Turn and Smile Prime Time, June 26th: Phineas & Ferb, Motorheads, The Better Sister
This week there are 104 days to figure out who's the better sister in the rust belt
Welcome back, Sofa Taters!
We have some surprising quality for you this week! From returning greats to shows we weren’t expecting much from, this week runs the gamut.
Gen Z(ed) and Gen Alpha will be ecstatic that Phineas and Ferb is knocking its revival out of the park in its fifth season, and should be looking forward to the upcoming sixth season. So to court favour with the youths and their parents, we’re looking at “Today’s Gonna be a Great Day,” the theme song by Bowling For Soup, to this popular show and its opening sequence.
Proving once again that there’s value in every piece of media, Motorheads came out of nowhere to surprise us with one of the most tightly written teen dramas we’ve seen in a while, so we’re taking a look at the pilot episode.
Finally, we have the biggest variation in our review ever as we look at the adaptation of a crime thriller novel by American writer Alafair Burke, The Better Sister. Will you agree more with Mason or Larissa on this one?
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Table Of Contents
OPENING: Phineas And Ferb
The flagship creation of long-time collaborators Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh that entertained Gen Z(ed) youths from 2007 to 2012, Phineas and Ferb is about half-brothers Phineas Flynn and Ferbs Fletcher who try to maximize their fun and adventures during their summer break while their pet platypus Perry, who is a secret agent, fights against the evil Dr. Doofinshmertz (played by Povenmire). The series has been brought back for a revival, and with it, so too has the iconic theme song, originally penned by Povenmire, Marsh, and “1985” hit makers Bowling For Soup, who also perform the song.
Sound 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: The great thing about getting an honest-to-goodness rock band to help write and to perform a TV theme song is that it ends up sounding like a radio hit. It’s a real melding of musical forms, and it also sounds like a song you might hear on a Bowling For Soup album.
Larissa’s take: Agreed. This reminds me of the song “The Joneses” from Your Friends and Neighbours, which also sounded like a radio hit. Unlike the Hamilton Leithauser & Dominic Lewis bop, Bowling for Soup’s “Phineas and Ferb Theme Song” is literal rather than metaphorical. Stating there are “104 days of summer,” the song clearly outlines the problem Phineas and Ferb (alternative reality Ferb and Phineas) face is figuring out how to fill them. It then progresses into the various adventures the duo embark on during those dog days, like “building a rocket”, “discovering something that doesn’t exist” or “giving a monkey a shower”. The inevitable outcome being: “driving our sister insane”.
Conveyance (of Tone/Theme) 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Larissa’s Take: This title sequence explained everything, even the fact that Phineas and Ferb were making a title sequence. 5 stars.
Mason’s take: Phineas and Ferb is a wild, weird, funny, and sometimes insane kids’ cartoon involving interesting and cartoonish inciting incidents. “Today is Gonna be a Great Day” by Bowling For Soup (et al) perfectly encapsulates that.
Aesthetic 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: Honestly, just based on aesthetics and vibes alone, it feels like Ferb was a fan of Bowling For Soup and got Phineas into them.
Larissa’s take: Aesthetically, it looks identical to the show. I like that they didn’t deviate too much from the style of the show while animating all the lines from the song.
Innovation 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: The best part of a Bowling For Soup concert for a Gen Z(ed) 2000s kid is the inevitable, and expected, Phineas and Ferb sing-along. And it feels like it has a lot more longevity than the Big Bang Theory sing-along at Barenaked Ladies shows.
Larissa’s take: I liked the 4th wall breaks throughout, like nanobots spelling out “Hello” to the audience, the quips from Phineas or Ferb during various silhouettes (eg: Bowling for Soup singing “Finding Frankenstein’s brain”, to which Ferb quips “it’s over here!”), not to mention the aforementioned “making a title sequence”. Fun, tongue-in-cheek. Definitely holds up for the revival, and likely for a long time to come.
Overall Opening Rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟
EPISODE: Motorheads, S1, E1: “Pilot”
In the pilot of this teen soap opera, Zac Torres (played by Love, Victor alum Michael Cimino) and his twin sister Caitlyn (played by One of Us is Lying alum Melissa Collazo) are acclimated to high school in a decaying midwestern rust belt town while trying to contend with their infamous family history.
