It’s rare for a film to come along and be consistent from head to toe. Which makes Unfinished Business a true feat when you realize just what a failure of a film it is on every conceivable level.

Unfinished Business  is the new “comedy” from the director of Delivery Man, and the writer of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (those words should be enough to get your spidey sense tingling). Vince Vaughn is Dan Trunkman, a fast talking salesman of some sort (the film never really explains what he does very well … something with numbers and making deals). The film opens on him having a heated discussion with his boss (played by Sienna Miller) over a five percent cut back to his salary. Long story short, Trunkman thinks he can start his own business and do a better job than his jerk of a boss. He then does his best Jerry Maguire tribute when he starts asking who will go with him and ends up alone in the parking lot. There he bumps into Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkinson), who coincidentally has just been forced into retirement, as well as Mike Pancake (Dave Franco), a young enthusiastic but dim applicant who has just been turned down for a job. Of course Vaughn’s character hires them both and they get to work.

From there on forward we are exposed to some of the worst writing, lazy filmmaking, and oddest tone you might ever find in a major studio release. From the start we get an odd and overbearing five-minute Dunkin Donuts product placement, Vaughn sets a meeting with his staff at Dunkin, and there are several shots prominently featuring their logo including an establishing shot of the building’s outside sign that lingers far longer than needed. The movie’s logic immediately starts falling apart at this point. We are taken to one year later and see that our three leads are not having as much luck as they had hoped, but what sticks out more is that they also apparently know next to nothing about each other. Every piece of information we learn about them through the movie is a complete revelation to the other two. Somehow, while working side by side, the only three people running an upstart company, and they managed to learn next to nothing about each other.

Fortunately everything that defines these characters is two-dimensional and often cringe inducing so at least they didn’t miss out on anything important. Wilkinson’s character is an old horny man with a filthy mouth who wants to make enough money so that he can divorce his wife who is “the shape of a vending machine.” He constantly wants to see naked women, get trashed on booze and drugs, and curses nonstop. Of course we’re supposed to think it’s cute … ’cause he’s old! Franco’s character is defined by two things. First, his last name is Pancake, and apparently everyone they meet think that’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. Second is that he’s mentally challenged. Yes, like literally he went to a special school and lives in a special facility. This fact doesn’t come up to his colleagues for over a year! Vaughn’s character is, well, the same character Vince Vaughn plays in every single movie. Except here he is somehow both a workaholic father who doesn’t notice the trouble his kids are having at school (another cyberbullying subplot, as is all the rage these days), yet the film also shows him constantly Facetiming with his family on the road. So we’re supposed to think he doesn’t know what’s going on but that he’s still a good dad.

Through a series of convoluted and frankly stupid events, the three must travel to Germany to close the one big deal that can save their company and send Vaughn’s oldest child to a private school where kids hopefully will stop picking on him for his weight. Once they arrive, it’s offhandedly said that the G8 summit, a gay and fetish festival, and a marathon are all happening the very same week. Hmm, I wonder if those will come into play somehow? Spoiler alert: they do, in the most forced and ham-fisted ways.

From here there is just scene after scene of unfunny, overly vulgar, and distasteful situations. Also from the previews you would assume a little swearing and some crude situations but the amount of nudity in the film is extremely surprising and used in ways that are the definition of gratuitous. Worst of all, none of it is funny. The “high point,” as I imagine the writers saw it, is a scene during the fetish festival where they use the bathroom at a gay nightclub. There they find four gloryholes along with four gentleman waiting for service behind said holes. Even after Vaughn explains he’s just looking for a friend, they stay as they are and have a five-minute conversation with cutaways to each man’s genitals as they speak. It actually gets worse from there, but I’ll leave that to your imaginations.

