About Monkeying

Post 1322:

I’m sure there's a hundred great movies and shows out right now and nobody’s telling me about them. Stop holding out.

I logged into Hulu the other day and because I had some time to kill I started watching the 12 Monkeys TV show that aired on some channel at some point in the not too distant past.

Have to tell you, I liked it. A lot. The movie was always a little too manic for me. Artistic, yes. Coherent—I’ll say maybe I’m a little too dumb to “get it.”

What’ve we got to work with? Lots of time travel. Apocalyptic diseases. Guy going back in time to try to stop the bad thing from ever starting. Creepy cult that is trying to stop good guy from stopping bad guys. What else do you need?

You need lots. The show provides. I was turned off here and there. Exposition is heavy. The dialogue can be clunky, but they are explaining things. I’ll take it. The writing makes me feel like I understand what’s happening, more or less. It could be all smoke and mirrors, but there is a bit of that in every time travel story.

Mainly, it’s the characters. They have some nice emotional payoffs. There's a hero. Heroes. The bad guys are my only complaint. They are indeed bad, but their motivation is a little vague. I guess that’s okay. If someone tells you why they believe in the creepy cult thing, you can understand, but you really never understand. Not all the way. That's how I feel about the monkey folks in this show. Just stop with the monkeying and we can all just hang out. But then there’d be no show. So monkey away.

I’d recommend it. It’s about as fun as a drab, miserable, hopeless, ill-groomed, weird, end-of-the-world show can be. Fun is cool. So if you’re not watching cooking shows or home improvement shows or all the Yellowstones, check this out. Or watch the old movie and save time. It’s trippy.

Cheers and see you after.