S2:18 WandaVision, Servant

It’s Family Time!

This week we were introduced to two extraordinarily trippy, mysterious families in WandaVision and Servant.

But first…

Congratulations U.S.A.!!! By the time you listen to this week’s episode, our long national nightmare will be over! And even though it may take us years to clean up the mess, we have hope… the audacity of hope.
We also hope that by the time see this we will have a peaceful inauguration behind us. Good luck President Biden and V.P. Harris, we all need it,

WandaVision

Yes, you read that right. Travis and Elaine dipped our toes into the Marvel Universe! And the water was warm!! Of course, we soon found out that WandaVision is a complete departure from anything Marvel had done before. So??? All we know is that so far, we love it!
We won’t go into the multiple Easter Eggs that link back to Marvel. Even we know the “Stark” brand is a callback to Ironman etc etc. But, we did love some of the cool little bits from the classic TV that WandaVision is built around.

In episode 1

We loved the nod to the famous (3) The Dick Van Dyke Show openings. Here’s a video where Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) falls, sidesteps, and then sidesteps and trips over the ottoman.

And here’s Vision. He walks right through.

In episode 2

This time around, WandaVision revisits the classic Bewitched!
Here is the pilot episode of the original. We set it to cartoon Samantha, flying.

And here’s WandaVision.

At the end of WandaVision episode 2, the show goes from black and white to color. In 1966, after 2 seasons in black and white, Bewitched (and nearly everything else on TV) went to “Living Color!”

These are the little things that make WandaVision so much fun for TV fans like us. But, what really got us was the dark undertones. The feelings of dread. The Truman Show style pullback at the end of the episodes. If we’re lucky, WandaVision will wind up in the realm of David Lynch‘s Blue Velvet suburbia rather than homage or, worse, a retread of the classic sitcoms. We feel a dark vibe even in the first two episodes and the trailer(s) back it up. We have our fingers crossed for WandaVision!

WandaVision is on Disney + and stars Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany and the wonderful Kathryn Hahn.
We highly recommend Hahn in I Know This Much Is True and I Love Dick.

Servant

We got lucky with this one. And by lucky, I mean we never heard of it until this week when it launched season 2. And even luckier that so far it has us hooked!
We gave very little away on the show because there are so many twists and turns in this one that we didn’t want to spoil any little thing.
Let’s talk about the cast. We’re thrilled to see Lauren Ambrose as meaty a role as Dorothy. She’s gone through a long spate of back luck (Torchwood, The X-Files reboot.) We loved her so much in Six Feet Under. We hope to see A LOT more of her moving forward.
Here are some of the best cold opens from Six Feet Under, just because.

Playing Dorothy’s long suffering husband is played by Toby Kebbell who we knew mostly from The Entire History of You, the first episode of Black Mirror that wasn’t written by Charlie Brooker, instead credited to sitcom writer Jesse Armstrong.

Dorothy’s brother is Harry Potter star, Rupert Grint in one of his first adult roles. Keep an eye on him!

And as the “Servant,” Nell Tiger Free. You may remember her as Joffery’s much less interesting sister, and Jaime Lannister’s favorite niece/daughter on Game of Thrones, Myrcella Baratheon.
But, we know and love her from her role as Martin’s (Miles Teller) 17 year old girlfriend and daughter to coke snort Billy Baldwin on one of our favorite shows and the first show we ever talked about on this podcast (well kinda second episode, but that’s another story) Too Old To Die Young.
It was a much different podcast then. I hope we’re better now! Worse? You tell us!!

Nell Tiger Free. is as creepy/sad/confusing as ever as LeeAnn but we’ll let you discover that for yourself.

And now one more thing from Too Old To Die Young!

One of our favorite musical sequences ever!

And on that Ska note

We want express one more time, our unbridled glee end for the end of the Trump reign of terror, Cya next week, in a whole new world!

Please enjoy this slideshow of some of Elaine’s fav TV and movie themed Bernie Sanders Memes from Inauguration Day!