The production itself seems to have been plagued by either laziness, lack of budget, or even lack of talent. Some scenes early in the film appeared blurry or shot on a low-grade camera. Some of the same scenes had lighting that stuck out as blatantly fake. There were also two glaring continuity issues in the film. One being when the leads get off a train, bright sunny day, cut to the building they arrive at, still sunny mind you, and their shoulders have been noticeably rained on between the two shots. While it’s possible there was a scene cut out that explains this, in the film it just looks like sloppy filmmaking. The second issue is Vaughn is shown driving to the airport for his big trip, but when he arrives back to the airport his family has his car and is there to pick him up.

These are just the tip of the iceberg. When looking for negatives, this film comes fully stocked. I would say I chuckled three times over the excruciating ninety minute run time. Needless to say the cast and crew obviously cared little to nothing about the making of Unfinished Business and you as the viewing public should concern yourself even less with experiencing its failures.

There was a run of teen movies in the late 90s and early 2000s that were cheap, simple, and harmless. Films like Whatever It Takes, Mean Girls, and  She’s All That. Take these movies, sprinkle a little Easy A in and run them through a blender and you get The Duff, a cute but harmless entry into the teen makeover comedy category.

The Duff is about a smart, quirky girl named Bianca (played by Arrested Development‘s Mae Whitman), who is a bit of a tomboy, she loves cult movies and excels at her studies but is completely lacking in style, fashion, and popularity. While not the most popular girl in school, she does have two best friends who happen to be two of the hottest and most popular girls. Of course no teen comedy would be complete without the mean popular girl and The Duff is no exception: the beautiful and popular Madison (Bella Thorne), the queen bee of the school and all around bitch. Bianca is approached by her neighbor and childhood friend, sorta, kinda (the film briefly mentions they used to play together as small children but never expands on it), named Wesley (Robbie Amell), and he informs Bianca that she is a D.U.F.F or Designated Ugly Fat Friend. From there Bianca decides to change her station in life and Wesley agrees to help her in exchange for math tutoring.

A lot of old ground is retread in The Duff, from the neighbor/ love interest having a bedroom window facing the lead’s (Whatever it Takes), to the nerdy ugly girl getting turned into the hot popular girl (She’s All That), the bitchy high school queen character reeks of Mean Girls, and the parent who curses and is just like a best friend is straight out of Easy A. Yes The Duff is a hodgepodge of the standout parts of many more memorable teen comedies, and while it does a fine job with what it’s emulating, the end result is fine … just fine.

This is probably the biggest problem with the film; it never becomes anything more than just okay. Some gags will make you groan, a few are genuinely funny, but not much is particularly special or memorable about The Duff. The leads have surprisingly good chemistry but the screenwriters were so worried about getting as many clichés in that they could, that the story and character development suffers as a result. There are certain moments where the film shows another side of itself that could have really been something special. A couple of fantasy sequences, including one that parodies old porno tropes, were laugh out loud funny. Ken Jeong is also a highlight as one of Bianca’s teachers but he’s criminally underused. There are just so many directions this movie wants to pull you in that it short-changes all of its subplots as a result.

The film has a strong focus on cyber-bullying and social media’s effect on today’s high school experience. While this angle gives some of the more cliché elements a slightly fresher feel, you can’t help but roll your eyes at other points that are surprisingly unsavvy with technology in a movie that concerns itself with the internet so much. These moments are brief and few in number but they feel oddly out of touch with the twelve to twenty target audience. Moments like YouTube videos being pulled from the internet by teenage hacker girls in a matter of seconds, teenagers carrying multiple cellphones, and kids sharing videos around school while declaring out loud that they’re going to make them “go viral.” No one shares other people’s videos with their friends to make them viral, they just share it and it becomes viral organically. These story beats feel clunky and out-of-place.

The happiest surprise in this film is Robbie Amell. The young actor is surprisingly likable even when filling the traditional high school jock/ jerk role. He has a very Daniel Tosh-like quality both in look and in ability to say terrible things with a wink and a smile that keep him endearing. This almost undermines the films attempts to set his character up as the traditional dumb jerk with more under the surface. The movie starts off trying to convince us how mean he is and how he’s just another stupid jock but they quickly forget this thread entirely and just let him be a pretty stand-up and awesome guy for the majority of the film. Had they let him be a bit more unlikable at the start, there could have been a nice arc to his character development.

