Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 12/20/24
Turns to Snow in my Clutch edition
Everyone here at the Bunker is in full-blown four alarm family Christmas mode, decking halls, jingling bells, and playing Eartha Kitt’s version of “Santa Baby” on a loop. You may infer from my tone that yes, we have completed our holiday shopping, save for a few last-minute bits and bobs that we don’t know we need to pick up until we make contact with our various relatives and find out that, whoops, so-and-so IS coming, after all, or hey, there was a thing we were all supposed to buy that we somehow missed the email for.
I want to stress that I am not full of Christmas cheer; it’s too late for that, and I wouldn’t know what to do with it right now, anyways. Rather, I have found my Christmas Feet, which are the feet I wear when I need to get stuff done at Christmas whether I’m feeling it or not. They are self-working, have a 48-hour battery life before I need to recharge them, and they don’t care about my emotional state: they are task-oriented and would prefer to be done with things early rather than late. They have saved my life more than once.
That Superman Trailer
I’ll link it right here, just in case you were somehow tied to a folding chair in a warehouse in the sketchy part of town and couldn’t access the Internet for the past 24 hours.
This couldn’t have landed at a better time for me. When I saw the snow churning up, and then Krypto skidded to a stop, I started ugly-crying. That whole trailer was designed for fans, bronze age comic book readers and older, who grew up with this vast, ramshackle extended Superman Family of characters and concepts, all stitched together across five decades. This was all the stuff we had to learn about on our own, as best as we could. There was no Wikipedia page for Superman. There was only the letter columns of comics, back issues of same, and a handful of books that offered some middling attempts at perspective on Superman and comics in general (we didn’t really start diving into comic books at the molecular level until the mid-80s). The point being, all of our collective Superman knowledge was piecemeal, a grimoire of facts and trivia we had to build from scratch.
That’s who this movie is for, or, rather, that’s who this movie isn’t actively trying to chase away. I wrote about the significance of Superman back in 2013, at the start of the Snyderverse Years of the DCEU, wherein I predicted that in ten years we’ll get a new Superman, one that we need, which was the point of my think piece. I don’t like people who gloat, but I called it, and you shouldn’t be surprised by that. Here’s the article, updated slightly for the age and posted to the website.
I love this new teaser. I have my nits to pick, because I’m never not going to be “that guy,” but I’m much more interested in the sum total of what we’re getting, rather than the stuff we’re not getting, such as a modern-day haircut for Guy Gardner that doesn’t make him look like, well, like that.
Those few scenes showed you all you need to know about this movie. He’s going to save people, and he’s got a super dog named Krypto. I’m in. I’m all in. I’ve never seen Krypto in a movie before so this will be something new, and as I like James Gunn’s overall take on superheroes, I am cautiously optimistic that this will be great. Mister Terrific?! Come ON!
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Note: this will likely be our last report for the year. We’re going out with a slightly longer review than usual, because we never learned how to be brief.
Landman (Paramount)
Taylor Sheridan writes the saga of oil production in Texas, starting Billy Bob Thorton and Jon Hamm.
Even though I am a career Texan and take great pride in being one, I am not the kind of person who gets offended when people tell me they hate Texas, or don’t like some Texan thing, or whatever. I know that 90% of the time, they are reacting to one of two things: they are flipping out about something political (and they can get in line behind me, at the head of the flipping out queue), or they are reacting to the attitude and arrogance that Texans sometimes—well, most of the—okay, all of the time—exhibit online and elsewhere.
I also don’t get worked up about the way Texas is depicted in pop culture. It’s flattering that people try to simplify a concept that is so complex, in order to make a TV show or a movie. Such things tend to get a lot of facts wrong and they present Texas as a caricature of itself, often for comedic effect.
And why not? Texas is, as the tourism guides used to say, “Like a Whole Other Country.” We have beach, mountains, snow, swamps, plains, desert, and forests. We have different regional accents. For as much as we like to rally under the state flag, we’re not all one people. We know it because we live here. I don’t expect people in LA or NYC to get it. That’s why I don’t get mad when I hear a generic Texas accent in a TV show, or see a show set in Dallas but filmed in Toronto. How can they know, unless they have lived here?
