deerstalker
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BGN dives into episodes 3 and 4 of the new FX series Kindred currently streaming on Hulu.
Adapted from the celebrated novel Kindred, by Hugo Award-winner Octavia E. Butler, the FX series centers on “Dana James” (Mallori Johnson), a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to Los Angeles, ready to claim a future that, for once, feels all her own. But, before she can settle into her new home, she finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time. She emerges at a nineteenth-century plantation, a place remarkably and intimately linked with Dana and her family. An interracial romance threads through Dana’s past and present, and the clock is ticking as she struggles to confront secrets she never knew ran through her blood, in this genre-breaking exploration of the ties that bind.
Hosts: Jamie Broadnax, Angelica Monk and Ryanne Bennett
Video Editor: Jamie Broadnax
All episodes of FX’s Kindred are currently streaming on Hulu.
The following is a dramatic, non-comprehensive retelling of the writer’s multi-day journey in the Paldea Region while playing Pokemon Violet. All embellishment is their own imagination, but also some of it is just how the game works. Also, if it’s not clear. There are spoilers. Many, many spoilers.
Oh Arceus, It’s Happening Again
On a completely typical Thursday night, I laid down on the couch thinking about the fact that this time two years ago I had been isekai’d into the Galar region and raised a sad water lizard that became an emo sniper water lizard. I became a monster tamer champion in a large stadium, then spent a couple days doing a karate training montage with a bear, going to a frozen tundra, and solving mysterious with a telekinetic deer on a horse. As I pondered these, I felt my eyes close and then right before I could finish blinking, a familiar musical cue started, and the abject fear filled my body.
It’s happening again.
Once again, I find myself in the body of a 10-year-old, and I already know what’s going to happen next. And sure enough, there is a knock on the door, and I resign myself to once again undertaking an arduous journey.
This incarnation is slightly different as I am greeted by a headmaster who has too much time on his hands. Apparently, I am a student in the Paldea region. I am given the rundown about being a new student and shown a happy go lucky fire gator, a grass cat, and what appears to just be a duck. I am instructed to walk over to my neighbor’s house as the pocket monsters frolic about. She, in addition to apparently coming from an abundance of money, is also the school’s star pupil.
I am asked to select one of the three friends, and having bonded with the fire gator, take the Fuecoco and name him Adobo. Nemona aka Star Pupil, perhaps rightfully thinking that as a new student I have no knowledge of the world of Pokemon, picks the grass cat and is shocked when I show an understanding of type advantage. The school director leaves me and Nemona to navigate the south side of the continent by ourselves.
On our way to school, a futuristic dragon bike crash lands onto a cove. I fall down as I try investigating it only to be saved by a sentient smart phone. The futuristic dragon and I take the slowest walk through a dangerous cave where the futuristic dragon bike wards off most of dangers, and I am reunited with Star Pupil. We take a detour to the lighthouse and meet an angry student with a backpack and eventually make it to the first town. Alongside all of the shenanigans, I had slowly been acquiring new pokemon, and have a surprising diverse team from the get. I decide to rest before making my way to the school.
Oh, We’re Learning About Things
After learning how to unleash a fire gator against all of the local grass types using an auto-battler, I make it to the big, big city, and star pupil Nemona asks to duel right there and now. This time she shows more pokemon, and I successfully wall an electric type with a Diglett. Somethings never change no matter the continent or reality. She mentions something about “Terastalizing” and then goes off to get an orb. I interact with elaborately dressed peers who do a weird star gesture routine, and thanks to Star Pupil, I can make happy fire gator even more fire.
Afterwards, I am quickly shepherd into the school that I’m pretty sure I should have been all along. Months seemingly pass in moments and before I know it, Arven is telling me about Titan Pokemon, Nemona is begging me to tackle the Elite 4 and become a Champion, and someone hacked my phone and is asking me to raid five different student bases.
All of this just in time for an independent study where the entire faculty just let all of the students wonder around the continent alone, accompanied by monsters of various sizes in technological marvels.
After inspecting the maps, I decide to head east to find the first Titan, only to find that no matter the world I am directionally inept and had exited the city from the West Gate. I get lost in a crystal den for a second, and then manage to take down the Titan. Arven “helped” and then made a sandwich which made my dragon bike very happy and now we could move even faster, but he was definitely up to something.
I take a quick detour south to find some dragons and a giant ghost dog that I barely manage to capture and then return on my Eastern route to the first gym. I could not tell you the names of these towns or the people I met, only that I had to play hide and seek with a pack of Sunflora, fight a plant artist who gets to jump down from a windmill, and thankfully, Adobo manages to take care of everything without a worry.
Afterwards, a wild bull nearly knocks out all of my pokemon, I experiment with base jumping just to see if I can get to the Poke Center on the other side of the river, and then infiltrate a Team Star base with a “student” named “Clive” who definitely isn’t anyone I met before. As this is happening, my sentient smartphone helps me connect to a friend who has also been reincarnated as a 10-year-old monster tamer, but he does this groundhog’s day loop thing. Long story short, I end up with my own grass cat and duck, and we each have a full set of starter pokemon.