It’s also worth noting that from Arrested Development through The Duff, Mae Whitman has now spent eleven years playing a high schooler. Luckily she’s in good company. The Duff keeps the teen movie cliché of having almost no actual teenagers playing teenagers and instead we get a bunch of twenty-somethings playing the bulk of the high school parts.

As it is, The Duff is a funny, though uneven film. If only it had taken the time to decide what it wanted to be, there could have been a real classic here, instead we get another average entry into the teen comedy genre. While it’s worth the time and money to check out, it’s likely you’ll have a hard time remembering it soon after you leave the theatre.

With the new film Fifty Shades of Grey coming out for Valentine’s Day, many couples will be tempted to spend their hard-earned cash to see it. Instead, lets look at why 2002’s Secretary is the smarter alternative.

To start, lets look at story. A young woman meets an older man in a position of power named Mr. Grey, the two become attracted to each other and embark on a BDSM relationship. Yes we just described both films with that one simple sentence. Two movies dealing with intense sexual relationships, focused primarily on BDSM, and having the male leads named Mr. Grey. The films diverge from here and show two very different takes on this lifestyle. Fifty Shades puts all the power into the man’s hands and focuses on the purely sexual side, making the female lead little more than a toy for his amusement. Secretary concerns itself with showing a fairly traditional love story, boy meets girls, boy and girl flirt, something goes wrong, girl tries to get boy back … but dressing such a traditional idea with an untraditional relationship. At it’s core Secretary is still a love story where Fifty Shades is a lust story.

Now lets look a little closer at the characters. Fifty Shades presents us with Christian Grey, a rich wildly successful businessman, and Anastasia Steele, a naive college student and virgin still finding her place in the world. In Secretary we meet Lee Holloway, a smart but damaged young woman, lacking in social skills and just out of the hospital for self harm, and E. Edward Grey, an odd, socially awkward attorney, who while successful is modestly so. The imbalance in these relationships becomes apparent immediately. Where on one side we have a rich powerful man towering over a shrinking violet, on the other hand we have two socially awkward people looking for someone who can appreciate them for their odd behavior and taboo desires. Where Christian Grey almost forces Anastasia into a new and frightening lifestyle, E. Edward Grey pulls back from Miss Holloway and she becomes the pursuer. Secretary is not only the more balanced story, it’s the one that empowers women.

This brings us to a fundamental problem with Fifty Shades of Grey. From what I’ve read of the BDSM community, a driving force seems to be that both parties enter into it with full knowledge and desire of what is going to happen. Whether through safe words or  agreement ahead of time, everyone involved knows their boundaries and they all sought out what they are getting into. Anastasia may be curious about what she is presented with but she’s really satisfying Grey’s desires, not any pre-existing ones of her own. Again Secretary shows us both parties enjoyed BDSM activities prior to meeting, they are satisfying both of their desires.

Next, lets look at our talent. Fifty Shades brings us Jamie Dornan, whose biggest role to date was the sheriff on Once Upon a Time, and Dakota Johnson who has only had some small film roles and one failed sitcom. They are brought together under the eye of director Sam Taylor-Johnson in her second full length feature. While they all seem to have some talent, they are by and large untested and unproven. Secretary also has a director with a limited body of work, Steven Shainberg, who boasts just a small handful of directing and producing credits over a twenty year career. He had the luck however of having two strong lead actors in Maggie Gyllenhaal (who had already been in ten feature films by 2002), and James Spader, whose performances are always deliciously odd but fascinatingly so. Despite being seventeen years apart in age the two of them work wonderfully together, bringing both an odd, socially inept, weirdness as well as a sweet childlike sensitivity to their characters.

