On My Block is a coming-of-age comedy drama about four funny, street-wise friends who must deal with the complications of relationships, high school, and the rough streets of Los Angeles.

The setting takes place in a Latino populated community, where the group of friend’s favorite pass time is guessing what kind of gunfire is being roared through the streets.

OMB talks about important issues that take appearance in many urban communities without having the scene to feel like a sitcom’s “Very Special Episode.”

The cast includes Sierra Capri, Jason Genao, Brett Gray, Diego Tinoco, Stuck in The Middle‘s Ronni Hawk, and Liv and Maddie‘s Jessica Marie.

The show has great storylines, excellent character development, and some of television’s most memorable music.

OMB’s soundtrack consists of music from RAYANA JAY, KIRKO BANGZ, DEJ LOAF, RUSS, KHALID, and more!

One of my favorite songs on the series, “Changes” by DEJ LOAF, gives a sort of “jazz-y” Latin vibes with its eccentric horns and animated tempo.

If you want a great show this summer to watch with even greater music On My Block is the perfect choice.

The post Music From “On My Block” Is on My Playlist appeared first on SCAD Radio.

The cast is filled with a lot of lesser-known actors, but is supplemented with several surprisingly familiar faces such as Jeff Daniels, Michelle Dockery, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and Sam Waterson from the Netflix series Grace and Frankie. Out of this large cast of unknowns emerges our very own SCAD alum, Kayli Carter, playing Sadie Rose. Sadie Rose is one of many women living in the small mining town of La Belle, Arizona. The men of La Belle, excluding the sheriff, his deputy, and a few of the older shop tenders, have all died in a mining accident. The town is now governed by the dead mayor’s wife: a pants-wearing, gun-shooting, bisexual who’s in love with the town’s prostitute-turned-school-teacher. With Frank Griffin’s hoard of bandits quickly approaching in search of Roy Goode, an outlaw stowing away in the barn of the town’s own outcast, Alice Fletcher, these women must decide if they are willing to give up their mine to a company that promises to bring in strong men to work it, or be left to fend for themselves.

There has been a lot of debate over whether or not this series has lived up to the responsibility of providing its viewers with original feminist characters. Godless certainly doesn’t do much to break the formula of a single outstanding male outlaw with a heart of gold being hunted by an intimidating number of deadly male bandits, but I think the redeeming factors of this show lay in the new characters that it does introduce. It’s so refreshing to watch a Western and see a strong female character like Michelle Dockery’s Alice Fletcher that isn’t the bar mistress (although Tess Frazer’s character, the former prostitute, does at one point joke that Fletcher would do great as a mistress.) The strong female characters don’t end there. The women of La Belle are powerful, diverse, capable, and hilarious. Even the male characters are, for the most part, three dimensional and dynamic. The sheriff’s ginormous ego is threatened by the fact that he’s losing his vision, which throws his arrogance into overdrive and forces him to face his own limitations. The deadly outlaw Frank Griffin has a lot of likable and relatable qualities, and by the end of this series you get a sense that this sociopath may just be force-fed a dose of reality.

Overall this series was wildly entertaining and beautiful. Several shots took my breath away, the story was captivating, and the character’s paths were skillfully interwoven. However, the show could have definitely done more for the topics of feminism and racism that it so casually addresses. The new female archetypes, Native American secondary characters, and retired African American soldiers inhabiting the neighboring town of Blackville were perhaps a weak start, but at least these topics are becoming part of the conversation.

4/5 ominous tumbleweeds

The post Godless, The Netflix Miniseries that Rewrites the Western Genre appeared first on SCAD Radio.

There are aspects of the show that can be grating, to say the least. It hooks you with that familiar aggravation as you watch the characters make poor decision after poor decision. Then, you get stuck watching the next episode to find out if it all works out when you really should be using these last precious hours of the night to get some sleep. With its kooky campy style that is part of the show’s charm, and it’s secondary characters that represent to the viewers both who we’re afraid of turning into and what kind of people we might truly need in our life, the show makes light of what could otherwise be some very heavy content to work through. At times, however, the writers make too much light of the subject matter. Some episodes will leave you writhing in frenzied annoyance while the characters you’ve become so involved with hurt each other over and over again. There is often the urge to grab them like dolls and knock their heads together while screaming, “Communicate!” yet Gus and Mickey are always honest with each other at the end of these periods of frustration – a welcome relief in that scratch-itch-scratch sort of way.