It’s like women and The Three Stooges. Most women don’t like the Three Stooges, and they aren’t even polite about it. “They’re just stupid! Why is he being so mean to them? Who has hair like that?” I can’t explain it even if I tried. Oh, I’ve tried. Look who you’re talking to! OF COURSE I’ve tried. It only drives the wedge further.
But there are women out there who do like the Stooges. They are unicorns, but they are out there. And so, seeing as how “Women hate the Three Stooges” is the default setting, it’s not a negative. But “A Woman who loves the Three Stooges” is worth so many bonus point, because how often does that occur in nature?
That’s how I feel about a show set in Texas, about Texans. It’s going to suck, unless it doesn’t. And if it DOES manage to get it right, it’s worth so many bonus points.
Landman scores ten thousand bonus points in that particular category.
It’s pitch perfect from the top to the bottom. The voice (not just the accents) of the show is one that’s so familiar to me, because I’ve lived near oil country for much of my life. I know who these people are. I knew them, hell, I know them; I went to high school with these folks. I’ve had dinner, been to their houses, and I’ve even dated one or two daughters in the days of my youth.
Landman is filled with those little touches, those brief and memorable character moments that make up the whole of the show. Sometimes it’s a single line of dialogue, like “Good God-All-Mighty,” a thing you hear often anywhere old men gather to talk over coffee. Other times, it’s a thing like being at a high school football game and getting a Doctor Pepper at the concession stand. It’s like a universal Texas experience.
There’s not a misfire, nor a false step in any of the episodes so far. In fact, there’s a lot of commentary, political and otherwise, cleverly sandwiched in between Billy Bob Thornton being his iconically misanthropic self, swearing in the language of Texas idiom (in a cadence and rhythm I’ve heard spoken my entire life), dealing with people that you can point to and say, “She’s from Dallas,” and “He’s SO from Lubbock.”
Speaking of Dallas...that show, as popular as it was, bore little resemblance to real people. It was a soap opera, with characters drawn from a book called The Super-Americans by John Bainbridge. The subtitle of the book was: “A Picture of Life in the United States, as Brought Into Focus, Bigger Than Life, in the Land of the Millionaires—Texas.” It was a hatchet piece, based on an article about the Waggoner ranch and its various court cases and in-fighting between the two halves of the family. Whatever minor truths the book initially recounted got distorted through the lens of prime time television. That’s what a lot of people still think Texas is: “Dallas.” Well, it ain’t, and it never was. I care a lot about Texas, and how jacked up life here is at the moment, but I don’t expect any of you outside the state to care as much as me, so I don’t get worked up about inaccuracies. I’m sure people in Florida feel the same way about the “Florida Man” jokes.
It almost feels like Sheridan knows he’s up against that monolithic picture of Texas Oil, and he goes out of the way to de-glamorize it early. Landman is not preachy, but it makes a point of drawing a line between the haves and the have nots without clubbing you over the head. That’s to be expected when Taylor Sheridan is writing; his scripts have all been about something else, not just what’s happening in the story. It’s nice to see movies and TV shows that have substance but are also compulsively watchable, like a potboiler.
You’re probably already into Landman, because the Taylor Sheridan-verse is one of the most popular things at Paramount right now. I’ve laughed out loud with delight while watching every single episode. If you haven’t given it a try, use the Christmas break to binge all six episodes and then join us for the rest, one a week, like dope addicts. I already can’t wait for season two.
I like the concept of Christmas Feet. Still I hope you get something nourishing out of the holidays. Guy Gardner - have to admire the shutzpah of giving him that iconic look!
I've been tied to a chair in a sketchy part of town, and let me tell you, it feels good to see the sky again! Honestly, I had no idea a new Superman was on the way.
Not for nothing, I decided to rewatch every episode of Dallas, and am currently about 1/3rd of the way through Season 10. It's every bit as over the top as you remember. There is no Dr. Pepper to be found.