Both films are adaptations of existing works, Secretary is an adaptation of the short story “Bad Behavior” by Mary Gaitskill. Fifty Shades of Grey started its life as Twilight fan fiction titled “Master of the Universe” which E. L. James published under the pseudonym “Snowqueen’s Icedragon.” Yes, that last sentence is a real thing which I just typed and you have just read. For many people the words “Fan Fiction” and Twilight will be all it takes to deter you from seeing the film. Kudos to you for being so smart.

While I’m sure people will flock to theaters to see Fifty Shades of Grey, I can only hope that a few people will take that time and watch (or even rewatch) a much lesser known film which tells a beautiful if unconventional story. Plus while the average movie ticket costs eight dollars, Secretary is available streaming for a very reasonable $2.99, money well spent.

  

Over the past few decades one thing has become abundantly clear — television audiences love sociopaths. Whether it’s Scrubs‘ Dr. Cox, or the titular characters of Dexter, Sherlock, and House, America seems to love emotionally distant yet brilliant characters. Sometimes they push into psychopathic territory but they still end up fan favorites, sometimes they’re the hero, other times a mentor, and other times villains we love to hate.

Fox is betting on that affection for the new show Backstrom, they even gave it the tagline “Brilliant detective, total dick.” Unfortunately Backstrom comes up lacking in the brilliant department and very heavy on the dick. As of this article, there have been three episodes of the show so far, all three have been painfully uninspired and lacking any real charm. The only real stars in the show are Dennis Haysbert, of 24 and Allstate commercial fame among countless other projects, along with Six Feet Under and The Office star Rainn Wilson as Backstrom. The rest of the cast is made up of fairly unknown actors. There are some pretty faces in the supporting cast but no one really stands out as particularly memorable or special. No one sticks out as particularly bad either, just forgettable.

Fox seems painfully desperate to create the next House with this show but they come up severely lacking. Most shows in this vein try to show the audience that this terrible jerk is brilliant and that’s why people put up with his crap. From word one, the writers seem to have adopted a tell and no-show attitude. Backstrom seems dead set on telling us ad nauseam how smart he is while showing us that he actually just makes wild unsubstantiated guesses and is usually wrong. When he is right, more often than not, the success has nothing to do with real detective work and more with dumb blind luck. One character even suggests that Backstrom works on a higher plane, that he sees the world differently and when he suggests a man is guilty just because he’s black that Backstrom really noticed his body language and read into his soul but isn’t aware he’s doing it and that’s why he gives such ridiculous reasons for his intuitions. My eyes rolled so hard when I heard this I feared they would get stuck that way.

This shows a primary problem with the entire show, instead of slowly building our respect of this character, peppering in bits of his dickish behavior, they instead try to force us to respect him by telling us he’s brilliant while saying that we should find his terrible behavior funny and endearing. Plus they seem to be trying to seed in possible future plot points far too early. Several times, ancillary characters have made reference to Backstrom’s famous father, a perfect upright citizen who apparently abused him as a child. They are obviously setting up his father to enter the show eventually and be in contention with his son. Then on the other end we have a gay, thieving, son of a prostitute, who is also Backstrom’s roommate. How Backstrom knows his mother is left vague and one character even notes their similar appearance. Uh oh, looks like Backstrom will be dealing with an illegitimate child who he may or may not realize is his.

These are the kind of things most shows would wait until season three or four to get into, right around the time they start running out of ideas. Here we’re setting these up in episode two. Not a good sign of things to come. Plus the show is already treading the clichéd, “Hey! This jerk is really a well-meaning guy with a tortured past and a dark side.” If we never get to know him as a hard-assed cold-hearted genius and the writers start deconstructing him from day one, nothing they do will have any real impact. Rainn Wilson is really trying to make the character his but he just doesn’t have the charisma of a television lead. Scenes where he attempts to play up some sort of irresistible sexual draw are played seemingly straight but come off as a joke.

From uninspired writing to miscast parts, Backstrom is a misfire on every level. Its police procedural elements are boring and its comedic elements fall flat. Barring a complete overhaul in writing and tone, there’s little chance we’ll be seeing Backstom again next year.