After doing everything I could in the SE quadrant, I double back to the SW, push an olive, fight a bugbear, learn that level capping is by badge count, and that if I read the map better, I wouldn’t have needed to do base jump. In any case, I discover that I couldn’t make it to my destination in the Southwest because my dragon could not jump or climb yet, so I head north where I ignore almost every single trainer in the vicinity, climb a mountain to fight a giant bird to learn how to swim, and then literally get run over by a futuristic elephant. I lick my wounds, revise my approach, and then somehow my dragon learns to swim. I now fully intended to help Arven become the best chef in the world to heal his dog, and there is still so much to do.
Crosswinds at the Crossroad
With the wild pokemon I caught refusing to listen to me, I decide to tackle another badge and decide to fight a PokeStreamer named Iono who asks me to boost her viewer count by playing “Where’s the Director of Your School” a couple times while fighting trainers. Everything goes relatively smoothly even though her ace terrified me for a moment.
We double back west in an awkward pendulum, take down another Star Base, another Gym, and then decide to see if the ability to jump is enough to climb a cave system…and it is. However, apparently the plateau I found myself on is significantly higher than I probably should be, so I go off to train for a bit. After an oddly placed game of Simon Says, I face the next gym leader, and I am gently reminded that Dark types are unaffected by Psychic moves and that gym leaders have type coverage.
Since my best counters for the gym refused to listen to me, I head to a different gym before successfully winning the rematch and winning against my rival, Star Pupil, to boot.
With more than half of each of the true paths sorted out, I felt a sense of embodiment. I conquer another Star Base and discover that this school, like many other schools, had an administration that was completely oblivious to the severity of bullying happening. Next, I hobble around the Northwest mountain pass to find myself in the frozen north where penguins with ice cube heads just float.
I meet up with a different friend who also got reincarnated as a 10-year-old, and at this point, we just sort of stopped questioning why so many of us were prone to such a specific problem. I manage to slay one more Titan, learn that pokemon definitely are capable of eating each other, and find a new friend: an ice dragon.
I venture back to the Lighthouse at the very start of our journey and discover that Arven’s father is the mysterious professor who randomly calls me to check on my progress and that Paldea is at the epicenter of a potentially world ending phenomena. At which point, Arven shows that he too has been training, and he systematically demolishes me, which leads me to a training montage.
I head back to the Gym and discover that somehow, out of all of the people who start collecting gym badges, only about a tenth of them make it to 6 gym before a lot of them just stop. Dead dogs rise from the earth, and I meet another member of the Elite Four who is literally an even younger child than me. This brings up even more questions about why so many people are getting reincarnated.
We end the day culling a Chansay population to make sure we’re not underleveled for the last bits of our journey.
Fast Traveling Through Time
Somehow, despite crossing the continent several times over on an electric dragon bike, this is only day 3 of my journey. I finish the cull and feel reasonably confident about my to-do-list, and manage to sweep through the rest of the Star bases and gyms without too much thought.
I look at my team and then realize, I had somehow subconsciously drafted Pokemon to recreate some of my favorite Destiny loadouts, and decided not to put too much thought into why I can’t escape my proclivities while I sled down a mountain with my dragon.
With all of the badges collected, titans felled, and bases raided, I feel that my return home is on the horizon. I return to the school for the first time in… two days and manage to defeat “Clive” who surprisingly was my school director and then face my benefactor for the Starfall mission, a shy introverted hacker who just got tired of being bullied, but thanks to the power of friendship, none of the students who set up barracks are getting expelled, so i guessed that’s good.
I then turn my sights to what I thought was a Victory Road, but rather was more of a victory hill, where a trainer with a meager level 10 greats me and then a trainer with a level 56 is at the door.
My Pokemon League accreditation starts with an interview, and I had to rely on my Isekei power of “the Internet” to remember that the Pyschic Gym Leader’s name was [] in [], and then am greeted with a question that heavily implies that at some point someone collected all 8 badges and went “you know, I don’t actually like pokemon that much.”
I go into the Elite Four blind, and trudge through ground, steel, Larry from before except with flying types which is a terrible match up for my particular team, and then sweep the Dragon trainer before making it to the champ Geeta.
Geeta’s almost as blood thirsty as Star Pupil Nemona, but thankfully my team is able to work through. Cynthia remains the only champ to truly instill fear in my heart. Afterwards, Nemona and I battle in the town square, and then I go rematch Arven so we can explore the mysterious blank spot in the map.
P-r-d-x P-k-m-n
Thevideojournalendshereinblurofstaticfallingdescendingallthingsinthefutureinthepresentallthehorrorsunleashedlikedpandoraboxwithaperpetutorwhowearsafacethatdoesnotbelongtothemandtheworldissavedbutatagreatcost.
