July Wrap-Up
House of the Dragon, The Bear, and others.
The theme that I was interested in exploring this month was family, specifically complicated family dynamics and parent-child relationships. I wasn’t able to read and watch everything on my list, and I didn’t stay as close to the theme as I wanted, but it was a good month nonetheless. Let’s get into it.
What I Read.
The Sundial, by Shirley Jackson.
This book is funny. Shirley Jackson captures the specific insanity of the absurdly rich, their banality and lack of self-awareness, and how they just deeply suck as people. All the Hallorans are self-absorbed, their obsession with themselves and their status is the driving force of the narrative, and they couldn’t care less about each other or see people outside the house as real human beings. Despite how funny and ridiculous the characters are, that doesn’t mean the book isn’t as much horror as Jackson’s other works. The fact that so much of the story is left ambiguous is what makes the horror so effective. Is the world really going to end, or are these people just crazy? Who knows! One of the most eerie scenes is when Gloria tries to escape the house but ends up getting lost in the mists and finding her way back to the Halloran property, leaving you to wonder if this was planned by Mrs. Halloran to scare her into submission or if there’s actually supernatural forces at play. So much of what happens could just be people manipulating each other into being frightened, and yet there’s always the possibility that there’s something more going on. 5/5, a great horror book about awful rich people.
City of Glass, by Cassandra Clare.
Continuing on with my Shadowhunter’s project, I have made it halfway through The Mortal Instruments, and I have to say this book is my favorite so far upon rereading. While it suffers from many of the flaws of its predecessors, I think it has some of the best writing Cassandra Clare has to offer. The prose is getting better, the pacing is good, the characters are compelling (particularly Jace), and there are some well-crafted mysteries and twists. I also want to highlight the action, which I didn’t talk about in my other post, but Cassandra Clare writes fantastic fight scenes, and I think she should include more. My biggest gripe with the book is, of course, the incest plot line, but I don’t really have much to say about it that I haven’t already said. I liked the “Cain and Abel” parallels with Jace and Sebastian, and I thought the final confrontation between Valentine and his children gave him a lot of depth. His relationship with Clary and Jace is more nuanced than it seemed at first, and I liked that he only recognized Clary as a threat at the very end after spending all that time seeing her as merely an extension of her mother. It was a satisfying conclusion to the Valentine arc. A solid 3/5 for me.
Batman: A Death in the Family, written by Jim Starlin and penciled by Jim Aparo.
I read all of Jason’s Robin run in preparation for ADitF, and I just love Jason Todd. I think he’s a nice parallel to Bruce, both orphan kids victims of Gotham’s rampant crime, but they come from extremely different backgrounds that inform how they respond to criminals. Jason’s anger is a valid response to his circumstances, and I like how their relationship really breaks down why raising a kid as a vigilante is dangerous. Personally, I think Bruce needs someone like Jason—someone who pushes back and has a different outlook on life. Unfortunately, readers didn’t like my boy, and they decided to kill him.
ADitF is…interesting. There’s a lot that didn’t age well (the islamophobia, the orientalism, the zionism) but the very concept of ADitF is so fascinating to me. Comics are sort of static, the status quo always resets at the end of the adventure, but Jason’s death was supposed to be “permanent”. It seems like a massive change to the status quo, but it actually isn’t. After his death, Bruce decides to kill the Joker, but the Joker, being a more beloved character from the Batman mythos, can’t die, and Batman can’t start killing, so events are contrived to let the Joker off the hook, and Bruce just accepts it. The writers make sure that Jason's death doesn’t have any actual consequences besides the emotional impact it leaves on Bruce, and then they give him a new Robin right away to please the fans. ADitF both breaks and resets the status quo, and by doing so, it perfectly illustrates the amount of control that fans have over series like Batman. By all rights, it would make more sense for Bruce to kill the Joker, and it would be a great turn for his character to then see him grapple with the murder and perhaps reaffirm his ideals or lose himself, but the story is not allowed to reach that natural conclusion. As it is, ADitF ends with our main hero giving up. Even if the Joker was defeated, Bruce lost all the same. It’s a genuine tragedy. 4/5, I would like it more if it wasn’t for all the racism. Shout-out to Mike Mignola, I love how he draws Bruce and Jason in the covers.
La Casa de los Espiritus (The House of the Spirits), by Isabel Allende.
This was a letdown, sadly. I loved the first half, which focused more on the magic realism aspect and the dynamics within the family, but once the book tries to be more political, it falls apart. I think Allende didn’t know what she wanted to say or if she had anything to say, and her attempt at political commentary was very disjointed and messy. The reveal that the entire story is Alba’s attempt at preserving the past for future generations as some sort of revolutionary act didn’t work for me, it came out of nowhere and felt patronizing, as if we’re supposed to be empowered and awed by this despite how much time the book spent undermining its own anti-authoritarian message. The main issue here is Esteban Trueba. I hate him. I’m not saying that he should be an evil caricature, but I think it’s telling that Esteban Garcia, who’s a result of Trueba’s terrible deeds and has genuine reason to resent him, is portrayed as entirely evil. Why is the white, racist, rapist oligarch allowed nuance while the poor brown boy whose entire family was victim to Trueba’s abuse was turned into an irredeemably evil man? The final message seems to be that people should break the cycle of hatred, which is just an empty platitude here. Allende also wants to have an anti-authoritarian message, yet the book ends with the embodiment of authoritarianism dying peacefully beside his beloved granddaughter. Every “revolutionary” character in the book lacks a spine, especially the women who seem to believe in leftist ideology as a hobby. The entire book can be summarized as “Yes, my grandfather is racist and a rapist, and he did help organize a military coup out of greed, but he was nice to me”. 1.5/5 Finding out that this started as a letter from Allende to her dying grandfather made all the sense in the world.