This year ABC is doubling down on the winter mini-season, launching two high concept niche shows over what is normally, for most networks, a break from new content. Both Galavant and Marvel’s Agent Carter are period pieces consisting of 8 episodes each. However, for some reason, ABC decided to air Agent Carter over eight weeks while doubling up on Galavant’s shorter thirty-minute episodes over four. In this age of fewer summer reruns and little chance of syndication for a shorter run leads us to believe that the original plan was to air the show over eight weeks as well — otherwise why not just produce four-hour long installments? Maybe they thought stretching it out over eight weeks would lose too many audience members.

Regardless of whether ABC had faith in Galavant or not, the end result is a delightfully cheesy show, a dash of Disney, a pinch of Monty Python, with a side of The Princess Bride. Composer and Disney golden boy Alan Menken, along with the team behind Tangled, have created a fun world in which characters can turn from wholesome to risqué on a dime. With a relatively unknown cast save for former Psych cast member Timothy Omundson and go-to baddie Vinnie Jones, along with a few funny cameos, Menken and Co. have managed to make something that feels original yet familiar at the same time. The lead actors have wonderful chemistry and even Vinnie Jones, who has become almost a parody of himself at this point, works wonderfully as a gruff thug in contrast with Omundson’s prissy king.

The biggest complaint you could make about Galavant is it could have used a one or two more memorable songs. While the majority of the songs were fantastic and almost too catchy for their own good (the title song alone will be bouncing around your head for hours after), several songs throughout the season were less than stellar, there more to drive the plot or serve exposition. Admittedly, these only stick out because we’ve been so spoiled by some of the standout numbers: the pirates’ “Lords of the Sea” along with “Hey Hey We’re the Monks” being two prime examples. Some people will be turned off by the musical aspect of the show but frankly anyone who doesn’t like musicals should stay clear. Galavant doesn’t shy away from the cheesy, flamboyant nature of an old-fashioned musical. If anything they turn hard into the skid. Many of the musical numbers demand repeat viewings and you can’t help but laugh at some of the ridiculous antics that take place.

Plot and writing-wise there were weak points scattered throughout the season. A few parts of our heroes’ journey felt a bit glossed over while others felt like they went on longer than necessary. The pirates we meet in episode four are so funny and offbeat you could easily see multiple episodes dedicated to the adventures they had together on their way to Valencia. It’s a shame they weren’t kept in the mix.  The finale also had some awkward moments that didn’t seem to fit the rest of the season: Princess Isabella went from a strong independent woman to a more traditional damsel waiting to be rescued, and Galavant’s plan to get King Richard drunk to go after his brother seemed unnecessary — though it did lead to one of the best musical numbers, “We’re Off on a Secret Mission.” The biggest surprise that came out of Galavant‘s season finale is that it wasn’t a series finale, we’re left with all our characters in precarious situations and our story draws to a close on a cliffhanger. It seemed like this was a one season and done situation so the fact that we now have to hope for a second season to get any kind of resolution was a real shocker. Though after seeing how fun King Richard and Galavant are together, the promise of more of their growing bromance is exciting. With the way everyone is left at the show’s close, there’s a lot of potential for new settings, situations, and some dynamic pairings of characters. Hopefully these will lead to some great songs as well.

Whether or not we get another season, Galavant was different from the rest of the pack, it did something unique and will no doubt have fans and detractors both in abundance. But for those of us who love musicals and can appreciate the show for the funny, cheesy, self-aware approach it takes, Galavant is a welcome addition to the television landscape and here’s hoping we can have at least one more season of humming that damn catchy titular song over and over again.

Another season of American Horror Story has come to an end. This year’s Freakshow continues a steady decline that began last season. The show still has its quirks, its moments that makes it fun, trashy television but this year felt slightly neutered. Whether this was through the budget or just storytelling is hard to tell. The season started off promising enough with Sarah Paulson playing the two-headed Bette/ Dot and John Carroll Lynch (who I will always see as Drew Carey’s cross-dressing brother from The Drew Carey Show) as the bed-wettingly scary Twisty the Clown. This year had the potential to be something truly dark and deserving of the “horror” moniker. Even the musical number that began this season (David Bowie’s “Life on Mars”) was fun and didn’t seem as forced as last year’s weird Stevie Nicks music video. Somewhere between that enticing start and this week’s finale the show lost its way.

