3 Cool Paramount+ Originals I Saw While Flying Delta
Reviews of‘Pink Ladies,’ ‘Star Trek Prodigy,’ and "School Spirits"!
In this article, I hope to share some thoughts I’ve accumulated over the past couple of months about streaming platforms and provide reviews of three works I’ve seen while air traveling in July, which I like to refer to as a form of ‘flight streaming.’ This led me to see a number of original streaming shows I hadn’t previously been much interested in, including Star Trek: Prodigy and Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, both of which had been removed from Paramount Plus but still available on Delta.
Table of ContentsFlight Streaming Movies/TV on Delta
I love flying via Delta Airlines.
They have good prices, they provide proper service for your money (sleeping masks, complimentary earphones, and earplugs are standard), and they have really damn good in-flight entertainment, especially when it comes to film and TV. Every seat gives you access to a personalized little computer/TV screen with a whole array of options to pick from. (In addition to movies, you might get a flight tracker screen that shows how much time you have until the plane lands, how fast it is, etc.)*
*It used to be that inflight viewing in general was completely out of your control. I remember the days being on flights where there was maybe one big screen for the whole class, and it would show pre-recorded stuff off of videotape. These could also be edited for content. From what I’ve gathered, airline censorship is considerably less frequent now, at least when it comes to US flights.
So, whenever I fly somewhere, I just like to watch as much as I can before the flight is over. It’s a good way to pass the time and avoid boredom. It’s also an opportunity to see works I normally wouldn’t be able to see, or works I’ve wanted to see in theaters but missed, or works I wouldn’t be interested in because other things are available.*
*For instance, this is how I managed to watch “3000 Years of Longing” last year, which had a rather brief theatrical run. I wasn’t interested in the movie enough to get it on video but this was the perfect opportunity.
See, in-flight entertainment options can be wide-ranging but they are also more limited than what you get on most streaming services. And this is NOT a bad thing - I often find myself browsing for a long while trying to pick out things to watch on Netflix or Amazon or Max because there is a veritable sea of film and TV options to pick from. I’m like Dev in that episode of Master of None where he wastes 45 minutes looking for the best taco truck only to find out it’s closed by the time he gets there. When your options are limited, you waste far less time choosing something.
A typical Delta flight by my estimate lets you pick from around 200 or so movies. You can select from a variety of categories, though I usually don’t pick anything outside of ‘new releases,’ which are movies that have just been through theaters and might not yet be available on Blu-Ray, Itunes, Streaming, etc.
Arguably more interesting though is the TV section.
Delta Airlines and Paramount Plus
Imagine paying for a streaming platform that had just the stuff you wanted or what was worth seeing and none of the filler. You didn’t get a large number of shows from any one source, but you could get a sampling or aggregation of the ‘greatest hits’ of all these. (Let’s face it, when it comes to streamers with huge libraries, you’re prob-ly gonna watch 90 percent of their offering even if you’re paying for it. ) I mean, remember the days when there were only like 30 basic cable channels and 4-5 premiums? That’s kinda what Delta’s inflight entertainment felt like.
As in, Delta used to offer a rather eclectic selection of programs from across different networks. If my memory is correct, there were at times popular CW and ABC shows, as well as stuff from HBO, Netflix and Hulu. In ONE place. On ONE interface.
As my most recent flights have revealed, that’s not quite the case anymore, sadly. There was a good selection of about 25 or so different shows available for viewing on the most recent flight, with about 2-4 episodes per series. But the shows were limited primarily to two sources: HBO/Max and Paramount Plus.
This was quite surprising, especially as Paramount seemed to have had the larger share of the spotlight, effectively becoming the main source of Delta Flightstream TV. Having done a little research, I later came to understand that this was due to a special licensing deal reached between Delta and Paramount back in January of this year which was meant to specifically introduce potential new audiences to Paramount + original series and convince them to subscribe.
“Delta first reached out to Paramount a little more than a year ago to be the airline’s streaming partner as part of a major update to Delta’s entertainment offerings, according to Jeff Shultz, the chief strategy officer and chief business development officer for Paramount Streaming.”
