Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

Wolf Like Me/Joe vs. Carole/Moon Knight

Director’s Note: As you know, we here at the DIV decry any kind of frivolity, instead preferring to err on the side of being too serious than not serious enough. That being said, it took a herculean amount of restraint to not refer to this report as the Dogs and Cats edition.

Wolf Like Me (Peacock)

Josh Gad is a widower with a ten-year old daughter and they both have their problems, the least of which is them trying to get along in the absence of their wife and mother, who died of cancer. Gad is nearly at the end of his rope when he runs into Isla Fisher—actually, it’s the other way around—and that puts the three of them on a new path together. There’s a lot of chemistry and attraction, sure, but Fisher’s got her own stuff going on, and it’s centered around the full moon...

Confession time: about halfway through the six-episode series, I was convinced this was a version of the story I wrote many moons ago, “I’m an Animal,” with the genders flipped. I was wrong, of course, but there were some similarities.

Both actors are known for their comedy chops, but they do a great job of splitting the difference between chuckles and pathos.

Simply put, this is the kindest, gentlest werewolf story I’ve ever seen. I got the idea early on that we weren’t going to see any kind of transformation, or that we wouldn’t quite know if this was supernatural or just bug-nuts crazy, and there was strong evidence for both. I won’t tell you where the bouncing ball ends up, but I think if you’re any kind of lycanthropy fan, you’ll be pleased.

There were a couple of baffling elements such as the need to film in Australia, and one very important point about destiny being mentioned early on as a concept, and then having characters keep banging into one another with no real explanation as to why this was happening. It was easier for me to buy that one of them is a werewolf than it was for me to believe that they are drawn together by fate. Hopefully it’ll get mentioned and resolved in season two.

This is a short, easy to watch, dark comedy/nearly dramatic series. Wolf Like Me is unconventional and manages to subvert expectations and show us something pretty interesting. If you’re pro-werewolf, you can’t afford to let this one pass you by.

---

Joe vs. Carole (Peacock)

This whole sordid human car crash of a situation is turning into my Achilles’ Heel. I’ve seen all of the documentary footage released to date, and I am eagerly awaiting the next installment of the ongoing saga. Don’t ask me why. I can give you some vague answers about crazy cat women, my unironic love of gay rednecks, my genuine belief in wildlife conservation, and a bunch of other things that sound noble, but really, I just want to find out what happened to Carole’s husband. Also, I want Joe to have learned a valuable lesson about loving himself before he can love others.

You know what’s the most jaw-dropping fact about the whole thing? The two real-life people (and by that I mean, the actual Joe and Carole themselves) are the most normal/least damaged of all of the whackadoo big cat movers and shakers we’ve seen so far, and what does THAT say about them? About us?

Probably the most restrained performance from Kate McKinnon I’ve ever seen.

And so, I wait, patiently, for the next installment of Tiger King to drop, and in the meantime, Peacock has thoughtfully released an 8-part miniseries that purports to go behind the scenes to the parts of the story that the documentary doesn’t show, and before you ask what that could possibly be, I’ll tell you: the humanity of everyone involved.

I have to wonder what it says about us as a culture when the TV movie is more sympathetic than the documentary. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to check this out, at first; hadn’t I just seen the whole thing already? Joe vs. Carole created sympathy for their damaged lives that the actual people weren’t allowed to have in their own documentary. And it’s largely thanks to Kate McKinnon as Carole Baskin and John Cameron Mitchell as Joe Exotic, in a note-perfect performance that is either comically tragic or tragically comical, I’m not sure which. McKinnon in particular has her work cut out for her; normally she takes a person and creates a caricature of the. Here, she’s deconstructing the caricature to find the person, and she gets to the heart of what we find so off-putting about Carole Baskin. Kyle MacLachlan plays Baskin's husband, Howard, and he certainly pulls his weight and makes him far more sympathetic and likeable, as well.