Where last season people said the show lacked any real consequences, once multiple characters have come back from the dead it is hard to care about what happens to them, this season seemed to over correct by killing someone every episode. The problem though was the writers never took the time to let us like any of these people before they killed them off. Generally the characters this season were by and large terrible people. Just about everyone either murdered or aided in the murder of someone over the course of the show but no one ever showed any remorse or regret over it. When those same people meet a bloody, violent death it’s hard to feel sorry for them.

A few times we’re given people to feel bad for but here again, they aren’t fleshed out, they’re two-dimensional props and we are being forced to care about them. Two examples of this were Meep “the geek” and Ma Petite, the “worlds smallest woman.” We were supposed to care about these two because they’re weak, they’re cute, and they … well we never really knew anything else about them so that’s it. The show used their characters as superficially and selfishly as a freak show would. Maybe if we had gotten some real back story or some more interaction it would be easier to care for them instead of because we’re told to do so. While we weren’t getting background on characters who were important to the plot, the writers were busy tying past seasons into this one. For the first time this year we have confirmation that all the seasons take place in the same world. One of the Nuns from Asylum came and we see how Pepper the pinhead ended up there. So now that we’ve had “Pepper Begins,” an Avengers-style crossover must be next right? But really unless there are further plans to expand on this, what was the point other than to confuse people while taking important time away that they could use to flesh out their characters?

It wasn’t just the lack of connection to characters that took away this year; the effects work was all over the place. The “twins” Dot and Bette were especially hit and miss, while having a two-headed character is going to be challenging, and to their credit many different methods were employed to achieve it, the results were mixed. Moments where they shot the heads separately juxtaposing their personalities to one another started off as clever, even entertaining, but there’s only so many scenes you can have ping ponging between shots of two heads coming from the same torso before it gets tired. Scenes that used CG and practical effects went from the completely convincing to laughably bad, more than once a shot from behind clearly showed one head bobbling on a rubbery neck.

On a more positive note there were some great visuals this season. The freak show itself came off like a Tim Burton fever dream and the opening credits sequence this season might be the creepiest yet. The aforementioned Twisty was a terrifying clown design and whenever he was on screen he stole the show. The only negative was how quickly they resolved his story. It would have been nice to have him throughout the season. Then there is Dandy the rich psycho. He was basically a murderous seersucker wearing  version of Blaine from Ryan Murphy’s other show “Glee.” If any one character had to be labeled this season’s “Big Bad” it would probably be him. He got to be the creepy momma’s boy, a psychotic apprentice, as well as a spoiled brat. Outside of freak show owner Elsa Mars, Dandy is probably the character we spend the most time with and learn the most about this season. It would be surprising if Finn Wittrock, who plays Dandy, doesn’t become one of their recurring actors in future seasons after such a strong performance this year.

So many good ingredients make it such a shame that the end product was so lacking. A fantastic cast, great guest stars, plus a weird twisted setting but there just wasn’t enough focus to have things come together. As quickly as plotlines and characters were introduced another plot is wrapped up neatly and another character is killed. One week the local townsfolk hate the freaks, the next week they cheer one as a hero, but wait! The week after that they hate the freaks again. Last season might have been a little too generous on resurrections but it still had fleshed out characters who felt like real, though out there, people.

Seasons one and two of American horror Story were fantastic,  season three was pretty damned good, and now season four is just ok. Hopefully next year creators Falchuk and Murphy can stop or reverse the drop in quality or else American Horror Story will end up like their other collaborations Nip/Tuck and Glee, shows that peaked early but then dragged on until they became parodies of themselves. It’s still fun to watch, which is more than can be said of a lot of shows, but where it used to be well written trashy fun it’s just plain trashy fun now. With the format of a new story and set of characters every year, a turnaround is easy to manage. Let’s just hope they can make a return to form next year.