Story 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Larissa’s take: The pilot starts off dropping us right into the action. Racers driving a yellow Dodge Charger and a red Corvette are on their marks, and everything is on the line.
Then we flash back to Zac and Caitlyn arriving in the small town. Their dad was the most infamous getaway driver of all time, riding off with $12 million, never to be heard from again. The twins are weary of people finding out, but Zac, who has racing aspirations of his own, admits the identity of his father to his new friend. Will he ever be as great a driver as his father? He barely has any experience and never actually raced. Meanwhile, Caitlyn finds a rust bucket in her uncle’s garage that apparently used to belong to her and Zac’s dad - an old yellow Dodge Charger. Is this the car from the earlier street race?? How will they get there?? I’m hooked and need to find out.
Mason’s take: I grew up in the suburbs and went to a high school that bordered the local wealth divide. The average household income of my peers there would fluctuate wildly from lunch table to lunch table. It was unique, but there was always something to do around town for kids. Even still, some rich butt-holes would still like to go out and pretend they lived in a place like the setting of Motorheads, where the only vaguely interesting thing for teens with a licence and too much time on their hands to do is street racing. I also knew self-important jerks like the obvious antagonist, Harris Bowers. This isn’t fair. I promised I wouldn’t think about high school again. Stop being relatable, Mortorheads.
Acting/ Characters 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: Cimino is quite a talented young actor who’s been proficient at communicating character traits to his audiences. Everybody likes an actor who wears it all on their sleeve. In Love, Victor, it was easy to tell that he was the love-struck innocent. In Never Have I Ever, his BDE swung from his hips like he was dragging around an anaconda. But in Motorheads… It’s harder to peg. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. His character is introduced as having secrets, but after they’re revealed (spoiler warning), and we finally learn that his father ran with a lot of money, he’s still hard to peg. But if anyone can peg Cimino, it’s probably George Sear.
Larissa’s take: I was a big fan of Cimino’s subtle and nuanced performance in Love, Victor, so I was interested in seeing where he might take his role in Motorheads. I didn’t mind it.
Aesthetic 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Larissa’s take: Motorheads is basically Fast and the Furious but makes it Gen Z. The setting of their small town is intentionally austere, not only to emphasize specific character motivations, but also to have a lot of the viewing experience be focused on the cars. And the cars, honestly, look pretty awesome.
Mason’s take: Sometimes I like to work on the aesthetic first when working on these. At first, I was getting ready to give my take on "Killed by Death” by Motörhead.
Then I realized that the promo image doesn’t look like Lemmy, there is an S at the end, no umlaut, oh, and I’m a TV critic, not a music critic(???), so I have to say that was a slap in the face.
At any rate, as somebody who isn’t from a dying rust belt town, the show looks exactly the way I would expect a small, dying, rust belt town to look. It’s aesthetically almost like something that would be in a music video by Bruce Springsteen.
Innovation 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: Michael Cimino made out with boys in Love, Victor. He made out with girls in Never Have I Ever. Everyone is dying to know who he’s going to make out with in Motorheads. Other than that, the most innovative aspect of this show is its potential to use cars, racing, and repair metaphorically in its storytelling. Because they’re damaged people… with damaged cars… and they need a little work.
Larissa’s take: This show has a well-framed, engaging plot with a cast of characters all set up for nuanced back stories and complex arcs. The actors are giving their performances the grit their roles deserve, and the crew behind the camera is clearly talented, working with what looks to be a modest budget. In a time when high-budget limited series and remakes reign supreme, it’s a breath of fresh air to see such a tight pilot for an original story made to expand into multiple seasons on a network like Prime.
Overall Single Episode Rating 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
SEASON: The Better Sister, Miniseries
Chloe and Nikki are estranged sisters who went on very different paths in life. Nikki reeled from childhood abuse and became an addict, but Chloe started a successful magazine and dedicated herself to philanthropy. After Nikki spirals, her husband, Adam, leaves her for Chloe, who also adopts their son, Ethan. When Adam is mysteriously murdered and Ethan is arrested for the crime, the sisters are reunited. Can they work together to uncover the mystery? Can they bury the hatchet and come together for their son?