“The pact between Paramount and Delta is an upgrade from the typical partnership between a streamer and airline, where only a select number of film and TV titles are usually made available to watch on a flight at any given time, usually due to windowing rights issues or a plane’s limited server storage capacity for content.”
I think the strategy is a sound one. At least in my case, I legitimately became interested in watching more Paramount Plus. For one thing, the flight stream introduced me to an amazing Paramount Original teen series called School Spirits, which I think might be one the best new shows I’ve seen in years.
For another, it gave me the opportunity to check out two other Original shows that by this point already been removed from the actual streaming service.
That’s right!
Last I checked, you could still catch the musical period comedy Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies and the animated sci-fi action series Star Trek Prodigy while flying Delta, even though you can’t watch them anymore with a Paramount+ Subscription.
Both shows are currently available for individual episode-by-episode or full season digital purchase on Amazon and Apple TV, but Grease was only uploaded on July 24, and I got to see it via Delta two weeks earlier during the brief interim period where the show was no longer available and some claimed it would be erased from existence.
So, if you happen to be flying Delta anytime soon, you should seize the opportunity and check out the pulled shows before whatever licensing agreement keeps them there runs out (if it hasn’t already by the time this is published).*
*I don’t know about other removed Paramount originals such as ‘The Game’ but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s on Delta as well. Also, the idea that airlines become places to see removed originals isn’t limited to Paramount. Last year, The HBO Max original “Gordita Chronicles” was still viewable on flights after being removed from the Max app proper.
Now then, let me tell you my impressions of all three original series.
Rise of the Pink Ladies
I’ve never seen Grease (1978). I know it’s a popular music-and-dance film set in the 1950s starring John Travolta. But I have never really been interested in checking it out, so I had no frame of reference for Rise of the Pink Ladies, ostensibly a prequel to the movie that focuses on a gang of outcast teenage girls that form their own high school gang. I’m pretty sure fans of the movie can find all sorts of allusions, callbacks and easter eggs embedded in the text.
Not me though. This was my intro to the world of Grease.* And though I saw only the first two episodes, I was quite impressed, if not completely blown away.
*Despite the fact that there was a song explaining it in the Pilot, I still don’t really have a clue just what the titular “grease” is. Maybe somebody could explain it to me?
If anything, Grease is a beautiful, overly stylized, heavily entertaining show. It has elaborate period production design, some cool cinematography, gorgeous costumes, and a few legitimately great dance numbers. The opening sequence of Episode 2, which made extensive use of split screen to show the news of the girls’ exploits spreading across town, was a knockout.
I wasn’t really that impressed by the story, which was full of 50s nostalgia, comedy, and teen melodrama. But I did like the main cast composing the titular Pink Ladies. The real MVP in my opinion was Nancy Nakagawa (Tricia Fukuhara), possibly the weirdest and most offbeat member of the group.
If there was anything that truly gave me pause, it was the pace. The central premise of Pink Ladies, as I understood it, was to show how and why the gang gets together. But the show effectively burns through it by the end of episode 2, even going so far as to have its central quartet get their iconic uniforms. If you ask me, that’s too much happening too quickly.
I mean, I know we live in the time of hyper-fast storytelling, but I think the show would’ve benefited from slowing down and spreading out this storyline over something like six episodes. And the fact that I’ve heard it really goes off the rails later in the season is not encouraging.
Will I keep watching it, now that it’s available for purchase? Maybe. Maybe not.
Grade: B
Star Trek Prodigy
Star Trek Prodigy feels like a series made for people who aren’t fans of Star Trek.
Its strong two-part pilot, with its dark tone and isolated prison setting, feels like it’s from a different universe entirely, one where aliens cannot directly communicate with one another due to a language barrier, where the central cast is a rag-tag crew of (sorta) teenage aliens thrown together by circumstance, rather than a team of trained Federation Starfleet officers, and the main driving goal, at least initially, is survival, rather than spatial exploration. So, it’s kinda disappointing actually that the series starts to lean more and more heavily into its Trek-ian roots as it goes on, rather than continue to exist as a completely standalone action-adventure/survival series.