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Ten years, seven seasons, fifty-six hours, and one terrible live action adaptation … now we’re here at the end of the avatar’s world — no not the “Dances with Smurfs” one. The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is no more, at least for the foreseeable future. After three seasons of the original Avatar, many wondered if their follow-up, set seventy years after the first series, would be as well-done or as well-received by the viewing public. While not as consistently great as its parent series, The Legend of Korra had many moments that were well deserving of its lineage.

It’s a shame that such a well done piece of animation failed to find the number or quality of audience that Nickelodeon was hoping for. If it had, the last year could have gone much differently. After moving to streaming online only, scaring fans that the show would end without a proper finale, Nickelodeon moved the show back to airing for the end of the season just as suddenly.

After all that drama, it came out in the press that the budget for the final season was slashed heavily. To the point that one episode of the final season would be a clip show. Luckily the writers were clever enough to take this setback and give us an especially funny episode, albeit one with practically no plot or character development.

It’s doubtful the executives at Nickelodeon knew what they were doing when it came to Korra. Lucky for us the creative team behind the show kept their focus on getting us to the end of their story. Season four (or Book 4 as it’s called) was titled “Balance.” As such, the series explored several variations on the term: Work and family, spirituality and the physical, war and peace, along with love and duty were all running themes this year. The two-part finale did an amazing job at addressing each of these over a forty-five minute run time.

The finale started with Kuvira, a powerful and charismatic leader, poised to take over Republic City. To do so, she has a giant mech equipped with a spirit-powered super weapon. Seeing the rows of soldiers with her at the helm invokes tones of World War II. The use of a weapon of mass destruction not only invokes images of Hiroshima but modern acts of terror as well. The show has smartly strayed from turning Kuvira into a one-note villain, instead juxtaposing her intentions with Korra’s. They both are strong women who feel driven to an end: they both want a world at peace … but their views on achieving this balance are vastly different. A big arc this season was for Korra to look at her enemies, to see their similarities rather than their differences. Every antagonist she has faced had a quality that mirrors something inside of her.

Once the action begins, the episode really takes off. Throughout the good and the bad of this show one thing has always stood true: the action scenes are phenomenal. The way the fight scenes are choreographed and presented is some of the best action in any medium, not just animation. They lead you down a path where as a viewer you would ask yourself “why they don’t use a certain ability or tool at their disposal”,  the next second they do just that. Instead of building roadblocks out of characters stupidity, as many shows do, they have smart, creative characters whose conflicts feel organic. Team Avatar joining forces, using a multilateral attack of ground and air-based abilities is a great culmination to all the battles we’ve seen. It would have been nice to see more of the new Air Nomads at this point to really hammer home that the air nation is back in full swing, but understandably they wanted to keep the focus on our main group.

Korra gets one more talk with her teacher Tenzin; they have a heart to heart, demonstrating they have helped one another grow. Their dynamic is what drove the first season … now at the end we see that master and student view each other as equals. Neither one is above the other; balance once again.

For the last few minutes of the show the writers finally address the big issue that has sparked fan discussion since book two: the Mako/Korra/Asami relationship. Since day one, Mako and Korra never gelled the way they were intended to. It was obvious they were trying to capture a little of the Aang/Katara romantic magic of the first series, but it never felt right. Conversely, the friendship between Korra and Asami felt natural. It grew out of something organically. The last words we hear Mako tell Korra are platonic: “I’ll follow you into battle no matter how crazy things get, I’ve got your back and I always will.” These aren’t the words of someone in love, but those of a dear friend. In this moment the show finally lets go of the idea that Korra and Mako are romantically linked; instead they’re comrades, soldiers in arms, but not in love.