The first episode is a work of art that lays out these characters flaws in their entirety. Once you really get to know Gus and Mickey, they hit you with the second episode which is a satisfying display of everything you want the series to be. For the rest of the season, the relationship between these two volleys between varying levels of disappointing. But you can’t say that they don’t warn you. The two’s departing sentiments at the end of the second episode foreshadow the breakdown of events that follow when Mickey assures Gus that, “Dude, I’m the queen of eating s***. You should never be embarrassed,” to which he responds, “I’ve been waiting for somebody to say that to me my whole life.” Perhaps their correspondence is disappointing because it honestly portrays the shortcomings of human relationship instead of the cookie cutter, us-against-the-world portrayal of love we’re used to being fed. Our duo will spend the rest of the two seasons deciding how far they’re able to push the other person, and realizing that they can’t fix the other nor should they run away for fear of being fixed. This is what makes the show so rewarding to watch. There is pain and there is pleasure as Mickey and Gus’ characters unfold into people willing to better themselves as a result of the acceptance that they’ve received and learn to give in return. Are they meant for each other? Eh. But there is something to be said for those beautiful scenes that capture their dynamic when they have each gotten out of their own way.

Love is a show that finally forces the nice guy to realize his own manipulative tendencies and irrationalities – a bit of character development we seldom see in today’s TV landscape. At the same time, it portrays the man-eating alcoholic/sex addict as someone who is able to make strides towards controlling herself and work toward her goals. The beautiful thing about this series is that it’s honest. It shows two people, aware of their issues, and willing to put in the effort required to make it work. These are characters that we, as viewers, are proud to see ourselves in. Gus shows us the side of ourselves that is scared to give too much, scared of rejection, and scared that the person that has captured our affection could never love us for who we really are. Mickey, in a RIV-ET-ING performance by Jacobs, shows us that side of ourselves that is afraid to burden those that we care about with a load we fear is too big for them to carry. Mickey says to a fellow sex and love addict at the beginning of season two, “I don’t want to binge on him,” and this seems to sum up their dilemma in a glorious way. Both have plenty of baggage that would make it easy enough for them to split, which is the viewer’s fear during the entire two seasons. However, something draws them together. Every now and then we catch a glimpse of what it’s like when they aren’t trying so hard to be what they think the other wants or running away out of fear. Gus and Mickey share a genuine connection, and it is a connection that they deem worthy of preserving. This time, it’s worth getting right.

4 out of 5 nervous break-downs

The post Nice Guys Take a Breather, Netflix’s Love Wins This Round appeared first on SCAD Radio.

The main character Clay (Dylan Minnette) has a crush on Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford) who left behind tapes with stories about thirteen different people who caused her to commit suicide. Clay doesn’t have any levels or depths. He was in love with Hannah Baker and thinks he has the ability to love her back to life. This one part of his character has to pull the entire weight of the story. The book’s version of the events takes place in one night. And you think, how can one take events of one night and turn it into 13 hour-long episodes? The result is a drawn-out, mundane story trying to pass as a mystery. The execution is terribly unsteady.

Delving into the inner lives of highschool kids with emotions running high and the aftermath of a classmate’s death could have been interesting. And there are some insightful moments: the weird magic of parties; the vulnerability of budding friendships. Its attempt to show the self-absorbed nature of teens fails.  It directs the audience to dismiss the obvious faults in the characters and take them at their word, trusting them completely when you really should not trust them at all.

The first episode has a tight story, but as the season progresses, it slowly unfolds, becoming messy and sometimes difficult to follow, until the rushed ending.  It feels as if the writers forgot their 13 episode limit and crushed all the rest into the four remaining episodes. Each episode focused on one character, but some weren’t even interesting enough to follow for an hour of television.  It set a dragging pace.  And each episode is exactly as the one before: Clay listens to the tape, complains about how much pain they give him, demands more answers, then listens to another tape.