Story 🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: Two things are true about the writing of this miniseries: it is very succinctly written. And it adeptly alludes to the larger lives of its characters. A compliment usually reserved for fantasy, science fiction, and genre fiction set in non-human environments is that the world of the story in question feels very lived-in. Despite being set in (presumably) modern-day New York, the same is true of this story. It deftly gives the impression that the characters we’re following around are full, complex people with lives and homes and relationships beyond what we see. It feels very much like the detectives are going home at the end of the day and spending time with their families. And because of this, the story was able to keep its mystery until the end. Good luck trying to figure it out.
Larissa’s take: Hmm, I wonder if the person who committed the murder is the estranged person (whose life was ruined by the victim) who shows up all of a sudden, who also is haunted by ghosts (including the victim), and who has a knife covered in blood (the victim died from stab wounds). Nah, it’s probably a 17-year-old who wrote mean things in online forums, or an old drunk guy, or stakeholders in corporations we never see on camera. As viewers, we absolutely need to go through at least five meandering episodes about police investigations and court trials that didn’t lead anywhere, that we all knew were red herrings anyway. I know the New York judicial system is slow, corrupt, and incompetent in real life, but does it have to be that way in fiction as well?
Acting/ Characters 🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: Honestly, I need to pick my jaw up from the ground after Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Biel gave career-defining performances in this miniseries. I don’t know if Jessica Biel’s fierce mama bear energy was developed while trying to keep Stephen Collins away from her and Beverley Mitchell, but wherever she got it, she uses it amazingly well here. Elizabeth Banks, who you might know from such very serious projects like Zach and Miri Make a Porno, The Lego Movie, The Lego Movie 2, Modern Family, Our Idiot Brother, and Phineas and Ferb, brings everything we’ve come to love about her and more as she fully occupies the skin of a mother who would do anything for her kid— including sobriety. Neither is the “better” sister because both are outstanding.
Larissa’s take: Jessica Beil is the top student of the Kristen Stewart School of Acting™️.
Aesthetic 🌟🌟
Mason’s take: There were so many sad, muted tones I almost felt like I was watching a modern superhero movie with the colour grading turned to zero. It looked so muggy in every scene that I’m surprised that there weren’t more characters drinking coffee. The aesthetic— however fitting it was— was so sad and depressing that I’m surprised that nobody sang “I Miss You” by Blink-182.
Larissa’s take: The only scene where we see Ethan with his late father Adam is at this Renaissance fair, when he was about 5. We can only assume that this relatively drama-filled event, where his birth mother seems to be forcibly ripped from him, is actually the only positive memory of his dad, because we see this damn suit of armour crop up about a dozen more times in the show. Even for a metaphor, it’s quite literally clunky. Even if Ethan once thought his dad was a good man - a knight, if you will - why would he wait so long to give up the costume? Not after knowing about the horrible things his dad did, not after posting about it online… hell, not even after going to trial for the murder of the man. No, we had to wait for a cinematic moment to deliver a soliloquy about it and get rid of the knight costume then.
Innovation 🌟🌟🌟
Mason’s take: In a simpler and less enlightened time, a few changes probably would have been made to the story to decentre the sisters as the point-of-view characters and main characters or to focus on the perspectives of men. Now that we’re in a “less” sexist time, it somehow still seems refreshing and even a little novel to centre a murder mystery around women. If you need me, I’ll be reading Judith Butler and Simone de Beauvoir and trying to unlearn these patriarchal gender standards.
Larissa’s take: The most innovative thing about this show was how boring they made a series with source material packed with so much intrigue. The only thing that really kept me engaged was trying to think what would make it better. Maybe gender-swapping all the characters, and have it not be about sisters but brothers? Cut several hours from the run-time of the show and turn it into a tight 120-minute movie? Re-casting literally everyone? It was weak and needed to be better.
You had me with the Kristen Stewart School of Acting and the following screenshots of the wife range of emotions 😂. I honestly only saw bad reviews of this show so I guess it's just that bad.
I wasn't expecting Motorheads to be the good surprise of this week. I was intrigued by the trailer but afraid it would be kinda bad. Now I'm just intrigued.
Elizabeth Banks’ portrayal as Rita Repulsa in Power Rangers (2017) That was the first time I discovered her acting performance so I loved her in everything thereafter