And Per Isekei Convention
And with that sorted out, I decide to spend a couple more days as an unsupervised 10-year old before going about my actual day to day life. It was a very enjoyable detour, even if the fabric of reality was probably stretched a little too thin.
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The post Help, I Have Been Reincarnated as a 10-Year-Old Monster Tamer Again appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.
Noah Centineo has proved to be a great leading man in his previous work with Netflix and an action star in Black Adam. Netflix’s The Recruit marks two firsts for the young actor. He’s the lead in a streaming series. He’s also stepped into the role of executive producer, along with showrunner Alexi Hawley (The Rookie) and journalist/lawyer Adam Ciralsky, who used to work for the CIA.
Owen Hendricks (Centineo) is a 24-year-old recent law school grad who goes to work for the CIA. He’s intelligent, charismatic, hard-working, and incredibly ambitious, perhaps to a fault. Only days into the job, he gets an assignment that sends him all over the world to deal with scary people and life-threatening situations.
That assignment involves Max Meladze (Laura Haddock), a former CIA asset who sent them a “graymail” letter threatening to name names and spill some juicy secrets unless they get her out of prison. Russian spies aren’t anything new in storytelling, but there’s more to Max than just being a highly skilled killer, something Owen finds out the hard way.
When he’s not jet-setting or talking his way out of being tortured, Owen is at the CIA office where things aren’t as dangerous but are no less taxing. Two of his colleagues, Violet (Aarti Mann) and Lester (Colton Dunn), really commit to making his life hell. But it’s not just silly office pranks or humiliation. There are so many acronyms and code words in this profession. Owen doesn’t know any of them until his lack of knowledge gets him into varying degrees of trouble, sometimes putting his life on the line. It’s not super clear whether this is just traditional office hazing or jealousy, or both.
Owen’s boss Walter Nyland (Vondie Curtis-Hall), general counsel of the CIA, is the classic intimidating authority you want to impress at all times. He reminds me a bit of Stan Edgar from The Boys, though he smiles a lot more. Curtis-Hall really nails the “why are you still here” and “did you really just say that” looks, the two nonverbal responses he regularly gives to Owen.
Other than Owen, I have to say that Janus Ferber (Kristian Bruun) is my favorite character in the series. Anyone familiar with Orphan Black will know Bruun as Donnie Hendrix. Janus has a similar cluelessness but as a seriously burnt-out CIA lawyer, his frantic mindset is dialed up to 11.
In a place where everyone has to be on their lying A-game at all times, no one trusts each other. For a guy like Owen, an oversharer who can get along with just about anyone, navigating this world of professional deception isn’t the easiest, at least when it comes to coworkers. He’s still a charmer who can get himself out of tricky situations, whether it’s getting tortured, kidnapped, or both. Owen is good-looking and likable but gets himself into trouble on a daily basis. It seems to come from a good place, though.
Owen’s home life is pretty messy. One of the two people he lives with is his ex-girlfriend Hannah (Fivel Stewart), who acts as his voice of reason and de facto therapist. She’s also a new lawyer, working a boring government job and clearly more put together. They’re still best friends even though there’s obvious tension. Their roomie Terence (Daniel Quincy Annoh) often finds himself in between them, literally, but he handles the drama well.
The Recruit is genuinely funny in a non-slapstick way, which is a credit to the writing but also the talented cast. Centineo has brilliant comedic timing, especially in scenes with Bruun or Colton Dunn. But the series still has its dramatic, emotional moments. Laura Haddock imbues Max with a sense of vulnerability buried beneath the ruthless killer’s exterior, making her scenes alone and with others equally captivating. And Owen’s danger-seeking overachiever behavior stems from events in his past, suggesting/implying that his taste for intense conditions is a form of avoidance.
Interestingly, the series isn’t nonstop action. So, when an action scene comes, it’s delightfully chaotic and intense with some disorienting camerawork that puts you in the scene. Owen is a snazzy dresser but ends up bruised and bloodied in pretty much every episode. He mostly rocks a suit or whatever clean clothes he can get his hands on after a scuffle.
In The Recruit, Centineo plays Owen as a “ready-for-anything go-getter” while somehow coming off as very chill, making his character someone you want to root for, laugh at, and be friends with. The relatability factor was intentional. At Netflix’s Tudum 2022 event, Alexi Hawley said, “None of us can realistically dream of being James Bond, but all of us have had the first job — with co-workers we can’t trust and agendas we don’t understand.”
The Recruit is somewhere between glossy and gritty without being too much of either. It’s the perfect blend of action and comedy and does its best to avoid spy thriller cliches by creating characters who aren’t only smooth-talking agents and devious femme fatales. The series isn’t over-the-top guns blazing, but with a comically reckless main character just kinda winging it in a world of espionage, it certainly never gets boring.
The Recruit debuts Friday, December 16 on Netflix.