Quick Rant About Monarch: Legacy of Monsters That Is Four Weeks Late

Note: I originally wrote this a few weeks ago on my phone, then forgot I had it on there. I rediscovered it the other day and I'm getting it up now. Thanks!

Apple TV+ recently started airing a television show called Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. It is a spinoff of the MonsterVerse franchise. The American Godzilla franchise. Set in 2015, it followed the events shown in 2014’s Godzilla. Basically, after what happened to San Francisco, a woman went to Tokyo in search of her father. What she found that her father had another family. She teamed up with her father’s son, her half-brother, to figure out what happened to her father, and what Monarch, a Titan research branch of the government, had to do with it.

The show is alright. It dives into the mysteries and back stories behind how the titans could come out of nowhere and wreak such devastating havoc upon the world. Within those back stories are flashbacks to characters connected to other characters throughout the franchise. One of the characters is the grandmother of the two half-siblings. Another character is a younger version of a character John Goodman played in Kong: Skull Island. But it is the third character that piques my interest the most.

Lee Shaw was a military officer in the 1950s. What got me most interested in the show was the casting for Lee Shaw. In the 2015-set portion of the show, Lee Shaw was played by Kurt Russell. In the flashbacks of the 1950s, he was played by Wyatt Russell. Father and son were playing the same character. They wouldn’t share the screen, but to see this use of father and son was a fun casting choice. I liked the idea of having both Kurt and Wyatt Russell playing the same guy.

Yet… It left a couple lingering questions. The two timeframes in which the show took place were the 1950s and the 2010s. That put them 50 years apart. What took me out of this distance in time was the ages of the character during each time period. I don’t believe Wyatt Russell was born when Kurt Russell was 50. That would put Wyatt Russell in his mid 20s. Not even his mid 20s. Kurt Russell is currently 72 years old. If we were to take 50 years off of that, Wyatt Russell would be 22.

That’s just not the case. Wyatt Russell is 37. If we look at this from the other direction, and add 50 years to Wyatt Russell’s age, that would make the older version of Lee Shaw 87. If you do the math, Lee Shaw is either 15 years younger than Wyatt Russell or 15 years older than Kurt Russell. If we were to go off years. But this is TV. Streaming TV. It’s like a movie. Especially when the TV show is in the same universe as movies. The age could flux 5 to 10 years either way. So maybe Kurt Russell played five years older, and Wyatt Russell played 10 years younger. That could be the case. However, no makeup was done to make Kurt Russell look older, or to make Wyatt Russell look younger. They look their current ages.

I know what you might be saying while reading this. This guy is insane. This guy is nitpicking the smallest detail about a show where you just need to check your brain at the door and watch espionage about giant monsters. And you might be right. I need to turn my brain off. But… And this might be a pretty big butt in here… They brought up the age thing on the show. I don’t mean they brought up exact ages on the show. They may have at the point I’m at. I’m only three episodes in. There could’ve been a paper with an exact age on it. The thing I caught was when a character mentioned that Lee Shaw must be almost 90. Then Kurt said something about “Oh, you know, good genes.” The show addressed the age issue with a throwaway line of dialogue.

That line of dialogue didn’t really make sense to me. Sure, good genes could make a person look younger than they should. But this is supposed to be a 90-year-old man. He shouldn’t be able to move nearly as easily in an action setting as Kurt Russell can. I don’t know. Seems a little unbelievable to me. Even if I’m checking my brain at the door, I don’t know I can buy Kurt Russell as a 90-year-old man when he is flying and crashing planes and walking out without scratch. It just breaks the reality of the show.

There’s not much more I have to say about the show. Again, I’m only three episodes in. There could be a better explanation for the age discrepancy later on. I don’t know. What I do know is the show is pretty good. I’ll keep watching it. And that’s kind of all I have to say.

My Bubly Flavour Journey - Merryberry

I’m back to take a look at another flavour of Bubly with a brand new post! You know that, though. You’re looking at it right now. It’s the holiday season and Bubly released a limited time flavour to commemorate the festive time of year. At least, here in Canada they released a new flavour. It might be a permanent flavour elsewhere. Who knows? I can only speculate at what the flavour is, since they don’t actually state it on the can.

Merryberry Bublé was released a while ago to mild fanfare. The fanfare was mostly in the advertising and merchandising. You see, I didn’t make a mistake in calling it Bublé. The can has an é covering up the y in the brand name. The flavour is actually called Merryberry Bublé. As always, Michael Bublé was tied into the commercials and things like that. There has been a running gag that he kept saying it was called Bublé instead of Bubly. That’s why I usually compare the flavours to a specific song of his. He has become synonymous with the brand in Canada.

Now, Merryberry definitely has a berry tinge to it. There’s a slight hint of some sort of berry. I initially thought it was similar to blackberry before it clicked in. One berry is associated with the holiday season more than others. Cranberries are a frequent holiday dish. More accurately, cranberry sauce is a holiday dish. Once that clicked, I knew that was what I tasted. At least, I knew that was likely what I tasted. I might still be wrong. But it did taste like cranberries and that would make a lot of sense.

I quite enjoy this flavour of Bubly. It’s not overwhelming. Yet there’s enough there to latch onto. It doesn’t just taste like sparking water. The berry flavours tend to sit well within the sparkling water of Bubly. I don’t think there’s a berry flavour I don’t like. Spoiler alert for later on in my journey through the Bubly flavours.

The holiday theme of Merryberry Bublé narrows down what Michael Bublé song I’m going to choose for it. The guy has made a few Christmas albums and he’s proud of it. I’m obviously going to go with one of the Christmas songs. I’m going to go with his rendition of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, based solely on the cozy vibes that it brings. Every can of Merryberry Bublé I’ve had has brought me the same cozy feeling. There’s also the can, which looks like a cozy ugly Christmas sweater. It’s the perfect feel for this flavour.

My current order of Bubly flavours would be peach, blackberry, merryberry, pineapple, watermelon, lime, coconut pineapple, and then cherry. That top five could shake up after I have some more of each of them. I’m not one hundred percent confident that merryberry is above pineapple or watermelon.