of movie references and Easter eggs tied to 1980s action flicks. And Blaine and Bryce Hogson’s Don E continue to surprise us, but never more than in this week’s episode. The excellent villainy of the past four seasons (iZombie has three episodes left in Season 4) has smartly balanced out the heroes’ story: first with the brilliant Steven Weber’s Vaughn Du Clark and his daughter Gilda (Leanne Lapp), then with Eddie Jemison’s mobster Stacey Boss, followed by the return of Veronica Mars lead Jason Dohring as the questionable zombie law enforcer Chase Graves, and meanwhile the writers were furtively building the character arc of Robert Knepper’s Angus/Brother Love into compelling new territory as we prepare for what’s coming next season.
This year Buffy Summers, one of the greatest characters in the history of sci-fi and fantasy television and the #1 kick-ass heroine of all time in any medium celebrates a major benchmark as the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer turns twenty. Dark Horse Comics–publisher of the Buffy comic books and related characters from the series including titles featuring Angel, Spike, and Faith–announced this past week that a new trade edition of its Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The High School Years monthly series is available for pre-order, and an adult coloring book for the series was released last week.
The television series was groundbreaking, its first episode airing March 10, 1997, on The WB. With high school and college as a backdrop, the incomparable showrunner Joss Whedon was able to address racism, identity, bullying, guilt, death, first love, and heartbreak using demons as metaphors. Never before on television had a teenage girl been empowered like Buffy, with smart writing, lovable characters, fun monster-of-the-week episodes, action-packed choreographed battles, and emotional and dramatic arcs that continued over seven years from 1997 to 2003. Buffy Summers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, would go on to inspire other great shows with smart, strong, and empowered young women, including Veronica Mars and iZombie.
It’s a subject of debate among Buffy fans, but some of the best episodes and story arcs of the series can be found in the first seasons of the series. Dark Horse’s new collected edition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The High School Years, titled Parental Parasite, taps into fans’ nostalgia, taking readers back to the first season of the series, when Buffy’s mom starts to want more “quality time” just as Buffy must secretly fend of monsters as part of her nightly slaying duties.
Dark Horse has taken Buffy all the way into four seasons of stories beyond the finale of the TV series. Check out a cover gallery after the cut, and links to hardcover and trade editions of Seasons 8, 9, 10, and 11.
The first teaser has been released for the new Netflix series, Marvel’s Jessica Jones, based on one of the more obscure Marvel Comics characters. That’s right, in the Renaissance of superhero shows, Jessica Jones beat Wonder Woman to get her own television series. Veronica Mars’s Krysten Ritter has the title role. Alone, that makes it worth giving the series a try, but several other genre actors in supporting cast roles will give us even more to look forward to. This includes Doctor Who’s David Tennant (Kilgrave), The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss (Harper), Men in Black 3’s Mike Colter (Luke Cage), Transformers’ Rachael Taylor (Trish Walker), and True Detective’s Erin Moriarty (Hope).
The Netflix original series is the second of four Marvel series, Marvel’s Daredevil launched earlier this year, plus Marvel’s Luke Cage and Marvel’s Iron Fist are on the way, leading up to Marvel’s The Defenders, all to be released only on Netflix. Behind Marvel’s Jessica Jones are creators of the Twilight movies, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Elementary.
Here are two teaser trailers for Marvel’s Jessica Jones, one a mood piece and the other a brief hint at the nature of humor in the series:
Spoiler alert: iZombie is a big contender for multiple top honors at this year’s borg.com Best of the Year awards. Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas did the unthinkable this year by putting together a big hit for Warner Bros. on par with both his own tale of a butt-kicking young woman but also the ultimate series of the genre, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The writing, the characters, and the actors make for a surprising hit show. The other unthinkable bit? After much kicking and screaming, Thomas finally sucked us into the zombie genre and even The Walking Dead was unable to do that.
Happily audiences and the CW agreed with us and quickly renewed iZombie for Season 2. It’s “in the can” and ready to air next month.
Where we last left Rose McIver’s medical-resident-turned-morgue-dwelling zombie-police aide Liv Moore, Liv had made her life into a complete mess in classic TV cliffhanger style. What’s to become of boyfriend Major (Robert Buckley) now that he knows she’s a zombie? It’s not really the end for fan-favorite evil zombie Blaine (David Anders), right? What about the fate of Liv’s poor brother, and will her roommate ever talk to her again after she witnessed Liv in full-on zombie mode? Will Liv finally get a taste for brains and throw out the hot sauce?
We can hardly wait to find out. Meanwhile, check out this preview of the premier episode of iZombie Season Two, followed by a San Diego Comic-Con panel from this summer, and if you’ve missed Season One, a great 3-minute catch-up reel:
