Sometimes “We Need a 2nd Season” Isn’t a Plan (or, How Jupiter’s Legacy Ruined a Good Thing)
According to the Internet, Kirk Douglas once said that “in order to achieve anything, you must be brave enough to fail.” I don’t know if he actually said that, but it seems plausible enough, and it helps me get to my amendment: “in order to achieve anything, you can’t do some lazy bullshit.” Jupiter’s Legacy is, well, lazy bullshit. Likely the victim of the Netflix model – which sometimes seems to treat single seasons as pilots for continuations rather than contained narratives – Jupiter’s Legacy falls painfully short on nearly every measure despite having, I’d argue, one of the most compelling “quest” stories outside of traditional epic fantasy. Jupiter’s Legacy is split into two major narratives: the first explores what happens when the values of a Justice League-esque union of graying superheroes are challenged by a younger order of supers and a violent conspiracy plot which takes the lives of several supers; the second takes us back to the Great Depression and the journey the original supers had to complete in order to gain their powers (and, thus, pass them on to their children). There are numerous side plots, most of which center on the children of the original supers dealing with what amounts to a series of problems with one’s parents. Most of this doesn’t really matter to the story, but it’s there to distract you…
Considering Exotic Animals and the Tiger King
On a whim, I began watching Netflix’s new documentary series, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, which apparently set out to be the Blackfish of the private big cat zoo world but quickly became something a bit more eccentric and “true crime’-ish. Just like the characters it follows: Joe Exotic (the Tiger King himself), Doc Antle, and “big cat rescue” lady, Carole Baskin. Part of the shift in tone from animal rights documentary to a true crime dive into the dark hole of the human soul appears to be the fact that Joe Exotic, a longtime enemy of Carole Baskin, was arrested and convicted last year for attempting a murder-by-hire on Baskin. Or maybe that was just the icing on the cake the directors realized they had baked after filming. I don’t know. I’m not really here to talk about that, though. Rather, I want to talk about my own perspective on this cast of characters and the many others like them in the exotic pet world. As many of you know, I am also an exotic pet owner and come from a family of them. By comparison to the cast of characters in Tiger King, however, we’re fairly innocuous varieties. I keep small snakes and lizards (three corn snakes, a bull snake, a spotted python, a Peruvian and a Colombian rainbow boa, and (now) 3 leopard geckos) while my mom and her delightful wife Kathy run a bird rescue — which results in their house being a haven for parrots. Our perspectives are fairly close: we both think that most bird species should not be kept as pets, especially certain breeds of parrots, but we also agree that many exotics can, with proper care, be wonderful additions in a family. In my case, I just really like reptiles, but I draw a pretty firm line over what I consider acceptable as a reptile keeper.