What I Watched.
Hell’s Paradise.
I checked out the first episode way back in 2023 and forgot about it until now. It’s fine, the premise, characters and setting are interesting, but it suffers from low production value. Obviously, I don’t want MAPPA to overwork their animators just to make everything they do look cinematic, but Hell’s Paradise is closer to Tokyo Revengers (season 1) than Jujutsu Kaisen. It’s decent, but uninspired.
Story-wise, it has a strong start, but then it slows down and only gets going around episode 5, which is almost the halfway point. The main characters, Gabimaru and Sagiri, have an interesting relationship and motivations, but they are a little repetitive. We get it, Gabimaru loves his wife. Sagiri’s struggle to be respected because she’s a woman is realistic and important, but we spend so much time going over whether she’s qualified to be on the journey and showing her being insecure that you start to think she really isn’t supposed to be here. What we’re told (that she’s as strong if not stronger than Gabimaru) and what we’re shown (her constantly letting her guard down and needing help) don’t add up. It feels like half the show is wasted convincing her that she can do this. The side characters are more enjoyable, it’s a shame that so many of them are killed off right away. The action is good, but there aren’t many memorable fights, which I think is due to the serviceable but forgettable animation. The world is quite intriguing, and I hope we get another season sometime soon, I can see the potential despite all the flaws. 3/5
House of the Dragon (season 2).
I will make a separate post about this season, so I’ll try to keep it brief. The pacing is bad, they spent way too much time on Daemon, Alicent and Rhaenyra, who don’t do much during this part of the Dance. I understand it’s because they are the big names of the show, but it severely hurts the story. This season should have focused more on the younger characters instead of having these three go in circles the whole time. Here’s Alicent and Rhaenyra being belittled by men, and here’s Daemon having weird visions, over and over again. I dislike the “pacifist and self-less women” vs. “power-hungry violent men” narrative, especially seeing Rhaenys preaching after her mass murder last season that the show wants to convince you wasn’t a big deal.
The best part of the season is certainly Aegon. He’s funny, and tragic, and he has a really good arc. His scenes with Alicent are heartbreaking, and I love the parallels between him and his father. It’s a shame that he and Rhaenyra still haven’t had a single interaction, their relationship could be very interesting if it existed at all. The same goes for Aegon’s relationship with Helaena. I loved Helaena, but the writers are wasting her and Phia Saban. Please, give her more screentime and let her say more than one line per episode. 3/5
The Bear (season 3).
This season is not as bad as people paint it to be, it still has plenty of good moments and at least two excellent episodes, but the quality is vastly inconsistent. That was the same issue I had with season 2, but this time the lows are lower and the highs aren’t as high. It got to the point that I was skipping scenes. Back in season 1, every scene and every character was important, but this season had way too many scenes that neither advanced the plot nor developed the characters. One Fak scene is funny, one Fak scene every episode is annoying. The jokes didn’t land most of the time, the bits went on for too long, and the comedy felt disconnected from the rest of the show. I’m not sure if it’s true that the show is using the Faks to stay in the comedy category, but I wouldn’t doubt it. In general, the quality of the dialogue really went down. People were saying things, but they weren’t talking, it would just be a bunch of empty monologues. I love monologues; my favorite show of all time is Black Sails which has multiples in every episode; and my favorite scene in the first season is the Carmy monologue in the finale, but this season had too many, and they were mostly bad. Especially when they bring a lot of real-life chefs to talk about how much they love cooking, it feels like a half-hour-long ad for the dining industry. I skipped these, and I also skipped the Claire scenes because I’m tired of her. She’s one-dimensional and boring, and the way she's writing is extremely sexist. I can’t believe they had Fak straight up tell Claire that she should get back with Carmy because “she can take care of him”. Dude, what? I also don’t get what they are doing with Syd and Carmy. I saw a post about how every season of The Bear, Carmy says he’s going to treat Sydney right and then fumbles so bad that Jeremy Allen White has to apologize to Ayo Edebiri, and I really felt that. If Sydcarmy isn’t going to happen, she needs to kill him.
It seems to me that the writers got a little too full of themselves. Maybe we were too quick to call it “prestige TV”. There are two genuinely good episodes in the season, the Tina and Sugar episodes. These two didn’t rely on montages or the chaotic editing that’s become so associated with the show, and the dialogue in both felt very natural. Going back to this month’s “family” theme, I deeply appreciate how the relationship between Sugar and her mom was handled. I also think the acting is getting better across the board. Other than that, there are not a lot of positive things to be said. I still have hopes that perhaps next season will be better, but it’s hard to trust the show again. “Maybe we have reached the limit of your talent”, as the asshole chef said. 2.5/5
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, directed by
On a lighter note, I decided to watch this movie with my family on a whim, and it was really fun and cute. You can see the Spider-Verse influence, for sure, but the art style is quite unique, it has a less polished, kind of hand-drawn look that matches the youthful tone. The characters act and talk like teenagers, the comedy is excellent, and it has some nice heartwarming moments. I also loved the music, there are some very fun choices. 4/5, a good time for the whole family.
July was a very busy month for me, so this list wasn’t as big as in June. There were a couple disappointments, like The Bear, but overall, it was a fun month. I’ll go back to reading more fantasy, which I’ve been missing, but I don’t really have a theme for August, it’s going to have a little bit of everything.
Upcoming:
House of the Dragon Season 2 Full Review.
Explaining the Shadowhunters Chronicles, Part 4: City of Fallen Angels.
I want to be special too, or why I love Wakaba from Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Thank you for keeping up with me for another month! I’m having a lot of fun doing this, and I have lots of ideas for future content. I enjoy talking about media, and I hope you enjoy reading what I have to say. See you next week!