By the time the Pilot ends, our crew has found universal translators, removing the need for non-verbal communication and so taking away the atmosphere generated by the unknowability of the non-English-speaking members, as well as absconded with a Federation starship complete with a hologram version of a legacy Trek character from another series. The latter two episodes are good, yet suggest that the series is uncertain, as to what extent it wants to tie itself to the larger Trek canon, or whether it really wants to be a Trek series at all.
And yet, Prodigy is the sort of show that you want to keep watching more and more because you can see its potential for greatness. I couldn’t help but purchase the rest of the first 10-episode season (or is it a volume?) to see the further adventures of Dal, Gwyn, Zero, and the others. Though the first season doesn’t resolve the identity issues suggested by the pilot, it remains engrossing, highly entertaining, and capable of pulling off the occasional great episode, such as the one where the crew makes first contact with a race of non-humanoid beings that communicate through sound waves. I really like how it takes its time to unravel the mysteries of its ship, while still providing some engaging episodic adventures, as well as how it gradually and convincingly turns a villain into another protagonist.*
*This development seems almost inevitable yet a lesser series would’ve likely rushed to make it happen by the end of the Pilot.
I definitely plan to keep watching Prodigy, wherever its later episodes turn up. I just hope the show decides to ultimately carve out its own path rather than contort itself to fit into the larger Trek canon.
Grade: B+
School Spirits
The ending of the pilot for the supernatural mystery/high school drama School Spirits, easily the best of the three Paramount Plus originals that I’d flight streamed, utterly floored me with its visual storytelling. It’s hard to describe, but basically the combination of cinematography, editing, sound, and music - the rhythm of it, if you will - made it clear that the episode was building to something big, some kind of climactic event, but one that wasn’t at all evident from the story being told on screen. In other words, I couldn’t tell exactly what was going to happen, but I could sense something was coming for sure, some other ball was about to drop.
And just as it seems the pilot has entered its final seconds and is about to cut to black, Simon (Kristian Ventura) turns his head and finally sees the ghost of his dead best friend Maddie (Peyton List), who had remained invisible to him and every other living human for the entirety of the hour. It’s as though the two have reached the same emotional wavelength, allowing them to break through whatever veil is supposed to separate the land of the living from that of the dead.
It’s an amazing crescendo to a beautiful sequence that grabs you emotionally and doesn’t let go. And it’s a great cliffhanger ending to a strong, confident episode of television that promises something legitimately special.*
*Unlike the other two series discussed in this article, the show is still on Paramount Plus and has been renewed for a second season. It is also available for purchase on digital video.
Honestly, I’m not sure if I could describe right now just what it is about School Spirits that makes me want to proclaim it possibly the best new show I’ve seen this year and the best show nobody is talking about right now. Perhaps it’s the strong writing of teenage characters, or the excellent cast, or the emotional sincerity of its tone, or just the sheer confidence of its storytelling, which successfully melds a bunch of different genres into a single consistent whole. Sure, you occasionally get some instances of familiar high school hijinks and humor. But this is a show that isn’t afraid of being earnest, of going for the feels, of focusing extensively on the emotions of its main characters, especially as they grieve the loss of a loved one.
It is great. So, check it out if you have the opportunity.
Grade: A-Overall, I find that Delta’s Paramount Partnership is pretty great for viewers. But what do you think? Do you like flight streaming movies or TV? Have you seen anything good recently during your travel? Notice anything specific about an airline’s entertainment options? Agree or disagree with my views on Delta, the shows, etc.?
Side notes:
*The premise of School Spirits reminds me of a French series available on Netflix called Beau Sejour, where a young girl discovers she has died and attempts to investigate her own murder with the help of people who can see her. I have to wonder if that was at all an influence.
*Before too long, I hope to write about some of the movies I’d flight streamed, such as John Wick: Chapter 4 and complete a long piece where I reflect on the changing streaming landscape.
I checked out School Spirits recently and it's pretty fantastic if there are some dragging parts to it story wise.
Didn't know there was a Grease series! Hope they went the Delinquent Girl Boss route with it...
(Title note: the grease keeps their hair still and makes their cars move).