Of course, you have to take all of it with a grain of salt, because it’s being made for entertainment purposes and the situations aren’t real, but they do seem to be representative of who these two people are. If you’re looking for a more nuanced, humane portrait of these two singular personalities, as well as something to tide you over until the next dumpster fire starts, Joe vs. Carole is certainly watchable, but I think you should spread the viewing out a bit..

---

Moon Knight, Episode 1 (DisneyPlus)

Director’s Note: It is expected that this office issue statements about all of the super hero fare that releases, seemingly weekly, which occasionally goes against our existing policy of waiting until three episodes are available before venturing any opinions. In seeking a compromise, we have opted for the following solution that we hope you’ll find instructive, if not entertaining.

Moon Knight is one of Marvel’s many B, C, and D-List characters with small, devoted fanbases and a...let’s go with storied...publishing history. This character is a microcosm unto itself, showing how Bronze Age Marvel characters and stories came about. Originally conceived in the rush of the monthly schedule for the comic, Werewolf by Night, he was created as a foil for Jack Russell, the eponymous reluctant lycanthrope. The reason? Werewolves...moons? Silver weapons? Yeah, it was cool. A neat idea. They pushed the character in a few issues, and then in a couple of back-up stories in the black and white magazine, Rampaging Hulk. There were enough fan letters, I guess, to merit a bi-monthly comic.

The comics that made me a Bill Sienkiewicz fan.

With the new comic came a new, retooled origin story, involving his mercenary past (always a big part of the character) and being magically saved in the Egyptian Tomb of Khonshu. Marc Specter decides to become the Left Fist of Khonshu, the Moon Knight... and then he used his vast fortune to build gadgets, devices, and a support staff. If this sounds more than a little like Batman, you’re not wrong. They even asked Bill Sienkiewicz, a brilliant artist who was just starting out, to lean in the art style of Neal Adams, the guy most celebrated at the time as THE Batman artist. It wasn’t hard to do, what with the cape that looks like a crescent moon when he jumps into the night, and all that kind of thing.

That series didn’t last four years. The next series leaned more heavily into the Egyptian roots. That was a six-issue affair. There have been eight or nine different comic book series, more if you count his participation in super groups like the Avengers. Each time a new creative team takes over the character, they make tweaks. Some of them make sweeping changes. But some core concepts stay in place: the multiple identities, which are sometimes merely acts, and sometimes represent psychotic breaks. There’s the Egyptian Khonshu, sometimes mystical, and sometimes imaginary. Support team, no support team, costume, no costume, dead, alive, and so on and so forth.

Now it’s 2022 and we live in a world where super heroes are no longer in comics, but in movies and TV shows. Marvel and Disney have some choices to make if they want to do a Moon Knight TV show. Literally, they have to decide what this character is and what he isn’t. And they also have to make sure he looks like Moon Knight, acts like Moon Knight, and does a bunch of Moon Knight-y looking stuff. And all in six episodes. A mini-series. It’s the comics all over again.

A fantastic costume that amalgamates several versions of the character.

I told you all of that to tell you this: I don’t know if Disney’s Marvel’s Moon Knight is any good, or if it will deliver on any of its promises. But what I saw in the first episode was really cool. They are handling the multiple character/personalities in a very interesting, novel way. The costume looks great, like mummy wrappings, and it reminds me a lot of the DC character Ragman. Oscar Isaacs is strong in the first episode. There’s a bit of a mystery, some drama, and some really cool action sequences that aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen before. I don’t think we’re going to get the full premise until about halfway through, and by then, it’ll be too late for anyone to have an opinion that will matter to the rest of us fully-invested viewers.

I can only tell you that I have loved every version of Moon Knight that I’ve been given. From the looks of things, they are going with one of the more recent versions, with a few bits and bobs from older versions included for good measure. You know, what they’ve been doing for something like ten years now. As one of my childhood favorites, I’m still kind of stunned that I’m even watching a TV show based on this character. Oh, and they’ve also greenlit a Werewolf by Night special for Halloween. I mean...how can I not be completely on board for that?

If any of the above piques your interest, by all means, check the show out.