Fittingly, we see Korra and Asami together one last time. They talk about their regrets, say their apologies to one another, then decide to go off on a vacation together into the spirit world for an indefinite time. In probably the most beautiful moment of the series, they walk hand in hand into a spirit portal, turn in to face each other, look into each others eyes … and vanish. Many fans (including this one) have hoped against all odds that this same-sex pairing would be allowed to happen on a Nickelodeon animated show. It would be a safe bet there is probably a version of this episode’s script where they embraced or kissed in the end. By leaving it vague yet so assuredly true, the writers manage to show us a beautifully realized romance while still leaving enough deniability for those unready to deal with it.

Korra managed to bring peace to the world as well as find love in an unexpected place along the way. This season was about balance, it delivered on every front: a unique, smartly written story with beautiful animation, amazing action, and memorable characters. These are the ways Korra became a legend.

Who would have thought a drama about a biker gang would last seven years? Who would have thought a drama about a biker gang would be riveting, well-written television … for five of those years. Yes Sons of Anarchy has grown a bit long in the tooth and finally taken out to pasture, and while it was a wild ride it petered out in the end. Without a clear adversary like Clay Morrow, the show has felt unfocused for the last two years. Where the first five seasons felt like they had a clear direction, Jax struggling with his outlaw ways and the wishes of his dead father to legitimize their club, these last two seemed to forget that and dive headfirst into the seedy criminal world of Samcro. The series finale tries to rectify this somewhat, returning to a Jax who knows that he and his brothers in arms are bad men that do bad things. If it did nothing else, this change redeems the mess the series had become. We get to see our anti-hero reconcile what he is and what he’s done and finally take responsibility for his sins… on his own terms of course.

Kurt Sutter has been more and more self-indulgent with the show; he could easily be called the Peter Jackson of television. Where the first seasons were packed to the brim with character development and action, we now spend most episodes — including this finale — with three-minute bro hug-offs and discussions of finances. Not what we expect from a show that started with gang wars and burning tattoos off of mens back with a blowtorch.

There is a good finale buried in this mess though, one that is an hour, maybe an hour and twenty minutes long.. Once Jax gets his house in order we get to see him clean up the neighborhood one last time. One more trip with mister mayhem and while not the most violent or bloody battle the show has had Jax seems like the focused man with purpose he started the show as. We get another visit from the strange homeless girl who always seems to pop up before pivotal events on the show. While her appearance had never been explained before, there are allusions to her being some sort of angel. Whether a guardian or an angel of death is left up to us, she is definitely an otherworldly guide of some type for Jax. While this character’s mysterious appearances and motives are effective for the most part they also come off a bit pretentious. The leader of a vicious biker gang has a supernatural entity watching over him … when you read it out loud it’s almost laughable. To their credit they kept it vague and grounded enough that people could interpret her comings and goings in a number of ways.

After all of his battles, losses, trials and tribulations, Jax’s fate is pretty much inevitable at this point. He rides off into the sunset but also go out in a blaze of glory: Jax visits the site of his father’s fatal crash. The crash that has been called an outright accident, blamed on his mother and Clay as murder, and suggested as a possible suicide. How fitting that Jax speaks one more time to his father, the man whose writings and teachings gave him such turmoil in his soul. Also fitting that from here he launches, after firing at a cop, his last ride. On his fathers bike Jax takes off down the highway and eventually is chased by what looks to be easily a hundred officers. The show has one of its greatest shots here as the camera flies above the action swerving from left to right just over the police cruisers. It is the kind of staging you’d expect from Breaking Bad or True Detective. Jax sees an eighteen wheeler coming in the other direction and has a beautiful moment of clarity. Just like his father, on the same bike Jax goes out riding free.

Most longtime fans have always assumed there would be no happy ending for Jax Teller and while they were right. Jax was able to fulfill his father’s wishes and get his club out of guns and get his children away from the club. While the show may have lost that objective for the last two years it was a fitting, perfect way to cap off the show. Sons of Anarchy may not go down as one of the greatest shows of all time, but it sure was one hell of a ride.