The story is told through a back and forth between the present and past. Most of the flashbacks are Hannah Baker’s blurry-edged, fuzzy, sepia-toned point of view, breaking the monotony of Clay’s tunnel vision that leads the rest of the show. There is no need for this obvious guidance. Hannah Baker’s appearance in the flashbacks are enough to indicate the past.

The show is geared toward young kids: tweens, teens, and young adults. This is a show about suicide, targeting an audience of individuals that die more from suicide than any disease. The show could have been important and educational, but the story is not real or healthy.  It glorifies suicide by making it seem like it leaves behind a message for the world. It shows it as only a result of bullying when it is much more complex than just that.  It also adds insult to injury by not even breaching the topic of mental illness or delving into Hannah’s background to find the source of her pain. And even though bullying can and does have an effect, the show puts the blame of the action entirely onto other people when in reality, it was Hannah’s choice. It glorifies self-harm by saying, “It’s what you do instead of killing yourself.” The show offers no other solutions aside to being troubled and having problems than suicide and there are many other paths out there to teach young kids.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has regulations on how to portray suicide without leading to more death. 13 Reasons Why blatantly ignores these guidelines. The show provides no resources in the credits for audience members who are struggling with the same issues. The only episodes that had content warnings before them were the last four, but there should be one before every episode. The show graphically shows Hannah cutting her wrist, an unnecessary visual and against safety measures. Everyone watching knows she had committed suicide. There were many other ways to get their point across. For example, a scene of Hannah simply picking up a razor and stepping into the bathtub gives the audience all they need to know. The production and creative teams were not interested in considering the impact they could have.

Dull storytelling. Inappropriate dialogue. Average acting. The show is offensive to many people. The lack of research showed the creative team’s absence of care for their audience, which led to poor execution.

13 out of 13 Bad

If you are in a state of distress, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 
1-800-273-TALK (8255)

Or contact the Crisis Text line by texting TALK to 741-741

The post Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why to… Not appeared first on SCAD Radio.

Like its predecessor, MST3k: The Return takes the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” to its logical conclusion with a hokey sci-fi twist. In the show, host Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray) and his two robot pals Tom Servo (Baron Vaughn) and Crow T. Robot (Hampton Yount) watch old, bad movies and make fun of them at the behest of their cruel mad scientist taskmasters Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and Max (Patton Oswalt). In addition to the “riffing” of these old films which makes up the bulk of the show, there are also interstitial bits of traditional situational comedy focusing on the interactions between these characters and a rotating cast of bit-players including Neil Patrick Harris, Mark Hamill, and Jerry Seinfeld.

This show has charm coming out of its ears, and plenty of other places, and it all starts at the production quality. Everything we see on-screen; from the claymation spacecraft, to the goofy costumes, to the robot puppets has been constructed and produced with a handcrafted low-budget flare, emulating the earnest low-budget flare of the original public access-era Mystery Science Theater 3000 show of the late-80s. MST3k: The Return has the money and the star power of a modern television series, but it doesn’t lose itself in that. Its main focus is on keeping with the authenticity and quality of its low-fi predecessor and I love that about it. There isn’t a sudden shift in production values because the show got more funding, it just keeps being MST3k, and it doesn’t try to overstep those bounds.

With a writing staff bolstered by the likes of Rick and Morty’s Dan Harmon and helmed by former Daily Show head writer Elliott Kalan, the goofs are back and stronger than ever in this new iteration. The jokes, references, and bits delivered by Ray and company fly fast and furious, and as a fan of the original series I felt right at home from the first wisecrack. The writing, sprinkled with references new and old, manages to appeal to the more modern audience of Netflix while also keeping in the spirit of the original show without missing a beat. It’s smart, it’s gut-stomp hilarious, and even bits that would rely on knowledge of the previous run of the show are still funny enough on their face to have newcomers to the world of MST3k guffawing along.

The strongest episode of the season, and one I’d start on if I’m not too sure about the show, has to be “Avalanche” wherein Jonah and the Bots riff on the 1978 disaster movie of the same name starring Rock Hudson as a creepy land developer, Mia Farrow as Rock Hudson’s journalist ex-wife who he’s weirdly obsessed with, and featuring Jeanette Nolan as Rock Hudson’s constantly-drunk mother.

So give it a shot, I say. You’ll never have a better time watching a bad movie, I guarantee it.

5 out of 5 Satellites of Love

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